Congruence: Harmonizing Life and Success

Speaker A 00:05 Welcome to the Wisdom Parlor, a thoughtful discussion of important ideas among people who are committed to succeeding in life. This is a gathering of leaders from a variety of industries, and our role here is to help you reach the top 1% of your field of choice. I'm Jim Cathcart, so come with me and let's discover how much more successful you could be. Jim Cathcart 00:38 Hello, and welcome to Wisdom Parlor. Today we're talking about congruence, which means everything fitting together, everything aligning with everything else. And it makes sense for every part to be there. My name is Jim CathCart. Every Wednesday, first Wednesday of every month is Wisdom Wednesday. And first Wisdom Wednesday at 2pm Central Time. That'd be noon to the Pacific Coast. We hold the Wisdom Parlor podcast. And today's podcast focuses on one particular aspect of wisdom that I think is vitally important for all of us to know, and that's called congruence. My colleague and respected friend and mentor, Nito Cobain, is the president of High Point University in North Carolina, which he has transformed into almost a Disneyland of learning since he took over there. It's phenomenal. Look it up. High Point University, High Point, N.C. nEATO. Many, many years ago, he and I were both professional speakers, and we were going out doing motivational speaking and training for companies. And I flew to North Carolina and I spent a weekend at his home and went to his office, and he showed me how he was operating. Now, this was 19, like, 78 or 79, long time ago. And he had already established a pretty good base as a. As a trainer, and he had his company going pretty well. And years later, I came back and participated in a mastermind event he was holding. It was a symposium. You can see the big red ring binder over there. And the symposium was for people who were subject matter experts or speakers or consultants, authors. And so people like myself had enrolled to be there. And Nito shared with us the concept of what he calls intentional congruence. And I love that idea. And I find that it holds true, the value of it holds true in every aspect of your life. Figure this. Let's say you have 10 talents that you could express. Maybe you're an entertainer, maybe you're a technician, maybe you're an inventor, maybe you're an author, maybe you're a counselor. I don't know. Whatever your 10 talents are, and you go into the marketplace with those 10 talents. Well, if you have those 10 talents, you can make money with each of them or any of them or all of them. But what if you could Use all of them in concert. You know, you could play 10 instruments, but if you could form an orchestra of 10 instruments, you could produce some music. That would be really, really impressive. Impressive compared to what you could do with a single instrument. Well, the same thing's true in your life. You know, when you look at the life balance wheel that people talk about. Mind, body, spirit, friends, families, career, finances, emotions. Well, a lot of people talk about life balance, and they say you should pay attention to each one and not neglect any of them. Well, I agree, but life, when you use the word balance, life balance, it implies something that doesn't quite work. It implies you're going to give an equivalent amount of time to each one of them. So if there are eight categories of your life, middle, physical, family, social, spiritual, career, financial, emotional, then you'd give 18 to each. No, that would give you almost no advancement at all. You know, people say, well, then how should I divide it? You know, because I've got to make money, I've got to take care of my family, I've got to take care of my health. I've got to. Whatever. Someone recently said it differently in a way that really resonated with me. They said, don't look. Go for life balance. Go for life harmony. Let every part of your life work in harmony with the other parts of your life. It's kind of like with an orchestra. Not all the instruments are playing all the time, and not all the instruments are playing dominantly. Some of them play in the background intentionally. So there's a rhythm, a harmony among them that creates the music that becomes so wonderful. Well, the same thing's true in your life. When you're at work, be at work 100%. When you're at home, be at home. When you're taking care of your health, take care of your health and make time for those. Because whichever one you neglect, before long it'll step forward and dominate all the others. You've been neglecting your help. Whoops. Now you're ill or you're injured and you got to go to the hospital. Hadn't been taking care of your money. Whoops. Now you're bankrupt and you've got problems with bill collectors. Not taking care of your relationships. Whoops. You know, the going to courtrooms or dealing with divorces or angry arguments or whatever. So we've got to make time for each part of our life. Well, the same thing's true for a business. In a business, you have every aspect imaginable. You know, from sales and marketing to administration to products, to inventory, to production, to research and development. You know, any number of