Leadership Freak Fireside Chat with John David Mann 10 19 23

record this session and I had some people email say you know it's 3:00 here in the morning and we are you going to record it so I am we will record it and get it out there and again I'm it's 7 o'clock I did want to start uh right on time so if you wouldn't mind muting uh I would appreciate that and once we get up you know if we get over a 100 people in the room you can IM imine uh that it's kind of difficult and I would love honestly if we could all just have like a one-on-one conversation I would love that so if you didn't open up your chat window uh I think you should see it down uh at the bottom of the screen uh I have several things that I do want to ask and so if you would please go to that menu on the bottom and open up the chat there we go and the first uh just uh for fun while everybody's coming in if you wouldn't mind uh typing in the window uh where you're from in the chat window so that we can get a feel for yeah that's going by so fast I guess because I look at that we will save this chat i s New Jersey go by yes it hit particular activating system because I grew up in New Jersey that's all did they uh in the you when you think New Jersey you think uh City but there's so much country in New Jersey was it country or was it City for you Garden State man uh yeah I was smack in the middle in the suburbs some white Suburban Jersey Boy what can I tell you yeah I we State I think we hit all 50 states at this Point pretty much I haven't been checking scrupulously but I don't see one that we've missed yeah and quite a few countries outside from New Zealand to the UK is there someone from New Zealand here yeah yeah New Zealand shot back shot by there oh my word you know it's so early in the morning in New Zealand just got China yeah from China to New Zealand to the UK to Canada I think it's safe to say Australia yeah wonderful another New Zealand there yeah it's noon in Auckland okay great it's the whole world so folks the whole world came to see you Dan uh they or you I think it's probably you that's why I wanted you here so I could hide by I want to hide under Superman's cape yeah I'll check yeah Jama Jamaica you'll see me folks kind of looking over here because I'm still uh admitting folk and I just don't want anybody sitting out in the waiting room so that's what you see me looking at over here I'll take care of the admits if you want Dan I'll just admit every oh okay great they so we got a feel for uh I didn't know if the co-host could do that that's fantastic wow versatile co-hosts yeah oh and you can walk and talk and admit uh people at the same time no I can't walk and I can't talk but I can admit so uh thanks for sharing where you're from if you're just bopping in tell us where you're from the second thing I was curious about is what time it is if you don't mind just pop a number in the chat window and say what time it is 4 P. M West Coast yeah 600 p. m 7 1900 obviously most of the readership for leadership freak is uh North America Canada and the US but uh there's good readership in the UK India um and as you saw Australia New Zealand welcome to you all I'm so thankful to see you and so glad you're here Mexico City is 5 o' it's funny you know because you think 5 o' you Mexico City you think that's such a different time zone but obviously it isn't I'm going to uh John I'll take over the uh admitting and I just want folks to meet you I know I build this John as a you know kind of a leadership freak family thing because we haven't have never done this and I'm so excited to meet everybody yeah and at least put some faces with some of you but they don't know you too well and uh why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself um just a little bit I'm human that's all I have little yeah I gotta find you down here there it is because I want to highlight you I think there's a way to do that I'll do that but I'm H also happy to to be entirely in the back seat on this call by the way you're all watching right now uh the Machinery of how Dan and

