Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Be a Voice, Not an Echo: The Power of Authentic Leadership - Chris Widener [Ep 100]

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Be a Voice, Not an Echo: The Power of Authentic Leadership - Chris Widener [Ep 100] · Glovisor Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to tell you that you're supposed to be
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a voice and not an echo. Be a voice, not
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: an echo.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Glowvisor podcast, where we explore business growth, communication,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: and personal development through real conversations with people who make
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: an impact. Our guest is a Wall Street Journal and
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: New York Times bestselling author, internationally recognized speaker. The last
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: two years, he's been named one of the top speakers
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: by global gurus, an expert in influence, sales, and leadership.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Glowvisor welcomes Chris Widener.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Joe. Pleasure. Chris,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: you've built businesses.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: You've become a best-selling author, spoken to audiences all around
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: the world. What experience most changed the way that you
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: think about success? And what did it teach you?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that it's one experience, but it's
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: a bunch of experiences that all fall under the same umbrella.
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: And I think it's great to make a lot of money.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It's great to build big businesses, all those kinds of things.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: But I've known dozens and dozens of people who've made
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: tens and tens or hundreds and hundreds of millions of
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: dollars and their life fell apart around them. And so
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, seeing people who are wildly successful financially,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: whose lives fall apart, it makes you realize, is that
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: really success? In fact, my wife and I will joke,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: sometimes we'll be driving through a neighborhood. The last time
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: we were driving through Franklin, Tennessee, which is a very
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: affluent suburb of Nashville. And we're driving through and we
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: take a shortcut to another friend's house and it's all
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: these like $ 10 million mansions. And my wife said, wow,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: that house is beautiful. And I said, I wonder which
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: room the couple's fighting in tonight. It's a reminder that, yeah, beautiful.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: But that's not what life's about. Life's about relationships and
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: love and peace and joy. And money is fantastic to
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: have on top of all that stuff. But I'd rather
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: have those without money than money without those.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Now, many entrepreneurs believe that having the best product or
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: the best service is enough to win customers. How important
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: is influence in business? And how can someone develop it
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: without being that manipulative salesperson?
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Well, developing it is a longer conversation. But I would
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: just say that I teach in my seminars that people
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: judge you when you're trying to influence them. They judge
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you on your character and your skills. Or you could
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: also say, as part of skills, your product, right? So
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: you go onto a car lot, and I've done this
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: numerous times. You have to, you go onto these lots,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: you're checking out different cars or whatever. And one time
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: I was looking at these two particular cars, and they
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: were probably I don't know, $ 20, 000 apart.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: They were SUVs. And so I was narrowing them down.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: And one of them was obviously better. And actually, I
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: think the cheaper one was actually better. But the very
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: last day that I went, well, because the other one
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: you were paying for a brand, you had a brand
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: price as well. And so was talking to the guy
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: and I caught him in a couple of different lies.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And so I said, okay, well, I'm going to go
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go over, you know, check out the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: other thing. And he pulled out every stunt that he
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: possibly could. You know, listen, this is the lowest price
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I could give you. I couldn't give you another dollar
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: off if I wanted to. I'm like 10 feet from
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: my car.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: And he goes, listen, listen. He does one of these things.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: I always think it's so funny. He goes, hey, hey, hey, Mr. Weidner, Mr. Weidner.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: And he goes like this.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Listen, if you'll buy it right now, I can give
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: you another $ 10, 000 off.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: And I said, you know, I could never buy a
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: car from you. And he said, why?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: And I said, because you have no integrity. He goes,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: what do you mean I have no integrity? I said,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: a hundred feet ago, you told me you couldn't give
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: me another dollar off if you wanted to.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: You lied to me.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: And so he had the better vehicle, but I went
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and paid for the second best, which is still a
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: great SUV.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: And paid $ 20, 000 more for it.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: While I was driving home that day in the brand
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: new SUV, the first general manager called me He goes, hey,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: my sales guy told me that we had this problem, blah, blah, blah.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: And what can we do to save the sale? I said, nothing.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: I'm driving home in my new SUV.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And so I think when you're talking about product, it
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: is amazing to have the best product. I'd rather walk