different aspects of a company. You've got accounting, you've got quality control, you've got training and development, you've got hiring, you've got all the human resource functions. Which one do you put attention to? Well, the ones that need it. And you put attention to all of them on a regular basis over time, so that there's a rhythm to it all. What does this have to do with intentional congruence? Well, let's go back to my earlier example of the talents. When I was early in my career, what I wanted to be was a motivational speaker. I wanted to either be the guru on the radio like Earl Nightingale, my hero was, or I wanted to be on the stages like Cabot Robert and Zig Ziglar and some of the other big names of the day that were going around doing motivational talks. Entering into this field, what was I really selling? Was I selling the sound of my voice on stage? No. Was I selling the stories I told or the examples? No, I was selling the value of the ideas I was bringing. I was selling the value of the ideas I was bringing. The fact that I delivered them in a way that was motivational and enjoyable was a bonus, and it allowed me to charge a little higher fee because that added more value to the ideas. But had I chosen to be only a motivational speaker for an extended period of time, then I probably would have built a very successful career because I was willing to do the work necessary as a motivational speaker. But what other sources of income would I have? What other ways would I have of helping my clients? Well, let's just say we take the money from that and speculate in real estate on the side. So I become a real estate investor. All right, fine. And I can do that and learn to do it better and, you know, grow over time to where I have substantial real estate holdings. And then let's say I want to be an entrepreneur as well. And so I buy some franchises, you know, like I buy a Jiffy Lube franchise or I buy a Kentucky Fried Chicken or a, you know, car wash or something. Well, I could do that too, and have other people manage it so that I could focus on my motivational speaking career. And over time that would accumulate value and. And do better. And I could keep on going for half an hour with different things I could get into that would be investments and things that were. They're very worthy of my time and money. But what if I took my speaking and Multiplied it in other forms. What if, in addition to being a motivational keynote speaker, I created and published training programs that could not only be sold by me, but sold by other people and let some other entity publish those programs in their system so that I get a royalty on those that are sold and I'm able to sell them myself and earn a commission on top of the royalty. So I could do that, and I would have other people making sales while I was doing my main activity of, say, motivational speaking. Also, I could transcribe my motivational speeches and work on the transcript and turn it into a series of articles. So take each segment of the speech and create an article of, say, the few hundred words and then publish that in magazines or, or blog or, you know, put it in some kind of a publication. I could also take those articles, combine them together into small books, booklets, pamphlets. I could put some exercise pages in there and sell those are training materials to go with my training programs and to follow up at the end of my motivational speeches, I could also take those same articles. Now remember, the articles came from the speech. So the ideas that I'm selling and delivering through my speaking, I've transcribed and I've turned them into text and then I've broken it into pieces and made articles out of it and published it in magazines so that every month or so a magazine is coming out with my article in it and reaching an audience of people I wouldn't have reached otherwise. By the way, this happened, and it happened many, many times over many, many years. One of the most recent was Gears magazine, G A R S in the automotive business. It's the magazine for the Automatic Transmission Rebuilders association at R A. I wrote an article for Gears many years ago and they said our readers like your article. Would you do one every month? So I did that. I did that for pay. And I wrote articles for all 10 issues every year for more than a decade. I have 130 articles that have been published in Gears magazine over more than 10 years time. All of them are slightly geared toward the automotive aftermarket. In other words, they are addressing owners or managers of automotive service shops, in this case specifically transmission shops. Well, with very, very little editing, I could take those 130 articles and change them to focus on the or to be compatible with auto paint and body shops or shops that sell accessories or tires or wheels or performance products for automobiles, upholstery shops. In other words, the similarities in all of these shops is they're all in the auto aftermarket, so they Read the same general publications, they go to the same general big conferences. They know the same language, the industry jargon. They are all in the automotive business. And to serve one of those groups would be very