Defining the Professional Expert

Speaker A 00:05 Welcome to 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. Hello, folks. Welcome to the Professional Experts podcast from Cathcart Institute, where we are creating a better world, one professional expert at a time. And I have one with me today, and I'll introduce him in just a second. The whole concept behind Professional Expert is that if you look at coaches, consultants, professional speakers, authors, specialists, advisors, these are people who are making their living as the main product of their company. In other words, they're building a career around what they're especially good at doing. And that's a different business model than building, say, a retail shop or creating a service industry of some sort of. So what we decided to do at Cathcart Institute a few years ago was to define what is a professional expert and then to come up with a structure that allows people to be trained and then certified as a professional expert. The question that pops up is, well, what if I'm an expert at, I don't know, landscape design? Are you going to train me in that? No, it's the professionalism that we certify the expertise is a separate silo of skill. So this is about certifying professional experts. And today we have the newest brand, shiny spanking new Certified professional expert, CPE Dr. Terry Paulson. Terry, welcome to the show. Jim Cathcart 02:11 You bet. Great to be here. And as you you describe that the latest one to get this, I reminded of a book read a while ago was when Too soon Old, Too late. Young. I mean, you're smart. Too late smart. The whole idea we find out a little bit too late how much we do know and how much we can share with other people to, to really build that corpus of information that allows more people to be experts and to. To expand and to never stop growing and continuing to make a difference. Speaker A 02:42 Well, for the folks who are watching who have not yet met you, let me share just a few little layers of what makes up the amazing entity that we call Dr. Terry Paulson. First is a clinically trained psychologist. He worked as a counseling psychologist. Then he discovered professional speaking and he started branching out, giving presentations, found out he could get paid for doing that, built a career as a professional speaker. Now, when I say career, he joined the National Speakers association and became the national president of it. He was inducted into the Professional speaker hall of Fame. He received the Cavett Award, which is a lifetime achievement award for contributions to the profession. Named after the founder of nsa, Cavett, Robert. And it's a statue, beautiful statue of. Of him in a speaking pose. Terry has been president of the Global Speakers Federation. So he's been all over the world working with professional speakers, authors, and experts in other countries as well. In addition to that, he has a very strong faith and lives his faith. He's active in his church, has been for years. He's delivered many sermons. He's served as a deacon. He's. He's served that community well for a long period of time. On top of that, he has solid convictions when it comes to politics and what he thinks is right about America and how the world works best. And so he's a contributor, a regular contributor to Town hall magazine and other publications. Also, he's a tremendously good friend. When Paula and I were departing California to come to Texas back in 2020, the last night we spent in California was in the guest bedroom at Terry and Lori's lovely home in Agoura Hills, California. So welcome, my good friend. Jim Cathcart 04:37 Oh, I love that. That we can stop now. I don't think I want to live that down. That's great. Speaker A 04:45 Well, how did you. Oh, by the way, and he's also a novelist. He wrote an action novel. Jim Cathcart 04:50 Yeah. Speaker A 04:50 Thriller, which has the. The President of the United States and the. The premiere of China. They're being captured by terrorists together and spending an extended amount of time trying to survive together. What a fascinating read. And it's called the Summit. Get your copy today. And I mean that. Jim Cathcart 05:09 Thank you. Thank you for that. It's really done well, and I really enjoyed writing it and bringing it to life. Now I just got to make it into a movie, so. But. But outside of that, I. This is our own summit, so looking forward to having an interesting conversation with you about just what's important in the journey. Speaker A 05:28 In the journey. Expertise. You know, everything in a certification needs to be defined. So you need to define what is certification and what is expertise, and how do you measure expertise and what is professionalism? For example, these are the criteria for a certified professional expert. There are five qualifiers for an expert. For a professional in any field. Think of, you know, doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants. Any field, automotive design. You know, if you're a professional in whatever it is that's your field, then you're well educated for what you do. Your education never ends. You're constantly renewing it, going back to learn more and get, you know, get more depth in your field. You do it as a service to other people, you do it for pay, and you do it according to a set of ethical standards, no matter what the profession. When I designed the National Speakers Association's professional competencies for their certified speaking professional