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: into a sales call with the best product. The best
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: product isn't always what people are buying. They also need
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: to buy you. And primarily people judge us on our character.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: They want to know, they want to know, that you
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: are a kind of person who's going to tell them
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: the truth. You're going to be a person who serves them.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: You're going to operate out of excellence. Those are three
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of the four things I talk about in my speeches.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: But if you can get the best product, take the
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: best product. But maybe you have the second best product.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Be a better salesman. You mentioned your speeches. Could we
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: go back? When did you start speaking publicly? I started
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: out right outside of college. I had a crazy upbringing.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: My dad died when I was four. I had a
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: mom with borderline personality disorder. I lived in 28 homes,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: went to 11 different schools. I was shipped off to
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: live with relatives twice, once in the fourth grade, once
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: in the ninth grade. Started drugs in the sixth grade,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol in the sixth grade. Made most of
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: my money growing up betting the horses at Long Acres Horsetrack,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: which used to be outside of Seattle. It's torn down.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: They built a new one now. And so I had
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a really crazy upbringing. Got my life together. And so
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: right out of college, I got a degree in youth
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: and family work because I wanted to help kids who
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: were sort of at risk kids. And so I started
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: out speaking at high school, summer camps, colleges, youth groups,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: you know, all those kinds of things.
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: And it was fun.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what, some of the best speakers
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: in the world that I know now, they started as
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: youth speakers. Because if you can talk to a bunch
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: of if you can hold the attention of 500 eighth graders, adults.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: Are really easy. That is a tough crowd for sure. Oh, man.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: Now, how did we go from speaking to youth to
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: becoming one of the top speakers in the world?
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: Well, a few transitions.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Obviously, most of our careers don't just go from here
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: to here. There's sort of an arc or a trajectory.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I had been a pastor for 14 years from 1988
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: until 2002. but I was what they call a church planter,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: meaning that I go start a church. They didn't just
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: hand me a bunch of money. They're like, start with
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: these six people and see if you can make something
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: out of it. So I was speaking to pay my
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: bills while I was building a church just outside of Seattle.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: And in 2002, I decided to go and write and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: speak full time because I got on the internet pretty
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: early because living in Seattle, I realized where this was
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: going far before a lot of the country knew where
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: it was going. I lived in the town just south
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: of Microsoft. We shared a border with Redmond. And so
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I knew all these guys at Microsoft and all those companies.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: And so in 2002, I decided to transition and just
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: write and speak full time because I'd already written three
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: or four books. By this point, I was talking to adults.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: By this point, I was probably making $ 10, 000 a speech.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: And so I ended up going and doing that. Over
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: the course of those seven years from 2002 to 2009,
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: I had three amazing opportunities. The first was during those
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: seven years, I worked two years ghostwriting for John Maxwell.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I wrote his nationally syndicated column for him. Another two
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: years of those two years, I was asked to co-host
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a TV show with Zig Ziglar. And so I was
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: his co-host on a show called True Performance. You can
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: still find it on YouTube. Sometimes people say, how long
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: ago was that? And I say, it was about 30
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: pounds ago. So you'll see a younger, skinnier Chris if
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: you go and look that up. But the real big
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: break for me, not only those two, was all seven
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of those years I worked with Jim Rohn. And I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: became Jim Rohn's last protege. And I co-wrote his last
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: book that he ever wrote, a book called Twelve Pillars.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: So that's sort of the trajectory. Probably the best thing
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: for my speaking career, aside from just the accolades of
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: working with John and Zig as well, was Jim was
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: really big in the network marketing industry, the direct sales industry.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: And he had an exclusive deal with Herbalife because the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: founder of Herbalife founded the company two weeks after going
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to a Jim Rohn seminar.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: So he was big on Jim. And they paid him a.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: Million dollars a year and he could only speak for
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Herbalife in the network marketing direct sales industry. He could
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: go talk to BMW if he wanted to, but he
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: could only talk to Herbalife. So you know how you
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: usually talk about upsells? I was the down sell and
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: it worked out really good for me because he was
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: getting hundreds of phone calls a year saying, hey, we.