easy if you had already served one of the other groups. All right, so you take those and then you combine those 130 articles into a more generic auto aftermarket book and you get someone from that market to co author the book with you. In my case, that person was Dennis Madden. Dennis Madden was the, the executive in charge of the Transmission Rebuilders association during all those years. And he and I took my articles and his and combined them into this book. High rev, you know, indicating revolutions per minute like the house, fast engines running, and also high revenue for small business, a faster way to profits. So I took what would have been basically one long robust speech message. I put it into short messages where I fleshed it out a little bit more on each topic. And I customized it to the auto aftermarket. And I was able to reach the people that are reached by 10 editions of that magazine, 10 issues per year for more than 10 years. And it cost me then, not only cost me nothing to reach all those people, I was paid for doing it. Now, I want you to be thinking about yourself as I give these examples. Because if you're a subject expert and you offering one particular type of expertise, that means you go deep in that expertise and you've got a lot to share. You could share it through giving speeches, you could share it through writing articles. You could take those articles and write a book. You could also turn that into training materials because each chapter, each article could have with it an exercise that people could do that would teach them whatever the skill or idea was that was contained in the article. Put all those together and you've got a big training manual. So now instead of only a book, you've got a big ring binder full of exercises and worksheets and vital information. And anybody that buys that workbook goes through the training. And if they go through the training and buy the workbook, they probably want a copy of your book. And if they want a copy of your book and they've been through your training and they're comfortable with your way of thinking and your ideas, they probably like to have you as the speaker at their convention. You see what I'm talking about? Everything fits together. So if you're developing other materials or putting your money into another investment, how about investing into something that is congruent with what you already do so that it creates what I've come to call Swiss money. Now, that's not money from Switzerland. It is S W I S S Sales. While I sleep soundly. You see, through your own efforts, there's only so much money you can generate. But if you learn to leverage and multiply your efforts to set up affiliate arrangements and ongoing consulting arrangements and alliances and partnerships and distribution agreements and publishing agreements and so forth, then you can multiply your own ability to sell tenfold, twenty fold, a thousand fold. But it requires that you think, how does this fit with everything else I do? For example, if you're going to join a country club or a city club of some sort, which one? The one with the best golf course, the one closest to your house or the one where the people you would like to be doing business with, then become friends with belong? So it might be that the one nearest your house is not the ideal one for you. It might be that that's across town a little bit awkward to get to. But if you're going to go there, and you know you will, then that might justify that membership, because the people you'll get to know, the things you get involved in doing, will lead to more opportunities. I moved into Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, California, in the year 2001. So just after the millennium, Paula and I left La Jolla, California, where we'd been for 20 years, moved to Thousand Oaks to be near our son and his wife and our grandson who had just been born. And when we got there, we found that there was a wonderful country club very close to our home, and we were qualified to apply for membership because of where we lived. So we found some sponsors who would put our name and. And we became members, social members at first. Sherwood Country Club. Now I don't play golf. I could take up golf. And there are plenty of people that consider golf a way of business networking. And it works for them, really. Well, not so much for me, but I do a lot of other things. You know, I play guitar and sing professionally, and. And I. I do what speakers do. Well, when I got to Sherwood, I thought, how can I get to know all these wonderful people that belong to this club? How can I develop friendships here that could lead to more opportunities? Because I want to get to know these folks quickly, and I really don't enjoy the networking dance. Hi. What do you do, you know, to where you're from, really? I mean, that's okay, but there's got to be a better way. So here was my idea. Intentional congruence. I thought, what can I do from what I'm good at, to be of service to this country club. And I went to the woman that was managing the country club at the time. Her name was Alex Quilty. Alexandra, I said, alec, I have a offer I'd like to make. I'm a professional speaker and author and I've