Transcript of Be The One: How Leaders Win by Owning Themselves | Karl Sherrill

I'm going to be an impact to somebody every time I interact with them. I will never be perfect at it, but I'm going to try to do the best I can to be the positive influence on people. Why don't you be the one that makes a difference, a positive difference? Why don't you be the one that... It's if people would come and complain to me, even at work or at home, about stuff in a community, and I'm like, Let's just talk through that. What if that person just needs you to be positive? You don't even have to agree with them. What if you just be kind to them today? Maybe that changes the environment they're in. I'm an insurance junkie by trade, and so acronyms flow all over the place. And I figured out, let me take one, and how can I talk about that message in an organized pattern? And so I just came up with own yourself, nurture others, and expand your influence, which is the acronym that I use for this story. This message is part of what I've been trying to lead to in my life, and also the way that that carries over into how I lead my teams and how that's been a development over time is the the big idea.

I mean, it's a function of how it carries into every single thing that you do when you get to a point where you understand. I no longer... Being a leader for me becomes the big idea, which is I'm just who I am. I happen to I've been blessed with experiences and life experiences that have allowed me to fail miserably and to succeed very well. All of that mix, I would say, much of my years when I was growing was, how do I hide the failures? How do I get by over the failures? How do I defend against the failures? And then how do I embrace my success and get more success? And then the secret became that chasing those two different things was more stressful and challenging than just being really clear about who I was and what I wanted to be, and then let that just carry over into how I lead.

What was the catalyst to create that reframe in your brain? Because I think a lot of people never... They never reframe it the way that you did. They get caught in this constant loop of, hide my failures, over-emphasize my success, and try to chase more. And that, I think we both can say, and I would completely agree with you, there's no happiness down that path. Certainly no long term happiness. So what was the catalyst for you to reframe that idea in your mind?

I think more than anything, being a father, right? And my fatherhood and leading at home had lots of ups and downs over the years as you grow and you have kids and nobody tells you how to do it. And then you look around and you see people that are doing it well and it all looks like success. And obviously with social media and other things, it puts that in front of people. You just wonder sometimes when it's not what you see, that everything else is defined by the world as success, you start to question, how are you leading at home? As my children grew, I began to see things, silly examples of just being so caught up in how they did in school at an early age and how important that I thought that was during that time and going through middle school. Then as they reach high school, and then the whole everything in middle school is about getting into the right spot for high school and how high school is all about college. I've got a whole another tangent we could go on about higher education to today's environment, but how all of that pushes you to lead differently than maybe how your heart feels.

My heart was saying when I had young children was, I want them to be healthy, I want them to be happy, I want to enjoy that time with them. I certainly did. But every once in a while, you would let the world creep in to say, Well, yeah, but they need to be doing this, and they are not going to be doing this, and they need to be playing more of this, and they should be doing... And so the world began to dictate how I thought about the way I wanted to define success as a father, as a family for my children. And as we got into the middle school years, I have three children. I've got a 24, 22-year-old and a 19-year-old, my two boys and my daughter at the end. As we got into middle school, I had especially one of my sons who began to have some health issues that we couldn't to figure out, and they were impacting him significantly. There's no playbook for that as a dad. That's not what you talk about with other dads. You talk about what travel team they're on, you talk about what sports they're playing, how they're doing in school, what grades they're making.

All that's the normal conversation amongst dads. There was no normal conversation when I would go out with friends in the community about, Hey, my son's really struggling, and we can't figure it out, and I want to help him, and I don't know how to help him. That began to reframe things for me. Then there was another seminal moment during COVID where I found myself, as many of us did, home, couldn't go to the office, wasn't allowed to go to the office. I'm a people person, so that wasn't healthy for me. I got home, and I've got three great kids. I've got a beautiful bride. We've had a great marriage. We've got a beautiful home. My job was going really well at the time. I was with Marsh. Things were great. I'm at home and I'm miserable. You look around and I'm like, I'm doing great in my career. I've got a great family My family got neighbor across the street I'm hanging out with during COVID. It's like you got it licked, and yet I was not happy. I began to look at it and say, You know what? I'm not in control of my situation.

I'm letting the world dictate to me what is going on. My oldest son was a senior in high school, and COVID was taking all that away from him. All the senior celebrations, 13 years of school to get to that senior moment, to have senior breakfast, and have mom and dad come over for the breakfast, and to have prom, and to have dances, and to graduation live and all of those things that he had worked so hard for to watch it be stripped away from him and realized that, yeah, but in the grand scheme of things, he's 18 years old. He's got a lot of life ahead of him. This is a moment in time, and I was letting myself look at it and say, That's defining how I feel about the world. I felt out of control, and I was not myself. Had good friends and mentors in my life who said to me, Man, you don't seem like yourself. What's going on? That helped me to step back and say, I've got to take control of the situation. The reframing for me was twofold. One is that my priorities completely shifted. I have a child who is incredible.

