Business Elevation with Chris Cooper
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
It takes a brave leader to listen to feedback because often, leaders are scared to face the reality of the situation and forget how engagement must start with them. Chris Cooper, author, speaker, and host of the show Business Elevation, talks about an employee engagement program that allows employees to give anonymous feedback so they can be heard, moving the management to take action. In return, employees will become more engaged, productive, and loyal while the overall business becomes elevated. Furthermore, Chris gives us a peek into his book, The Power to Get Things Done: (Whether You Feel Like It or Not), which contains techniques and strategies focusing on what’s essential in getting things done.
—
Listen To The Episode Here
Business Elevation with Chris Cooper
Our guest is all the way from the UK. His name is Chris Cooper. He’s a business engagement and elevation specialist, a speaker, an author and a broadcaster himself. I’ve had the pleasure of being on his show called Business Elevation. His real specialty is helping big brands to small and medium enterprises for the last few years. He’s got an employee engagement program that helps you measure and achieve a higher rate on engagement. He helps people make sure that they’re getting good employees and keeping their stress levels down. He’s written a book called, The Power to Get Things Done. Chris, welcome to the show.
John, it’s a pleasure to meet you.
You’re in the UK. I always want to ask people their own story of origin and I know you used to work for a big company called Mars. Is there anything in your background before that that led you into this world of business elevation and engagement that you want to share?
[bctt tweet=”If people are happy and engaged, productivity soars. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
There are a lot really. I was brought up in a steel town in the North of England. I didn’t have an opportunity to travel. My father was a steelworker and my mom worked for the local newspaper. My dad used to go to the steelworks and he was an electrical engineer. Sometimes he would look after a very large steel plant when senior management was away and manage workers and schedules and people doing the right sorts of things. I remember he never seemed to be very engaged with it. I don’t think he’d found his passion. I remember one day, I was probably about thirteen years old and my father took me on an open evening to the steelworks. I got the opportunity to look around because where I lived, the natural thing because the steelworks was such a big employer, was people went from school and they went to work in steelworks.
We went around this plant. It was like hell on Earth. There were molten metals flying around and it was dark. It was noisy. It was smelly. We went afterwards into a little room and had a few sandwiches and a few crisps. I remember this very tall man walking in and my dad suddenly straightening up. He must have been the CEO. My dad had never actually ever met the CEO. We don’t ever see him in pictures. He walked straight over to me and he said to me, “Have you enjoyed yourself?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “When you grow up, do you want to come and work for us?” I said, “You must be joking.” My dad was fuming. On the way home, he was really angry with me, “How could you do that? One day you want to go and work in the steelworks and you fancy say that to him. I’ve never even met him before.” I said, “Dad, you aren’t happy, why should I be? Why would I want to work there?”
The Power to Get Things Done: (Whether You Feel Like It or Not)
At that point, I realized that I wanted more than to live in a steel town when I was older and I went through my career. Eventually, I worked in the motor industry and then I worked for companies like Mars. I saw how people really engaged in the work in some companies, less so in others. When I look back on my career and I ended up becoming the Director of a very big company, looking after logistics for 5,500 pubs. Then I set up a procurement consultancy which grew quite quick. Many years ago, I decided that my passion is people. Looking back through over that career and over the several years of working, I think one of the things I’ve realized is that when people are happy and where they’re engaged on in their work, you achieve so much more. Therefore, it makes every sense that every employee should give the best of themselves but want to because there’s an environment that supports them and cares for them and enables them to realize their full potential. In that way we all benefit, the company prospers and the individual prospers. Hopefully, having a good life at work leads to a good life at home and it leads to good health. It’s an important message, John.
Your childhood story is fascinating. It reminds me of some of those movies we’ve seen of the steelworkers and certainly here in America with a generation after generation working for the car companies and factories and finally people saying, “Either the job is not there anymore or I want to do something else with my life.” I can get that in a big way. What I love with what you just said is, “If people are happy and engaged, productivity soars.” That’s such a great soundbite for what you’re doing. Let’s go back to when you were working at Mars, you told me that you heard hundreds and hundreds of people pitching you to buy their marketing services because you worked for a big company that had the budget to do that. What are some of the tips you have from hearing all those pitches that people can take away of how to get good a pitch, so they get people to hire what you’re selling?
I had the opportunity with Mars. I went to a sales job. I was a salesman and business development manager. I spent in marketing and training of people. I thought from the salesperson, “Wouldn’t it be really helpful to understand what goes on when people buy and how does the mindset of the buyer work?” I moved on having had a sales and marketing background to look after the buying of marketing services. I literally arranged sales promotional pictures, big PR pictures and in one instance for over £1 million. I got United Biscuits and all the advertising spend. I had the opportunity to arrange these events with the marketeers who are the clients. I would facilitate those events and we would introduce some suppliers. I manage the rosters of suppliers.
To answer your question, you get to a short list of maybe three suppliers. On one occasion for big Mars or big Snickers, we launched Celebrations. I launched that with a big PR campaign with a train that was branded with different celebrities and different characters and people getting married there and TV shows being filmed and all things. The first thing I think people have to do is it’s not just about the pitch. It’s about that relationship that you established beforehand. I know there’s this process where people formally can be asked to come in. Marketing can be quite an expensive and creative process, but what goes on outside the room is important. If you can establish a really good relationship and rapport with people outside of that pitch, that will also help to influence the buyer.
[bctt tweet=”People buy emotionally and then back it up with logic.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I also noticed the marketeers that sometimes it wasn’t always the most rational decision they got through. It was the one that struck the emotions of the marketeer and they can do something. If you think about a marketeer or many people in roles where they’re buying, particularly in marketing, they’re often only in a job for a couple of years. Quite often they were motivated by doing something different and doing something creative, as opposed to maybe continuing something that had been successful before. They want to make their mark in their job.
They’re looking for that creativity. Where I worked, it wasn’t always about costs because they did have some quite big budgets. You could give some options with some different cost options. The thing is it’s got to be creative, it had to connect emotionally. The other thing is that with companies often, we’d see these amazing people who would be the lead of an agency and they’re full of engagement and enthusiasm. On one occasion, I saw one jump up on a table and stopped moving on the table when the PowerPoint suddenly broke. It was all captivating. However, what we knew was that we also had to see the people who work for those individuals because sometimes it was the sales pitch, but afterwards you get the real team. You need to make sure that the team who support the projects or the activity and the campaign is also of good quality. We’ll be measuring creativity, we measure the quality of accounting. We’ll be measuring how well it was thought through and planned and how it could execute. Also, somewhere in the next two would be the price.
My big takeaway there is that people buy emotionally and then they might back it up with some logic. Whoever comes in with an emotional hook is more likely to get a yes then the emphasis on selling the team. It’s not just the razzle-dazzle people who sell it and then you never see them again, but painting a picture, if you will, of what it would be like to work with these people and why they would want to work with them. I see that time and again myself when I work with clients who are pitching themselves whether it’s an architecture firm or any firm that it’s really, “Do we like you? Do we trust you? We’ve got to work with you for a while. Are you going to be easy to work with? Are you going to have our back? Are you good listeners?” Things that people tend to not mention in a pitch, but what I hear you saying is these are all big criteria that people should address.
Business Elevation: Employee voice is important. A lot of companies don’t give employees the opportunity to share how they feel.
If we’ve not worked with them before as well, knowing that they’ve got some good case studies and good testimonials. One example I had quite a significant pitch. I was actually asked to give no credential to talk and to turn up without a PowerPoint and facilitate the session which was quite interesting to understand the training and development needs of this organization. About ten people turn up, some quite senior ones. What I did was I broke the ice with some storytelling and I told a little bit of fun stories about my past rather than going into detailed credentials. Some of them really connected with them.
