Thriving and Navigating Change in a High-Speed World

Jim Cathcart 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. Hello, world, and welcome to Wisdom Parlor. I'm Jim Cathcart, your host. I've got Dennis Madden, one of my favorite people and my co author here in the Wisdom Parlor with me today. Dennis and I wrote a book called High Rev for Small Business. And High rev means both meanings, high revenue and high RPMs. He comes from the automotive industry, and so that's why we chose that theme. Well, my topic today is it's going to start off with taking a look at the year 1970. 1970? You mean they had people back then? Yes, as a matter of fact, there were humans in 1970. And one of those was Alvin Toffler. Alvin Toffler wrote a book that was popular in 1970 called Future Shock. And Future Shock had kind of an interesting concept to said, future Shock is when the rate of change is greater than than your ability to adapt to it. And that book sold more than 5 million copies and is still popular today, even though it's been succeeded by other books from him and then from many other people that built on that. But the concept of Future Shock, he said, now consider again, this was 1970 or thereabouts, maybe, maybe a little bit after that. But the early 70s, he said, in the future, we're going to have to relearn how to learn. We're going to have to relearn how to relate to each other, and we're going to have to relearn how to make choices. Consider in the early 1970s, learning was still pretty much traditional classroom or read a book. That was pretty much it because there weren't many public seminars. There was no Internet that anyone knew of, so that, you know, communication like that wasn't happening. There were no cell phones and websites, obviously. So everything was pretty much analog. And the way we learned was we got together in a room with a teacher or maybe on a phone call. But for the most part, phone calls were one person to one other person back then. Have we had to relearn how to learn profoundly. So, all right, how to relate. What does that mean? Well, in the early 1970s, relating to other people was pretty much done directly, face to face, mostly in small groups and occasionally on the telephone. There were no video calls. Video was only television. And that was three channels and mostly local programming, not national programming. And if you wanted to go to a movie, you got in a car or a bus and went to where the movie theater was, bought a ticket and saw it that way. And some movies, theaters still had newsreels back in those days and cartoons that were shown before the main event. So we definitely had to relearn how to relate, because we're relating to people today in the people we've never met, you know, people that we've met online or that we're communicating with in a chat room or something like that. And Dennis's background is his associations. He was the head of the Automatic Transmission Rebuilders association for many, many years. And as an association executive, they created. He and his team created forums and media through which the members of that industry transmission rebuilding could connect and relate. So they definitely were teaching, creating meetings and creating new and better ways for people to communicate all the time. Toffler also said in his book, in the future, we're going to have to relearn how to choose. Well, in 19, early 1970s, and by the way, Paula and I got married in 1970, so I can definitely relate to this. Our son was born in 1971. I was as, you know, naive and wet behind the ears as anybody in the world at that time had no clue how the world worked. But I did know that the world was familiar and pretty simple back then compared to today. Today we're going to have to relearn how to choose. Well. What does that mean? Well, back in the day, choosing was between good and bad. You know, you could look a horse in the mouth, see how his teeth were. You could check its hooves. You could look under the hood of a car, you could kick the tires, you could. You could go directly, physically to whatever it was you were dealing with. And you could look people in the eye and feel the nature of their handshake and get a pretty good sense of whether you could trust a person or not, or whether you could trust a product or not. Now then, we have very convincing proposals come to us every day through email, through phone calls, through websites, on Facebook, things like that. You know, we're seeing it on TikTok and Snapchat and everything else under the sun. And a lot of it really looks credible. And with AI, oh, my God. Artificial intelligence. Looking like real people, sounding like real people, responding to questions like real people. Here's the question. Not only how do we choose? Who do we trust? Who do you trust when you're not even sure the entity you're communicating with is a living being. Whoa. So I think Alvin Toffler was absolutely prescient. I think he genuinely had a grip on what the problems of an evolving society and information society like we have today would be. Consider a few things. This is a quote from Eric Hoffer, may be hard to read, says, in times of profound change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned, those who already know, find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists. Isn't that the truth? So we've all constantly got to be new, relearning what we already know and re examining the positions we've taken, the truths we consider to be self evident and unchanging, and see if they're still true. Because from the old point of view, new ways often look ridiculous. But from