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Transcript

Reinvention and Standing Out · The One Small Change Podcast

0:00
Welcome to the One Small Change. I'm glad you've decided to spend some
0:04
of your time with me on this journey of exploration and
0:08
transformation. I'm your host, Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost
0:11
30 years of entrepreneurial experience. And I have a passion
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for discovering growth through the power of seemingly small change.
0:19
And so I am glad that you are here with me this week. And
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our guest, as always, will share a smaller, unexpected or
0:27
insignificant decision that. That sparked a remarkable
0:30
transformation and growth in their life, either personal or
0:34
professional or both. And the person who you are
0:37
going to get to know today and spend some time with
0:41
is Richard K. Richard, thank you for spending time
0:45
with us today and sharing some, I'm
0:48
assuming, remarkable things that have happened in your life
0:52
so that we as the audience can grow from your experience.
0:56
Yeah, well, thank you. You know, we all have decisions to make in life,
1:00
Yvonne. Sometimes very small decision changes
1:04
the whole trajectory of our lives. And that's the way life's
1:07
supposed to be. We step into uncertainty, and that's where growth
1:11
occurs. Absolutely, absolutely. So I'm gonna
1:15
let you take it away. And every once in a while, I'm gonna interrupt you
1:18
and say, stick a pin in this because this is really important.
1:22
So tell us about. Tell us about that thing that changed your
1:26
trajectory. Well, I
1:30
had a very, very successful, thriving practice. I was a
1:33
chiropractor in San. I still am. I just don't have any state licenses
1:37
anymore. But I had a wonderful practice in San Diego.
1:41
I'm going to give you a little background onto how it became that
1:44
large. When I moved to San Diego, Yvonne, there were
1:48
300 chiropractors in town. Yeah, that's
1:51
the exact. Yeah, we're all in crowded fields. And here I was, a new kid
1:55
on the block. I didn't know anything. Well, how do you stand
1:59
out? You've got to distinguish yourself from
2:02
everybody else. Otherwise, you just, whatever you do, ladies and
2:05
gentlemen, to everyone else, most of us are invisible.
2:10
I said, I gotta get some publicity. So I got myself invited
2:14
to be a guest on a morning television talk show in San Diego called Sun
2:17
Up San Diego. Turn that into getting invited back
2:21
every month for almost a year. Then I got an article in the
2:25
San Diego Tribune. Visibility is going up. Then I got
2:29
an article in the Los Angeles Times. Visibility is going
2:32
up. Elon, you know the statement, it's not what you know,
2:36
it's who you know. Yes. You've heard that. I assert there's a
2:40
much higher order than that, and that's who knows you.
2:44
No matter how good you are. People don't know you. It doesn't matter.
2:48
Well, one day I get a phone call from the producer of ABC News
2:51
in San Diego. The essence of her question was, who
2:55
are you? I'm seeing your name, I'm hearing about you. Well, now
2:59
I got a 6:30 news segment on ABC News.
3:03
Then I got a similar phone call from the producer of
3:07
pbs. Who are you? Well, now I got a PBS segment about me.
3:11
My visibility was. Now, up here, ladies and gentlemen, that's what you
3:15
want to do. You want to get people to know who you are. So that's
3:18
just the background of the change that I made in my life.
3:23
One day I'm meditating and
3:26
I hear, shut your practice and work with entrepreneurs.
3:30
And I kid you not, I looked around. There was nobody there.
3:35
Well, the Reader's Digest version, the short version of on is three weeks
3:38
later, I shut my practice, shut down. 30 years
3:42
of chiropractic. I was in San Diego.
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I now live in Taos, New Mexico. I owned 80 acres out here.
3:50
About a month or so later came out, and I've been serving
3:53
entrepreneurs ever since. Now
3:59
was not a decision that I feel I had a choice
4:03
in. I was guided. I don't care whether you call it download, chat, whatever it
4:06
was, it was a decision that I stepped into a void.
4:10
And that's where life changes. So that's one of the
4:14
decisions that I made that changed my life forever.
4:19
So if. If you were going to
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help us to. To use that. Yeah.