He's one of my heroes in my life. He has challenges that many people will never face in their life, and he overcomes them on a regular basis. Whether he did his homework or not, I could care less. I really could care less because his health and his happiness was the primary focus. In a middle school science assignment, a middle school calculus test was pretty small in the grand scheme of things. And so I wanted to make sure that he knew that as a leader, as his dad, as his leader, I wanted you to focus on what mattered, and that was you being happy and healthy. And we'll worry about that other stuff later. Tests come and go. We'll figure that out. So that was probably the beginning of the reframe of how I began to look at the world, which changed the way that I operated on a daily basis.

Well, I think your self-awareness, and I'll say humility to actually step back and look at those things is incredibly admirable, and something that I think we all should strive for because it comes in moments, maybe waves. We have waves of self-awareness and waves where we're maybe a little a little filtered in our view, but I do believe in having done this podcast for as long as I have and spend as much time with people, very people person, too. I think a lot of people struggle with this. I did a TEDx I talked back in February on status and the impact of status in our life. When I did my self-awareness journey, I could almost pinpoint decisions that I made based on the status that I thought I would accumulate from that decision versus the decisions that I made because that's what I wanted to do with my life and how it fit, was literally green for when it wasn't based on status and red for when it was, almost to a T. I think this is very difficult for us because the world is... Social media in particular, even if you're not there, still plays this role.

People look at you, they expect things from you. So if someone's out there listening to this going, I find myself in a similar place to where Carl was before he reframed, right? How does someone break down or just start to start to organize some of the mental clutter around the ego or the status or that living a life that they didn't choose that may have been pre your reframe that so many of us deal with. What if I told you Whatever you know you've gotten in the last 30 days was preventable. What if every, I need to think about it, was actually your fault? What if every, can you send me more information meant you screwed up that sales call? You'd probably get pissed, right? It's It certainly pissed me off when I realized this is what was happening to my own sales team. And you should be angry because anger creates action. And action is what you need right now. Your conversion rate is stuck at 20 to 30 % because you're using a broken script and a broken process. Meanwhile, your competitors are gaining ground. But wait, you have a secret weapon, the one call closed system I'm going to teach you.

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Sure. I'll tell you how I did it. The way it worked for me, and I would recommend it, but for everybody, they'll have their own way. But I began to read and chase after people who had a philosophy like mine. I would look at different authors and different books, and I would read. I've always been a reader, and I began to reshape what I was reading, because guess what I was reading? Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I was reading the books that the world said you should read if you're a good leader. But that wasn't feeding what I needed. I went back and started looking at things like, Well, I need to get myself in order. Who are some people writing about that? Who are speakers that I've heard at different conferences who I feel like that spoke to me. I need to go back to that. The beginning step for me was I literally sat down with a book. It's by Roger Sip. It's called Train Your Brain for Success. I've handed it out to a lot of people. Roger spoke at a convention that I was at years ago. It was a big eye convention in North Carolina.

It was a little speech, and probably most people in the room, I don't know if it impacted them or not, but it just stuck with me. It was years later before I went back to that book. In there, there's some chapters that really stuck with me. The very first one that I grabbed hold of was about what are your values? Have you sat down and done an exercise where you come up and look through and put seven words together that are the things that are the most important to you? Have you done that exercise? I hadn't. Everybody could probably tell what they valued, but I had not sat down and spent time with that. I dedicated time to, let me go through the exercise of putting a bunch of words on paper and then narrowing them down. The neat thing about the way that exercise played out was you go through a lot of words. He has like 100 and some words on a page. You go through the words, then you cross off the ones that are similar and you narrow it down to where you get to whatever it is, five, six, seven.

There's no magic number. For me, it was seven. Then you go in and define yourself, not the dictionary. What does that word mean to you? You write that definition out. Then you start looking at what are the things that I value. For me, it was faith, joy, influence, and a couple other great comments in there. I went back and defined those, and that set me on a path of, Okay, well, if those are the seven things that I say are non-negotiable for me, let me look at what my calendar looks like every week. I calendared that, and that was very eye-opening. I wasn't feeding those things. My calendar wasn't reflective of my values. I began to change that. And then the other piece of the puzzle that happened, not just from that book, although he talks about it and a lot of people do, The Miracle Morning by how El Rod is another great one that I gleaned on to, I realized that for me, if I just woke up every day and tried to live that out, it wasn't going to happen. The world had many times successfully derailed me throughout my career, throughout my life.

That's when I said, I've got to own myself in the mornings and then during the day. I've sat down and worked on a routine that I was going to commit to on a daily basis of things I was going to do to put me in the best position to defend myself from when the world came at me. To me, getting clear on those values and actually writing those down and then starting to come up with a routine that would allow me to Listen, I'm not 100% successful. I'm not 100% in my routine. I fail still on a regular basis, but my routine gave me the best chance of success every day. At that time, too, Ryan, it was, I can't take a chance because what I'm dealing with to try to help my son get through what he's dealing with. It's one thing to let my team down at work. It's one thing to not sell another insurance policy. It's a whole another thing to take a chance on the way my day goes and when it impacts my son. And my daughter and my other son. And that became how I began to move in that direction.