designation, that's the model I used. And so that's the structure that we use today to certify whether somebody truly is a professional in their field of expertise. So what do you think of that? Jim Cathcart 06:50 I think it's great. And I think you've already gathered together quite a few amazing people into that cadre of experts that isn't that. I think show that. Speaker A 07:00 Yeah. I mean, I look at Terry Paulson and who's Terry Paulson in there with? Nito Cobain, president of High Point University. Tony Alessandro, founder of Assessments 24 7. Patricia Fripp, first female president of the National Speakers Association. Don Hudson, founding member of nsa. Alan Pease, amazingly successful speaker from Australia who wrote a book that went ballistic in multi million sales worldwide. It is called why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps. Jim Cathcart 07:37 That, that's a book you want on your, your coffee table, whether you. There you go. Speaker A 07:41 Because it's bounded. Tick somebody off. And then Eisner, the founder of Business Networking International, bni, Les Brown, Brian Tracy. I mean, what a lineup of people we've got in the certified professional experts. And I know, as you do, if we just took our mutual friends and made a list of all of the colleagues that, that we've spent time, quality time with over the years, I could probably fight. We could probably find several hundred, certainly a few hundred who already qualify as a certified professional Expert. Jim Cathcart 08:17 Well, I think you'd also agree when you think about expertise or true experts, the more you have worked as a consultant or a speaker, you meet many clients who really are professionals in whatever they're involved in doing. And there are certain qualities that you can expect and you can trust. And I think that's what you're looking for because you gradually you earn the title expertise, an expert, because it's really not a self, something that everybody agrees. Speaker A 08:47 And someone asked me the other day, Jim, why are you, not me, why are you not a certified professional expert? Because I'm the one that pulls the trigger on bestowing it. And it seems enormously egotistical to say, yeah, and I'm one too. Pardon me Jim Cathcart 09:08 in your obituary, probably somebody will give it to you, you know, I mean, there you go, you know, Speaker A 09:12 postage and well, how did you grow Your own career, because you started out so far afield from what you ended up doing. Jim Cathcart 09:23 Well, I, you know, it really started when I was in graduate school and clinical psychology and I decided that I wanted to do research. But when I completed that research, and the fact that it was an interesting research study, it was on teaching mothers to be more assertive with their teenage delinquent kids. And we also cited its impact on their husbands, well, I decided the results were something we could talk about at a professional association. So I started going to professional association meetings and presenting on my research. I would get a breakout session and talk about it. And they kept having me back. They kept saying, why don't you come back? Well, I haven't done any new research I haven't done. He said, well, look, we want you. I said, well, why? I said, well, you're the only funny one we've got. So I just realized something about what impacts people. Number one, you have to be comfortable in your own skin. You have to have some expertise that actually matters and some substance underneath that. So I could talk about that research initially. Then I had to be able to tie it to story and to humor. Both of those are tremendous skill sets that connect with people. Now, I've often said story is what penetrates. And so when you could weave in the story behind the research, when you could all of a sudden stop and say, you want to know why that happened? Let's talk about what we learned from the people in the midst of that. And all of a sudden it comes to life because data is boring. Story is so exceptional. Well, that started me speaking at a number of areas. And so when I got out of graduate school, I decided I had a hot topic. Assertiveness was big then and people starting to do research on that. So I decided I'm going to open an assertion training institute. So I opened up the institute with another colleague of mine who was also involved in some of the research. And we had trouble getting people because the people were most non assertive, weren't assertive to call up. So we had to. We decided we would speak to rotaries and we'd speak to chamber of commerce and any group that would have us. Speaker A 11:26 Yeah, if you hold them. Jim Cathcart 11:27 They kept inviting me back. They kept spreading the word. So I put together a little flyer on what I could talk about and we sent it to 100 of the nonprofits in the area. So I was not making money off of that, but I was getting a lot of clients. Finally, this guy called me and said, look, we've Heard you at the Rotary. And we feel what you talk about is something I want my people here in the business to, to, to hear it. And I said, well, I, I don't really do that. I'm a psychologist. People come to me and he said, we'll pay you. And I said, I'm flexible. Yeah. All of a sudden the profit came in. What I got from him was just classic. I charged him my normal hourly fee that I paid for clients. And he said, after he said, we felt so guilty because we pay other speakers so much more than we paid you