the new point of view, a lot of times the old ways look completely obsolete. We need a balanced way of seeing the world. Now on the screen, if you're watching this, instead of just listening, you can now see a picture up in the corner of the screen of a man, a woman, and a little baby. That man is my father, the woman's my mother, and the baby is me. In 1947. I was born in 46. And this picture was part of a larger picture taken on Easter Sunday at a church in Little Rock, Arkansas, where they baptized. Of course, baptizing at that time was sprinkling babies. They baptized something like 50 kids. So when I say I'm part of the baby boom, I can document it. I got a photo right here to prove it. This was one church on one Sunday in 1947 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Only chances are very strong most churches at that time were filled with parents holding new babies because the baby boom, 78 million people born between 46 and 64, was the people returning from World War II getting married and causing babies. And they were absolutely changing the face of our society. And we've gone through many changes like that since then. Now, the baby boom was who Alvin Totler grew up with and who he was communicating with when he wrote his book in the early 1970s. I get it when someone says, okay, boomer, in other words, they say, yeah, from your point of view in the old days, yeah, yeah, that was true. But things have changed, old timer. Yeah, things have changed, and so have I, and so have many, many, many of the people that have stayed tuned in all these years. One of the guys that I grew up with was Leland Russell. He was also in Little Rock he was also born in 1946. And he moved on, ended up in Hollywood. He formed a group doing kind of Alvin Toffler work like Future Strategies. His group was called Geo Group Strategic Services. He wrote a book with a man named John Warden called Winning in Fast Time. Winning in Fast Time, how to harness the competitive advantage of Prometheus, which was his concept in business and in life. John Warden and Leland Russell. Let me tell you a little bit about John Warden, okay? John Warden was the guy who Arnold Schwarzkopf, not to be confused with Arnold Schwarzenegger, General Arnold Schwarzkopf, and General Colin Powell, they called John Warden, who worked in the Pentagon, when it was determined that we needed to defend Kuwait against the invasion that Saddam Hussein of Iraq had made on Kuwait. And Warden used a concept that is known as, in this book, Winning in Fast Time, to design the strategy with which we would respond to that invasion that was the shortest, most successful, with the least loss of life war in history. That response, the Desert Storm, the response to the invasion of Kuwait by our country and our allies was unbelievably successful. And the way they did it was using the concept that he calls the Prometheus concept. The idea, Winning in Fast Time. Fast time is presented as a time when the rate of change overwhelms your ability to adapt to it. Sound familiar? Sounds like Alvin Toffler's concept of future shock. If you look at the screen, you'll see two words, complexity and velocity. Now, this book was written back in 2005. No, 2001. Excuse me. So Leland Russell in this presentation is referencing his 2001 book, but it's a 2005 graphic that I'm going to be showing you. You might say, well, Jim, 2005. Heavens, that was, you know, 15 years ago almost. So couldn't you update your concept? Well, yeah, they're 19 years ago. Excuse me. The concept is still valid, kind of like Toffler's concept. We're at a time right now where the complexity of change, especially with artificial intelligence, is so, so overwhelming that there's no one single person that gets it, how to deal with it. So all of us are getting bombarded from every direction with more information of more varied type than we've ever seen before. And the velocity of change is blinding. It's so fast, you know, you wake up and the world is different than it was yesterday afternoon in some categories. Okay, I want you to notice something here. Now, this is a slide that kind of changes the, the tone of what I'm presenting. But it's directly in line with what I'm talking about. Adapting to change. This is 31 inventions of the 20th century that changed the course of history. I'll run down the list verbally for those listening. The radio, the airplane, television, computer, cell phone, escalator, helicopter, robot radio, telescope, radar, jet engine, electron microscope, atomic bomb, laser, space shuttle, compact disc, polio vaccine, antibiotics, chemotherapy, pacemaker, safety razor, vacuum cleaner, neon lights, zipper, toaster, microwave oven, transistor, ballpoint pen, cellophane, chocolate chips and tea bags. Wow. Change the course of history. You, you know, certainly would get an argument on some of those, but let's just take a look at a few. The radio, how much did it change society profoundly? For the first time in the existence of the world, people were able to communicate entire messages as, as presented, meaning the recorded the way or broadcast the way it was expressed in real time to people in a location that they couldn't even think of in their, in their mind. So people all over the world were able to receive messages as never before. It changed the rules on who had access to information. Go back further than that. The Gutenberg Bible was the first Bible. Gutenberg press allowed printing, and the Gutenberg Bible was the first Bible that was widely printed and distributed. What's the big deal? Prior to that, most people didn't know how to