I noticed it was somebody’s birthday as well. I made something of that and then opened them up. There was great rapport in the room, and then I could start to facilitate this conversation around training needs and working a route forward. As I walked out, I remember getting an arm around my shoulder from the HR director who said, “That went so well.” I got in the car and I have to say, I actually had a few tears because I just felt I was in there on my own. It was almost like I was being supported by somebody guiding me through the process. It went so well and it probably did my confidence a lot of good as well. I won that and then I won another big piece of work with them almost immediately afterwards. Engaging with the storytelling with a heart that you support is important. I even talked about a girlfriend who dumped me, which moved them but that was perfect and they related.
A little vulnerability makes people feel connected to you and that they want to spend time with you. I love the title of your book, The Power to Get Things Done: Whether You Feel Like It or Not. That’s a big a-ha for a lot of people because they’re like, “If I could get motivated to get this project done or do my expenses, things I don’t really want to do and I keep procrastinating.” What is your secret sip there? How do we get things done if you don’t feel like you want to do it or motivated but somehow that’s still not working?
[bctt tweet=”Having a good life at work leads to a good life at home, and it leads to good health.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When I left the corporate world to set up my own business, I hadn’t realized that there was an important support network, line managers, board meetings, events and finger-pointing at times. There was a whole mechanism that held me to account, but when you set up your own business, that infrastructure doesn’t exist. You have to create it yourself. Therefore, what you tend to do in a corporate job often is a good system, the things that are important to getting that job done. You may forget about your health or people forget about the relationships. When you set up your own business, the whole lot has to have some structure around it. What I realized in the corporate world is that in good companies like Mars, there is an infrastructure that is actually, you might not like it but it’s your friend. It helps you perform.
When you’re out on your own, you’ve got to create your own structure, what you have to do, if something’s really important. It’s very important to ensure that you create situations that mean that you have to act whether you feel like it or not. It’s almost like you’re sitting on a seesaw and there’s a very heavy weight on the other side. If you’ve got on the top of that yourself, you wouldn’t be able to press it down. It’s an elephant sitting on the other side, you need to put weight on your side to be able to lift the elephant. It’s important to get very clear about what’s important in your life so you don’t get too many things and take them very seriously, but then create situations that mean that you act whether you feel like it or not. I’ve quite a lot of examples if you want me to share any.
Please share an example of how we could create a situation or maybe even talk about how you were detoxifying dreaded tasks. A specific story would be great.
Business Elevation: A lot of leaders think they must get all the people, troops, and employees engaged; what they forget is as a leader, they need to engage themselves.
With that particular story and the thought came through for that is the detoxifying, sometimes something might seem just too big a step. For me, I started off by asking some of my clients to come along and I did some book study groups. From the study groups, I started interviewing a few people and another audience came and with social media then. That stepping stone gave me the confidence to move to my radio show and hosting that. Where I really thought about this was I remember my children, I’ve got two boys, Matthew and Daniel. We went to a wildlife park on the South Coast of England while we were on holiday. They had this reptile and book show, but I don’t like snakes.
We walked into this place and there were lots of seats. There were quite a lot of people in there. My kids tried and went to the front row but I managed to carefully guide them to the back without them realizing I was a complete coward. We sat on the back row. This guy from the front said, “Is there anybody out there who’s scared of snakes?” I ducked down and my kids started pointing at me, “Him,” and my wife was looking at me and they all started pointing at me. This guy said, “That gentleman on the back row, would you like to overcome your fear of snakes?” I kept my head down and then people started joining in and there was a little bit of a clap that started. I had to get up and I went out to the front. It was me in front of about 60 people. I basically passed around this snake, which was quite a nice-looking thing actually. I passed it around a few people but I had to hold the snake.
He passed it over to me and my heart was pounding, but I held the snake and it moved around in my hands. I thought, “It’s not as bad as I thought it was.” I felt reasonably comfortable with it. I gave it back to him and I started to walk off. He said, “No, stop. I thought you wanted to overcome your fear of snakes.” Suddenly, two people walked out with this huge box with a rope handle on each side, and they gently placed it on the floor. He opened this lid and there was this enormous Boa constrictor in it. He picked the thing up and pulled it over his shoulders and said, “That wasn’t a snake. This is a snake.” He said, “Are you going to pick this up?” People were like, “Go on.” I put this snake around my neck and held it. I’ve got this photograph of it looking at me straight between the eyes. I’ve never been scared of snakes in that way since and that really helped me. Therefore, if you break up tasks into little sections, it becomes easier or you can do like a friend of mine did. She is a Tennis World Champion from Denmark. She’s a speaker and she wanted to add more comedy into her speaking. What would your strategy be if you maybe talk some small steps towards being able to add more comedy into your speaking, John?
[bctt tweet=”It takes a brave leader to listen to feedback.” username=”John_Livesay”]
I’d start to watch comedians and improv situations and maybe even try to get up and do a couple of minutes.
I think that’s a good strategy and it will be my natural strategy. Read about it, watch it on the TV or maybe do some improv, but what she did was she booked a 1,630-seat conference hall in Tivoli Gardens. She paid the money in advance which is about $18,000 and she advertised that she was going to do a one-woman stand-up comedy show because she’s a celebrity in Denmark. She sold it out entirely and then had five months to learn how to do stand-up comedy. That’s creating a situation that means you have to act.
Let’s go into your formula for success and Business Elevation, which is the name of your company. It’s also the name of your show. You talked about engaging leaders plus an engaged team, plus getting things done gives elevation to a business where absentee goes down, well-being and productivity go up and the turnover goes down. That’s a big problem out there especially with Millennials as a lot of them enter with a mindset of, “I’m only going to be here a couple of years.” The cost of turnover is so huge. You’ve got some solutions that you talked to me about that I got so excited that I want you to share with me what you are doing with something called an Engagement Multiplier.
I was referred to a gentleman called Stefan Wissenbach as a guest on my radio show. Being interested in this side of workforce engagement, we do programs around elevation which might be working with a leader to help them develop and grow their business and being a mentor to them, a coach to them. I may be doing team development with their team and helping them through that evolution. I’ve got many clients I’ve helped grow their businesses. In this area of engagement, what I wanted to do was have a methodology whereby we could actually survey and get some real data on the company. You could use a thermometer to take a test of the temperature of the company.
When I interviewed Stefan, I realized that he was onto something pretty amazing. He invested £11 million in terms of developing some software, which enables you to measure engagement. He created a great book and a great story around this book. It was heavily researched. He had a vision that he wanted to help eleven million people become more measurably engaged. In America, your engagement level is a bit higher than over in Europe. It may only be 30% tops of people who are really engaged in their business and then about 50% of people who are coaching and then the remainder would have had sabotaged your company or they’re definitely looking for a new job. If you could turn that around, what could you do?
This survey enables you to take a test for your company. What we’re able to do through the survey is to offer an entire survey for free. I know you love this as well. You could go to John and he will be able to help you do this but you can utilize this amazing online tool. There’s an anonymous dialog in there. Your staff will give their feedback and comments and share how they feel. Getting an employee voice is important. In a lot of companies, employees don’t get the opportunity to share how they feel. You can also respond anonymously. You’re looking at how engaged people are with your purpose, how engaged they are with your leaders, how engaged they are with the owners of the business if that’s different? How engaged the customers are and how engaged are they personally and sharing all sorts of wisdom and insight?
[bctt tweet=”Engagement starts with the leader.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You get this amazing report but you do this quarterly. What the company showed is that if you take this survey quarterly and you developed some action steps each quarter, someone like John or in the UK, someone like myself can help you by looking at that information and helping you with the action steps. Engagement shifts from maybe 60%, 70% in the company to 90% they found over a twelve-month period. In ten years, it’s the best survey tool I’ve come across. I love the principles behind it as well. I shared it with you and you felt passionate about it too.