4:27
I mean, I know one of the things that is doing
4:31
kind of the unexpected or doing the uncomfortable. Right. Because
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everybody, if it's comfortable, then you're not changing anything. You're just,
4:39
you know, with the stream. But
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I think there was something else that. That prepared you
4:47
for that, and that was that whole awareness of being visible
4:51
and standing out in the crowd. So can you talk about that a little bit
4:54
more? Yeah. And there's multiple layers to that, Yvonne. One
4:58
is how can you, as a viewer, a listener
5:01
to this program, use that in your life? We've all gotten
5:05
messages, and I don't care what you call it. We have that
5:09
little voice that sometimes whispers and sometimes
5:12
yells. What if you were to pay attention and say, oh, that
5:16
doesn't mean anything. You're walking up the street
5:20
and you know you have to make a left or right
5:23
to get to where you want to go, but you wind up going in the
5:26
other direction. You say, why did I do that? That inner
5:30
guidance directed you. You may have just avoided an accident by
5:33
going in the other direction, Ladies and
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gentlemen, when you play in life, heed those
5:41
calm instincts, for lack of a better expression. When
5:44
you hear something, pay attention to it.
5:48
Watch what happens to your life when you say, I'm just going to
5:52
listen and say, nah, that's nonsense. I got
5:56
married the same way I met a lady, and it was instantaneous.
6:00
And most people say, that's crazy.
6:04
Well, we've been married five years, and it's a
6:07
magnificent. Better than any other relationship or
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marriage. There have been a few before that I've ever had. Pay
6:14
attention, get out of your mind, and listen
6:18
to your heart and soul. And whether you call
6:22
it waking up or whatever, whatever you assign it to,
6:27
be aware of what's around you. Well. And
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I think one of the things that I say to people all the time is,
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and it's taken me a long time to get there, is,
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you know, people have tried most of your life to
6:41
put you in a box or to certain thing.
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And if that's what you keep doing, then you
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will never stand out. You will never come to be the person you were meant
6:53
to be. It's when you take the road less traveled, you
6:56
know, that, that you really start. And, and, and that
7:00
is uncomfortable, right? And I say to myself,
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I must be making a great change because I've never been this uncomfortable
7:07
before. So I, I celebrate that.
7:12
And I think the thing is, you know, like, you're, like, you're saying
7:18
many times our parents have said, you know, when we were kids, sit down,
7:21
be quiet, don't grow. And so the
7:25
whole idea of being visible is almost foreign to us. I mean,
7:29
I had a boss once. I got an evaluation, and it was an okay
7:32
evaluation, but I thought I had worked my butt off. And he
7:36
was like, you know, And I was like, okay, then tell me what it is
7:40
I have to do to get the higher evaluation. And he
7:43
said, I'm not trying to make superstars. I'm just. And I
7:47
said, that's not your decision. I get to decide if I'm a
7:51
superstar or not. If I want to put the work into it. I just need
7:54
to know, you know, what, what, where the bar is,
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right? And he was like, huh, I don't,
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you know, I don't think I was meant to be mediocre. And, and,
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and, and when you listen to yourself, I
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mean, it's a very weird thing. I mean, I think all of us got that
8:12
wake up call with COVID right? I mean, on Monday
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I had a business, and on Friday I did and said,
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okay, if I Have to start over again.
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You're not really starting over, you're continuing on because you're not starting
8:28
at zero. What is it that I really want to do?
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Not what is it that I can do easily, but what is it that I
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really want to do that made all the difference in the world?
8:41
Yes. Yes. You talk about people
8:44
putting you in a box, ladies and gentlemen, there is no box.
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That parameter is established by people
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with saying the same thing, just different words, who want to keep you playing small.
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So you're confined to a 9 to 5 job or
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whatever it is. And I had one of those. I was an electronics engineer and
9:05
I went in and worked weekends and, you know, did that because that's what
9:08
I thought. Then someone introduced me to chiropractic and I
9:12
went to college, got my doctorate and you know, life changed.
9:16
When you step into uncertainty, and you said it so
9:20
beautifully, it's uncomfortable. That's where life
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changes. That's transformation. None of us
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are built to play small. We're all on this planet to give our gifts.
9:31
And your gift may be in service to somebody else at
9:35
a job, and that's okay, but you're always self employed.
9:39
Why? Because you have to perform at your best
9:43
even. And I go back to my days as an engineer.
9:47
My job from my perspective was to do the best I
9:50
could, not so I can get a promotion. You know, those come when you
9:54
perform, but that's who you are meant to be.
9:58
No one grows by playing small. I love the way you said it, and I
10:01
don't remember the exact words, but we are meant to give our gifts on this
10:05
planet. It's the only reason for being here. And I think the other thing is,
10:09
you know, if I, since I had this mindset, if I look back in
10:12
my life, probably all the weirdest things that
10:16
happened to me in my life was because I was doing something
10:20
differently. Yes. I remember being in Wharton, having
10:23
this, this, this class, you know, what do they
10:27
call, I can't even think of the word, you know, a project where you had
10:29
to like diagnose. And this woman got promoted. She had, she had
10:33
mentored all these people all the way up the ladder. They decided to promote
10:37
her and in the job they gave her, she did not do
10:41
well. And everybody in that class said, fire her except
10:44
me. And I said, this woman is a wealth
10:48
of information. Find a role that's right for her.