and you're the best what we had. So I said, I'm going to give you a gift. I'm going to tell you what you can charge. And all of a sudden I began to realize this is a business model. This is the ability to present information and wisdom in a way that connects to a person's life, business, personal, in a way that moves them forward. You give them a window into your world and talk about the expertise that you have and they all of a sudden connect with their own experiences and maybe they come away with two or three key ideas out of that. And I, sometimes it's just reminding them of what they already know. I can't tell you the number of times somebody says, you know, I already knew that, but I wasn't doing it. I mean, knowing something, being able to say something is not the same as doing it. And, and, and I think experts take their ideas and their words and they put them into action. And, and I think they're action oriented. I'm not going to wait on this. I'm not going to wait till it's perfect. I'm going to get out there, I'm going to do it and I'm going to, I'm going to adjust and make the adjustments I need and we're going to make this happen. Speaker A 13:20 There you go. When I'm presenting the, what I call the MO grid mode of operation, modus operandi grid, the two axes are knowing and doing. And knowing ranges from complete ignorance to aware of data, organized data, information studied information reveals knowledge. Knowledge applied leads to understanding. Understanding over time in a variety of situations reveals wisdom. And you can't get wisdom just from more knowing. You have to have the doing and the doing. It's doing only what's required or less doing, just barely enough, a little bit more, a lot more, enormous amount more. And you notice the high achievers always are big, big, big on doing you. And they either know a lot or they access people who do. You don't have to know everything. You just like Henry Ford with his buttons on his telephone. You know, he said, whatever question I get asked, I've got a button on my phone that leads me to someone who knows that answer. Jim Cathcart 14:27 That's right. Speaker A 14:28 Yeah. Jim Cathcart 14:28 Well, that is, it's a collective awareness. I don't need to know it all. I just need to know who knows some of these things and connect it. You become a hub for the kind of wisdom and that requires the relationships that you build and the network of people that you have and the humility to know you don't need to know it all. I mean, I think that's one of the things about experts. They, they know what they know, they have a focus they add to the party, but they don't necessarily have to feel like it always has to be me. Because people like what comes out of their mouth a whole lot better than what comes out of yours. So I always figure our job is to make sure that we're listening to people, we're honoring them. I mean, I mean, I remember times giving honor to a client sometimes, and then some speaker would say, well, why, why do you keep giving honor to them? Because they said it originally. I want to make sure that it lets people know. You read, you listen. When you read and listen, you're expanding that reputation. I think the other thing that comes from that is an awareness of really finding out what expertise is worth you building on. I mean, early on in my experience, I thought I knew what people wanted to hear from me, you know, and I'd put together these programs and then gradually. And part of it was this. Yeah, well, idea keepers or key ideas. I said, come back. What are the three things you picked up that were most important to you? And I collected those. And what I, what I found is what I thought was important was not as important as what they did. All of a sudden I said, whoa, this is a high frequency topic. I, I, they didn't tell me until they wrote it down, but that is what they really come to hear. And, and so I think part of being an expert is being willing to be taught what is most valuable in what you have to offer and then going with that, being flexible enough to move with it. Speaker A 16:18 I heard a way of saying that the other day that really impressed me. Intellectual humility. Isn't that a beautiful phrase? Jim Cathcart 16:27 Beautiful, yeah. Speaker A 16:28 That came from the University of Boston, a brand new university dedicated to the pursuit of truth with no hang ups. You know, they, they were founded just this past year and they're processing Their first class of students. And it's an intellectual university in Austin, Texas, with liberals, conservatives, business people, non business people, clinical people, people from every discipline from around the world. You know, like the Sorbonne and Wharton School of Business and things like that. All kinds of sources. And they come together with a dedication to being able to talk with each other in a civil way, like in your book the Dinner, you know, political conversations. To talk in a civil way about things on which they strongly disagree. One of the traits that you have that has always impressed me, and I mean this sincerely, is you are a diplomat. You have a knack for just being the kindest truth teller probably of anybody I know. Jim Cathcart 17:37 Oh, that's very kind. Thank you. You know, I've always seen in the term that I use sometimes I'm a bridger. I'm comfortable building bridges with people. And partly it is. I just have tremendous respect for people who disagree with me. And I really feel this is