One of the things that I think is really interesting about this concept is that the leaders have to have a level of courage to be able to hear anonymous feedback as opposed to just pretending that they think they know what people are thinking and feeling. Can you speak to that a little bit?
The company always talks about you want a business with brave, identifiable and caring leaders. Often, people are scared of what the reality of the situation is. They’d rather not know because we often don’t like getting feedback and knowing how people perceive us in case we come up in the survey. It takes a brave leader to be prepared and to listen to that feedback. I sat with the company as they went through their first survey. I was sitting with the CEO and the leadership team. I did say to him, “Remember, this is just a perception. Those people out there might not be relative but those people out there, that’s what they believe. Once we know that perception, then you’re in a situation to be able to do something about it.” Firstly, he was a little bit defensive and then he said, “Chris, you’re absolutely right. All that feedback is valid.” I’m not going to make it mean anything but now we’ve got that information we can act and he said, “This is the biggest no brainer. It’s amazing to have this. If we can do this quarterly and it’s not that inexpensive. It’s cheap as chips really for what it does for us. We understand some real data about our businesses.”
The problem of flying blind, if you will, is all the things like disgruntled employees and people feeling like they matter. The opposite is when they do feel like they have a voice and most importantly, I would imagine that the leaders take action from the survey. That’s when the real magic happens.
I’m thinking about the other company where we use the survey. Initially, there was a learning and development person and he said, “We need to go with something called best companies.” The board was about to go and they’ve got this new person on board and they changed their mind and went with this other survey and methodology. They just found it so unwieldy that within six months they came back to us with the learning and development person kicking and screaming and said, “We want to do one of those surveys that you talked about because it sounds more like it meets our needs.”
When they did the survey and within one hour of the results coming out, the CEO and this is quite a sizable business, he got the report. He scanned it and he immediately went to his PA and said, “I want every director in the company who’s available in my office in an hour.” They went through the report and started to put in place some actions actually. It was mind-blowing for them. This is astonishing. Very sadly, the L&D person lost their job as a result of refusing to budge and getting in the way rather than supporting what was really needed. That was a shame but they missed an opportunity because it’s proving so valuable for them.
It’s not enough anymore to just be dictatorial especially for the Millennials, which are the majority of the employees now. They want to be heard. They want to be acknowledged and they want to feel like they’re making a difference and that they understand the vision of the company. Clarifying any of those issues is going to help productivity, employee retention and engagement. I remember Starbucks starting out and Howard Schultz gave part-time employees health benefits when nobody else was doing that for part-time employees. Those people feel like they matter and so they go the extra mile. If you come in every day at the same time, they would say, “Chris, do you like the double whatever latte?” That person is so loyal to Starbucks. You can’t pay people to go that extra mile because their job is to take your order and serve it, but if they’re engaged and feel like you care, then that’s when you get extra service out of people. Would you agree with that?
I do agree with that. I think it was Starbucks where they used to have it. It’s one of those little cards and people would come in and you get a card and it gets stamped each time. You get a free latte or something once you bought seven. They decided to get rid of that and they just said to the staff, “You can give so much coffee, tea and whatever away for free to people when you think it’s most appropriate.” What they did is they gave the discretion to individuals to give the odd cup of coffee to somebody who may deserve it, who looked a bit harassed because they got the kids running around their feet or people who came in regularly. That autonomy and that discretion make a big difference. I know people about places like Zappos, they allow their customer service staff to send bunches of flowers and things like that to people if they think it’s important. That trust gives someone that ability to empower some of that and you feel more special when you can do that.
Besides hosting this successful show that you have, Business Elevation, helping people with their employee engagement, people hire you also to speak. Tell us about what speaking opportunities are best-fitted for you?
I speak about the power to get things done whether you feel like it or not. I do that fairly regularly and I’ve spoken at big companies like HSBC and various others. I also speak about engagement. One of the areas I like to talk about is Engagement Starts with You. A lot of people think we must get all the people, all the troops, all the employees engaged and what they forget as leaders are that they need to be engaged themselves. It starts before you get into the office. It starts with how you prepare your mind and prepare yourself mentally and physically so that when you step into the office, you are absolutely engaged. Therefore, you can spend your time in showing your team’s engagement is higher. Unless you’re walking the talk, then it’s not going to happen. That’s one of the keynotes that I love to share actually is engagement starts with you.
Time goes so fast with a guest like you, Chris. You’ve done so many interesting things and you have so many wonderful stories. Thank you so much for sharing. We all know a little bit more than we did on how we can get things done whether we want to or not.
Thanks, John. It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Links Mentioned:
- Chris Cooper
- John Livesay on Business Elevation
- The Power to Get Things Done: Whether You Feel Like It or Not
- Mars
- Engagement Multiplier
- Stefan Wissenbach on Business Elevation
- http://ChrisCooper.co.uk/
- https://www.EngagementMultiplier.com/partner/johnlivesay/
- https://www.Amazon.com/Power-Get-Things-Done-Whether/dp/0399175849/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=the+power+to+get+things+done&qid=1554137130&s=gateway&sr=8-2
- Quantmre.com
Wanna Host Your Own Podcast?
Click here to see how my friends at Brandcasting You can help
Get your FREE Sneak Peek of John’s new book Better Selling Through Storytelling
John Livesay, The Pitch Whisperer
Share The Show
Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!
-
- Click this link
- Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
- Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
- Click on ‘Write a Review’
Think It, Be It with John Mitchell
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
Everybody wants to raise their income and have success in their careers. However, even with so many things written about achieving that, it is still pretty difficult to find one that you can follow. Taking the legendary book, Think and Grow Rich, entrepreneur and success mentor John Mitchell has created a technique that practically applies its ideas through his 12-minute-a-day Think It, Be It. Debunking the idea that hard work makes you successful, John talks about working smarter instead by influencing your everyday actions and thoughts. He gives out the four categories that will change your programming so that you can see your life in a way that allows you to pull in the people and success that you want.
—
Listen To The Episode Here
Think It, Be It with John Mitchell
Think and Grow Rich
Our guest is John Mitchell. He has a 12-minute-a-day Think It, Be It technique that’s rated as the top practical application in the world of the legendary book Think and Grow Rich. When he applied his technique to his own life, he saw his income go up to over $5 million a year. Previously for twenty years as an entrepreneur, he earned low six figures and that twenty times difference happened because his daily technique significantly increased his control over himself by probably double. It made them laser-focused every day on the two or three things that move the needle in his business. It also allowed him to rapidly evolve his strategy for success. He was simply operating every day at a higher level than he ever had before and it showed up in his income.
The science behind his technique was profiled in a Time Magazine cover story. While John started out as a CPA, he became an entrepreneur at a very young age of 30. He’s owned companies in a wide variety of industries including real estate development, restaurants and publishing. Turning 50, he wasn’t as successful as he thought he should be. He found the top book of success written, Think and Grow Rich and he developed his own 12-minute-a-day technique. That what you envision in detail on a daily basis is what shows up in your life. John, welcome to the show.
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
I always like to ask my guest to take that little intro that I gave and bring it to a life of your own story of origin, not so much about being a CPA. I want to hear the story of origin of turning 50 take us there and saying, “I thought I’d be more financially independent. I worked hard. I’ve been an entrepreneur and things aren’t what they need to be.” Tell us what the a-ha moment was for Think It, Be It book.