You use this term defend yourself against the world, the universe. And I think habit routine, and we'll put all that in a bucket of say, preparation, right? Mental, physical, daily preparation. We're not taught this, right? It's one of the reasons that I do this show is I'm so incredibly curious as to how everything works, right? This show would be more commercially successful if I was the leadership guy for blah, blah, blah, or whatever. It would be, it would be. But I just am so interested in how we... Just so many different things in this particular idea And what's come out of that, this is where I'm trying to get to, from talking to so many different people, everyone from the first licensed psilocybin clinic in the United States to, billionaire investment bankers to content creator. This idea of preparation is one of the keystones of all of their success that I found, and everyone prepares differently. Sure. But here's where my question comes from, because I think everyone can get behind that, right? You find a routine, you do it daily, okay, But the world's going to punch at you. The universe is going to punch.

I tell people all the time, the universe doesn't give a shit about you. It does not care. You have to. You intentionally have to prepare yourself. So when it hits you hard, right? Mm-hmm. Something happens, maybe, God forbid, something with your kids or work, just something happens at work that just throws the whole ship into flux. How do you not spin off the rails? How How do you come back in? Everyone's going to have those moments, maybe it takes a day or two to get back on track. But where I see the difference between highly successful individuals like yourself and those who do not reach goals or do not reach places that they maybe are proud of is that when the best get punched in the face, they're able to recalibrate themselves and get back on track, and so many others are not.

Yeah, it's a great point.

How do you do that? How do you get yourself back on when you get knocked off course?

The way that I frame that in my mindset over the last, really, very recently, but I think it's just I've been recently able to describe and define how I was doing it before. I can equate it to being in a boxing match. You're in a boxing match with the world, and if you think you're getting into a boxing match and nobody's going to throw a punch at you, well, that's just insanity. You are going to get punches thrown at you in the world. And what I have learned as I begin to study and read a little bit I'm talking about boxing, which has been fun to do, it's something I know a lot about. I don't really follow it. I know Tyson and Muhammad Ali, but I don't know the science of it. I started reading some books on that. Some of the most successful fighters and trainers is because they learn how to take a punch, not necessarily avoid a punch. They teach you how to dodge and move, but nobody ever says you're not going to... You're not going to avoid every punch. And so how you absorb a punch, you actually have to think about it.

You have to be prepared. It's something you train about, how to take a punch, how to be absorbing of something. And so what I look at now is I try to take it as an absorbing of some experience. And so when negative comes at me and it does, man, I get knocked down. I'm in a season now where I've got some stuff going on that it would be easy for me to just say, This isn't right, this isn't fair. God, why are you doing this? That all exists in my life at this very moment. But when you know it's coming, it's not that I live in fear of when it's going to happen, like when's the other shoe going to drop? But I just accept the fact that there's going to be something coming in my life. When it does come, I'm going to absorb that punch. Well, how do I absorb it? I've got a partner in life, in my wife, who we are aligned and we see the world the same way. I can go to her and we can share with each other. We don't have conversations that very often they're like, It's going to be fine.

Don't worry about it. We have conversations which is, Yeah, this sucks. Sorry we're dealing with this. I'm sorry you're dealing with that. But this is what matters. This is what we know matters. Let's focus on that. Let's stay clear to that. Whether it's at home or at work, I've got great mentors and friends throughout the industry, throughout work, who I can also lean on to say, Man, remind me while we're doing this. Then you get that reminder and it helps you to absorb. But the other thing I think about it, too, is I fully believe all that negative stuff that comes at me from the world. Every time I get punched by the world, if I can absorb that and then look back at it, I can learn from it. I'll be better the next time I take one of those punches because it's going to keep coming. We don't get a life free of punches. It's just going to happen. But I think framing it from a standpoint of, I want to absorb the experience for what it is. The interesting, cool thing about that, Ryan, for me is I'm very much in the moment on the good stuff, too, now.

I fully absorb that stuff, too, because in the back of my head, I'm thinking, Hey, it's not every day that it's going to be good like this. Let me be in this moment. My wife and I joked around, we got three kiddos. Throughout life, all three of them have had their ups and downs. Obviously, they're growing adults trying to figure this world that even a grown adult doesn't have figured out. We call it the trifecta when all three of them are in a good spot. We high five secretly. They're out of the house now. We'll have phone calls and text with them. If all three of them are really good, we're like, Hey, I talked to him. He's great. She's doing good. Oh, he's good today, too. It's a trifecta. We high five and we celebrate. Little wins. They're just all three having a really good day right now. I think the combination of absorbing the punch, knowing it's coming, being prepared for it. Listen, I still get knocked down a lot. It still happens, and it still sucks. But I got a couple of people around me that are not going to allow me to lay on the mat and complain about getting punched in the face.