lost. Today we have people who demonize other people and they feel they have to totally defend their position without realizing sometimes you're wrong. Yeah, you know, I go with that old adage. My great uncle told me, if one person calls your horse's ass, don't worry about. But four people do. Go out and buy a saddle. You do need to be flexible to admit that occasionally I buy a saddle. And the depth of your relationships allows you to continue to grow. Because if you can't admit that somebody else has a better idea, you're in trouble in today's world. And I think that's one of the things. It goes together with this whole issue of conflict. Conflict is given a bad name. You almost have to be angry to talk with somebody today instead of realizing. I seek first to understand. Help me understand. I want clarity. Give me, give me an understanding of what your position is. Because I'm. I'm sure that somewhere in the midst of this, I'm going to learn something from you and hope you do the same with me. Yeah. You mentioned the op ed world. I would write columns and people would just, oh, God, they sent me these emails. I, you know, I'd show them to Laurie. I mean, should I die? I mean, you know, it was. It was terrible. And I would always write them back, but my comment was always the same. I wouldn't defend, I wouldn't attack them back. I would look for something in what they said that interest me that I hadn't thought of, and I write them back. Boy, I thank you for writing. I know you, you speak for a lot of People who disagree with me. But I wanted to ask you something. Something you said here I had not thought about. Could you explain that more? Every single time I did that the person would come back. Well, thank you for giving me a chance to further explain. I apologize for my initial tone. And we end up having a friendly dialogue about differences. And I think that's. It's. That I value. And I'll tell you something, I think at the heart of that is a belief in the value of tension. Attention is a valuable construct. You wouldn't have a disagreement unless there's some truth on both sides. I mean, I need to value the past. The past has value. And then the other person says, oh, but you're standing in the way of future and success and innovation. Well, I value the past. It still works. And I embrace any change that allows us to be better. But that means I need both people in my world. If I kick out all the people who value the past, I'm going to reduplicate the mistakes of the past without. Speaker A 20:34 Isn't that the truth? Yeah. Racing history. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Learn from history. Don't erase it, for heaven's sakes. Yeah, but it's shameful. Well, not for you. Was for them. Jim Cathcart 20:46 Exactly. You know, and it's the same thing with other tension, the tensions of. I value my faith, but I also value the reality of dealing in a world where I can be with people who have a different faith, different perspective, because I value the fact that I have a solid ground. You talk about all of these different tensions that are out there. I want to value time and I want to be able to say yes to life, but I also have to value that by saying no to the things that are important or I won't have time to do the things. Speaker A 21:14 Yeah. Jim Cathcart 21:15 Like my wife or time with friends. Speaker A 21:17 May feel things are valuable, may feel temporarily satisfying to. To get angry and rant and. And blame and attack verbally. But the satisfaction is kind of like the satisfaction for eating delicious poison, you know, tastes good. Oh, man, I'm sick, you know. And then it. Jim Cathcart 21:36 I remember being brought into a company having tremendous conflict. They had bought out a company that there was. The transition was just really ugly. They said, well, you feel the different division work and conflict in some of these areas. And they said, we'd like to have you come in and do a program. And I talked to him, I said, okay, and. And the goals are. And. And I said, I'd like to talk with some of the people that. That you've had some difficulty with. She said. He said, you want to talk to them? I said, well, they're going to be there. Speaker A 22:06 Yeah. Jim Cathcart 22:06 I mean, my job isn't to change them. My job is to become part of the process of allowing you to communicate together. And so I said, let me. Let me have. Give me a couple of names that I can talk to, because prior to that, I want to get some idea of some of their thoughts they think needs to happen. And so I went and I interviewed these people, and I came back and I shared with him on the phone before. I just wanted to give you a little bit of a feel of some of the things that came out of this. And I shared these things. There was a moment of silence, and he said, well, those are the same things we want. And it was the realization. People often want the same things, but there's no dialogue across the divide. And it just. It is. We are connectors, we are bridgers. And I think any speaker needs to know that, because you also, as a speaker, I come in, you know, you have a few people in the back of the room who's ticked off the tree of it there. My God, they're paying this guy more than I make it. I'm like, damn. All the garbage goes along with that. But one or two people in an audience can really take down a program. And so I'm a bridger. During a break, I'll go over and I'll talk to some of the people in the back of the room. What do you want? What