been all over the world doing talks. I would like to be of service to the country club and to your members. Here's what I propose. Let's put together a monthly or occasional series of parlor discussions in your beautiful parlor at the front of the country club near the boardroom. And let's invite the members to come this, make this a member service so that the members can come and 20 to maximum, maybe 30 of them join me in the parlor and we have a discussion for a couple of hours early in some evening. I suggest a weeknight, I'll bring in a series of distinguished guests. And she said, well, okay, let's give it a try. So we put one together and they did the promotion of it to the 600 and some odd members and they did the catering of it. And it was just, you know, snacks and drinks, not. Not a dinner event. It was held from 5:30pm to 7:30pm Hard stop. And 36 people, I think, showed up for the first one, which was stretching the limits of that room. And I led the discussion. And I had a guest. I don't remember offhand who it was, but I brought in authors, business leaders, astronauts, celebrities from Hollywood, philosophers, researchers, you know, all kinds of amazing people. So it went really well. The part of the discussion and the next one we held, we had to limit it to a smaller group, so we kept it around 24 people. But we would just sit, a big oval seating arrangement of all these overstuffed chairs and couches. And people would come in at 5:30 and I would start exactly on time. I would say, it's your living room. Behave accordingly. Here are the refreshments. There are the restrooms. We're not going to take a break. We're going for two hours. Our special guest today is. And I would introduce my guest and the guests would talk for five, 10 minutes maybe. So it was not a lecture series. The person would talk about their specialty or their. Their unique feature. And then I would throw it open to the group and we would discuss the ideas, not interview the guest, discuss the ideas as equals in the parlor. And in doing so, I found that there was way more wisdom in the group than there was in the presenters or the guests. And we all loved it. I learned, they learned, the guests learned, and everybody came away from there feeling just truly invigorated by the whole experience. The way it paid off for the country club is not only did it get their members more involved with the club, it also brought everybody out of their homes from 5:30 to 7:30. And at 7:30, I would go across the street to the tennis club dining room, and the guest and I would have dinner there and invite the other people to join us and charge their meals to their own account. So what it did for the club is it generated more people showing up at their restaurant on those evenings. And it was a prestigious thing. It had got attention in the community. And so there did lots of ancillary benefits. Pardon me. So it helped the club, it helped the guest, because many of my guests were seeking promotion of their latest book or their newest venture or their charity or whatever. And it helped me. And I became quickly known as the guy who was so well connected he knew everybody. Well, I didn't, but over time I pretty much did. And anybody that was anybody in that area, I probably knew them, or it even had them as a guest at the Sherwood Parlor. Well, I found that I could do that same thing for my clients. If I was going to give a speech at a convention, we could hold a special private VIP discussion with their key people and have it sponsored by one of their company sponsors or do it in concert with one of their major customers. So it was a way that I could be of more value when I went to give a speech. Well, I was being paid to give the speech. I got extra pay for doing this. And while I was doing that, since I was on site, why not have me coach one to one a few of their key people that might need some personal attention or might benefit from it? And so that added a little tiny bit to the fee. And then, you know, since you're bringing me in to speak, what are you giving people to take home? Well, we're thinking about getting them some tote bags with our logo on it or some ring binders or portfolios with our company logo. How about instead, you give them something that they will learn from and it'll continue the learning? What do you have in mind? How about one of my books? Well, I've now written 26 books, so I could offer a whole library of books or one book or video courses or training programs or whatever, but instead of them spending, say, $25 a person to get somebody a pen with an imprint on it and a tote bag, they're Giving them something that they're going to take home, it's going to be autographed and they're going to be able to continue the learning. And it costs them virtually the same amount of money. So look for intentional congruence in all this. And if they say, hey, would you be willing to come in a night early and come to our banquet? Say, well, I'll, I'll definitely come in the night before I give my speech. I'll be happy to come to the banquet for a little while, but with your permission, I'd rather not draw attention to myself yet because I'm the next day's speaker. So if I come to the