I think, one, I love that. A reframe that I use all the time is this isn't happening to me, it's happening for me, right? So when things happen that I didn't expect or aren't exactly what I want, right? It's often it's easy to go, why is this happening to me? I'm a good person. I pay my taxes. I love my kid. Why is this happening to me? And it's like, no, it's happening for you. This thing that you didn't like, how about you go put your adult pants on and go solve the problem? Go figure it out. Learn from it. It's happening regardless. You can either wallow in it or go figure it out. And that mentality that I'd say the second half of my of my more mature side of my career, not the super early days, has really helped me get through those, like that absorbing of the punch, right? And I think these reframes, as much as we can build them into our life, really help. Oh, yeah, they're aphorisms or whatever. They're just little ditties. But, man, they can be really powerful. And I often caution people to... Some people can think they're trite or like, I don't need that in my life.

It's like, dude, you just got punch in the face. If a simple reframe can help you think about it differently, isn't it worth doing it? So I love that stuff.

Ryan, I think, too, for a lot of folks, there's some people that don't have that happen a lot, or they already naturally handle it well. And for me, it's good for you. That's awesome if you don't need it. I hope you live a life where you don't have to worry about what I've got to worry about. I would love for you to have for that to be your life experience, but the large majority of us know that that's not the way it works.

So for the audience, so they know, I was at Mick Hunt's Lead Loud series down in Greenville, South Carolina. A tremendous event. I highly recommend you go check out his Lead Loud series. He has them quarterly or so. One or one powerful events. And you were one of the speakers. And I was really captured by this idea of being the one, your leadership philosophy that extend and you used examples extending outside of just business into how you lead your family, et cetera. But I love this concept because, again, speaking to the reframes and stuff, it's a simple, understandable concept, but incredibly powerful. So I'd love for me to talk through the genesis of where this idea started to come and then start to break down for us what this philosophy is that you're out there teaching, because I do think it's incredibly powerful.

Well, thank you for that, Ryan. And I second that with mixed group and that lead loud. It's an amazing time together with a lot of leaders really chasing the same things. The thing I like most about it is it's chasing the personal side of it to be professionally better. That's most of what you hear at the conference. I came up with an idea probably four or five years ago about how do I get the message out about what I and my family went through in helping my son to be successful, be happy, and be healthy, even though he's facing health situations that are out of his control. What it really came to me, there were a number of people along that journey who, at moments in time, at the exact right time when needed, were the one person that showed up in that moment. As I looked back on our journey through there, there's always been this moment where a person showed up. Because that one person took interest to make a difference and have an impact, it significantly changed the path that we would have been on. As that began to happen, and as I look back at that journey, I started to think about There's so many people out there.

For example, teachers don't know how to deal with this, and they haven't been trained properly. There's a whole thing to this. I'm not saying that all. I've got a long line of educators in my family, and I teach as well. It's nothing about that. It's just that when you're dealing with something like he was dealing with that's not evident. The other thing is, played sports, great football player, student body president, great student, smart kid, super smart kid. From the outside, everybody loved being around him. From the outside to a teacher, to people around him, they had no idea the struggle that he was having. When we finally talked to some people and they realized it, you had a couple of different reactions to this. I think this happens, and this happens professionally, too, by the way. But in this situation, this was the genesis, is that There were the group that would think, Well, I don't know if I believe all this. Maybe this is just some manipulation. Maybe this is just a kid trying to get over, maybe whatever. Then you had a couple of people that took an interest enough to say, Well, maybe not.

Maybe this is a real struggle, and how can I help? On both sides of those coins, I began to make the argument with everybody that, Listen, at the end of the day, let's say you're right. Let's just say you're right. Let's say that they're manipulative, that you think they're trying to get over on you with whatever the situation is. Let's say you're right. Let's go to the, What is the worst possible case scenario that could happen in that? If they're actually getting over with you? Well, that doesn't happen forever. Maybe they get a grade they don't deserve, and maybe they move on. But at some point, life catches up with us when we do those things. But what if this struggle is and you're the one who did not help them, and it was enough to go to the other side of the equation, which let's be honest, you never know where that's going to go with someone, and you could have been the one that did that, too. I just got to a point where I said, I've seen people impact him and us positively and negatively by being the one person that made a difference and took an interest.

I want to make sure that all the interactions that I have, I'm fortunate enough in my professional life to interact with tons of people. Man, what if somebody just needed me to be positive and smile at them that day? Maybe that was the one thing that I was the one interaction in their day that changed the path for them that day that maybe led them to a different place. But what if also Also, if I'm real with myself, what if I'm the one that was negative to them? What if I'm the one that had a negative interaction? What if I'm the one who fed into what might be self-taught for a person to say, I don't know why I'm here. Nobody cares about me. What's the deal? I don't have any Why am I here? Then you interact with Carl at the airport, and he's frustrated already because he's missed a couple of flights, and we have this interaction, and I don't even know you, but we have a bad interaction, and I'm really negative to you. Then off you go because I've just confirmed the self-taught you already had that there's no reason to be doing this anymore.

Everybody's out to get me. That just became a real moment for me to say, I'm going to be an impact to somebody every time I interact with them. I will never be perfect at it, but I'm going to try to do the best I I can to be the positive influence on people. That started me down this path of be the one. That's the message that I talked to people about when I was already having an interaction. The message is just getting out. But as I talked to people, I was saying, Why don't you be the one that makes a difference, though, a positive difference? Why don't you be the one that... People would come and complain to me, even at work or at home, about stuff in a community. I'm like, Let's just talk through that. What if that person just needs you be positive? You don't even have to agree with them. What if you just be kind to them today? Maybe that changes the environment they're in. That started it. I'm an insurance junky by trade, and so acronyms flow all over the place. I figured out, let me take one, and how can I talk about that message in an organized pattern?