I uh work things out this is how we figure stuff out we get in the phone and go uh why don't you do this I yeah okay that it's very calculated very elaborate this is how we wrote this book it's extremely calculated um okay I'm highlighted so I'll introduce myself I don't know a lot of your names and faces I haven't met before seen before and that's incredibly exciting for me um so I'll give a little quick um s spiel about myself I grew up in a a family of musicians my dad was a coral conductor and my mom was a Pianist and a playwright and uh my brother was a musician my little I started out playing the cello and I was a composer and that was kind of my plan for my life but my plans kept changing because the universe kept pushing me around uh all of all of the best things that have ever happened to me in my life um did not come about as a result of a plan of mine let me say that a different way none of the best things in my life were things I planned now they were all things that I didn't plan and that keeps happening so I had lots of plans for my life my career kind of pinballed around really almost all over the map as much as this call demographic tonight is all over the map I went from playing the cello and being a composer and I won prizes as was a kid I mean I was all set for a career as a comp classical composer um and I got very interested in Natural Food and Health and I taught that for a while and I taught inner city kids to play the recorder and I drove a taxi cab and then I got involved in um a retail business which turned into an a sales a 100,000 person sales organization magazine about sales leadership somehow Health in the environment and environmental issues and as you can see I had Johnny had some issues with Focus um I focused on each one of those things that I did but they just keep coming and the unifying theme and all there were two unifying themes in everything that I bumped into and everything that I played with in my pinballing career one of them was leadership I kept bumping into leadership um dad as I said was a conductor which is leadership exemplified this guy stands up and moves his hands and a 100 people do stuff at exactly the same time in Harmony in rhythm in this amazing way that moves thousands to tears it's like the most amazing example of leadership I ever saw with my own eyes and I played in his ensembles many times um matured in uh Europe with him so that was one of the themes to kept I kept bumping into and the other was writing I was almost the guy who ended up doing the newsletter or editing the article or whatever and I eventually be became a professional editor and I edited other people's stuff for years and that kind of merged into co-authoring with people and that turned into authoring and lo and behold here I am in the latter half of my Century uh unplanned writing books is what I do uh and I love it I feel like I've finally figured out why was put in the planet and having a ball I published um over 30 books the one that everybody knows is the go-giver which came first and kind of established my career and then there were a bunch of go-giver books that came after my wife and I just wrote a book called The go-giver Marriage a few years ago which um Dan hosted our fireside chat when we did what we're doing right now for that book um and now I'm writing novels I'm writing Thrillers and uh a few years ago I got a phone call actually I got an email out of the blue from somebody I'd never met but who I Knew by reputation and that was Mr Rockwell and he said I'm interested in writing a parable with you would you be interested so he got in the phone and he kind of sketched out I knew who Dan was and Dan who I was he'd been a huge proponent walking ambass personal walking Ambassador for the go-giver for many years and I was very grateful for that I knew his work I knew the leadership freak but we never spoken and I don't even know if we'd actually emailed maybe we had but just perfunctorily so we had this conversation our first and uh he said I have this idea about writing a book about humility and he sketched out sort of the the setup of the story and I instantly went I'm in say jump and I'll say how high uh let's do this book I get a lot of people asking me if I'd like to do a book with them and I I learned the the challenging arst saying no I've said a lot of NOS but with Dan it was an immediate yes and creating this book with him has been an absolute Joy from start to finish uh it that's true of most of my books but there's more struggle sometimes and this has just been delightful a delightful ride from start to finish I love this little book I just fell in love with it Dan love the idea of the story and I even have great affection for poor Bob uh in between the two covers of this book who is really dealing with a tremendous handicap in life and the handicap of course is himself he has to carry himself around um so Dan that's my introduction to myself over to you yes well uh I'm gonna there we go I didn't know you

could do both so there you go what a rookie we're a duopoly yes thanks and I just have to tell everyone uh so I did have this a story in my heart for the vagrant and it been there for 10 years or so and I had tried to write it but uh that totally failed and E you know sometimes when you uh write something you're so in love with what you write you think it's good when it's bad uh it was so bad that even I knew it was bad uh but uh anyway and finally and if you want a leadership lesson we'll start right here with a leadership lesson um I think one of the smartest things we do as Leaders is get help and if you're in it by yourself and if you feel alone and if you're struggling and uh it simply means you got to open your heart you got to get help and many of us I am not good at asking for help because let's face it you probably got ahe Where You Are by not asking for help but by giving help and by getting the job done and saying yes sir and getting everything done so let me just say from my own heart to you all um one of the smartest things I did especially at this stage and in relation to the vager in particular was uh ask for help and when I thought about and here's the thing asking for help I I thought well who's the best that I can think of who's the and obviously because of the goger and Bob berg uh I thought well John David man and it was a shot in the dark uh to say what do you think and I was so thankful he's exactly right I remember the conversation as he does that it was like about 10 or 15 minutes and um let's go let's do this so it was a very quick decision and I'm thankful that he was willing to be involved get help let people into your life uh don't anyway so that's sort of my little Soap Box Thing quick question in the chat and that is uh many of you perhaps all of you are leadership freak readers I'm just curious how long have you been reading leadership freak just like to know that 10 plus years wow yeah four years three or four years look at them go yeah 10 years six there was a newbie there I saw one couple of months hard to say five or six years JY been reading it for six years go Jersey yeah 10 plus Tim Ward Tim you must have