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Want Jim to come talk to our direct sales company.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: And he's like, well, he can't, but he's got this
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: guy that he's been working with and training and all
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: these things. I had never spoken to a network marketing
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: or direct sales company before. And I spoke to 500
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of them in those, you know, seven years.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of Jim Rohn.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree. Many people are.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: But, you know, could we go back? Because, I mean,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: you mentioned that you worked with a lot of amazing names,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: people in the industry. But there had to be that
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: moment that you can identify and say, this was the
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: turning moment that connected you to those names. Because, again,
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: we're just a regular guy just living a regular life.
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: So how does that switch? What was that moment?
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: So there were two things that I did to connect
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: myself into that level. First of all, like in 2004,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: a friend of mine and I started I had already
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: started the company. He came on board and he had
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: been selling photography and language learning software through Costco.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: And Sam's Club.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And he looked at the CD set. I actually met
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: him at a speech I gave and he looked at
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the CDs. and he goes and he made the connection.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: These are what I sell, but they have photography and
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: they have language learning programs on them. So he said,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: I wonder if we could do like motivational speaking packages.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: So we spent an entire summer calling hundreds of speakers
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: and licensing their audio programs And we ended up selling 50,000
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to 75,000 copies a month through Costco and Sam's Club.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: And we owned the rights to it and all that.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: We paid some royalties to the people who were in it.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: But one of the things that I did, we had
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: 14 CDs, one DVD.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: In every package.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: And it was a big box. Everything has to be
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: big for Costco. And on the front panel or the
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: front of the box was a thing that opened up.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: And so when you closed it up, it was the front.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: And I always put four names on that. I put
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: three famous people and my name. So I'd see John Maxwell,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Chris Widener. And so I sort
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: of psychologically started tying myself into that group of people.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: So that's probably the most important way that I did it.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: But then probably the turning point was the Jim Rohn
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Weekend Leadership Event, which was held, I think, July 30th
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: through August 1st.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Of 2004.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: And I had been working with Jim for a couple
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: of years and they asked me to be the MC.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Of the event. It was a three-day event. Legendary speakers.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: We had Jim, of course.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: We had Brian Tracy was also one of our guests
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that weekend. Dennis Waitley, who just recently passed away, maybe
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: the last.
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: Year or so.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And then a guy named Charlie Tremendous Jones, who a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: lot of people have never heard of, but he was
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: really a contemporary of theirs and he was just as good.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: He just never got as famous. And so if you
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: ever want to watch some great, amazing motivational stuff, look
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: up Charlie Tremendous Jones. And so that the Jim Rohn
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: organization took that weekend and they turned it into a
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: bunch of products. They they sold it just as is.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: And so I was just front and center to all
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: these people who loved, you know, Jim and Brian and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Dennis and Charlie. Maybe they'd never heard of me before,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: but I was in there so much. that over the
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: course of watching, you know, 15 hours or 20 hours
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: or whatever it was, they just got an awful lot
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: of me. And they gave me a few times where
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I actually spoke like 15 minute sections over the course
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of the weekend.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Mostly I was the MC though.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: And so I think those two things are probably the
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: times that most catapulted my career.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: It's interesting because you know exactly the dates when these
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: things happen.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: Well, they were big.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: That's probably why I remember. There's a lot of dates
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: I don't remember because they weren't that big. I want
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: to get some more golden nuggets from you. Leaders often
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: struggle to get people to buy into their vision. How
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: can business owners really inspire more commitment from their employees
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: and customers?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I think there's sort of twofold. There's pre-vision casting
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: and then there's vision casting.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Again, Zig Ziglar made the quote famous.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it was actually his, but he said,
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: people do business with people they know, like, and trust.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: And so a leader who is known, liked, and trusted
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: is going to be a person that other people want
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to follow, they want to do business with, they want
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to carry out the person's vision, those kinds of things.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you have to be a walkover
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: or a welcome mat or anything like that. I'm not
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: talking about being weak, but I am talking about being
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: a generous, kind, visionary, optimistic leader, not a bulldog who's