I just came up with, own yourself, nurture others, and expand your influence, which is the acronym that I use for this story.

And I think it's tremendous. And I think the message is timely because of where we are in our society today. We have lost the ability to disagree with each other in a way that doesn't lead or spin out of control. People develop preconceived notions on fragmented information and will interact with you in ways that you don't understand. It's a very odd time to be a community communicator and a leader. Odd is not the right word, challenging, tumultuous. But I think this idea of constant positivity or reasonable and intentional positivity is absolutely what we need. In the audience at Lead Loud resonated, it certainly resonated with me. It's why I was so excited to have you on the show is because... I'll just give you an example. I coach my kids' baseball. And what I found... One of the parents came up to me and she was like, My son really likes playing for you. She's like, What are you doing? I was like, Nothing. I don't know. I mean, I know the game. I love the game. Don't get me wrong. She's like, Well, no. She's like, he's played for other coaches that were, whatever, not yelling.

I'm not a big yeller or whatever. And he's like, But he really... And I was like, high fives. And she's like, What do you mean? I'm like, Kids, high fives because it makes them feel connected. It makes them feel seen. It's fun. It's energizing. Now, do adults want you high fiving them as you walk to the office? Probably not. Maybe not. Maybe they do. But I'm not against it. I look at a good fist pop or whatever. But I was like, For this audience, kids, if you just constantly high five them, they're in a good mood. Even if they mess up, you just give them a little dap. Dude, you got You got this. You're good. Bam, you're the man. No one better. Throw some little thing on it with a high five. They could go 0 for 3 that day, and they walk away with a smile. And I think in the context of Little League, that makes complete sense. Oh, yeah. No, that makes complete sense. Then we get into our adult world and we're like, Johnny's not holding up his end of the bargain. Sally hasn't sold anything. The HR team's up my butt about some email I sent, or I didn't mean what I...

And now all of a sudden, it's pure negativity. And I guess when you talk to someone who's dealing with these adult toxic environments, what is... Like, is the first step just be the one? Is it go get consensus? If you're in one of these toxic environments, maybe you enjoy the company in general, but it's got this negative or toxic and you want to change it, how do you start injecting this idea into this idea of being the one, which I love, into an organization so that you can start to break that negativity spiral down.

Yeah, I think so early on, it's if you have the opportunity to be really careful about who you join. I think the team that you join, you have to be careful about it. And so I talk to a lot of undergrads, talk to young professionals, and I remind them to just this is the time to not compromise. Finding a team of people that is aligned with the way that you see the world and the way you want to live your life and the way you want to be professionally. Again, just to reiterate, the main thing they're usually missing is they haven't even spent time thinking about that. I got to get them to go back and do that first. But let's move forward. They've joined a team, and obviously, sometimes you do the best you can. You still end up in a team where the environment is not what you expected it to be. It turns toxic over time. You have new leadership or new teammates, whatever the situation is. But when you find yourself in that space, I think you have to do a couple of things. Number one is I want to make sure...

I don't want people to think that I'm all rainbows and unicorns. I do I do not think that this is easy. I'm not good at it all the time. It's the desire of my heart. It's not the way that I execute on a daily basis, but it sure is what I want to do on a daily basis. What I would encourage people in those situations is be really clear on who you are, because if you're compromising the core value of who you are in a toxic situation, there's no fixing that. It's probably not getting better. If you can align your core values and you can have honest conversations with people, start trying to find people in that team who you believe are aligned with you. And begin to have real, vulnerable, transparent conversations about what you're feeling and where you're at and how it's going, because that's reality for a team. And good leaders should be receptive to the teammates coming to them and saying, I don't know what's going on, but this is how it is making me feel. It may just be my perception is incorrect, and I may need to adjust this a little, but I think it's important that you and I have a conversation about how this impacting the way that I operate daily.

Then you've just got to find a way to talk through, how do I move to a place that I want the team to be? Now, the other piece of that that I challenge people with, you have an obligation, though, to be the teammate that you want to be, that you want everybody else to be, too. It's very easy for all of us to point to the people around us who are causing the problem without taking a step back real quick to say, Yeah, but was I really intentional about showing up today? Did I really do my work today? Did I really show up correctly? Because if the answer is no to that, you got to get that square before you go take care of what's happening with the rest of the team. I think that's where... I mean, it's difficult when you find yourself and listen, there's a lot of people who... Listen, I've been very fortunate in my career, very fortunate with people and connections and things. There's people, though, that are in places where they're stuck, that don't have a choice. The choice to leave is... It'd be easy for me to answer that question and say, Well, you shouldn't be on that team.