When I turned 50, I wondered if success looks what I thought I should be. I had a couple of goals in my life to make enough money, so I didn’t have to work and to find the woman of my dreams. As I assessed my life, I realized that I was falling short on both. As an entrepreneur, I’m always blessed to make well into six figures but never close to seven. On finding the girl at 50, I’d never been married. I can tell you, it was not from lack of interview. I did a lot of interviewing. The defining moment happened three days after I turned 50. I’m in my office, kick back and my feet are on the desk. I started thinking about my life and I do the math. I realized, “If I don’t make over $1 million a year, I’m never going to have that exceptional life that I’d always dreamed of.” The freedom, the lifestyle, the sense of accomplishment and that hit me like a ton of bricks. It was clear, I had to make things happen in my 50s. I made the decision that hard work doesn’t work.
While it works for making six figures a year but clearly it didn’t work for making seven. I knew there had to be something other than hard work. I made the decision to find out whatever that something else was. Three months after turning 50, as I’m puzzled about how to change this direction, a pearl of wisdom hits me. Why not find the top book in the world on success and achievement ever written and then apply it word for word to my life? The logic was so simple and compelling. After some research, I’ve found that there is one book that excels over all others and it’s Think and Grow Rich. Are you pretty familiar with Think and Grow Rich?
[bctt tweet=”‘Hard work doesn’t work for making seven figures.'” username=”John_Livesay”]
I am. It’s all about investing in real estate and letting that real estate grow for you.
It’s not quite, but I guess you’re in some of that.
That feels a little like Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
Here’s what’s significant about the book. First is the book has sold over 100 million copies whereas the next bestselling book on success and achievement has sold under ten million copies. Clearly, it’s a top book ever written on success by a factor of ten. The second thing is the book has created more millionaires and billionaires than any other book on the planet. It’s basically applying science to your life to up your success. I read the book and the central concept is what you envision in detail on a daily basis is what shows up in your life.
It’s very much along the lines of The Secret or Abraham Hicks, that whole mindset of The Science of Mind of Ernest Holmes or Your Thoughts Create Your Reality.
Think It, Be It: You got to work smarter by influencing the actual part of your brain that influences the thing that determines your success.
I read that and then I discovered there’s a problem that I and probably all of us have encountered 100 times. It’s a great idea but how to apply it in a practical way. I probably moped around for a couple of weeks not knowing how to apply it and then it hit me that maybe I had to come up with the practical application myself. I did and I applied it to a new business I was starting in the financial services industry. Over nine years, I continually tweak my 12-minute-a-day methodology. Over those nine years, my income went from low-six figures a year to $5 million a year. I felt so incredibly blessed. It’s quite a change from my twenty-year history. I could see why it was happening. By applying science to my life for the first time ever, I was influencing my daily actions and thoughts. Clearly, I was operating at a higher level than I ever could before. I could feel it. The best news was I also met the woman of my dream from applying this methodology.
It’s about pulling people in. Energetically, it’s almost like a metaphysical principle that the science is based on.
It really is. That sounds a little woo-woo, metaphysical.
Quantum physics does if you’re talking about energy for people who prefer that. Let’s go and dive right into this concept of a lot of people who go, “I don’t have time to meditate. I don’t have time to fill myself up with a bunch of positive thinking.” Give us an example of how the 12-minute-a-day methodology works.
This is essentially how it works. You’re going to feed yourself every day exactly the person you want to be, exactly what you want to accomplish and precisely how you’re going to achieve your clearly defined goals. When you feed that to yourself every day, after about 21 days, the science kicks in. That starts showing up in your thoughts and actions automatically without thinking. That’s the magic of it because when your thoughts and actions automatically start reflecting your programming, it immediately takes you to a higher level.
[bctt tweet=”Success is when your thoughts and actions match your programming.” username=”John_Livesay”]
What’s an example of somebody who did? Let’s focus on the career at the moment.
I’ll give you an example. Everybody wants to raise their income, their success and their career. To backtrack a little, the way this works is, you’ll take your life and compress it down to one sheet of paper, front and back. On the front is the ideal you and the five key areas of your life: yourself, your health, your romantic relationship, your spirituality and your career. That’s on the front. On the back are the improvements you want in each area of your life and your three goals for the quarter. That’s essentially it. One of the things in a career that we do is we articulate your succinct business plan, your strategy for success or the two or three things that move the needle. The linchpin issue that takes your business to the next level.
You feed that to yourself every day. I found that three things happen. First, your business plan is so easy to implement because it’s so top of mind. Secondly, you do become laser-focused on only what moves the needle. Everything else falls by the wayside. The third thing is that suddenly I had a way for evolving my strategy for success in the business plan in a way that moved it forward by like twenty times what I’d ever experienced before. That was happening because when you’re feeding your business plan or your strategies for success to your subconscious mind every day, it’s constantly challenging it and refining it. It had such an impact on me. I have that ability to continually refine my strategy and it made me more successful.
This is why I wanted to have you on the show, John, because I’m so fascinated by this premise. From my own speaking career, for example, when I had the courage to say out loud to people, “I want to give a TEDx Talk.” All your self-talk comes up, “Who am I to give a TEDx Talk? What a big goal? You’ll never achieve it. It’s never going to happen.” If you keep saying it to yourself and putting it out to people and let go of all the negative self-talk and worrying about whether the other people think you’re crazy to do it, then someone said, “I know someone who puts one on in San Diego. He might be able to help you figure out what you need to do to get a yes.”
The thought process of that laser-focused, keeping it top of mind, knowing that having a TEDx Talk would be one of those key drivers that you talked about moving the needle that gives you credibility as a keynote speaker. We got the laser-focused, then I get introduced to someone for saying it. It still took me a year and a half to get someone to say, “Yes.” It had nothing to do with my talk. It doesn’t fit our theme. You had to get used to those noes. This question that someone gave me that is what I hear you saying, which I want to tell everyone reading is if we plant in our seed this question of challenging that question, why is it that I’m a successful TEDx speaker? Why is it that my TEDx Talk has over a million views? That’s what I hear you saying is by having that laser-focus and then asking, “Why is it that I have my perfect soul mate in my life now?” Your brain starts matching that programming. Is that the gist of what you’re saying?
Think It, Be It: Just as you’re baking a cake where you can’t keep opening the oven, we have to give our goals and thoughts the full time to bake.
There are two parts to success. Using your example is probably a good idea. Your desire to do a TEDx Talk, that’s setting the goal. That’s being clear about what it is. Equally important, if not more important, are the action steps that you have to take to achieve that goal. You no doubt had a detailed vision of exactly what you needed to do to make that a reality. That’s the power of this 12-minute-a-day technique is that it takes those action steps that you’re going to need to take to achieve that goal. By feeding it to yourself every day that causes your thoughts and your actions to reflect your programming. That’s the game-changer. When people wonder about, “What makes me more successful or how do I become more successful?” Most people think, “I’ve got to work harder.” No, I don’t think so. You’ve got to work smarter. You work smarter by influencing the actual part of your brain that influences the thing that determines your success, which is your everyday actions and ongoing thoughts. Does that make sense?
It does. We talked about this a lot. I’ve interviewed investors to fund startups. They say, “Please tell your clients, don’t try to boil the ocean.” I tell people Amazon sold books first and have proof of concept that worked before they started selling everything. If you try to pitch Amazon now, it would be like, “That’s boiling the ocean.” I love this concept of laser-focus. People say, “I have top of mind what my goals are. I’ve figured out what I should be focusing on to take some action. Your secret sauce, from what I can gather, is this questioning your mind of visualizing it already happening where you’re saying, “Why is it that? This has already happened.” When you are fighting, in my case, when I finally did stand on that TEDx stage, on that red carpet, it seemed like, “I’m here,” or like you’re meeting the woman of your dreams for a date. It’s like, “She showed up.” It doesn’t seem like a surprise or magic. There’s the science of it because you’re doing this. The 12-minute-a-day, you mentioned the four categories: yourself, health, romance, spirituality and career. Do you spend a couple of minutes on each of these categories for the twelve minutes or do you spend twelve minutes on one?