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: always riding people and that kind of stuff.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: You get a lot more out of people when you
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: treat them well.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: And so before you ever cast your vision, just make
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: sure you're that kind of leader. Make sure that your
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: people love you. You know, there are some people that
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: they they hate their boss. In fact, it's always been
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: said most likely people don't they don't change jobs.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: They change bosses.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: They leave because they can't stand their boss, not necessarily
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: because they can't stand their job or the reason they
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: can't stand their jobs because they can't stand their job,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: their boss. But then you have the actual time of
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: vision casting where you're projecting what your vision is. You're
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: projecting what you want the organization to do or the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: individual team or whatever. And I think there's just a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: real couple of real good aspects there that people need
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: to consider. First of all, you know, you bring the
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: vision to the table and you need to be clear.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: You need to be concise. You know what your vision is.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: But then one of the things that I think good
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: leaders do or great leaders do is after they've laid
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: their vision on the table. Now, this isn't the military
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: where you're a general and you say, this is what
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: we're doing. No questions asked, you know, because they have
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: to follow the general. They can actually be thrown in jail,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the brig, if they don't follow the rules. Right. But
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: this is not that. This is people work there on
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: their own volition. They are going to work as hard
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: as they want to work or as little as they
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: want to work. And so I would suggest at this
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: point that you offer the team to give feedback for
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: a couple reasons. Number one, it makes them feel like
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: they're included in the process and you can gain buy-in.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: But number two, you might get some really good ideas
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: from some people because in the end, we might be
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: smart and brilliant and experienced and all those things, but
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: we also don't know what we don't know. If you're
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: telling somebody something and this is included in your vision
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and you've got you know, 15 salespeople and seven of
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: them say, well, man, I've been hearing from my customers
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: such and such. And it's in direct contradiction or it
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: might just give a little bit of a twist to
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: what you're projecting. As a good leader, you hear that
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: feedback and go, wow, I'm not out on the front
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: lines with customers. My sales guys are out on the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: front lines with customers and they're.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Giving me that feedback.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Maybe we should take my vision and we should just
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: shift it just a touch to overcome those sorts of
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: objections and pushback.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Within the thread of change, Looking back as a professional speaker,
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: how have things changed? Are there more people in the
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: same space? Is there more competition than there's ever been?
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. Every corporate guy that gets fired is now
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: a speaker. I mean, seriously.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: You know, when the National Speakers Association started, I want
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to say the mid-70s. It might have been the early,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: might have been the late. But it was started by
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a bunch of folks who are in their 80s now.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: Zig was one of them. Jim and Naomi Rohde. Jim Cathcart,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of those guys started the National Speaker Association.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: They started with 100 people, speakers from across the country.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: And now I'm guessing that there's probably 15,000 former members
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of the NSA. I imagine that there's probably maybe 3,000
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: or 4,000 members of National Speaker Association now with another 15,000
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: to 20,000 who tried it and left. I've talked to
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: some speakers bureaus that have told me they have 20,000
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: speakers in their database. So the competition is extremely vast,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: which is all the more reason why you really have
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: to find your niche and become the go-to person in
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: that particular niche.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: And that's the ideal ingredient in becoming a successful speaker today?
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I learned this. I hired a coach in
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: the 90s. I paid a guy $ 7, 500 for a year.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: And he coached me on marketing and the speaking business
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: and all these kinds of things. And one of the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: very first things he told me was I was billing
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: myself as a motivational speaker. And he said, you're not
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: going to call yourself a motivational speaker anymore. And I said, why?
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: And he goes, because there's thousands of them. Now you're
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: competing against thousands of them. And so he actually did
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: this for me. He said, this was back when you
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: had landlines and long cords. And he said, I want
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: you to go to your bookshelf. And I go, okay,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: I got my bookshelf right here. I was in my office.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: He goes, go and look at your bookshelf. I want
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: you to look at all the books you have. And
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: I want you to tell me what the number one
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: topic by volume of books that you see on your bookshelf.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: And I said, leadership. And he goes, second question, have
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you ever been a leader?