banquet, let me come to the reception hour, shake a few hands, get to know some people, and then sit in on the first part of the banquet and when it's convenient, excuse myself, go to my room and prepare for the next day's talk. But by the way, if I'm coming in a day early, do you have an exhibit expo going on as part of this commit? Well, yes, as a matter of fact we do. Ah, have you found, like I have, that many of the exhibitors in these expos, they don't know how to run a booth. In other words, they just sit there and kind of wait for people to come up to them and so their booth doesn't pay off all that much and the next year they don't renew to exhibit again. Well, if that's been true for some of yours. How about when I'm coming in early anyway, you have me do an afternoon session for only the exhibitors themselves on how to sell more effectively in a expo booth environment. And I'll do a workshop on that. Wow, that sounds like a great idea. What would that cost us? And it's an extra fee. So what starts off as say, one speaking fee starts growing exponentially potentially by these other services you can add on. And I mean, think of the value of that versus let's say, starting to speculate in real estate. And you've never been involved in real estate? Well, the first few years and speculating in real estate, that's going to be mostly cost and learning, not money making. Right. And the first few days in what I was just describing immediately pay off. And when you get enough extra money, you can hire somebody to speculate real estate for you, somebody you trust. But I'm just saying, if you're going to speculate in the stock market or real estate or franchising or whatever you want to go into, do it, enjoy. But the More you can make whatever it is congruent with your mainstream, with the main activity, the essence of you. The more the power, the synergy of all that will come together and just be rocket fuel for what you're trying to do in your main activity. When I got into this business, I sincerely just wanted to be a motivational speaker. But the more I thought about it, the more I found I could be of greater value to people, helping people grow and succeed through providing tools, creating training programs, doing special events, giving speeches, creating a special YouTube channel or a Facebook page or channel. You know, doing all the various things that we do today to reach people. And who should you get involved with? You know, when I was in Thousand Oaks, California, I didn't have a base of people. I knew I had moved there to be closer to my son in Santa Barbara, but I didn't really know many people in Thousand Oaks. And so I went to the local newspaper, and I mean, local neighborhood newspaper. It was called the Acorn. Wow. Since I wrote the book the Acorn Principle, that was kind of cool. And I brought a copy of my book the Acorn Principle, and I went into the publisher's office and I said, I'm the author of this book, and I just moved here. And they said, well, hey, let us do a feature on you for local newspaper. So they did a. Took a few photographs and did a feature. Motivational speaker and author moves to Thousand Oaks, and he wrote the book the Acorn Principle. So it tells about me. Well, a week or two later when the article came out, I was at the country club, didn't know a soul, and I'm going through a buffet line. And the guy across from me said, excuse me, are you that motivational speaker? And I said, the one in the Acorn? He said, yeah. I said, that's me. His name was Lon Martin. Delightful guy. He said, well, I'm involved with the Boys and Girls Clubs, and our chairman is going to make a proposal soon to the city council. And we're a little nervous about it, because if he gets it right, we get a million dollars from the city for Boys and Girls Clubs. And if he gets it wrong, we don't. Would you be willing to sit down with him? And I said, well, sure, having come by my house. And so he came by my home a day or so later. His name was Cal Johnston. He was chairman of the board and founder of that. And we sat out by the pool in the backyard at the time, and I gave him some ideas on how to do his presentation. More persuasively. And then about two weeks later, he called me, and he said, hey, Jim, we got it. He said, it went well. I got a million dollars. I said, oh, my word. Wow. Congratulations. Good job. He said, I owe you. I said, no, you don't owe me. He said, yeah, I want to take you to dinner. So he took me to dinner. At dinner, he told me about what they were doing building new Boys and Girls Clubs. And he said, would you like to be involved? And I said, well, I'll be happy to support, you know, give whatever guidance and value I can from time to time, but not so much looking to get involved yet. He said, okay. And so he had his marketing committee chair contact me, and I talked with them about marketing ideas, and they loved it. And then Cal came to me, and he said, would you be willing to serve, like, as an advisor to our marketing committee? Sure. So now I'm on the marketing committee. Well, shortly thereafter, would you head up the marketing committee? Okay, shortly thereafter, since you're the head of the marketing committee, you