read. And if you wanted to know what the Bible said, what the church had to say, you had to go to the church. And the priest being the only one who could read it, told you what it said. The printing press allowed the distribution of that and the expansion of education in reading and writing that all of a sudden put things in the hands of the individual instead of the hands of only the anointed ones. So we could go through this list and spend the rest of the day just talking about the implications of. What about when the television came around? What about cell phones? What about vacuum cleaners, you know, polio vaccine? Every one of those had a cascading effect of immense proportion and not just throughout society, but within their industry. For example, the safety razor. Instead of people taking a, the equivalent of a knife, you know, a shaving blade and sharpening it on a strap or a whetstone and then shaving. They all of a sudden had a little disposable item. They could change the blades in it, carry it around with them. That changed a lot of things in that industry. So why am I telling you all this? Well, the complexity and velocity of change have created a new normal. That's the term we've Heard a lot in the last 10 or 20 years. New normal. What does that mean? Well, it means what was normal in the past is no longer normal. That today we've got processing power of computers going up, skyrocketing, changing and increasing virtually year by year. The communication bandwidth available to people and to industries is immense. The world is becoming more and more available. But web, the Internet, is becoming available to more and more of the world. Especially with the circling of the globe with satellites that now allow for remote regions to be able to access the Internet. The tempo of change is faster. The intensity of competition in a world like that is greater. And by the way, some of that competition is crooks, it's hackers, it's people in Nigeria who just, you know, found some obscure prince who has a fortune that you can get if you merely send them a few thousand dollars on Bitcoin. The time available to think and plan and execute has been reducing year by year by year. Innovation is greater than it's ever been. The acceptance and embrace of new technology is greater than it's ever been. The price paid for items compared to the value you get from items has been dropping year over year over year. Look what it cost to get the first televisions or to get the first cell phones or whatever versus what it costs today. You can get simple cell phone fairly inexpensively. The iPhone may cost you a thousand bucks, but you can get something to do the communication with pretty inexpensively. Certainly compared to what it used to be. I remember when transistor radios could have run you $200 and then, you know, they were virtually free. Few years after that, the cost of computing and communications is dropping. Okay, then add on top of that global terrorism, system failures, and a worldwide fear of climate change. Would you say we have a rather chaotic and threatening situation? Yeah, most people would. And you could just disagree with some of the elements in this. But the overall statement is that complexity and the velocity of change is so immense that taking what we used to know and going forward boldly with it would be the most foolish thing you could do. We all need to constantly learn, relearn and re examine what we have learned. In China, the famous symbol for the word crisis is dangerous opportunity. And certainly that's what we're in. There's a time of danger, of course, but it's also a time of opportunity. Have you ever noticed people don't default upward? In other words, in a time when they loosen their grip on staying in touch and staying alert. If they loosen their grip, they tend to fall back to their old ways instead of advancing to new ways. I've got a photo on the screen of a limousine, stretch limousine under an awning, carport awning next to a house trailer. And that's typically what you would see if a person won the lottery and didn't have much money to start with. Most people who win the lottery a few years later, even though they've got all the resources they need, they're back to their old life again because they were foolish about their new opportunities. But those that are wise with it rise to a level they'll never, ever go below again. There's a statement in. In the military, no battle plan ever survives its first contact with the enemy. I don't remember who said that, but Leland Russell revived that in his book, and he says, no plan, think business plan, survives its contact with reality. As soon as we lay our plans and start to implement them, the first thing that happens is our competition wakes up and says, oh, wait a minute, someone's offering this cheaper, faster, better. I guess we better adapt. And then people start saying, oh, wow, I didn't know that was possible. Let's. Let's do more shopping. And so the whole field that you're dealing with starts to change, and that's some pretty radical and at the same time, exciting stuff. So who will our next leaders be? I don't know. Where are they going to come from? Where are they going to learn how to lead? Why will they want to help us? What are they capable of contributing and will cause us to be the organization we need to be to deal with the new reality and to cultivate new leaders, either in ourself or in our people? I mean, that's a pretty heavy load to drop on you in 23 minutes. But that's. That's my message for today and that what I wanted to do was warp your mind a little bit and then