No, it’s twelve minutes in total. Probably more of it is spent on your career because originally, I created this because I wanted to go to seven figures a year net. That was my big focus. It’s a little more towards the career, but it has all of those areas.
What is your life like? There are all these studies on happiness that we pass a certain Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, our basic needs are met in terms of food and shelter and what have you. In other words, the difference between making $100,000 and $1 million is not the same exponential increase in happiness as it is in money. Has that been the case for you?
When I was making six figures a year, in some ways, I was afraid to look at creating an exceptional life looked like because I wasn’t sure I’d ever get there. Once I got there and I started making $5 million a year, I was like, “This is way better than I thought it was.” Finally, I had enough money not to have to work. Because I was so fascinated by the stuff we’re talking about, I sold my company. I guess it was probably two or three months after I sold the company, I met the former chancellor and president at the University of Texas at Austin. I told him my story. He said, “You’ve got to teach this at the University of Texas and why don’t we teach it together?” I said, “That’s fine to teach at the high achievers.” My passion is to get those people that were like mad that struggle to go to that next level and teach it to them because I so relate to the pain that I had back then and so many people have.
[bctt tweet=”What you envision in detail on a daily basis is what shows up in your life.” username=”John_Livesay”]
You have empathy because you’ve been in their shoes is my big takeaway from what you said.
I had freedom was the feeling I’ve gotten as I crossed over and didn’t have to work. The best things were not material things. The lifestyle is great. That’s small potatoes compared to that sense of accomplishment, that pride of accomplishment, the level of control that this gave me over my life, that level of control was immensely great.
You’re the perfect person to ask this question to. In my observation of entrepreneurs and business people in general, a lot of people have the money thing down, but they don’t have the fitness thing down. They’re physically fit but not fiscal fit and then vice versa. There are a lot of fit people out there that have no money. You have both. You’re physically fit and you’ve got financial freedom. I tell people, “If you can get one area of your life, take the discipline you have, knowing how much your cashflow is, and what’s in your checking account and apply it to the calories and exercise you’re doing and vice versa.” Take the discipline from working out to your money. I don’t see many people talking about that. You seemed to be embracing all of this. Another reason why I wanted to have you on is you’re not talking about careers, you’re talking about all areas of our life. Can you speak to how this Think It, Be It applies? The concept of visualizing is discipline and focus from one area. Let’s say fitness can also be applied from your career.
I’m so glad you brought that up because here’s my definition of an exceptional life. You’re making seven figures a year. You’ve got a great romantic relationship and you’re fit and trim. To me, that’s the trifecta of an exceptional life. I see so often that to your point that people maybe are doing well financially. They got a lousy marriage or they’re overweight. They can’t control their weight. I particularly find this issue about having a great romantic relationship important. If you think about it, that relationship affects your happiness more than any other external factor there is. This affects all three areas at the same time. One of the things I think that you’d find interesting, this is something that we all have to overcome. We’re all using an antiquated operating system to run our lives. It’s like playing the game of life with one hand tied behind our back. The effect is that we’re all innately geared to daily survival. The effect of that is three things.
First of all, 90% of your thoughts are fear-based. Secondly, you have less than 20% control over yourself. Thirdly, you’re reactive rather than proactive on your report and agenda. All that is great if you’re running from a lion. It’s exactly the opposite of the way you need to be if you want to be productive, creative and happy. You have to overcome that. The part of your brain that controls your everyday actions and ongoing thoughts is your subconscious mind. That antiquated operating system is what’s running your subconscious mind. It’s gearing you exactly the opposite way you need to be. That’s what this 12-minute-a-day technique does. It overlays an operating system that gears you to productivity, creativity and happiness.
You have mentioned that there are two scientific discoveries that affect how much we achieve in life. Can you tell us what those are?
Over the last 30 years, there’s been a lot of scientific interest in what separates the mega achievers from the moderately successful. It comes down to two things: control of self and focus. Those are the two exact things that this affects. The principles that you’re referring to, it is that antiquated operating system. The other one is, you have a reticular activating system, which is a part of your brain that’s about the size of the tip of your little finger. It’s a filter for your brain. It determines what gets in and what doesn’t. It’s like the nightclub bouncer for your brain. When you’re feeding every day to yourself exactly the person you want to be, exactly what you want to accomplish and precisely how you’re going to achieve your clearly defined goals, then it knows what’s important to you. It brings in stuff that isn’t coming in. That’s what amazed me when I first started doing this, I saw my reticular activating system reacting to what I was doing for twelve minutes a day.
Is it the amount of time? Is there something special about twelve minutes versus ten versus fifteen?
The beauty of twelve is it’s doable. It’s not too much. I’ll give you an example of how it worked in my marriage. This illustrates how it works with everything. I didn’t get married until I was in my 50s. When I did, I discovered something that unfortunately my married friends had failed to share with me. Every once in a while, your spouse will say something irritating. I know that probably hadn’t have happened to you, has it?
It’s happened to everybody.
[bctt tweet=”Success is a necessity, not a preference.” username=”John_Livesay”]
When it happened to me, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like what would come out of my mouth. While it didn’t happen a lot, it did happen. I thought, “I’m going to put in my visualization that I’m going to be flexible, patient and thoughtful.” I’m reading that every day. Fifteen days in, I’m no more flexible, patient or thoughtful than I was at the start. About the 21st, the 22nd day, my precious wife, Ginger, said something irritating and in that moment, I was flexible, patient and thoughtful. I didn’t have to think about it. That’s who I had become.
It’s a tipping point. That 21-day thing of the brain getting reprogrammed.
I have done this with so many people. It is amazing about this 21-day mark. Some things the subconscious mind is going to accept at ten days in. I have consistently seen that around the 21st day, it then accepts everything.
I love stories. I always use the analogy of, if you’re planting a seed, you can’t keep digging it up going, “Is it growing?” If you’re baking a cake, you can’t keep opening the oven and be like, “Did it rise yet?” That’s what we tend to do with our goals and our thoughts. We don’t give it the full time to bake in this case, 21 days.
That brings up something else that’s interesting. This works on everyone, but it’s not for everyone. Maybe that’s even a negative about this. What I mean by that is it works on everyone because it’s pure science. It has to work. It cannot work. There’s one caveat to that. It’s not going to work if you don’t do it. It’s not going to work if you are trying not to do a habit or the other thing is if more success is just a preference, which is the case with most people as opposed to a necessity. It’s not going to work. More success has to be a necessity for you because if it’s not, you’re not going to spend twelve minutes a day.
Those twelve minutes a day, is it a journal that you’re writing in? Is it words you’re reading over and over? Is it making sure you’re top of mind on your action steps? What do the twelve minutes look like?
It’s pretty much all of the above. Keep in mind and picture this, you’ve compressed your life down to one sheet of paper, front and back. It’s sitting in a plastic stand that sits on your nightstand. The first thing in the morning before you get other things into your head, you spend twelve minutes a day to read it. You’re reading what’s moving the needle in your business. You’re reading the way you want to be with your spouse. You’re reading the things you want to make happen with your consistent exercise and how you eat. In the career, you’re feeding your succinct business plan, your strategy for success and your three things that move the needle. Also at the bottom of the visualization, you’re tracking every week on Sundays, the key behaviors associated with your goals. It’s that combination that has such a transformative effect on you.
The website is ThinkItBeIt.net. You have a five-day free email course that anybody who goes to the website can get. They can start to explore from that.
You can text me at 44222 and then the word, Genius, and that gets you the five-day email course.