You should find another team, and you should go enjoy Look at that other team. But the reality is for many of us, that's just not reality, that you can just jump around and be shopping around for some team that makes you feel better. It's just not the world we live in. But I also think you have this incredible opportunity. If you can take it on as a challenge and as a project, your own project, if you can absorb the negativity for what it is and then brush it off a little bit and then dig in a little bit, man, if you're the one that changed the culture of that toxic team, what an incredible spot you'll find yourself in, right?

Have you ever read the book No More Mr. Nice Guy? I have not. I highly recommend it. It's one of my number one recommendations for pretty much anyone, really, but particularly men in leadership positions. And what he defines in that book is the difference between nice and good. And this opened my eyes. I read this about a year and a half into to rogue risk, when I was developing Roe Grisk. The team was really starting to grow. And you're bringing people in, and you're bringing in team that fit in immediately, and you're bringing in team that have some friction here or maybe different personalities. And I'm looking at this and I was struggling to pull it all together, and I didn't understand why my message wasn't resonating as much as I wanted it to, because I've always prided myself on being someone who could inspire humans, captain of every team, and all this stuff, whatever. And when I read that book, what I realized is I was over indexing on nice. It was nice. I didn't have the hard conversation because I wanted to be nice. I didn't bring two people together and help them talk because I didn't want to create a comment because I was nice.

Everything was nice. And what he outlines in this book, and it's not a long read, you could get through it in a couple of days. The It's really the perfect type of business book because it doesn't take you a year to read it. It's not like I'm reading The Art of Seduction by Robert Green right now. And it's like a college textbook. It's this big, 12 font. I mean, it's amazing.

Let me just give you a little quick side story on this. It's weird, but it's legitimate because it's real for me. We were taking a group to London last year. A group of producers was a fun contest reward trip. I wanted to learn a little bit more about Winston Churchill, so I ordered a Winston Churchill book, a biography. The book came in and it was 1,700 pages and it was this thick. And I was like, well, I wasn't expecting that. So I sent it back, exchanged it for another book. The next one came in, it was 1,400 pages, and it was still this thick. And my wife was like, did you read the description? And I'm like, yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure I can get through that thing. So, yeah, good. That's a nice guys.

I'm with you. When it's over a certain number, I got to go to an audiobook. I just can't. I won't get through it. So this idea of good versus nice. And what I realized is it comes back. It almost is a more tactical version of what Jordan Peterson talks about with be a monster, right? Have the capability to stand up for yourself, to step into tough situations, but keep that sword sheathed as much and as often as you possibly can in the world. And what it forced me to do was say, the nice thing, the nice thing is to not address this point of negativity because I don't want to cause more problems. That's the nice thing. But the good thing for my team and for everyone is to let's address these problems. What is going on? Because a lot of times I found, and I'm very interested in your take with all the teams that you've led, is that when you do... The negativity spreads It's contagious, but so is positivity. So oftentimes someone who presents themselves as negative on a day-to-day basis, when you can show them that you accept them or accept whatever their issue is, or you're willing to address their issue, and you keep that positive environment, you can flip people.

People would rather be positive. I think most people would rather operate from a place of positivity. They just don't know how to. And you can. It is not a lost cause if you find yourself in one of these negative environments where if, as you said, you live that value structure that you say you want and you actually present it, people will come along for that ride. Have you found that to be true?

I I have. I would say, number one, I'm an over-index to nice guy for sure. I think the place that I have developed into from maturing in my professional career, also led by my personal life, is to be willing to have a very challenging conversation with someone because I'm coming at it from the standpoint of, if we don't talk about it, that's bad for everybody. I care too much about you to not have that conversation. That's number one. The other thing that is interesting, I also agree. Our brains are wired to be defensive, and that brings on some interesting personality traits in the way that we interact with each other that are just by design. But I do believe that there's not people that get up every day that would otherwise be wired to just be miserable. And make your life miserable. Then you begin to think about, Well, if I believe that to be true, then I would like to seek understanding as to why they're there. To me, it becomes compassion for... There's been something in the life experiences that they've absorbed have put them into a where that's how they see the world when they get up in the morning.

That's sad. I'm desperately sad for those people because that's not a way to live a life. As leading a team, I want to understand why we're there. I want to understand what the experience in your life has been that's put you in that space where you can't enjoy the moments in life that are really important, and then try to help you find a way to get there and enable you to do that. The reality is, if I've got a team of people who can't figure that out, we're not going to be We'll have small successes, and we'll be able to get lucky wins. Long term sustainable success for a team, when we've got people dealing with that, I don't believe, and I don't think history has proven it out either, that you'll have long term sustainable success if you don't help the team be great. I had a great mentor who years ago said to me, If you're not good at home before you get to work, you're not going to cut that off. It's not going to turn a switch when you get here. I think I think it's an opportunity for us to really step back and say, if I believe, and I do, but if I believe that people are generally wired to do good things and be good people, if they're not, something's going on.

There is no greater joy in my life to date or in other leaders, and I think there's no greater joy than to take that really negative person in my life and turn them into something, turn them into a fan, turn them into a person that smiles when they see me. I joke around with people. Listen, if you're rude and ugly to me, I'm going to probably be okay It might not feel great. I'll get over it. But I also have just accepted that as the challenge for you. You and I have a disconnect because if you really knew me, I don't think you'd treat me that way. So let's figure out how we can figure that out first.