do you learn? What are the things that we need to talk about? And then I weave it in. I was talking to Jim and everybody. Speaker A 23:21 You're talking to Jim. Jim Cathcart 23:24 And I honor him. And all of a sudden, Jim in the back going, yeah, this guy's good. He knows who to listen to. You build in listening. You build in a chance to honor all of the components of what it is. And I think that's the critic politically, let's be very honest. Right now, we are divided more than we have ever been. Speaker A 23:42 Oh, yeah. Jim Cathcart 23:43 And maybe that's not ever been, but certainly. Speaker A 23:46 Certainly in recent years. Yeah. Jim Cathcart 23:48 Yeah. Speaker A 23:49 Divide has gotten wider. And w. Yeah. Jim Cathcart 23:51 And you know what I think about? I think about Trump. Trump is a. He's a catalyst, but he's. He's. He doesn't do a good job of listening unless he's negotiating, when he's negotiating with somebody, but with an adversary that he doesn't feel he has to negotiate with. He just pushes back and he goes through it. He reminds me A little bit of someone like Churchill. Churchill had the drive to push England through, and, and he was elected and then he was defeated. Then when the war came back, he came back, and afterwards they didn't want him anymore because he was so darn difficult to deal with. And I think that's kind of what we. We needed a trump at this time. But at the same time, we're going to have to somehow come back to a point where we can have dialogue again. And that's, that's the. And I think that's what we as, as experts sometimes, too. We're willing to listen, we're willing to have that intellectual humility and affirm the fact that we've got to do a lot more bridging in a time where people are more divided. Speaker A 24:52 Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. I think about other polarizing figures like General Douglas MacArthur and World War II and the Korean War. And then you think about George Patton, you know, General Patton during World War II. And there have been a number of people who were that polarizing. But at the time, that's what was needed, was. Jim Cathcart 25:14 Yeah, you needed a focus and the drive to get something done. Yeah. Speaker A 25:18 Everybody else, sit down. Here's what we're going to do. If you've got a better way, you better explain it fast because we're going to do this. Jim Cathcart 25:24 Yes. Yeah, exactly. And they inspired people to go along with them. Speaker A 25:27 I mean, intellectual humility. I might be wrong. I might be dead wrong, but I don't feel like I am. So I will go forward with the assumption that I'm right until I'm shown evidence to the contrary. Jim Cathcart 25:44 Exactly right. Speaker A 25:46 Yeah. Jim Cathcart 25:47 Well, I, I remember, you know, it was used to be, we talked about the myth of perfection. The more you feel you need to be perfect, any decision, the more likely it is you will not do it at all. There are two factors you really need to position yourself for opportunity. I mean, and that's why knowing your focus, knowing and being able to read as you go through that. And then secondly, you've got to do the job well when you're there. So it's. That's part of that action side of your thing. But that results in a couple of things. Number one, you have to acknowledge the fact that occasionally you had poor performance, but you had very good luck. And you have what I actually call a happy accident. I've had happy accidents in my life where all of a sudden business came to me that I didn't deserve. I didn't even seek it. It just came. And at that point, I don't bask in it or think that I deserved it. I take that intellectual humility and say, you were lucky. Next time you're going to need to deserve the performance you did so that you have repeat business and you continue to go. Second thing. That is a reality sometimes you deserve to win. And you lost. Speaker A 26:51 Yeah, that's true. Jim Cathcart 26:52 You know, I've had. I've had times like that. Sports is filled with times, boy, you could have easily won in that last minute. You didn't. And if you beat yourself up for that when you were that close and you just say, hey, heroic efforts. And if you continue to put that kind of positioning and focus in your work and you perform at that level, you're going to win far more than you're not. Yeah, but here's the real key thing is experts win and lose more frequently than losers. And the reason is they stay in the game. They are active in that game. They continue to play the game. And when they're tired of one thing, they're doing something else. And they're building on that so that they continue to keep themselves alive. I mean, that's part of yourself, is to not bore yourself. I mean. Speaker A 27:36 Yeah, I mean, there's. There's always something new to learn and discover, something new to experience. I mean, the idea of retirement has never appealed to me. When I was kid, you know, back in the 50s and 60s, retirement was when a person who had been working really, really hard, burdened with their, with their job, finally got a chance to relax. And so he or she would go sit on their front porch until they died. Right? Jim Cathcart 28:02 Yeah. Speaker A 28:02 Or they'd go fishing and do it there. But it was basically a death spiral that, that was very calm. Yeah. And went through an Exercise in Adventures in Attitude seminar in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the year 1974. And one of the exercises