John, I can’t thank you enough for sharing your success formula. You obviously are walking your own talk, which gives credibility. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. Is there any last thought or quote or inspiration you want to leave us with?
I’ll share with you a story you might find interesting. When I created this a few years ago, I decided to go find the top expert in the world on success and achievement. I determined that the person is Darren Hardy. He is an amazing guy. I figured out a way to get to him. I’m able to sit down with him for three days and visit with him. Finally, we sat down and he looked at what I’ve created, this visualization. He studied it. He said, “This is good.” He looked a little closer and he said, “This is good. You’ve got a problem, though. Most people are not going to spend twelve minutes a day on anything to impact their success. That’s how it is.” I was like, “Darren, how can that be?” It’s twelve minutes a day. It’s based on the top book ever written on success and achievement. He goes, “I know, John. You’ll do it, I’ll do it. That’s a dirty little secret of the success in human achievement field is that most people won’t do anything to impact their success and achievement. The people that were a success is a necessity as opposed to a preference. They’re going to do this. It’s going to be their advantage in life for creating success.” I was like, “That’s what I experienced.” It was pretty gratifying to have him say that. Now, that we’ve done this with a lot of people and I get the inputs from how it’s changing their lives and how the template that we have makes it easy to do this, it’s gratifying.
Thanks again, John.
Links Mentioned:
- Think It, Be It
- Think and Grow Rich
- Rich Dad, Poor Dad
- The Secret
- The Science of Mind
- Your Thoughts Create Your Reality
- www.ThinkItBeIt.net
- Quantmre.com
Wanna Host Your Own Podcast?
Click here to see how my friends at Brandcasting You can help
Get your FREE Sneak Peek of John’s new book Better Selling Through Storytelling
John Livesay, The Pitch Whisperer
Share The Show
Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!
-
- Click this link
- Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
- Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
- Click on ‘Write a Review’
Raising A Netflix Superstar with Greg Centineo
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Episode Summary:
Many people don’t realize the work and the strategy that goes into any successful career. The road to success doesn’t come easy even for actors who most people believe have gotten their fame the easy way. Greg Centineo, the father of Netflix sensation Noah Centineo, shares what it’s like raising a Netflix superstar. Greg says getting his son to where he is right now is not an accident. They strategized it and went after it, and worked on it. He narrates how Noah’s passion for art and his energetic aura fueled him to his big break and become what he is today. As a father who cares and loves his child, Greg advises parents to never tell your children the steps to take, but point them into a direction. He says it’s a great experience to see somebody who goes after their dream and wills it into existence.
—
Listen To The Episode Here
Raising A Netflix Superstar with Greg Centineo
I’m thrilled to have back a friend of mine as his second appearance on the show. His name is Greg Centineo. You probably remember him because he was one of my more compelling guests and that’s why he’s back. If you had to come up with one word to describe Greg, it would be energy. That’s what he described himself as. No matter whether it’s a business project or something he’s helping with, he revitalizes you just being in his presence. I’ve had the pleasure of being with him in person as well as on phone calls and Zoom calls, whether it’s a small business or a huge production, it doesn’t matter to Greg. He sees things that others don’t see in themselves and draws that out.
He literally pulls potential where others only see failure and when fresh energy is needed, that’s when Greg is called in. He said, “Potential is limitless.” He attracts all kinds of large numbers of people to common goals by creating a seemingly magical process of transformation or creation. He’s done it not only for himself and clients but for his own son. You might recognize him if I say, “Noah Centineo who’s a multi-movie star on Netflix, one of their top stars.” Greg has appeared on the Today Show with his son, Noah. He knows about how to have energy and how to make himself successful, his son successful and some of his clients. Greg, welcome back to the show.
John, thanks. That was a lengthy introduction, but I appreciate it.
You have a lot going on. I had a gentleman named Isaac Lidsky who gave a TED Talk. He was going to tell people three or four things about himself and see if people could guess which one wasn’t true. He’s blind and he was on a sitcom when he was a kid. He was a supreme court justice clerk and all this other stuff. He goes, “I’ll let anybody want to talk about me being a sitcom star.” I’m guessing that my audience are the same way. They’re like, “You’ve got Noah Centineo’s dad. I want to know about that first please.” Let’s not torture our readers and talk about what’s it like to raise a child who their dreams become true. They get to be an actor, have huge success and watch all that pain.
It’s an experience. Sometimes it’s surreal and then sometimes it’s very normal. A lot of times somebody asked me, “How has life changed for you?” Not a lot. It still feels very normal. Outside of certain elements, you’ll see him on the Jimmy Fallon Show or you see him on Kimmel. You’re scrolling through Netflix, there’s your son’s movie or you’re walking into Starbucks and all of a sudden, there’s a crowd around him. Those are what I call peripheral changes, but everyday life for us has been the same. It’s been a great experience more importantly to see somebody who goes after their dream and wills it into existence. That’s where it becomes exciting and I become proud that he’s had a chance to do that. It’s not an accident. He strategized, we strategized, went after it and he worked on it so it’s great.
Let’s double click on that. The fantasy of being discovered in Hollywood or someone is like, “I’m going to create the next Facebook. I have a dream. I’m going to start this company out of my garage if I’m an entrepreneur.” Many people don’t realize the work and the strategy that goes into any successful career. When did you and Noah start strategizing on his acting career?
The earliest introduction to his dream was when he was about eight when he decided to act in school and put a foot into that trajectory. It got serious by the time he was ten because he was gravitating toward it. He’s 23. A few years ago, it got serious where he was pursuing this but it didn’t stop. He wasn’t 100% focus on what he was doing in acting. He was playing soccer and he was playing baseball. He was in school and he had friends. He had birthday parties to go to. It’s all part of your life. Parenting, for us, was about isolating on both tails on my daughter and Noah and trying to find what their natural bend was and what they were gravitating to.
At that early age, it’s not one thing. No one would allow them to do one thing because here’s planet Earth and they don’t know, so you let them lead. By the time he was ten, he was taking lead roles in plays and shows in school. His personality was developing and he was very outgoing. His energy and his early charisma were evident to everybody. That’s a sign. I always encourage parents to watch their kids. You’ll see things. Noah, strangely enough, at ten would command a room of adults. He wasn’t Noah Centineo at 23. He was Noah at ten, but he had a bunch of auras about him and I recognize that. I started to realize that this kid got something. It’s a God-given or universe-given. He’s got something. Typically with those gifts, it’s meant to do something on a larger scale in front of larger people. That’s when we started to begin to strategize a little bit at the age of ten.
What is it that someone can do either for themselves or someone they care about, whether their parents or not or their own team that they manage? Do you have any tips on staying energized because a lot of people get burnt out? They are maybe working too many hours or they’re doing something they don’t love. Is there anything you can give around this energy? Children have lots of energy and passion, but how can we recapture that if we’ve lost it?
There’s a Springsteen song called No Surrender. It says when hearts grow cold, renew that fire back into its normal. To find what it is that you want to do in life, and I don’t think it’s myopic, it’s a pathway. A lot of times people think it’s doing something and a lot of times, it’s walking in a direction. If you stop focusing on what is it that you want to do, “I want to drive a bus, I want to be in transportation,” you want to move people from one thing to another, you want to move into the direction on what you’re feeling, don’t look for the specific. That’s where people sometimes get discouraged because they don’t know what it is. Walk in that direction.
An old line I used to give my kids that sounded very paradoxical was, “I’ll never tell you what to do, but do what I tell you.” That’s true and it sounds like a paradox. I would never tell them the steps to take, but I will point them into a direction. As a father who cares and loves them, I see things about them that they might not see themselves. I’m not going to tell them the specific, but I’m going to point them into a direction, “You should walk that way and you’ll find what you want.” It’s more holistic. It’s not a single thing, but it’s finding your path and walking on your path even if your dream doesn’t come to fruition in the first five years because you’re walking in your path.