Yeah, I completely agree. When you see that light bulb, come on, for someone, there's nothing more rewarding because all of a sudden, you can take... I don't love these terms, A, B, C, player type of thing that you hear. I understand why we use them, but I don't love that because I think oftentimes we categorize people as if they're static, right? He's a C player. She's a player. And it's more like in this moment, In this season of their life and/or our business, this is where they fall. But it doesn't mean they're static, right? And what we ultimately want to do is look at our Bs and our Cs in the current moment and say, how can I help them elevate to their to our best level? Because I also think, and I'm really interested in your take on this, because again, I don't love this terminology. I understand why we use it, but I don't love it. And my point is, okay, I want everyone on my team at their A, not Our A. They obviously have to hit certain business metrics. They have to do their job. They have to perform. And we all have KPIs on what we need to do.

But if I can just have everyone at their version of A, whatever that is, or as their version of A as often as possible, that to me is how you hit true escape velocity in a business and you launch out into the atmosphere. Because you're not going to have everyone at a, quote, unquote, A level way up here all the time, because that might not be... Johnny's A, one, he might be doing a different function, and two, his version of A might be, yeah, he only sells at the minimum minimum requirement each month. But man, he also does X and Y and Z. And while those don't count in terms of the cash register, man, they really help our business in this way or that way. And it's getting these people up to A and simply Everything that you've talked about so far, it's about raising those people up. And I think that should be our goal as leaders, is not to have this team where all our A's are exactly the same, but how many of the people in your organization are operating at their version of an A at that moment. Again, the way my brain works, I have severely hyperactive ADHD at all given times.

There's like 10,000 things going. I don't want to tell you the other thoughts that are running through my brain while we're having this conversation, and I mean that with no disrespect. But I've had to come up with these reframes, and some of these things... Johnny doesn't have to be the same A as Sally. Sally's version of is this killer. She's putting max revenue on. That's awesome. He's hitting his A, though, and that's good enough. That's all. He shows up happy. He's communicating. He comes to the parties. He supports people. And yeah, he doesn't sell as much as her, but he sells enough. And he's super happy. So let's freaking go. Why are we going to knock him? Because Sally's just an absolute sales monster, right? But he's operating at his A, and I think it's the better way of viewing it. I love the reframing of that a little bit, too.

Because if I want you to operate at your best, I need to help you understand what that looks like. Not everybody has a view of that. And if we're not careful, again, the outside influence of the world and the environment and the business that you're in will dictate to someone what they should be chasing as their A-level. What I would rather see us do is help them understand what is my A-level that I'm wanting to achieve in life. And let's help you get there and let's have a real conversation about it instead of chasing somebody else's desire for what you should be in life.

I know people who don't play sports hate when people on podcast talk about sports, but I'm going to talk just for a second. Coming up, I played football, basketball, baseball. Football was my number one sport until I got three concussions my senior season, and I ultimately ended up having to play baseball in college. I said, Have to. That was a bad thing. I loved it, and probably better for my physical health long term. However, I think about a football team in this way. If you're taking this idea of everyone at their A, A middle linebacker or a quarterback has a very defined A in what they can do, and they're often highlighted in their respective sides of the field as the prime time players on those sides of the field. However, don't you also want your long snapper to be an A long snapper? Because if that guy throws the ball 10 feet over the punter's head, you're in a really bad position. So you don't need your long snapper to be an A middle linebacker or an A quarterback. You just to get them to being an A long snapper. I think if we think through our businesses in that way, it helps us not compare people who shouldn't be compared.

I think comparison is good to an extent, but it can also create some of the negativity if we let it get out of hand. I also think it can sometimes be, and I'm super interested in your take on this, I think sometimes it can be lazy leadership to just apply everyone to the same standard and judge them accordingly as as if we're all the same humans because we're just not.

Yeah, I think I had a coach in my high school career. I was a really good athlete at one thing, right? And so I played soccer growing up. I went to a great soccer player, but I was good enough to get to hang out with my buddies who also played. And so I played soccer. So my freshman year high school, played soccer. Wasn't great, but nobody cared because it was freshman soccer and nobody was great. So big deal. Go back out. And at the end of my freshman soccer season, wrestling started. Well, I had never wrestled. I didn't know what wrestling I'd never done it. But I was also a 97-pound, tiny little kid in high school as a freshman. So football wasn't an option. Soccer wasn't great for my size. Wrestling became this thing that had this ability to put you in a category where you're competing with similar people, like weight divisions. So I went and wrestled, fell in love with it, was pretty good at it my freshman year. The wrestling coach was also the soccer coach, same guy. I show up my sophomore year to soccer. I go out for the team, I'm at spring practice, and the soccer coach comes over to me about two days into practice, and he basically says, Hey, if you want to play JV soccer, most of your buddies are going to be up on the varsity this year.