said, when do you plan to retire? So you were going to calculate how much money you'll need and so forth. I put never. Now. This was 1974. I'm 78 years old. It's pretty clear I never intend to retire. Now my money and mine might retire, in which case I should stop working. But if they don't. Jim Cathcart 28:42 Right. Speaker A 28:43 I've got things to do. People see places to go, you know, there's work to be done. I love that. Well, one of the things, this refers back to something you said a couple of paragraphs ago. You and I have both been to China doing lecture tours for Dr. David Chu of World Masters Speakers Bureau. World Masters for many, many years, decades, represented 10 and 10 only of the world's top names in marketing and sales and business development and interpersonal communication and so forth. When Dr. Chu came to me in San Diego back in 2014 or 15, he said, I want to bring you to China as an expert on communication, especially public speaking and sales. And I said, okay. He said, I'm going to position you as the world's leading expert. I said, no, no, no, no, no, I am not the world's leading expert. He said, well, let me ask you a couple things. Have you been president of the national speakers? Yes. Are you in the speaker hall of fame? Yes. Have you written 27 books? Yes. Have you? You know, and I went down the list and I said, okay, okay, I'm in the running. Jim Cathcart 29:50 I'm just. There you go. Speaker A 29:52 I'm not the guy. And he said, well, I'm going to say you're the guy. I said, as long as it doesn't come across that I'm saying it, knock yourself out. Well, after I spoke there like four or five times, he started inviting me back more frequently. And I ended up going 20 separate times in a five year period. And they came back after Covid in 2024, and I'm going back again in October of this year, 2025. He said, Jim, I stopped booking the other speakers. Not all together. I mean, if he got a request, he would of course book them. But he said, I stopped promoting them, he said, because the audiences like you better. And I know they said the same thing about you because I talked to David. And the thing that you and I have, the quality that we share, I think that is not as prevalent in many big names is it's not only an intellectual humility, but it's a genuine fondness of people. Yeah, especially people that don't look at the world the way we do. Because we're talking to communists, for heaven's sakes. Right. And some of the people in our audience were very aggressively anti American. But the experiences we had were just wonderful. The people loved us. Jim Cathcart 31:13 Well, I go back to, for me, and this is where again, I think faith plays a difference for me. God doesn't create junk. I mean, you know, in my man, every, every person has value. So I don't go in thinking adversary. I go in, this is a person that I get an opportunity to meet, to listen to and to serve. I mean, Jesus didn't he laid out at the Last Supper is one that, hey, love as I have loved you. And to me that means I'm approachable and I Don't just go for the fancy people. I don't just go for all the leaders. I go for anybody I meet eyeball to eyeball. It's you and me. I value you. I want to listen. And if there's any way I can, I can take out of my window, experience something that I can share with you and then have fun doing that. We're both fun people. Speaker A 32:02 And. Jim Cathcart 32:03 Yeah, most humor is not jokes. It's. It's an attitude of life is a gift. And joy is an attitude you bring to whatever you do, particularly when you're talking about something you value as an expertise. If you're an expert and you don't like what you do, find another expertise, because you're going to talk about for a long time. And you people say you still enjoy talking about what you talk about. Yeah, because I believe it and I live it. And when you do and you get to talk about it and spread that and share your window to the world, all of a sudden there's joy that comes along with it, because all of a sudden they connect it to their life and experiences they've had, and it cements that part of it into them doing it more frequently. And that's the satisfaction I think you get from being a speaker is. Speaker A 32:50 There you go. You know, people say you really love the applause. No, the applause is an affirmation. Tells you it went well. Some applause is just, you know, like in China, they would occasionally generate an audience to scream for us when we came. Yeah, we love Terry. We love Terry. And they don't even know who Terry is. Oh, there's Terry, look. Yes, Terry. Yeah, we love him. But that was all just artificially. Jim Cathcart 33:15 Yes. Speaker A 33:15 Stimulated. But by the end of your talk, they could tell you care. Jim Cathcart 33:20 Right. Speaker A 33:20 And like Zig's famous lines of Ziggler, you know, people don't care what you know, how much you know, until they know how much you care about. Jim Cathcart 33:28 I couldn't agree more. Speaker A 33:30 And that's kind of was it. Jim Cathcart 33:32 It's kind of a secret to me because all of us have presented. I mean, I remember presenting to audiences where I felt these people in a lot of areas know significantly more than I do. I mean, these guys are. Are exceptional in what they do, and in their own world, they were an expert. Speaker A 33:49 Yeah. Jim Cathcart 33:49 And I can put them up on a pedestal, just like you say, well, I'm not really an expert. Well, I'm. I'm in the running. Well, I