been in way at the beginning when you know I someone said you've been doing this for 15 years I said no then I went back and looked at it and it's pretty near 15 years so you know 2010 and it's like I was always saying I've been doing this about 10 years and now we're going on 15 so it's nuts just nuts I was in junior high school then I know you were and B at the same time I'm sure um so uh thanks for your faithful readership uh it's such an encouragement to me and I do appreciate it um so here's a deeper question this one is about leader is about leadership freak too we I want to talk about leadership freak some and just learn from you and then we want to definitely talk about the vagrant and perhaps you have some questions about it um definitely wanted do that so um the uh question I have for you about leadership freak is what and if you could be try to be specific what is it that keeps you coming back as a reader I would just love to know what that what it is so I'm going to watch the screen practicality 300 words or less yeah short simple lots and lots of people say um when I read uh I read you because it's short it's like you're not Hemingway we're not you're not Hemingway but it's short and practical quick digestible y yeah thank you good feedback good encour you know encouragement obviously oops I got somebody sitting out there um so let I'm gonna mix back and forth maybe and John will talk some about the vagrant and then we'll talk some about leadership freak uh and maybe mix that uh mix that together so I have a it's a leadership question I'm going to pop a poll on the screen and if you would please uh the pole is about let me and launch the poll has like four

self-defeating behaviors that leaders engage in they're pretty close to the main character in The vagrant Bob does these oh before I la before I launch this you know the story The vagrant is definitely not biographical for either one of us ever uh the stupid things Bob did uh I'm like I got a PhD in those things and so they definitely it was I'm going to tell you as the story started evolving it was very humbling to and when I say humbling it felt humbling to know that other people would be reading my screw-ups now it's funny because they're not looking at it like it's me but so it's not biographical but it is uh about things that we do that we defeat ourselves and you we all have that's why the story is useful so I have a poll uh four things and which one of these do you think is uh you know most harmful so do you see the poll I launched it yep somebody's clicking on it John what's your favorite self-defeating behavior that Bob did uh boy doesn't he do all of them yeah seriously I mean putting himself at the center is kind of the key of it but to me the one that jumps out is dominating conversations and I think that what I love about that is that Bob genu had no clue that he did that I mean when uh the guy his friend told him you're loud he was baffled what are you talking about I'm not loud he didn't mean loud in terms of his voice was loud he meant loud in terms of he just took over the room and we all know people who take over the room when they show up dominate conversation dominate the room yeah one of the uh I so agree and during one of the podcast or several of them people were asking about some of these behaviors and the

uh the I think the challenge for a leader is Passion can be confused or perceived as pushy what you view as passion you're passionate about an idea you're passionate about your team you know you're just really trying to you know get something done what you're doing uh what you call passion others call pushy and I received feedback that I was pushy and on more than one occasion and it's like I it like Bob I could not register this feedback it's like that's ridiculous I'm a fuzzy cat meow you know I'm and uh I actually had somebody in a team meeting some years ago I was seeking feedback and I think you should do it very specifically so I was doing it very specifically and she said to me uh you can be pushy and I said uh and I've learned right you know the response to feedback and it's a thank you so I said Thank you and then I said you have an example can you give me an example and she didn't and you know we shouldn't be too hard on people sometimes they you know they just have this sense anyway two weeks later I'm having a conversation face to face with a guy and I see her out of the corner of my eye and she's going you know what I'm saying it's like and I knew and it was the first time in my life that I actually had a glimpse of me push pushing me that I thought was just being passionate or excited or whatever it is so I'm going to end the poll and share the results and can you all see the results yeah they're off the side to me uh so it's pretty near 50% what you were