ought to be on the board of directors. Would you join the board? Yes. Okay. Since you're on the board of directors, would you be on our executive committee? Yes. I ended up going to 52 meetings that year for the Boys and Girls Clubs, way more than I intended. Luckily, the Boys and Girls Clubs in that region at that time were sort of the charitable organization to be with if you were looking to grow your presence and market awareness in the area. So I got involved. I cut back from the 52 to a reasonable number and took a lesser role, still serving on the board of directors. But I found that what I had to offer that was best was my skill as a speaker and an expert in motivation and leadership. So when we held a gala fundraiser, I was on the gala committee. It went well. The next year, I was the chair of the gala fundraiser. And the next year, I was the master of ceremonies for the event. I was the speaker at the. At the big banquet. And we were able to raise as much as $248,000 off of one dinner event for the Boys and Girls clubs doing these things. And today they're raising as much as half a million or more from the same event because it's continued to grow over the years. But what I offered them was my expertise as a trainer, a motivator, and a sales expert. And in doing that, I was simply practicing the skill, the knowledge, the expertise that I bring to the table for my clients all the time. I got a number of other Referrals out of that. Not referrals to nonprofits, but referrals for paid business. And I had many, many people get involved with me over the full 17, 18 years. I lived there. We live in Texas now. It was a wonderful experience, but it was all intentional. Everything that I was constantly asking, how does this relate to the other things I do? How does this relate to what I do best? How can I take what I do best and use it more fully here? When 911 hit, when the Twin Towers were destroyed, when the entire nation was in shock from what happened there and in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon, we didn't know if we were in World War III or what. And I said, okay, I absolutely won't be making any money soon as a convention speaker because there aren't even planes flying and conventions are canceled. So what can I do to help? Ignoring income for the time being, let's just stay alive as a nation and stay safe as a community. What can I do to help? And I realized what I can do in my best, you know, my sort of superpower skill is I can teach people ground level leadership, how to get things done with very few resources and how to motivate volunteers to help you in what you're doing. I learned that through my many years of involvement with the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the jcs. I went from local chapter member all the way to state chairman and then national headquarters program manager in charge of leadership training for 356,000 members. So I had a lot of experience with that before I ever got into the business as a speaker. So I knew during the crisis around 911 that that's what I could help with most. So I created the Highway 101 leaders alliance and it was called the 101 leaders alliance. And we got together the leadership people in 12 communities in a 43 mile stretch of Highway 101 that starts in Calabasas and goes just the other side of ventura. There are 12 communities along that stretch of highway, each of which has a city council, has a mayor, has a school board, has, you know, all the things that a police department, all the things a community would have. And so I went to the leaders of these various communities and I got them together. And we met in Thousand Oaks, California, and I held a 101 leaders alliance summit. And all these people came together and we talked for a day or two about how do we join hands and help each other, teach the people in our communities ground level leadership so they can organize their communities, stay safe, solve their problems, and we'll be more likely to be able to survive even if this is an ongoing world war or something like that, that, you know, the things normalized somewhat after 9, 11, several months later. So it wasn't as severe as we had first thought. But the 101 leaders alliance stayed together for the better part of eight years. And we ended up offering a series of seminars that rotated in locations throughout the corridor and just got lots of other things started as a result of that. So it wasn't me going out to volunteer filling sandbags to build a levy against the flood. It was me going out to volunteer helping people learn to lead, helping people learn to organize, to solve problems, to, you know, get things done. Whenever you think about a situation where you're stuck like that, ask yourself, what am I best at doing that others might not be as good at doing? In San Diego, one Christmas, my sister was living with us, and she in San Diego, she said, let's go volunteer at the homeless shelter downtown. And so my wife and my son and I and my sister, we all went downtown San Diego to the homeless shelter. And it was a convention center that they had opened up because of cold weather and to allow the homeless people to come into a warm environment for a few