have to put myself away from competing with an audience and into serving. And so I literally I mean, I'd take some time, I'd be sitting alone, and I'd. I'd go into prayer. Help me to serve, not just shine. If the focus is shining, then you want great evaluations. Yeah, focus is serving. I want them to come out of this with something that they're better for having invested that time. Speaker A 34:19 Someone asked me, will you do that? Jim Cathcart 34:21 You're at the heart of what an expert is, because it's the transfer of that expertise to. That is the most satisfying of what occurs. Because I want other people to. To be able to capitalize on this. And if someday you take. I'll be on the sidelines applauding what. What a wonderful gift we get to do. Speaker A 34:39 And someone asked me, you know, if you don't enjoy the applause, then what's the perfect audience response to one of your talks? And I said, the perfect audience response is this. I never thought about it like that, but that makes perfect sense. I can do that, and that's my perfect response. But if you look at. I wrote a book called Relationship Intelligence that I haven't published yet. And Relationship Intelligence is being intelligent about relationships. So what's a relationship? That goes back to my thing of defining every word, a relationship. And I tried this, Terry, with, I don't know, 30 audiences. What's a relationship? Never got a consistent answer, so I created one. Here's my answer, and I'm waiting until somebody improves on it. A relationship is a direct connection between people in which value is exchanged. The direct connection in which value of some sort is exchanged. When I'm speaking to an audience, when you are, there's a flow going on that. That's the joy of the speech, the end of it. That's just a crescendo, but the joy of being there and connecting and knowing you're getting through, man, that's the pure gold. Would you agree? Jim Cathcart 36:03 Yeah. And here's one that I. I would slightly add at the end, in which you want to do it again, because a relief has a history. You know, you're like, well, we have a connection and there's an exchange of information, and let's set up another date. I mean, let's continue to make this happen, because. And you're good at that. You are tremendously good at that. And that's why relationships. And has been such an important part of what you do, because it does continue. Speaker A 36:33 And if you look at relationships, every relationship is on a continuum from instant only, you know, flash and eternal exact time. So somewhere in between is the life expectancy of that particular relationship. And it's usually based on how much you two can be of value to each other over time. Jim Cathcart 36:55 Yeah. Speaker A 36:56 And sometimes the value is not monetary, sometimes the value is not referrals. It's just simply, like the other day I called a friend at. No, no, I didn't call the friend. I went to his home for dinner with friend of mine, John Dwight and his wife Elena. Paul and I went to their home and we're sitting there having dinner and we just looked at each other and said. And it feels like we never left. You know, that's. That's a relationship where you just. It's like family, you know? Jim Cathcart 37:27 Well, and you just did something in that conversation which we don't do an often enough, which is to break the flow of the conversation and acknowledge what we have and be grateful for it. I think that's another quality, I think, of people who are truly experts in value life is there's a sense of gratitude for the day. If I'm going to have a day, I want to spend it with people that I enjoy being with. I want to do activities that give me a chance to make a difference and then to realize, to waste a day. If I'm going to sit in a rocket for the rest of my life, I'm in trouble. It would not work for me. So you're always thinking, what's. What's the next arena? I mean, that's why I took Covid as an opportunity for me to write that novel, because I. I felt like I needed something that is in the background that I had put off that now I had time to do so. It was like, hey, apply yourself in a new direction in a new way and open up a new window, a new door. You've done that with this certified professional expert. It's opened a new door for you to have an amazing impact. Find people who share that value and create an identity around it. I mean, that's. Speaker A 38:42 Thank you. Jim Cathcart 38:43 You're known for that, for Pete's sake. That's. You do deserve hope. Speaker A 38:47 It endures long. Jim Cathcart 38:48 I'm going to give you one, but you deserve it. Speaker A 38:50 Yeah, I hope it endures long. After Cathcart Institute, I would love, love to see the CPE continued over time. Jim Cathcart 38:58 I would hope so. Speaker A 38:59 Yeah. Gratitude. This is a statement I often make. Gratitude is spiritual magnetism. Whatsoever you ask in prayer, believing you shall receive. Now, if you don't believe it, you're begging. That's not prayer. Jim Cathcart 39:17 Right. Speaker A 39:17 You know, please, God, give me a new truck. Please, God, you know, take this Problem away. Well, that's just begging. But yeah, you know, Lord, help restore my health and help keep me optimistic on the way to that recovery. Jim Cathcart 39:31 Well, and you, you gave yourself a couple days here recently to get better, but you knew the realization of that I'm coming out of that it's time to get, move back into it. And I go back to one of my