saying John right pretty near 50% uh putting self at the center yeah and uh then the other ones fall in line I have to tell you all I had a conversation today with a fell who was hired as a manager and he was hired with the express purpose to be a leader and I've been engaged with him for I think maybe about a year and the owner I've worked with the owner of the company and that kind of stuff and uh so he they engaged me to work with him and you know just come alongside for his journey and today I said so you know we've been doing this quite a while I said what are you learning and without a hesitation he said I'm not as important as I thought I was isn't that something that's such a special thing to say so I was just so U EXC I'm G stop sharing now I was so excited to hear him say that um one of the things we want to talk a little bit about is uh you know something that maybe not every we don't assume everybody's read the vagrant we want hope you do but uh what is something that you took away from the story or that you appreciated in the story love to hear or see I should say you're just not that big a deal good one Jackie that's a good sign what's a wasn't takeaway uh for you or a something that sticks with you from the vagrant just like to hear or see at least what that is for you for those who have read it uh unconscious bias thanks Jean not paying attention yeah oh yeah y skill always growing good thanks Sergio you know how Alysa says this thing about how older me will always have good advice for current me for today me you know and you almost think of like if only I could step through a wormhole and and tap the older me and I think that in a way we can I think it's almost like you can you can almost say what would older me say to this and you may not have the totally accurate Insight but it's a great question to be asking I think yeah well you see it in I mean part of the premise of the story right is if you could talk to yourself you know what would you say yeah asking ask an older person to listen well I hear you Tim it's like the problem is when people ask you what would you tell your younger self you say it wouldn't matter why I tell my younger self I wouldn't listen right oh amen says Jackie it is so true y well thanks for your H feedback

on the story wisdom is wasted on the young yeah thanks for your feedback on the story and other feedback other thoughts about it um my email address if you don't already know is Dan leadership freak. com and love to just have your thoughts about that John what are your hopes as far as how people might use the book or how teams what are your thoughts about that I mean I think it's like any book that's you know that has the potential to be thought-provoking I think it's great to read it as a book club or as a team or as a group um for just everyone to agree to read it and then go through it um you know we put those questions for discussion in the back of the book discussion and reflection um really expressly for the purpose of being an aid to people who want to do just that who want to you know go through the book and see how it resonates I think the uh you know earlier you were talking about how this is not autobiographical for you or for me but that it's still there was a certain amount of you felt like Dan Rockwell in it Rockwell to Bob's story and I just to me that's what it resonates the word is resonate I think it the story resonates even though you know most of us I think would like to believe and do believe we're not quite as big a jerk as Bob um but something about his story resonates uh something about the situations he gets in resonates and I think that it' be it'd be interesting to sort of uh ask amongst ourselves in a group which realizations which uh coming smack into the face of reality which Awakenings which wax on the head in the story most resonated with you um and then to see how does that bounce what does that bounce off of and in terms of your own life I know that for me um writing it I mean the scene where and I don't want to do spoilers because there will be some of you who haven't read the book I'll stay away from anything it's a severe spoiler but uh it's not a thriller it's not you know a Tom Clancy book so we're not too worried about that the scene where Bob is with his ex-girlfriend Lacy and he suddenly realizes that when they broke up it wasn't him that initiated the breakup it was her um I felt that so I felt so resonant with that because not I haven't had that exact same situation but I've had situations that I thought were a certain thing was happening and I look back on it years later and realize oh a whole different thing was happening I thought I was being seen this way behaving taking this initiative and actually events and the people around me were looking at me really differently um and I think for me those are maybe the my favorite takeaways from the book is having a sort of a Eureka moment or an apocalypse a revelation about how the way we see ourselves maybe isn't accurate somebody else is seeing us in a certain way that's more accurate than than our own view um I just think that's a lot of fun and I think that could be within a group where we have a level of trust and a level of safety I think it could be interesting to you know Dan you talk about and in your part at the very end of the book the the business of asking other people how they see you in certain situations and I think that's you know that's where some of the real juice in this Glam is yeah wonderful and I just saw Tim pop up on the screen it made me think of something about using the book and how to use it for yourself or do it together and Tim said uh they're using it in a group of 10 or 20 somewhere and uh I just want to say if you buy 12 copies uh let me know and uh I would love to just spend 30 minutes with your group and we talk about whatever you want so if it makes sense right it can be just a few minutes at in a team meeting like five or 10 minutes at the beginning it could be Q& A it could be you can decide what you want to talk about but if you buy 12 copies and you do them together uh love love to talk to you about it um uh now what else do I have here I have a few things that I wanted to Let's shift to uh I played under Benjamin Xander once just mention did you yeah did somebody talk about Xander Jackie yeah why you know him oh well I saw him in New York and uh that just made me a huge fan of Ben Xander and his videos are fantastic when I was like a a 20-year-old I let him down in a really terrible way um it's one of the things that I you know that I look back at and go who was that kid who was that that young kid who committed that terrible crime as Morgan says yeah I was playing an orchestra we were going to do some mer Symphony and I was playing and I I let him down I scooted out of the last few rehearsals in the performance because I had something else that I thought was more important I don't have any idea what it was and obviously it was not more important what could have been more important than playing MERS fifth with Benjamin Xander but you know I was an idiot what can I tell you so there you go sorry Ben yeah and there's Lorraine I hope I said that right she's done some played with him as well uh thanks for that story it's great hope he doesn't remember remember yeah I thought I we might do Q& A as well and uh you know one of the you know we don't want to limit the conversation but here's a question Q& A and what John what did you learn from Xander accountability but I learned it after the fact little too late to thank him yeah uh I learned from Ben Xander uh one butock playing do you know that uh if you've watched his videos and he actually did it in New York where you have to lean sideways when you play I don't know if you