If you want to play JV soccer and you want to sit on the bench most of the year and not play a whole lot, you are more than welcome to do that if that's some experience that you think you want. He said, But also, let me ask you, would you consider this? We've got some guys from the wrestling team who are doing preseason work in the fall. Would you be interested in that? I think you could be a really great wrestler. I had a come to me and say that uncomfortable conversation to say, Hey, here's the reality of it. You want to muddle around over here? You can. That's fine. I don't have any problem with you doing that. So be it. I see an A player over here in this spot. If you want to put the When I'm into that, that's where I think you should be. I'll give you that option. But you still got to make a decision as to what you want to do. So fortunately for me, I chose to take his advice and go wrestle and had a really great fun wrestling career in high school. But it does go back to We have to put people in a position to be successful.

Again, people want to be successful. People don't want to show up to work and do a bad job. But if I'm putting them and telling them, Here's who I want you to be, and it's not who they are, that dynamic will never work. It actually will stress them out, and it'll make the whole environment difficult.

What a great example of someone being the one for you in the moment that you needed them. What a tremendous example.

No doubt about that. That's true. Very well said.

I got one last question for you. I want to be cognizant of your time. Our children are often our most honest critiques or feedback givers. So when you first pitched this idea of the one to them, when they started to hurt you, what was the feedback that you got? Do they buy into this? They're like, Oh, dad, what are you talking about now? Or was it like, Oh, are you dead? You got something here. What was your feedback on that?

That's great. I think my kids were a little bit older when this began to develop, and they have always been super supportive. I get a lot of eye rolls from them. I try to use words that they use. I use 67 and Riz and all this stuff today to try to- Hold on.

Do you know what's... I have no idea what 6-7 means.

I don't know, but I just know what I do. I don't even know if I'm should be saying it, quite honestly.

I don't think anybody knows. I ask them all the time, What are you saying? They have no idea.

My daughter and my boys, they roll their eyes at me on a regular basis because I like to be awkward and embarrassing for them. But in this topic, we've had a lot of conversations about this general topic and the way that it influenced our family. Because when you're going through something like this, it was really my son and I who... I mean, my wife I was totally involved, but I was the one struggling with how to help him. Therefore, that caused a lot of tension for us, and it caused a lot of issue within the family dynamic as well. My whole family, we've all gone on this journey together. When I talk to them about this idea of what I had, they're so supportive of it. My middle son, especially, who was my main inspiration for this, he's very open and talks to others and to each other. He and I have very honest, vulnerable conversations with each other about how we grew together through that journey that was very difficult at times, but how we grew together in that. He wants the story to be out, and we want the story to be out because we believe the impact that we can help.

If I help one dad have a better day with one of his kids, then that's good enough for me. Because I want to just change something in a small level on a regular basis. The answer is that they think it's funny. I take selfies on stage when I do talks, and they can't stand that. They think that's crazy. I show pictures of them in my presentation. They're not a fan of that. But as far as this topic in my heart about helping others in this space, we've all lived it. I've got great support from them. They're on board fully. They're older, and so that's certainly helpful. They're more mature. Ideally, I would love for my son and I to together tell our stories independent but together because he is as much as it is for me.

Yeah, that's phenomenal. I will let you know you are not alone. My children love to bust my chops about the videos. And at the same time, they also love it. You know what I mean? They love it, but they also love. Especially when someone gets you with a funky face, you get a picture and you got a funky face. That's the one that they'll talk about and send me a picture of. And I'm like, really? Of all the shots that came out of that speaking gig, that's the one you're texting me? Come on.

There's some universal truth in all of that with kids. That's for sure.

Well, Carl, man, I could talk to you all day. I think your story is absolutely phenomenal. And obviously, I'm a huge fan, fan of you in the industry, someone I've watched you grow and watched high seat grow and a big fan in that regard. But what I saw on stage was a message that I feel needs to spread. It's why, again, I couldn't wait to have you on the show. People who've heard this who want to get deeper into your world, who want to follow along, who think that this idea of being the one can help them either in their leadership or how they operate with their family and their children, where can they go to get more of you and the work that you're doing here?

The best way would be to connect with me. I'm on social media and I'm out there, so it's not hard to find me. And if you send me a note, probably LinkedIn is probably the best way to catch me. But my email out there, and you can email me as well. I'm more than willing to be open to and helping someone have more conversation about this topic, so I would love to do that. It's equal, same to you, Ryan. I've known of you and seen you and followed you as well throughout our different spaces and industry. We never really overlapped until just then at that conference. It was really great to see you. Appreciate your feedback on the topic and the opportunity to come here and continue to spread this message that I hope to really get some momentum behind.

Yeah, that's awesome. Guys, I'll I have Carl Socials linked up, whether you're watching on YouTube, listening, just scroll down. I'll have those linked up. I'll say, Man, hey, open invitation. If this becomes a book, whatever, love to have you back on the show. Enormous fan. Guys, if you put on events, and obviously, I'm a speaker myself, but if you put on events, I'm telling you, Carl is a great story. This is a wonderful keynote. It hits both the personal and the business side. And just appreciate the hell out of you, man, and glad that you're out there message.

Ryan, thanks so much. I really appreciate.