throw this into a dialogue where we can talk about what can a person do in a world as chaotic and potentially threatening as that, to see that they're optimizing the opportunities and not just falling victim to the threats. Dennis, what's your first reaction to that? Overload. Speaker B 23:40 Oh, overload is a good. Is a good statement. But as I looked at that list, most everything, if not everything, had to do with a reduction in the amount of time to do something, Whether it be the zipper to get your pants off or the atomic bomb to do in seconds what it might take days, if not longer, and you can go on down the list and what. Or before you started this meeting, I'd been. I was in the middle of a debate with some people about some articles. And I think that that information is hitting us so quickly that we may not be able to do much other than read the headline, the. The title, the subtitle, and maybe a few sentences. And that's probably on purpose, because more and more, if I read through an entire article, it isn't anything like the title or the subtitle. The evidence that they show is nothing of what the article suggests when you see it at face value. And now I think that the danger is we have a lot of opinion out there based on titles and subtitles. And so I was writing this long rebuttal to someone and ran out of time when this meeting started. But it's exactly what you're talking about today. Jim Cathcart 25:15 You know, I've done the same thing. Thank you for that. When I look at articles, I get several news feeds every week, actually every day, and I scroll through and I read the headlines, and then I determine where I'm going to dig in a little bit. But I. One thing I've learned to do in the last few years is be very, very aware of who's making these comments. Because it used to be that journalism was something that was kind of a badge of honor. You know, that if you were a journalist, you were objective, you did your homework, you positioned your opinions as opinions, not as facts. And you weren't trying to sway your reader. You were trying to brief your reader on the information and walk them through the thought process. Today, though, it seems that commentary is more common than reporting. And so even when we go to mainstream media, no matter which, you know, whether it's left or right or center media, when we go to that media, we're getting a higher percentage of opinion than we are of objective facts or data. I guess you could say all facts are an opinion of some sort. And that may be true, but. But there are some facts that can be relied upon a lot more than others. So I've had to be more skeptical, and I kind of resent that. I wish I didn't. I wish there were more people I could trust. But like he said, Toffler said, we're going to have to relearn how to learn. We're going to have to relearn how to relate and relearn how to choose and who to trust. As a matter of fact, one of his comments in the book was the biggest question in the future will be, who do I trust? Wow. And how do I know? Speaker B 27:15 Right, right. Sort of takes the fun out of it, I think. Jim Cathcart 27:21 Yeah. Speaker B 27:22 Turned it into work. Jim Cathcart 27:27 So if you're a. Let's you and me become advisors to small business owners. Okay. Which we are anyway, and have done for years. But let's assume that role right now for this conversation. So assuming that the people tuning into this own or are the lead person in a small business of some sort, what would you advise them in light of all this that we've talked about that they really ought to do going forward to make sure that they're either safer or that they're taking advantage of the opportunities before the windows close? Speaker B 28:06 I would say number one is time management. And I know you and I have talked about this, and it's a major point when I do a presentation, and that is one small example. Look at your phone and examine the screen time. And I've made a habit, I really try to work at this, keeping it under an hour a day. Now, sometimes you may have an app that you rely on for your business and it's something that you, you know, that you're required to, to use. But I would maintain that since so many people are caught up on with their phone, I mean, look at this. You can walk around anywhere in the store, at the airport, doesn't matter where it works. At a, at a restaurant you have a family having a meal in, three of the people are on their phone. Jim Cathcart 29:03 Yeah. Speaker B 29:04 And going back to your immediate. Jim Cathcart 29:05 Most people, you know, this is what they look like. You know, that's exactly. As a matter of fact, that's. I don't know. Speaker B 29:15 Now, something I've just noticed recently, it's probably been going on for some time is, you know, if you take a selfie, someone takes a selfie, they're doing something fun, they're going to post it on Facebook. Increasingly, increasingly I see selfies with someone having their phone in it. Like they're looking at their phone and someone else is taking the picture. I wonder how. What are we doing here? So. And then it begs the question, how much easier is it to outdo your competition if they're spending two and three hours on their phone? Time is the day just goes by. Jim Cathcart 29:57 Yeah. And so by the way, I've got a colleague, Maura M A U R A Thomas, who lives here in Austin, and she specializes in the field that you're talking about. But she doesn't call it time management. And the fact that she doesn't call it time management is profound because she had an insight years ago that I think gave her a perspective that we all