10:52
She took me aside and said, you don't intend to work for a big
10:56
corporation, do you? Like, it was like,
11:01
right, yeah, they've Caught up to me now
11:06
realize that human capital is a wonderful thing. Right.
11:10
And so I think, you know, and it's funny because my dad was kind of
11:13
like that in the sense that, you know, he was. He. My
11:17
dad always looked for the best, cheapest solution for
11:21
things. And he went to the art museum and they were going to spend, you
11:24
know, like $100,000 solving a problem. And my dad said,
11:28
that's not. You don't need to do this. You can just fix this for
11:31
$10,000 that he went with was
11:35
like, ready to kill him. Right. But the art museum hired him
11:39
to take care of all their stuff. Sure. Because he
11:43
could, you know. So, Richard, if you were, if
11:46
you were talking to. Oh, well, you do talk down our breakers. But if you
11:50
were talking to entrepreneurs and what would be three
11:54
pieces of advice that you could give them that they could put to work, like,
11:58
almost immediately? One of them, as we talked about, is step out of your
12:01
comfort zone. As a classic saying, if you do what you've always
12:05
done, you're going to get what you've always gotten. The question is, is that
12:09
working for you in the space that I play now,
12:13
Yvonne, it's about publicity. You know, my early experience,
12:17
God knows how many decades ago was publicity will
12:20
grow your business faster than almost anything else.
12:24
Imagine, ladies and gentlemen, what would it be like if you were featured
12:28
in a big city newspaper or in a big city magazine.
12:32
As a matter of fact, here's an example. It's one of the things we do.
12:36
Even if you don't know the magazine, you know the person.
12:40
We put clients on the other side of these magazine,
12:44
a whole stack of them here. And it's.
12:48
You've heard of guilt by association? This is fame by association.
12:52
When your name is attached, hey, I'm in a magazine with
12:56
Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise or Shania or whoever it is
13:01
that adds to your credibility. A couple of weeks ago,
13:04
we had a whole bunch of people being filmed at ABC Studios.
13:09
Now, let's be really clear. Not everyone reads the magazine.
13:13
Not everyone watches the news segment. When you happen to be on it,
13:17
it's leveraging all that information.
13:20
And ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, stay tuned,
13:24
because later on you're going to get a gift on how to leverage everything
13:28
you've got. What does it mean? And you've seen
13:31
this over and over and over again. As seen on or. As
13:35
seen on ABC or a scene on or, you know, I
13:39
was in a. I had a feature article in a magazine with, you
13:43
know, Tom Hanks, that adds to your credibility.
13:47
And how do you leverage? I'll give you a simple example. You put it
13:51
out to all the media. You put it out on your social. You put it
13:54
out to the people who are your
13:57
prospects and to your current clients.
14:01
It raises your credibility. When I was on
14:04
pbs, it didn't change a thing about the way I practiced,
14:09
but it added to my credibility. Hey, PBS thinks enough of what this
14:13
guy does to have a special feature on him. And Ivana,
14:17
I'll give you an idea how long ago I was handing patients VHS tapes.
14:20
Okay, so it was a while ago, but today he put it
14:24
all over social. So, stuff. Step out of your comfort zone and embrace the
14:28
unknown. All right, I have a question for you.
14:31
There's marketing, there's publicity,
14:35
and there is proximity.
14:39
Association by proximity. Can you talk about how
14:43
those three things are the same, different work together?
14:47
Yeah. And I'm going to add one other thing in there, and that's pr. Public
14:50
relations. What's public relations? You hire someone
14:54
or you send out, make phone calls, yes, even fax,
14:58
and you pray to God someone picks up the press release.
15:02
Now, if there's an 8.8 earthquake in Russia, you know,
15:05
your press release is gone, never to be looked at again. Because there's other
15:09
things that matter. Does it work? It's beautiful. It's
15:13
worked forever. And it works very powerfully if your stuff
15:17
gets picked up. So then there's
15:20
marketing. Marketing is point of sale. Hey, you
15:24
know, four cans of peanut butter or four jars of peanut butter for the price
15:28
of two today, you can measure that. You can measure. Did
15:32
sales go up? Advertise. We all know what advertising is. You
15:36
see it all over the place. You know, buy this car, this
15:39
movie's coming out. Special advertising. You can measure
15:43
roi, Return on investment on that, too.