favorite verses that at Psalm 118:24, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. That to me says joy ought to be the byproduct of what I come out of, out of this with. Secondly, they're going to be opportunities coming at me every single day. Open the doors, enjoy it, embrace it. Speaker A 40:02 Is seeking through you. Make be a better doorway, you know, and say, well, I want such and such. But I don't, I don't think I could get it. Excuse me. If you sincerely, deeply want it, that's the life impulse in you saying, hey, let's do this now. If you tell it now, we're going to watch TV instead, then that's on you. Jim Cathcart 40:25 Right? Speaker A 40:25 That is not on your potential because you chose the non fulfilling path. So I believe. Well, my personal favorite passage is John 10:10, I've come that they would have life and have it more abundantly. So I try to bring that into everything I do as a speaker, trainer and author and help other people live more abundantly. And how do I know I'm succeeding? Not by looking at me, by looking at the effect of the ideas on them and to see if it's working right. Jim Cathcart 40:57 Yeah, it moves from a scarcity model to an abundance model. Because when it's abundance, it's flowing out all around you and it becomes contagious and it creates an opportunity for my expertise, you know, creates a synergy with yours. And then all of a sudden you do something even more. And I get the benefit from watching it happen, applauding on the sidelines and learning from that process. It just, it's an ever expanding world in that, in that area. And as we said, it doesn't bore you. It makes you excited about every step of the way. Speaker A 41:24 It truly is. Well, I want to give you an opportunity to, to stick a stake in the ground with one thought that you want to pass along. And then also I'd like you to tell us what's the best way to contact you and what, how might we engage you? If someone was impressed with Terry Paulson and they want to bring Terry into their life in some way or Business. What's the best way? Jim Cathcart 41:47 Well, I mean, the best way for. For them is to contact me via email. And it's a real easy one because it's my name. Terryerrypolson.com and that is the best way to connect to me. So, terryerrypaulson.com would love to inquire, even if it's just to tell me a little bit, what are the three things you picked up from what we talked about in this. In this session? Speaker A 42:09 Beautiful. Jim Cathcart 42:10 Because that ultimately is probably one of the biggest things that I try and convey to people. It's not the quantity of information you pick up, it's the focus. So for me, and I got this from an early participant who said, you know what? You know, what do you do with these handouts I have? And I said, well, when I go to a program and I have a handout, I file them. And I says, what do you do with it? Well, they're in the file. Well, how many hours in the last week have you ever gone back to a file? I just went, you're very upsetting. I haven't had a very busy week. Maybe that's why I haven't gone back. Speaker A 42:48 That's what they call shelf help. Jim Cathcart 42:50 Yes. It's just sitting there from place to place. And he said, you know what? I've stopped taking notes that way. I don't do them in sequence. I just limit myself to one page, and I only write down things, a key phrase that will remind me of what I want to take from this, this program. And I limit myself to three. And I go back and I put it on my calendar, and every day I look at those three things and I. And at the end of the day, I write down one thing I did that brought me closer. It's focus. It's action. It's implementing wisdom. And my feeling is, out of all of the things, all these podcasts that they're doing, if the one thing they could get from that and in each one of them, get your focus, what was the keeper that you picked up out of what we do and then put it into action and watch you make it yours, I mean, when you do that, that's. That's the greatest compliment we can have, that we see that happen, and. And it just continues to grow. So that's. That's it. And I'd love to be a part. I still do some speaking, and I'd be glad to do some speaking to some groups who, who value. Really. I. I talk a lot about making change work. That's that's a major theme. And then optimism or resilience is really the factor that goes on what helps you get back from difficult times. And man, we are having a lot of difficult times right now. And optimism is a, is a belief that if you have a track record of overcoming optimism, you're more likely to do it again tomorrow. Speaker A 44:20 And you've written a book on it Jim Cathcart 44:22 called the Optimism Advantage with Wiley. It's a great book and worth worth reading because it really has some great keepers in there for, for your audience. So it's been a joy talking to you, my friend. Speaker A 44:33 I agree, my friend. Jim Cathcart 44:35 And we will so good to be with you at the summit recently and I look forward to seeing you sometime on a trip through Texas. We'll be there. Speaker A 44:43 Okay. Room's ready. Jim Cathcart 44:45 All right. Speaker A 44:46 Thanks, Siri. Jim Cathcart 44:47 You bet. Speaker A 44:48 Bye bye. Jim Cathcart 44:49 Bye bye. Speaker A 44:52 Thank you for joining us today. 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 my assistance in helping grow your success, then come with me and let's discover how much more success successful you can be.