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: I said, sure.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Captain of my baseball team, captain of my basketball team,
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: captain of my football team, president of my class in college.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I've always been a leader. And at that point,
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I was a pastor. So I was leading a church.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, I've got lots of leadership. He said,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: you are now a leadership speaker.
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: And I loved it because I loved leadership. I was
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: passionate about it. When I started working with Jim Rohn,
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: you know, leadership became the go-to topic. So now it
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: wasn't just, you know, 50 of us. Now it was
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: 500 of us all pursuing the same gigs.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: One of the folks at Jim Rohn International said, you know,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: you should write a book on influence.
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: And I said, why?
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: And they go, well, knowing your history and where you
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: came from, he said, you're like the only guy I
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: know who has senators, rock stars, professional athletes in your
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: phone and you have relationships with them and you've gained
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: influence in their lives. And I went, huh, I really
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: had never thought about that. I was just living my life.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I was just being me. And so I took six
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: or nine months and I did a couple of things.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I started reading everything I could on influence. I started
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: sort of looking at my own life, like, okay, How
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: did I become friends with that rock star? How did
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I become friends with that tech guy that just sold
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: his company for a couple hundred million? What was it
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: about me? But I'd never analyzed it. I was just
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: living it. And then I also started looking at other people,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: both people I knew and then people that were just
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: known to all of us, and asked, what is it
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: about that person that gives them the influence into the
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: life or lives of other people? And I created a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: program called Winning with Influence. I sold my second book.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: I did a two-book deal with Random House. One was
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: called The Angel Inside. That's my number two on The
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, number seven on The New York Times.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And then my follow-up book to that was the book
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: called The Art of Influence, Persuading Others Begins With You.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: And so I started talking about influence. And at the time,
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: there was two of us. There was me and a
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: guy named Robert Cialdini, who wrote a book called Influence,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: The Psychology of Persuasion. I think he's a marketing professor
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: at ASU, Arizona State University. And so I was in
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: a very small niche and that got me a lot
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of gigs because if you were looking at either a
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: leadership conference or a sales conference, they could hire a
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: guy that talks about influence because both leadership and sales.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Depend on your ability to influence other people.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And so as that lane kind of got bigger, when
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I talk about influence, I don't teach a lot about
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: skill sets. I don't say, here's how you handle objections
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and here's how you make a presentation and here's all
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the different closes you can use. I'm not that, I
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: don't teach techniques. There's lots of people that teach way
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: better techniques than I do. I talk about your character
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: because ultimately I said character and skills. People will walk
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: off the lot, even if you have the best product
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: and you have high sales skills, if they don't trust you.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: And so my sort of vision for my speaking career
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: was to talk to people about the part that we
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: don't think about much because we want to be the
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: best salesperson. We learn all those tips and tricks and
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: techniques and, you know, we try to find the best
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: products to sell. But if we're not working on ourselves,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: you know, Jim Rohn always used to say, work harder
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: on yourself than you do on your job. It doesn't
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: mean you don't work hard on your job. It just
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: means you have to work harder on yourself than you
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: do on your job. And so when you're selling from
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: a position of strong character, which builds trust, then you
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: also combine that with a great product or service, you're
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: in business.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Would you say that character is that one commonality that
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: helps you have those influential relationships? connections with people?
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things people get to know me, they'll,
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: they'll always say, you always know exactly where you stand with,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: with Chris. Like I'm radically honest, transparent. I'm willing to
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: tell people hard things, even though I don't even really
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: like it. And I know they don't like it, but
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: there's an old proverb from the Bible that says wounds
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: from a friend can be trusted. Now wounds from somebody
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: on the internet.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Just forget about them. They're just people who there's people,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: they're trolls on the internet. But when your close friend
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: or when your spouse or when somebody who you know
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: loves you and cares about you and wants the best
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: for you, when they say something to you, even though
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: it's going to hurt because it's still a wound and
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: you didn't like hearing about what you did wrong or
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: a character flaw or something like that, you can still
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: trust it. And I've developed a reputation as being the
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: guy who will lovingly tell you the truth. And so
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: I think that that is refreshing to a lot of
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: people when we live in this day and age of
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Everything's just an image on the internet.