could benefit from. She said it's impossible to manage time. What we're talking about is attention management, managing where you place your attention. And isn't that the truth? It is, because time moves on. You know, time doesn't even really exist except in the way that we comment on it. You know, life goes on. But does that mean time goes out? Well, what is time? It's a human concept to describe a life experience. So there's no such thing as time. You can't grab any and you can't get a sample of it and go show your friend can't paint it, you know, you can't make a smaller version of it. Speaker B 31:10 Yeah, that's, that's right up there with Stephen Covey and Quadrant one. All those things that work on us that we just simply can't avoid. And the next thing you know, we're looking at junk mail and we're going through all sorts of stuff that does nothing toward our significant goals. And look at our watch and it's lunchtime, Jim Cathcart 31:33 five o' clock somewhere. There you go. Wow. Well, let's say, okay, I'm an electrician and I've got five people working for me and I've been in business for a few years and we're doing well. You know, I'm bringing in a healthy income. I've got two small crews that are going out and taking care of the world and, and I've got one family member helping run the office and one person that, that works in sales and one who helps out on, on a part time basis. But I'm ready to get serious about business and start scaling up. But I don't want to scale it up to a bigger job for me because right now what I've created is a job instead of a company. I can't walk away from it. So it's, it's a job and I have to show up every day and I'm getting paid better. But I haven't built a business. I built a job. So how do I start building a business instead so that there's some point down the line where I can leverage this and either let someone else run it or sell it to somebody or hand it to my kids or something like that? What would you advise because you've advised thousands of people in the automotive aftermarket with shops and stores and services. What would you advise me to do as that beginning to succeed person? Speaker B 33:00 Well, one of the things that I hear too often is if I want it done right, I have to do it myself. Jim Cathcart 33:08 Yeah. Speaker B 33:09 And and they take that to heart to where they're doing everything. And I was caught up in that for some time. And it's exhausting. And there really is no pathway to growth as long as you're in that mindset. As a matter of fact, when I retired from ATRA and the man who now has that position, I. I've had discussions with them numerous times. I'll take that stuff that's on your desk that's taking up all your time, because I know how to do it. And you have better things to do and so delegate to others. That's if you can get into the habit of delegating without it seeming as though you're giving up part of you and, and saying that you're. That it makes you less of a. Of a leader by having others do it or some form of that. That's probably the starting place. Jim Cathcart 34:05 I think that's excellent. As a matter of fact, one of the things I talk about often is some wisdom. I got years ago from Dr. John Lee, a time management expert. John said he had the four Ds. D as in Delta, the four Ds of time management. He said, Item number one, look at the workload and say, okay, what could I drop and never do, and nobody would probably ever care. You know, it wouldn't make any difference on the bottom line worth worrying about. What could I drop? Well, the minute you do that scan and eliminate some of those items, your workload has shrunk. You say, okay, second question. What can I delay to a specific time? Not procrastinate. Procrastinate is different. That's avoidance. Delay means you say, this is not the time. I should do this. I should do this on Friday morning or Sunday afternoon or, you know, whenever. But you find a time that makes sense to do that item because that item doesn't require urgency to address it right now. And you delay it to a time specific. All right, so now then you've delayed a few items and your workload has shrunk yet again. What do I drop? What can I delay? All right, what can I delegate? Item 3. What is there that I'm about to do that I could get. I could ask Dennis to help me with this, or I could get a virtual assistant, or I could bring in a temp, or I could get my kids to do this. You know, what could I delegate to somebody else, including decision making? Which decisions must I make? And which decisions could be made closer to the action by somebody else? Right. And then you've gone from drop to Delay to delegate. And now you've got your core workload. What must I do? And you take what you must do and you address it. Important and urgent. What's urgent? You know, like if we don't get to the store before 3 o', clock, today's special expires at 259 and we won't get the discount. Big deal. Urgent, but not important. Okay, important but not urgent. Filing your taxes. But it's December 13, not April 14, so you don't have to file the taxes yet. It's important, but it's not urgent. What's important and urgent? That's what ought to be on my plate and that's what I ought to be doing. And then you do it according to the order of their overall importance. So you've gone drop, delay, delegate, do important and urgent, and then relative importance. And you put it down to what you ought to be doing right now. But there's another layer to this. If you're the manager, the owner, the chief, you ought to be also asking this question constantly. What could become delegatable? In