15:46
Publicity. You cannot measure the return on investment
15:50
because it's long term. No one's going to pick up this magazine
15:54
and say, oh, well, for example, we get people interviewed at the NASDAQ
15:58
studio and have them featured on the Nasdaq, Jumbotron and
16:01
Times Square. No one looks up. Lisa Nichols is one of our
16:05
clients and says, oh, Lisa Nichols, I want to buy her stuff. No,
16:09
but she's leveraged it profoundly. It's
16:12
all over media. All over her media. Now, let's go to the
16:16
point of your question about proximity. We do
16:19
events. Proximity again, is saying, hey, I'm in
16:23
this magazine with Shania or Nicole Kidman,
16:27
or here I am on a red carpet with Lisa
16:30
Nichols or Tom Hanks. Or
16:34
whomever. That's proximity. When we do
16:38
live events, we have red carpets. When
16:41
we have events, they usually dress to impress. Not dressed for
16:45
success, dressed to impress. Because you're going to be
16:49
taking photographs with people. They may not know
16:52
you, but if you're standing next to. And I'm just using Lisa
16:56
as an example to Lisa Nichols or perhaps
17:00
Linda Fisk, who runs Leadership Global, very
17:03
prominent people. You have
17:08
not fame, but you have proximity because you're with
17:11
these people. And that's all red carpet events are about. We
17:15
have camera crews, we got video, we got stills. So you get
17:19
to leverage that publicity. That makes sense, doesn't it, Yvonne?
17:22
Yeah. And what I'm hearing you say is
17:27
that in order to grow, you need to
17:31
have several different lanes. You know,
17:35
your marketing, your ads or whatever those
17:38
are, are things that you can measure. They're in the here and now. But
17:42
you got to put those seeds out there for long term
17:46
so that, so that they're working together. So you,
17:50
you've got the proximity, you've got the, the, the,
17:53
the PR stuff. Then when people, your marketing comes
17:57
out, it's going to land even better because they've seen you in these
18:01
other places. All right, so here's my next question.
18:04
None of us are, I shouldn't say none of us. I'm not going to be
18:08
ready for the red carpet next week. I don't think.
18:12
Or invited, which is probably the more important thing. If I was invited, I
18:16
would get ready. So
18:19
how can we start to build that momentum? So we are
18:24
going to be ready. We are going to be invited. So
18:28
I'm going to take exception with it. You said that you're not ready. We're all
18:32
ready. Where do we begin? I
18:35
suspect that you said you're not ready because it's uncomfortable
18:39
for you, because you don't feel you can hang out with those people. I assert
18:43
you can. Virtually all of our clients, there are a few
18:46
who are much larger. They're all like you and me.
18:50
Solopreneurs started small someplace.
18:53
When I had my first foray into television, quite frankly, I didn't know what the
18:57
hell I was doing. I just figured out how to get invited to be on
19:00
Sunup San Diego, the television show. And
19:04
I figured out as I went, no matter where you are,
19:08
ladies and gentlemen, a picture next to
19:11
whomever raises your profile,
19:14
raises your visibility, gets you ready for the stack.
19:18
It's constant, never ending improvement.
19:22
And I'll invite you to our next event. It's a
19:26
red carpet event. I think
19:30
it's I don't even remember. Oh, December 2nd and 3rd
19:34
in Los Angeles and it's called Top Talent Hollywood.
19:38
We did one a couple of months ago and it was going to be a
19:40
standalone event. People said, guys, we want another one. It was a one
19:44
day event. Now it's two. Because more and more people want to
19:48
come. And that's how you build your
19:51
influence, your credibility and get the
19:55
exposure by being at these events and then you get
19:58
invited back and invited back. So there's
20:02
no beginning point. It's now. This is, this
20:06
is the beginning point. Fantastic.
20:09
Richard, you are amazing. And what you talk about is,
20:13
is like space exploration to me,
20:17
something that I know nothing about. And so I am so glad that
20:21
you're here and, and starting to open people's eyes about what's possible
20:25
and what they can actually do. And so
20:30
I'm going to ask you my surprise question, and that is,
20:34
when was the last time you did something new for the first time?
20:39
I love, but I'm going to back up before I answer that.