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Now, how has your definition of success changed over the years?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know that it's changed because I think
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I came up with a pretty good one. True success
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: is not the overachievement in one area, but the balanced
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: achievement in all areas. And I sort of touched on
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: this before. If you have $ 100 million, but you're living
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: in a 12,000 square foot mansion by yourself because your
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: wife left you and your kids won't talk to you,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: are you successful? No.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: If you are super, super.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Smart, like, you know, professor of something somewhere, but you're
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: broke as a joke, are you really successful? You know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: if you are, maybe you're into fitness, maybe you're just
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: totally ripped and jacked and, you know, lean body mass
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: and low fat and all that kind of stuff, but
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: you're dumber than a box of rocks, are you really successful?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: So one of the things I try to challenge people
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to do is to take a look at what whole
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: life success would be for them. And, um, and so
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: it might mean, and this is sort of the cliche, right?
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: You know, the, the wife and kids leave you because
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: you've spent all this time at work. You never come
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: home for dinner. You don't never take your vacations or
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: take the kids on vacation, you know, all these kinds
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: of things.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: And finally, that's what they want from you. And you're like, no,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: I'm working hard to pay them. I'm doing all of this.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: For us, which is really kind of bogus because we
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: get a lot of, you And so I think it's
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: important for us to just really sit down and go, okay,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: what does true success look like?
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Maybe I don't build a $ 100 million a year business.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Maybe I build a $ 30.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Million a year business and I'm married for 50 years
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: and my kids love me and I get to see
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: my grandkids and I take the time instead of just
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: grabbing fast food at lunch because I'm working 80, 90
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: hours a week, I'm eating right.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: I'm making sure that I am exercising.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And I think that's my best bit of advice is
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: making sure that physically, intellectually, financially, emotionally, spiritually, that we're
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: taking a look at where we want to be and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: we're making sure that the way we spend our time
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: aligns with that so that we can produce the results
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that we want to see.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, focus on what matters most.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: You've had success in many different realms, but you founded
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: the Royal Table. Can you tell us a little bit
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: more about that?
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Royal table is a faith-based thing, kind of going
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: back to my ministry days. And one of the things
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that I've always believed when I was a pastor and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: still to this day is men tend to be the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: least interested in church or spiritual things, right? Women, I think,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: are probably more spiritual by nature. They're, you know, they're caretakers.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: And again, these are broad sweeping generalities, but They tend
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: to be more nurturing in those things, which are more
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: probably aligned with spiritual values and those kinds of things.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: And what I've realized is, is that there are so
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: many men out there who have spiritual interest, but there's
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: nothing that really gives them an opportunity to pursue that
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: spiritual interest or to deepen it. You know, at best,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: most men are like, my wife wants me to go
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: to church. So I go to church with her. We
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: probably go three times, you know, three times a month.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: And the kids like youth group and, you know, but
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I'm working. You know, that tends to be, it's more
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: of a tip of the hat, you know, like, okay,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: here you go. So for guys who really say, you
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: know what, I really want to make this a big
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: part of my life. I want to make sure that
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I'm growing, you know, I play tennis four days a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: week and I, you know, I save money every month.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Why am I not committing the same kinds of time
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: and resources into my spiritual life or into my emotional life?