days. And while we were there, I noticed there was chaos, that there was way too many people coming in, and there were volunteers coming wanting to help out that were being turned away because they didn't know what to do with them. And so I backed off and looked at it from a leadership manager's point of view. And I realized there were several things they could do. And I called, you know, I asked, who's in charge? And I talked to that person. They referred me to someone else and someone else. And I ended up talking to the city councilman in charge of that aspect of society. And I said, I have suggestions, and I've made a list of suggestions. And he said, man, we needed that. Thank you. Would you be interested in serving on a advisory committee? Sound familiar? Yeah. And the next thing I knew, I was involved with the city of San Diego in an advisory capacity. And I got to know more people, and I even got some business out of all that. So networking is best done by taking whatever your superpower is and leveraging it in ways that are intentionally congruent with. With your mainstream activity. Look for other ways to do what you already do well instead of looking for new things that will rescue you somehow later on. Intentional congruence. Here's another way to look at it. The more things you do that. Inch the ball a little bit closer to the goal in your mainstream. The more likely you are to score soon. The fewer things you do that, do that, the more effort you have to put into the mainstream only just to get it to advance as well as it could. It's. It's also a matter of integrity. Last night I went to University of Texas Golf Club, a country club that's right here near where I live in Austin, Texas. Our speaker for the evening was coach Steve Sarkeesian of the University of Texas. That's him at the speaker stand there under the star in that photo. Coach Sark, they call him. When he took over as the coach of the University of Texas football team, it was in 2021 or 2020, and we were right in the middle of COVID and we had not done well. The team had. Had been doing poorly, and he was brought in. And in the first year he was there, the team went five wins, seven losses, and zero players. Moving on to the NFL after graduation, he said to the people at the university, he said, team Trump's talent. He said, we have some talented people and I'm going to go out and shop for new talent, you know, to come to the university. But I want you to understand talent's not going to win US national championships. Team is what will win US national championships, he said. So yes, you have to have talent. But if that talent doesn't merge together into one culture, one cohesive, intentionally congruent, integrated culture, then you'll never be able to be the team you could have been. So trust me while I build our team. And they did. And so the first year he was there, of course, Covid, you know, all bets are off. Nothing behaved normally, but they went 5 and 7 and they had to place to some stadiums that had no fans in the stand. Remember when people put photographs in seats so that the players could feel like somebody was out there? Wow. I mean, seems mind boggling now. So anyway, five and seven, first year, second year, he's starting to get some traction. Came back eight and five, eight wins, five losses. So he went from being a losing season to being a winning season. And five of his players graduated on to the NFL this immediate past year. The team came together. They had 12 and oh, 12 and two overall, but 12 and oh, they won their conference championship. 12 and oh and 11 students went on to the NFL. And he still has talent four to eight deep on each position on the team going forward. But he says, it's not our talent, it's our team. See that's intentional congruence, by the way, this guy on the TV that you see here, this was a message they showed, a video message that they showed at the beginning of the presentation by Coach Sark, and that was Nolan Ryan praising the team and the way they do their coaching. So Coach Sarkeesian has done a great job for the University of Texas, and it's been a pleasure to get to know him a little bit. I was talking about integrity. When you say team Trump's talent, then that means integrity gives you more power than individual strengths give you. The individual strengths are wonderful, but it's how they all converge and then. And create intentional congruence that will move you forward rapidly and powerfully. People say, well, what about diversity? Diversity is wonderful that that's talking about the individual talents. But when the diversity is so diverse that there's no integrity in how it all comes together, then your strength, your power is pulled away from each of your activities so that it can go into another one. That's not helping at all, actually, if you think of that conceptually, diversity is wonderful if there's integrity without integrity, diversity is just variety. You go into a variety store, the store is filled with all kinds of diverse things, none of which are necessarily related to any of the others. And the store owner just has to kind of put out the merchandise and. And see what sells and follow those patterns over time. But