From ten-year-old Noah, when was his real big first break?
[bctt tweet=”Rejection is perspective. It’s all about how you view failure that matters, not how you see success.” username=”John_Livesay”]
At twelve was his first break. Everyone thinks that when everybody knows him, that was the break. No, it was thirteen to fourteen years of grinding and energy put into something and doubt and then renewing of belief to keep going. At twelve was his first big break and it was when he was cast for a movie called The Gold Retrievers, which was an independent live-action film with Steve Guttenberg and Billy Zane. He got the lead and that was his first massive break. As a matter of fact, I will tell you that it’s the biggest break of his career. It’s always your first, not the one that exposes you to everybody. If you don’t have the first one, you’re never going to get exposure because you’re green.
You don’t know how to carry a movie, you don’t know what a set is. It’s too big of a risk.
The biggest break of his life was when he was twelve and he got the chance to do that film. I remember him walking over to me on set. He looked at me and he said, “Dad, this is exactly where I need to be. I love this.” What he was saying was he’s on his path and what he was doing was what was in him. There was alignment and he felt that alignment. As a twelve-year-old, he thinks, “I want this for the rest of my life.” When you’re aligned, you don’t want to change it. That was his first big break doing Gold Retrievers. Then that gave him at least something on his resume that was big and his film.
He had a list of actors that he was starring with and that matriculated itself moving forward, but it wasn’t the end. We’re still navigating his career from Florida. I was doing all this with his mom from Florida. We would strategize and so forth. As a parent and an entrepreneur, I look at everything more of a disruptive way. Everybody does this. I’m looking at what everybody does to become an actor and I thought, “The percentages are low.” It’s not because they don’t have the talent, the path or the drive, but it’s because it’s all about getting in front of people. There’s a lot of luck involved.
It’s fascinating because being a keynote speaker, it’s very similar to acting. You’ve got to get an agent, you’ve got to get footage of yourself. How do you get the agent if you don’t have the footage? What was your insight? You have this great ability to connect the dots and see things that other people don’t see. How did you get Noah that big break if you’re living in Florida and he’s not even in LA? How does he even get in front to audition for a movie of that caliber?
He was doing the work. He was grinding hard at ten and eleven doing school play and flying out to LA occasionally. We weren’t doing LA yet, but he was doing the work in Florida. He was going to acting classes in Florida. He was going through the motions he needs to go through. I came across something in my path that I was doing business in the animation side at the time and I had come across the live-action film that these producers were doing as well. When I heard about the movie and they were looking for a twelve-year-old lead, I said, “I’ve got a boy who’s acting.” They gave him an audition.
It’s those warm introductions that cut through the clutter. Whether you’re trying to get your startup funded. You know that you need that introduction to an investor to have a little bit of sensibility and what you’re saying is relevant and things like that. Let’s fast forward a little bit because no matter how successful you are in any industry, you’re going to deal with rejection. Even Meryl Streep didn’t get everything she auditioned for, I’m guessing. How did you help Noah and how do you help your clients deal with rejection?
Rejection is perspective and it’s all about how you view failure that matters. It’s not how you see success. Failure is the major ingredient to success. If you’re not failing, you’re never going to succeed. That’s the problem. If you don’t fail, you won’t succeed. Most people don’t want to fail so they don’t try. It was about aligning Noah’s perspective of failure and success together. He was rejected. I might be wrong with the number, but I think it was something in the high 80s, where he auditioned and nothing was falling for him. He would get chemistry reads and then go and get it. He’d go to an executive level at Disney right to the top and right to the last minute, they chose somebody else.
I knew things were working for him, but he wasn’t getting the right role. His confidence level was sinking very quickly and he was having it affect him. This was going on for months and this is normal. I sat him down and he said, “I think I’m going to quit.” At seventeen he said, “I think I’m going to quit.” I said, “Why?” He goes, “I don’t know, dad. I probably need a plan B.” You get rejected. I understood that. This is a seventeen-year-old. I looked at him and I said, “Why do you audition?” He said, “To get the role.” I said, “That’s wrong. You audition to generate awareness. The chances of you getting a role when you audition are 1,000 to 1 if I’m kind. It’s not because you’re not good at what you do, it’s because they’re looking for something very specific. The chances of you being that specific needle in that haystack.” Chemistry reads with the star is everything that matters.
I said, “When you walk into a room, your job and your business is creating awareness for yourself.” Who’s in that audition? A casting director, a director, sometimes a producer and a camera person who’s doing that every day in the industry. When you look in that room, your job and role are to make yourself memorable so then when you leave, everyone in that room remembers you. That casting director is going to be casting for something else. That director is going to be directing for someone and one day, they’re going to go, “No,” because you were memorable.
He did something memorable. I work with clients all the time. I’m telling stories when they’re pitching to get them hired. That’s with La La Land. Do you remember that character Emma Stone played? She was a no-no until she told the story about her grandmother in Paris. If you have a personality in a story that makes you memorable outside of just reading the lines and the charisma that’s there back to the energy, then people pick up on that energy. It resonates with them and they go, “I want to be around that person’s energy in addition to the energy and talent they bring whether they’re on camera or in front of the audience as a keynote speaker.” There are so many similarities there on shifting that mindset and not being afraid of failure. Let’s talk about some of the clients that you’ve worked with Duncan Studio in particular, a lot of companies struggle. I’ve got this successful brand and maybe it’s not foreseen anymore as hip and new as it was and there are new competitors coming out. How have you worked with Duncan Studio to help them reinvent themselves?
It goes right back to mindset and everything is energy. Ken Duncan, one of your great animators in Disney history left as an artist-animator in 2007 and said, “I’m going to do my own studio right in the heartbeat of a recession.” He’s an artist. Artists aren’t typically entrepreneurs, but he does this with guts and he creates an amazing studio. His studio did Mary Poppins for Disney. His studio did Mary Poppins and all the animation. Here’s a guy for the last few years who succeeds in a CG animation studio and also they do a 3D hand-drawing animation, but he wants more. He’s got bigger dreams and he couldn’t get that they’re not happening.
[bctt tweet=”Failure is a major ingredient of success.” username=”John_Livesay”]
He succeeds in service. They’re doing films for other studios and so forth, but he wants to do his own and all these goals and all these dreams he had. We’ve been friends for many years. He said, “Can you help me?” I came in and helped. It was about changing the mindset. He’s thinking a certain way and you get what you think. Einstein said something very important. He said, “Everything is energy.” That’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics, Albert Einstein. Energy is a mindset. Energy is a belief. You changed the mindset.
I had to help them change him as a leader and his team their mindset from the energy they were giving off. The level was matching their reality. If you want this reality, we’ve got to change the mindset and we did. It goes from mindset and it changes in the culture of your company. Your culture shifts and it’s that same frequency. If it disseminates out to your organization, then the culture begins to change. That energy begins to rise to that frequency and then the vocabulary change. Cultures have vocabularies. It goes from mindset, culture and then to vocabulary. What ends up happening is your frequency now has risen and so is your reality and it changes everything.
I like that it’s based on quantum physics, metaphysical or whatever you want to call it. If you change your mindset and you’re changing the culture, the culture can be for huge companies or it can be your own one-person show. Noah is a brand and you constantly have to work with him, I’m sure. Even at 23, if he’s anything like you and me when we’re at 23, we’re still figuring some things out. We still need lots of support of, “How do I handle this or have I made it now? What is my brand? What do I want to be known for?” One of the things I’m very curious to ask you about, whether it’s a client like Duncan Studio or helping manage Noah’s career. Is part of the culture or the brand easy to work with? Are you a diva on the set? Are you demanding as a keynote speaker that you have twenty million things you need before you can come and give your talk or are you easy to work with? What are your thoughts around that, Greg?