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that all of us
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: say is, you know, you ask somebody, how often do
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: you go in for a physical? Well, once a year
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I do a physical. And we want somebody to take
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: a look at our body, right? Make sure that there's
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: nothing going wrong. I suggest that two other people, or
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: not two other people, I suggest two other people that
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: they do some other things. And the secondary one is
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: one that most people probably do as well. And that
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: is a financial. They go into their financial planner, they
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: sit down, they take a look. It's just the same
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: thing that your doctor did with you. The other thing
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: that I suggest to people is to do what I
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: call an emotional. Maybe every two or three years, you
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: just book an hour with a counselor. you know, or
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a psychologist. And you'll walk in and they'll say, well,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: what's wrong? And you're like, nothing's wrong, but I'd like
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: you to kind of poke and prod.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm a 50-year-old guy.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: What are most 50-year-old guys kind of struggling with? And
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: let them kind of poke and prod, just like your doctor.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: You know, your doctor goes, does this hurt? No, that
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: doesn't hurt.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Does this hurt? Oh yeah, that hurts.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Well, now we found the problem. You can do the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: same thing with finances, right? Well, you make a million
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: dollars a year, but you got 50 grand in the bank.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: What's the problem? Oh, you buy $ 70, 000 watches three times
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: a year. Okay. I think I found the problem. You
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: can do the same thing emotionally. And then lastly, spiritually.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I think spirituality is something that we kind of do
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: by default. We show up at church and we get
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: whatever that person decided to give to us that particular Sunday.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: And what I want to do is challenge people to
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: do those, the physical, the financial, the emotional, the spiritual,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: on a regular basis so they can kind of keep
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: themselves up to date mentally where they're at.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: And are they achieving the kinds of things that they
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: want to achieve?
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: So the Royal Table is mostly a membership base?
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: It's a membership base. And one of the things that
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: we do, we only open it up every three months.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: And the reason we do that is, I mean, with
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: my kind of following and that kind of stuff, I
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: could throw it out on the internet. I could run
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: a bunch of ads. I could get thousands of people
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to join it. But because I'm less concerned with how
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: fast it grows or how big it gets, but I'm
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: more concerned about the people who join and their spiritual formation,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I open it up every three months. We bring in
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: a whole new group of people. They get to be
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: with us for three months. They get to be absorbed
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: into it. But we really are protecting the culture. And
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: then at the end of every three months, and it
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: starts on January 1st and throughout every three months.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: We open it up.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: So if people are interested, then go to royaltable.org and
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: get on a wait list. And the next time we're
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: going to open up, as of the recording of this,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: is January 1st. If you're listening to this after January 1st,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: then it'll be April 1st, etc., We send out the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: first email for open membership to the people who are
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: on the wait list at RoyalTable.org.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Are there any final thoughts that you want to share
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: with our listeners?
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I will.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: And it's the best piece of advice I ever got.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: I got it in 1990. So as of the recording here,
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: it's been 36 years. It's one of the most weirdest
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: experiences I've ever.
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: Had in my life.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: And it was profound and it impacted my work, my life.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I think about it every single week. Sometimes I think
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: about it multiple times a week. I was at a conference.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: And have you ever gone to a conference by yourself
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: with a group that maybe it's your first time there
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: and you just don't know anybody? And now you're on break,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: you get your coffee, and you're kind of standing in
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: the corner like, here.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: I am, I'm at a conference, I got my coffee.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: I wonder if anybody will say hi to me.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Well, then they go, okay, the conference is going to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: restart in you know, seven minutes, seven minutes conference going
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: to start. So I go, okay, I better get back
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: to my seat. So I turn around and I immediately
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: come face to face with these two women, like literally
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: less than 18 inches away. It was just, we both
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: kind of turned into each other. One was about 55.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: The other was maybe 30 to 35. I found out
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: through the course of the story, I'm about to tell
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: you that one was the mother and one was the daughter.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And the daughter, the younger woman literally does this. She goes,
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: like literally just staring at me. I'm going like this.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: The older woman looks at her, looks at me, looks
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: at her, looks at me, looks at her and goes,
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: is that him? And I'm like, I didn't do it, man.