20:43
If it's not your gift, it's not your job. I have flown
20:47
God knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles. Probably
20:51
you don't want me in the cockpit. I wouldn't, you know, it's
20:55
dangerous. I'm the passenger. I defer to
20:58
the experts who do that. We're the experts in
21:02
publicity. We even produce movies for people. We get people on binge
21:05
television. We own the Trailblazer Channel there.
21:09
If you don't know what to do, turn it over to the
21:13
experts. And what have I done recently?
21:17
Well, I used to be there was an organization named
21:20
CEO Space. This is business. And then we can talk personal.
21:24
At the time, it was the largest business growth conference on the planet. We
21:28
launched Chicken Soup for the Soul. We launched Lisa Nichols. Actually,
21:32
I know Lisa from before she was on Oprah, before she
21:36
took the main stages.
21:40
The founder died. Bernie Dorman passed away about five years ago.
21:44
And shortly after that, I got a phone call from a fellow named David
21:48
Fagan. He and I know one another through CEO Space. And we've spoken
21:52
on stages together before, you know, on the same platforms.
21:56
He called me up and he said, I want to fly you and
21:59
Angela, my wife, out to Phoenix. And he said, let's work together
22:04
now. Who's David? Many of you have heard of
22:07
Guerrilla Marketing. J. Conrad Levinson. David was president
22:11
of, I mean CEO of Guerrilla Marketing. They sold
22:14
26 million books. And David's really clear, I didn't sell them
22:18
as an organization. We did. So he Brings publishing
22:22
into our world together. We do the publicity, the publishing
22:26
and all that stuff we've spoken about. The
22:29
shift was beginning to work with him.
22:33
It's been an amazing adventure on
22:37
learning new things. We mentor one another, we grow one another,
22:41
we amplify one another. That was
22:45
another profound change in my life. On a personal level.
22:50
I've always owned dogs. My last two were wolves.
22:54
I mean literal wolves. The vet said, yeah, 100
22:57
wolf here and in, in our neighborhood
23:03
we have a neighborhood lady. She posts everything. It's one of those
23:06
neighborhoods. And she had a cat up
23:10
for adoption. And Angela said, let's take the cat.
23:13
I said, I don't know anything about cats. So now we own an amazing
23:17
black cat. His name is Merlin and he brings such joy and love into
23:21
our life. So let's get personal and
23:24
business in there. Change is wonderful. So does Merlin run the
23:28
house and. Have you trained very well.
23:32
That I think is the difference between cats and dogs. Cats are like, you
23:36
know, you'll do it way or we won't do it at all.
23:39
Exactly, exactly. And it's fun and
23:43
yeah, so, so. Because we have two cats and,
23:47
and dogs. So anyway, so you got both.
23:51
It's time for the commercial. If you haven't taken the
23:55
time to subscribe and to share this, you know, and
23:59
engage on social media, please do. Because one of the reasons I
24:02
do this is to help to bring people into your life that can
24:06
expand your world and, and your quest for growth and
24:10
impact. And so I hope you will continue to join me for the one small
24:14
change and embark on this, this journey where, you
24:17
know, just some small insight can make a big difference in your life
24:21
and help you to dive into, you know, an
24:24
innovative possibilities and, and make your vision even
24:28
bolder. And so Richard, can you give us your last words
24:31
of wisdom that we can, you know, take away and, and keep on
24:35
our mind? Yeah. And it.
24:39
Ladies and gentlemen, if you Want to explore
24:42
talkaboutpublicity.com it takes you to my
24:45
calendar link Set up a 30 minute phone call. It's not a sales call,
24:49
it's an exploration call. And if you
24:53
feel that you are, that's not true. We're all ready to grow.
24:56
Talkaboutpublicity.com A takeaway, Yvonne,
25:00
is remember, we don't see the world as it is. We see it
25:04
as we are. We see it through our lens, through
25:08
our filters. And you know, when you're in judgment or
25:11
love doesn't make a difference. It's our perspective on
25:15
how we see the world. I.
25:19
Every time I talk to you, my world gets bigger
25:23
and the possibilities get bigger. So I definitely want to
25:27
thank you for that. I want to thank you for taking the time. And
25:31
for everybody else, remember that change is simple,
25:34
but it's not always easy. But it is wild. You
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know, it requires courage, some resilience, and it requires
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a willingness to step outside your comfort zone. Richard said
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this, and I truly believe it. If you keep doing what you're doing, you're going
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to what you got. So join us again for the
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one small change. And, Richard,
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like I said, every time I talk to you, my world expands. So thank you
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so much. Thank you for the opportunity, Yvonne.
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Goodbye, everybody. And until the next time, stay
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curious.