There’s no question about it. There are some people who don’t have great qualities about them or aren’t kind or aren’t nice or successful. It’s not across the board, but it is a big part of who you are. Success is not money. Success is not fame. Success is you becoming the person you need to become. We never altered that with Noah. When Noah was thirteen, fourteen, fifteen on the set of Disney doing Disney shows, I remember pulling up in the parking lot and he’d get out of the car. We’ll start walking. The guy who sits in the little security house in the parking lot, Noah would walk over and shake his hand and say, “What’s was going on, my man?” He knew him. Noah knew the lighting people and the PAs. He would help. If somebody is pushing a cart up, he’d run over and help them push the cart. It didn’t matter if he was famous or not famous. He brought on to set the energy of kindness, of authenticity and of love.
When he blew up, he blew up not because he’s a great actor. He blew up predominantly. At Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy said, “You’re growing 300,000 Instagram followers a day.” That’s on his way to eighteen million. Noah said, “There were a lot of people in the movie. It wasn’t just me.” He said, “Nobody else is growing to eighteen million.” It’s not that I’m demeaning any other actors, but I knew once Noah got a platform of awareness and the world had a chance to witness what we have all witnessed for 22 years of his life, the world would love him too. If he was known with 100 people at thirteen, 98 of them loved him. I just thought that if it meets 1,000, 996 will like him and the numbers keep going.
What blew him up was his interviews as well. When he would interview, people were picking up his kindness. They were picking up his gentleness, his love, his authenticity and people fell in love with him. As a matter of fact, on the morning of the Today Show, he also had a New York Times interview that day. I flew into New York to be with him, I met him at his hotel and we had breakfast at the hotel. This is my studies. He’s 22. He’s all over the place, the media and everything is going on. I looked at him and he looked just an inch awkward for a minute like taking the crowd of people outside the hotel. Sometimes it happens. I looked at him and I said, “There’s no pressure on you.” He looked at me and he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “They love you for who you are.” He said, “What do you mean, dad?” I said, “It’s not like you ended up playing in the Hudson.” Everybody loves Sully because he saved 200-plus people’s lives because he landed a plane in the Hudson as a hero. They love him, but then they had to get to know him. The pressure on him was like, “Will you like me?” He went from not being famous Sully to being famous, but now he had to maintain that. I said, “You didn’t land the plane in the Hudson. They like you for who you are. Continue to do what you’ve been doing. Be yourself.”
That’s great advice because I see that sometimes with Olympic athletes. They win a medal and then they get in front of a camera and they’re not used to being interviewed. There’s no personality and they’re deer in headlights. Being on camera on set is very different than being out. The thing that strikes me about both you and Noah that I see why you both have such huge followings on Instagram and other social media platforms is the accessibility. There are a lot of people that are striving to be authentic, but it’s still through a window. You’re looking in through the glass window with their lives. You and Noah pull people in. You make it accessible like, “Come on, let’s have fun.”
There’s a playfulness in some of the posts, whether he’s climbing a street sign or something and he was like, “I could maybe do that. Maybe I can be a little more playful in my life.” When people see themselves in the story, that’s when they go on the journey with you. You have demonstrated that for him on how to be yourself. The thing that I think you’ve done most wonderfully is giving him the sense of who you are is enough. You don’t have to do anything else. You don’t have to be a hero to be liked. Who you are as likable. If more people had that mindset going around that they wouldn’t have to try so hard to be liked, that’s when the magic happens.
It’s the beauty of being authentic. To be authentic, you have to be self-aware. To be self-aware, you have to be alone with yourself. To be alone with yourself, you have to love yourself. That’s the problem. Most people don’t like themselves.
Let’s take it to the business world one more time. One of your former clients is Washington Mutual Bank. People go, “There’s nothing likable about a bank. There’s no warmth there.” Yet, you were able to transform them again with your word of mouth marketing brilliance. Tell us that story a little bit.
I still don’t like banks but Washington Mutual at the time was America’s premier bank. I got into the bank at that time. I had shifted. I was a minister. Most people don’t know that about me. I was a pastor for over a decade and decided to acquiesce out of that for reasons that I felt like I needed to explore the biggest spiritual ideas than containment. I thought religion was a little too containing. That was a big shift for me. I ended up working with Washington Mutual. I brought in the same thing I brought into every part of my life.
It doesn’t matter what business is to you. I say that in my bio. It doesn’t care what business. I’m Greg Centineo. I’m not a pastor. I’m not a coffee shop guy. I’m not a Michael Jackson hologram guy. I’m not an animation studio. I’m not Duncan Studios. I’m Greg Centineo. Wherever I go, I’m going to bring transforming energy. I’m going to try to succeed with what I’m doing. In what I do, it’s more important to me who I’m doing it with and what I’m doing. That’s the first principle in life and business. Segregate business any more from life, that’s what the Millennials are teaching us. They don’t want that segregation. They don’t want that dichotomy. It never was a dichotomy. It’s all one.
[bctt tweet=”You can do good things alone, but you can’t do great things alone. ” username=”John_Livesay”]
There’s a great quote you reminded me of from Wayne Dyer. He said, “If you squeeze an orange, you always get orange.” It doesn’t matter what time of day, whether you squeeze it in the corner or not. Sometimes we become different people when we’re squeezed into a corner under stress. I think what you’re saying is you’ve got to be authentically yourself all the time, whether you’re “on or off” camera, working or not working, that’s what people connect to.
That should come naturally. You don’t turn it on and off switch to authenticity. You just be who you are. I gave you that process. You have to be self-aware and to be so self-aware, you’ve got to be willing to be alone with yourself because you’ve got to understand yourself. To be alone with yourself, you’ve got to like yourself and love yourself. That’s where the issues fall in. When I got to Washington Mutual, it didn’t matter that I was dealing with the financing, the structure of finance and lending. I just brought myself to the table and study to understand structured finance and then find how I can bring value to my clients. I turn the startup for myself in that bank into a $200 million company. We did that by building my teams.
It wasn’t what I was doing. It was who I was doing it with, the teams I was building and people around me. That’s where the community of fun, the love, the kindness. If you’re going to show up somewhere to spend nine to ten hours a day working with people, it would be better than your family. I build community in what I do everywhere I go and people say, “What’s the ingredient to your success?” That’s the ingredients to my success because humans are involved and if humans are involved, they all have the same exact needs. They want a sense of belonging. They want something bigger than themselves. They want to be loved and believed it and they want to love and believe it.
That’s the perfect ending to the episode, which is your quote that’s on your website, GregCentineo.com. Greg says, “You can do good things by yourself, but you still will never accomplish anything great alone.” You gave us a good example of that. Building a community inside the company and then you build a community on social media. That’s why you and your son have such huge followings on social media. Greg, what a joy to hear your success and your son’s success. Anybody is fortunate enough to hire you to help them get part of that magic. Your energy is contagious. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
John, thank you. I love coming on your show. I love talking to you. You’re a great one.
Links Mentioned:
- Greg Centineo
- Greg Centineo Guest – previous episode of The Successful Pitch
- Isaac Lidsky – past episode
- Ken Duncan
- https://www.Today.com/video/noah-centineo-on-bringing-new-life-to-the-rom-com-1313312323928
- http://GregCentineo.com/
- Quantmre.com
Wanna Host Your Own Podcast?
Click here to see how my friends at Brandcasting You can help
Get your FREE Sneak Peek of John’s new book Better Selling Through Storytelling
John Livesay, The Pitch Whisperer
Share The Show
Did you enjoy the show? I’d love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review!
-
- Click this link
- Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork
- Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section
- Click on ‘Write a Review’