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: It was somebody that looked like me. I didn't do it.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And the younger woman still has not spoken yet. She goes,
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: has not spoken a word yet. She's just saucer plates
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: for eyes. And the older woman says, well, listen, this
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: is my daughter. We're here for this conference. And last
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: night at two in the morning, she jumps out of
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: her bed, jumps onto my bed and wakes me up
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: and says, mom, I just had the weirdest dream. I'm
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: supposed to tell this guy something. And she's like, well,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: will you know him when she sees me? She said, yes,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: I saw his face in my dream. And so she goes,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: all right, well, Let's go back to sleep. Let's see
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: what the mom's like, whatever, you know? And so she
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: saw my face in her dream and the mother told
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: me that. And then she looks back at her daughter
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: who's still just like this. And she gives me the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: old thumb, you know, like, so tell him. And the
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: young girl goes, I'm supposed to tell you that you're
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: supposed to be a voice and not an echo. Be
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: a voice, not an echo. And I have thought of it.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: It transformed my career. It transformed who I wanted to
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: show up at as in the marketplace. And it's been
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: the number one piece of advice that I think has
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: distinguished me in the speaking business because I'm not just
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: regurgitating what everybody else says. I didn't read somebody else's book,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: create my own keynote on it and start giving it again.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: And so I think in your life, it's applicable to
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: all of us. Be a voice, not an echo. Don't
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: just go along with the crowd. Don't just like what
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: everybody else likes. You know, and crowd, we follow the
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: crowd so much. I don't know if you've ever seen
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: these videos where they test people where the elevator opens
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and everybody, you know, normally they'd be facing you, but
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: they're all facing the left and people will get in
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: and they'll just like.
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: Turn to the left.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: There's like, we do so much on the crowd. That's
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: being an echo. You know, don't just chime in. If
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: you're involved in politics, for example, both sides have very, very,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: very strongly rooted belief systems.
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: But sometimes your guy does something wrong.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: And I know that my preferred party, you know, sometimes
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: somebody in that party does something wrong. And I'll say, listen,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: the overall thing, I'm still with you, but this was wrong. dude,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: I get blasted, blasted because everybody else is just groupthink, right?
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: And so I think it's important for us to say,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be authentic. I'm going to be transparent.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: I'm going to hold to my values. And when those
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: are in conflict with what the rest say, I'm going
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: to say them lovingly and passionately into the marketplace of
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: ideas so that we can have a free flow of
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: information and an exchange of those ideas. And that's what
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I think it means to be a voice rather than
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: just an echo.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: What a great story.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Oh man, I'm telling you, I don't know that I'd
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: have believed it if I didn't actually walk through it.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: So you had never seen this lady before.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: And never saw them since? Didn't get their names?
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: They might've said their names, didn't get their names, never
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: talked to them again. And it was, I think it
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: was the summer of 1990. I know it was 1990.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: It might've been summer or early fall. I went to
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: a conference. And it's funny how God will drop these
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: little bits into your life. And when we get those
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: kinds of nuggets, it's important to store those away. And
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: like I said, I thought about it at least once
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: a week for 36 years and more than that. And
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of times at podcasts, they'll say, hey, any
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: final thoughts or, you know, something like that. And it's
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: always my final thought, because I think particularly with the Internet,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: there's a lot more groupthink. We get shaped into groupthink. And,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody says, oh, I love that dress. And
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the one girl goes, that's hideous. She's not going to
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: say that because she doesn't want to be outside the group.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Now, where can people connect with you, find out more
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: about your work and continue this conversation?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Sure. They can go to chrisweidner.com and they can find
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: out about speaking engagements. And there's a link to all
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: my books and audio programs on Amazon and all that
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. If anybody's looking for, I do, I've
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: sort of transitioned my business coaching to be not just
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: business coaching, but it's more of a whole life coaching,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: including a faith aspect to it. If they'd like to
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: know a little bit more about that, they can just
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: go to chrisweidnercoaching.com.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Chris, thank you so much for joining us and sharing.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks, Joe. I really appreciate it. This has been
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: a fun conversation.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: You're welcome. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If this episode inspired you,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: make sure you share it with someone. And don't forget
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: to follow the Globalizer podcast for more conversations that make
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: an impact.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: Till the next time.