other words, what could I teach somebody else? How to think about it, how to deal with it, Give them access to the tools to use for it, so that I could not delegate it now necessarily, but by the time they got up to speed, that would be off my plate and they'd be able to handle it. So that you can tell the effectiveness of a leader by the number of people that no longer need to be led. They're going to do the job well anyway. You know, if your people always still need you, you're not a very good leader. You may be popular, they may want you around, but you're not a good leader unless you're causing them to not need leading and still be able to do the work well. So I just, you know, I encourage people to constantly look for ways to grow your people, grow your capacity and shrink your workload. My friend Bill Bachrach has built a thriving business as a financial advisor, actually as a financial advisor at first and then a trainer of financial advisors. And now he has a worldwide network of people who are financial advisors and who are trainers of financial advisors who he has trained to do their work as trusted advisors. And Bill says he measures his success each year by the number, the number of days less that he has to work to achieve his goals and the amount of money he's able to achieve more with each moment of work. So he looks at the incremental value of his effort and the amount of his effort required and uses that leisure time and that growth in payoff as his success measures. I think that's pretty enlightened. What do you think? Speaker B 39:25 I agree with that and I'll share something with you. About five or six years before I retired, I began to actively, and I mean actively, you know, it was a decision actively work at having other people do my job with the intent that I didn't have to worry if I were gone for a few days, everything would get done in the other part of that is when you're. When you're in the trenches, you can't think of new ideas and new possibilities and opportunities that are right there, just escape you. You're not of the mind set to accept them. And so I had three department heads at the time and someone in accounting, and I work with each of them with the specific purpose of eliminating my role or my job outside of thinking of new stuff. Now, that didn't 100% happen, but I with certainty I could leave for a week, two weeks, and not. Not be concerned about it. Jim Cathcart 40:36 Wow. Yeah. When you said in the trenches, that's a term that people have thought about and used for years. When you consider what is. What does the metaphor mean? Well, a trench is a deep ditch. And it's a deep ditch that's deep enough that you can't see to the sides. You can only see straight up. And the trenches that we're most familiar with metaphorically are From World War I, when you look at the trench warfare between the Germans and the. And the Allies over in Europe. And when you're in the trench, as Earl Nightingale said, a rut, a trench is just a grave with both ends knocked out. And I think that's pretty enlightened because you are trapped in your own limited reality and you're not making things better. You're simply going the same. The same path all the time. So I love the advice that we're giving because I think this is desperately needed by a lot of people who run businesses. They. They work in the business, but not on the business, as Michael Gerber is famous for saying, author of the book the E Myth. They work in the business instead of on the business. And so they're not growing a business, they're just expanding their job and they're creating, in many cases, more and more work for themselves. So if you keep putting in place systems that allow the work to. To get done, no matter who's doing it, and, and still be done well, and policies that allow people the freedom to experiment, to grow to succeed or fail and recover from it accordingly, instead of being blamed for it and, and feeling bad. Only then your business will advance. But it all comes back to a fundamental question at first. And that's the question I ask everybody and every one of my books and every one of my seminars, every one of my coaching sessions. What do you want? You got to know what you want. You got to be clear on what's your goal. What do you have in mind? I just want to be happy, healthy, and have plenty of money. So does every living being on earth. That's not a goal. That's a general desire for a living being. You know, if you change the money thing to, to food, you could ask a dog, what do you want? Happy, healthy, and plenty of food. Right? Any living entity. That's what it wants. A plant. Happy, healthy, and plenty of sunshine and rain. Okay, so if that's not a goal, what is a goal? A goal is something you want, but you don't know whether you can get it yet. See, if it's something you know how to get, it's not a goal. That's a to do. So a goal is really only a goal if it's down there and beyond your reach. And you've got a lot of potential obstacles between you and it. Thinking of a goal in a, you know, like a football game, for example, you know that between you and that goal is a lot of yardage and a big enemy, the other team. So when you set a goal, whether it's for a bigger house, a better way of life, a better client, bigger client base, a higher profit margin, more reliable employees, better health and achievement, like running a marathon or being a New York Times best selling author. Whatever it happens to be when you set a goal, let the uncertainty be your motivator. Don't be bothered by the fact that you don't know. Be stimulated by it and begin your