it's not like if you buy one of these, you're going to need one of those. Now you go into a sporting goods store, you could say, well, look at the divorce. Diversity of sports. Yeah, but that's the hockey section, that's the football section, that's the baseball section, that's the tennis section, that's the golf section. So you go into that section, and everything there is intentionally congruent. The clothing displayed near the golf clubs is the golf clothing, not the football fan clothing, the gloves, the shoes, you know, they're golf specific. And if you buy these clubs, you probably want one of these bags. If you want these. These bags probably want one of these carts. And if you have one of those carts, it'll fit nicely on the back of this vehicle. And so here's a motorized golf cart to go with your pull cart, you know, and then. Yet you see what I mean? So diversity is wonderful. You know, God bless differences. Without differences, this would be the most boring world imaginable. And diversity does bring strength, but only when it's brought together in some meaningful way. When people come to America, you know, they say, we are a country of immigrants. More importantly, we're a country of a melting pot of Americans. People don't come here to be Austrian Americans. They come here to be Americans. So when there's integrity, when a person assimilates into the culture, then they become American and they add to the strength of our society. Paula and I moved after 37 years in California to Austin, Texas, at the beginning of the COVID era. So we've been here for four years now, and we love Texas. And I told friends I didn't bring California with me. I came here to be a Texan. And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, a lot of people come here from, say, California, for example, and they want it to be like California, and they expect it to be like California. Well, it's not. And so they're disappointed and they end up going back to California. I read an article recently by a guy who did exactly that. I didn't come here that way. I came here knowing Texas is different. I man, when I got here, I had boots, a hat, and a buckle. I was looking for cattle, right? I got involved in the community. I met some people that own a family friendly honky tonk. I went out there and. And sat in on some of their shows. I sat in on some guitar jams with them. I've even performed out there with my wife Paula on numerous occasions. I've. I've been to rodeos. I've been tubing on San Marcos River. I've been to University of Texas football games and Dripping Springs Tigers high school football games. And I've really gotten into the whole Texas experience. And I literally recently was inducted. So sort of acknowledged is a better word, acknowledged by the Texas state house of Representatives as a true Texan. On my wall right over here, you'll see a certificate just above that cowboy hat. That certificate came with a flag that had flown over the capitol of the state of Texas. And a state representative and a friend of mine's urging declared me a true Texan. And that certificate says, texas is proud of you. What stimulated all that was I did a Facebook post of like, 11 pages of a list of all the things I've done that are Texas specific since I got in this state. And the cool thing was there were comments I was getting were people saying, man, I've lived here all my life. I'm a native Texan. I haven't done all that well, and I'm not through. I'm still checking things off my list. So I love Texas, and I'm proud to be a Texan, and I still love California, too, and Arkansas, where I grew up. But intentional congruence was what I was trying to illustrate with all of this. Whether it's giving speeches, writing articles, creating books, doing training programs, consulting, advising, coaching parlor discussions, whether it's that sort of thing or it's looking at what do you do in a crisis, get involved with the skills you bring. Don't go, you know, shuffle supplies. Go out and do what you do best so that you can be of major value, not minor value. Anybody can just go hand out registration forms or, you know, file information in the file cabinets or whatever like that. But only you can do the things that you're particularly good at. How does what you're good at serve the world? And how many different ways could you do an iteration of it that would offer even more value or the same value to a different group of people? You have value to give to the world, and we need what you can give. So look for multiple ways to give it and then for ways to orchestrate all that together so that the intentional congruence is your jet fuel going forward. This is Wisdom Parlor, and I'm Jim Cathcart. Thanks for listening. Speaker A 52:02 Thank you for joining us today in the Wisdom Parlor, a thoughtful discussion of important ideas among people who are committed to succeeding in life. If you are committed to making more success happen in your own life, go right now to my website, free.cathcart.com and download my free ebook and then watch the video. If you decide that you'd like to my assistance in helping grow your success, then come with me and let's discover how much more successful you can be.