search. Relearn how to learn, how to relate, how to choose with your goal in mind. Thoughts? Speaker B 44:39 Ah, you said it. Jim Cathcart 44:43 You. That was good. I want to show our listeners and viewers this little book right here, High Rev for Small Business by Dennis Madden and Jim Cathcart. On the back it says something profound. Success. Oh yeah. Not normal. If you want to be successful, you've got to be willing to, maybe even eager, to be the person the other people sneer at, roll their eyes about or criticize. You got to be willing to be the mutant in the room, the one that doesn't agree with everybody, is not necessarily liked by everybody, but the one that makes things happen. Because success is extraordinary behavior. Extraordinary, not ordinary. If, if people say, why can't you just, you know, fit in and get along? If the answer is because I plan to succeed, then good, don't worry about fitting in and getting along. If, on the other hand, you're just looking for comfort, fit in and get along, but give up on your hope for success because then they're coming in in an easy chair. You look at people over their careers, you can pretty easily tell whether they have sought acceptance and comfort or achievement and advancement. More. In my own career, you know, at the first part, it was fit in. And then I realized more was possible and I had to find a new group to fit in with. And I lost. I didn't lose, but I changed my circle of friends. There were people I've been friends with that had low ambitions or no ambitions, and we got along and had pleasant times for years. But when I decided I want to do big things and I want to live a life of meaning and deep satisfaction, those people didn't find me as desirable to be around. No, no, no, let's not invite Jim, you know, Mr. Motivator. He's going to want to talk about the latest book he's read or the, you know, the dreams that he has or some interviewing some expert or whatever. So they wanted to keep going in their comfortable rut, their trench, and I wanted to get outside and see what was on the other side of the sunshine. So I, I had to form a new circle of friends. And at first it was a skinny little circle, you know, it was me and one or two other people. And then it grew from there. And as I earned my stripes, you know, achieved things and showed my value in various jobs, I was able to progress to higher levels and relate to a different circle of friends. And this morning I had a zoom call meeting with, I think it was 28 of my colleagues. It was the members of the Professional speaker hall of Fame. And these are past presidents of the National Speakers Association. Authors, speakers, experts, self made millionaires, multi, multi, multi millionaires, the president of a university, all kinds of amazing achievers and, and wonderful people. And we were all talking as if we were brothers and sisters or classmates at a reunion. Every one of us had a thriving business. Every one of us is constantly reading, learning, growing, reaching out, writing, publishing, traveling the world, lecturing to audiences. Every one of us, Even in our 70s and in some in their 80s and many in their 40s and 50s, we were all collaborating today. And I thought, wow, when I Started in this path as a professional expert. I didn't have any. And now the biggest names in my world, my little limited world, that's my crew. That's my. In the old days, Rolodex. That's my contact list. Right. What a joy and what a deeply satisfying feeling. I mean, you're in that position. I know it for a fact. I've seen the way you're accepted among the people in the. In the automotive field. Speaker B 49:14 Well, I would add something to it because. And that's a wonderful story and I really do appreciate that someone said, or somewhere I've heard that your. And I'm going to use the term value, that's not the right word, but you can consider your financial value, spiritual value, something that you have a high regard for, is about the average of the top five people you hang around with. Jim Cathcart 49:51 Yeah, I don't remember who that was, but I think that it was the first time expressed that I saw was about your net worth. Like your, Your financial success will be a reflection of the five people you spend the most time with. And certainly your, your. The quality of your life will be a reflection of the few, and it could be 10 people, but certainly the inner circle of people that you interact with on a regular, ongoing basis. Speaker B 50:25 Well, and what that means is, is that if you want to be over here, right, you've gotta. You've got to search out people that are there. Jim Cathcart 50:34 That's right. Speaker B 50:35 And you just, you have to pursue it, is the point of what you're talking about. Jim Cathcart 50:42 You're not going to pick it up along the way, just accumulate. Yeah. Speaker B 50:46 And the thing is with that is there are people like that all around us. We just have to observe better. Jim Cathcart 50:57 Oh, I love that. Notice more. That's my intelligent curiosity with Lisa. Speaker B 51:02 There it is. Yeah, yeah. Notice more. Jim Cathcart 51:04 Notice more. And that's the essence of intelligence, is the ability to make distinctions and to notice more patterns, more underlying principles and such than other people do. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson said, if you, if you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods. But if you learn the principles that make those methods work, you can devise new methods. And that's certainly true. But I want to build on what you said. You got to be proactive in creating these relationships. Which begs another question. What's a relationship? It's a direct connection between people in which value is exchanged. In other words, it's not. You don't have a relationship with organizations. You have a relationship with people who, when they gather together, form organizations. But your relationship's not with the group, it's with the individuals in the group. And it may be limited with some and intense with others, but it's a relationship human to human. What makes that a relationship? The value that's exchanged. Well, I have some relationships where I don't give value. No, you don't. The value could be, you're a good listener. They feel valued when they're with you. Because you're a good listener. The value you exchange could be, I do things for them and those things have tangible value. I give them money, they give me money. I give them products or services and they give me compensation. So value at some level, whether it's love or support or encouragement or just listening, is exchanged. And the more value that gets exchanged, the stronger the relationship. So how do you form a relationship with people who really don't care that you even exist yet? Well, figure out what they value. How do I do that? By listening to them and observing. Figure out what they value and then ask yourself, how can I help them get it? Which goes back to Zig Ziglar's famous line, you can get everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. When I went to my first national speakers convention, I didn't know a soul. Well, I take that back. I knew two people, but I only knew them through hello, how are you? I'm in this business too. Oh, that's nice. Where do you live? And that was the extent of our relationship. So I really didn't know anybody when I went to the first speakers convention in Louisville, Kentucky in 1978. And I arrive as this fresh, new, rosy cheek, 30ish year old kid who's just beginning to build his business as a professional speaker trainer and author. It wasn't even an author yet. They're all my heroes. I mean, right there, just a few feet away from me and they're all standing around in little circles and talking to each other. And I think, gosh, I would love to interact with these people. I think I'll stand near one of their circles. So I walked over and here are these big name, you know, very successful speakers. And when I walked over, they opened the circle and invited me in. Wow. Boy, did I feel out of place. And they said, hey, who are you? I'm Jim Cathcart. At that time I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And they said, well, what do you do? And I. Luckily I had the presence of mind to give them a short answer and then ask about them so that I could get Back to listening instead of trying to take up all the air in the room and impress them, because that was a losing proposition anyway. I didn't have anything going for me to impress them other than ambition. So I became accepted among the group, and that led to my volunteering for various roles in the association. And I started doing those roles diligently. And they said, hey, he's a hard worker. Ask him, you know, if he could help on this. And. And I got more opportunities and ultimately became the national president of the organization, was inducted into the Speaker's hall of Fame, you know, and now I've received every award they give, and I'm considered one of the old timers, one of the. Kind of the. Like, the founding father level. Wow. Wow. But it started with me bringing nothing to the table and wanting to be accepted among them. Yeah. Speaker B 55:49 And be. And be okay that it's uncomfortable because it will be. Jim Cathcart 55:53 Absolutely. Yes. Speaker B 55:57 Yeah. And. And every one of us have something to contribute, of value. It's, you know, given a choice. I'd rather not be in front of people and. And do those uncomfortable things. But, you know, at a certain point, you say to yourself, if you're gonna get where you want to go, it's going to be uncomfortable, and you just do it. Jim Cathcart 56:19 My friend John Lynn is a. He was born in China, grew up in the United States, and became very successful on Wall street and then Hollywood. Now he's built five hospitals and all that. He was with me in China recently on a lecture tour, and one of the points he made as I was interviewing him on stage was it should. And I'm paraphrasing, it should become your goal to be uncomfortable. You should want to be uncomfortable. And I said, why? And he said, because that's the only place that place that growth takes place. Yeah. So I think that's a good wrapping point for all of this, because we've got Alvin Toffler telling us from long ago, we're going to have to relearn how to learn. Yes. We should, even today, relearn how to relate to each other. Relearn how to choose between all these options and to determine who to trust and start valuing our attention so that we, through that, manage our time and then start building the skills that allow us to advance and developing the skills in our people that allow them to take on more responsibility, which lightens our load, and then make it our goal to find out something new we can become uncomfortable about so that we grow into it. Dennis, you've added a ton of value today. I appreciate you and I treasure our friendship. Thank you for joining. Speaker B 57:52 I do as well. This is fun. Thank you. Jim Cathcart 57:54 Super good. See ya. 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 my assistance in helping grow your success, then come with me and let's discover how much more successful you can be.