you yeah okay these are going by I gotta figure out how to get the comments because I have let me close that participant window and see if I can get the comments that'll do it much better yeah chat there it is chat okay oh good oh that's so much better how we work a little bit about how we work together on a book okay shall I speak to that Dan go for it man I'll speak to it specifically because I've done so many books in a similar fashion the go-giver books and the book with David Bach and the books with Brandon Webb and this book with Dan and I um the way I tend to work is um I and we did this Dan and I Dan had the original idea and Dan he had a setup for the story as he says it's a story that had been living he'd been living with for many years um in the same way by the way the go-giver was Bob's idea Bob berg had this idea for writing a book called The go-giver and he had a story set up there was going to be a guy called Joe who was going to go meet this Mentor who didn't have a name at that point um I ended up naming him after my music composition teacher Peter pindar Sterns but Bob had this idea for a story and he sat down with me and said here's my idea and he had some notes scenes he'd written out he had a draft and Dan and I likewise Dan sketched out these ideas that he had in that initial phone call and then he and I went back and forth for I don't know a couple of months I guess uh I don't mean daily but with some regularity we went back and forth let ala into the room and I would ask him questions like U he had this he had these ideas that there would be certain let's just call them political missteps within the context of his workplace political and the sense of stepping on people's toes and that kind of thing and so I'd ask him about that experience and how we saw that and we kind of brainstormed by email we didn't do much by phone a little bit mostly by email at the same time I read a bunch of leadership freak I went back and looked at a lot of his posts and I went and I just and I absorbed a lot of his stuff again and that's how I work I try to absorb this other person's point of view and expression and material as much as I can and I'm getting ideas and we're bouncing it back and forth and then at a certain point I kind of go into my room and start writing and it's at that point it's mostly a solo operation because that's just how I work best um and I I'll write a draft and then send it off to my partner and say hey what do you think and that person Bob berg Dan Rockwell um will get back and say I love this I love this what about this and what do you think and so we do we kind of uh what's the word we Q see it we tweak it we play with it um and that's kind of how the sausage is made we get to the very end of it and then once there's a draft of a whole book then we drop it on the table between the two of us and we take a look at it and we again bounce ideas back and forth you know what needs to happen there's a quite a distance between the end of a first draft and what you end up reading at the end of our first draft for example there was no bird there was no Santiago if you've read the book you know the bird there was no uh extended stay at this um you know recovery Center basically and there was no Merl in the park with his little strips of paper with the scriptures on them a lot of these things came in later as a result of our brainstorming and also other people's feedback we had beta readers who read it and said I don't know I think it should be this way or that way and you know what they were right and uh anybody who's worked with beta readers and an editor has gotten a tremend tremendous lesson in being open to feedback the thing that Dan's been talking about um because you cannot succeed as a writer an author there is not a snowballs chance in a very fiery place that you can get anywhere near succeeding as an author or as a writer without the tremendous capacity to absorb critique to have people stand up and throw little darts at you and say this didn't work this didn't work this feels superficial this feels forced this doesn't this feels incomplete this kind of didn't ring right to be able to take all that even when you know they're wrong you're sure you're right you absolutely know that they totally missed the point and the original thing was perfect to still go more please he on more abuse and listen because they're right they are right um Neil Gaiman the one of my favorite writers says that when people tell you something didn't work in your creative work they're nearly always right when they tell you how to fix it they're nearly always wrong you have to figure that out yourself um but yeah it takes as Damian says it takes a village to write a book critique a book so it is it is both a very isolated lonely solo Enterprise and a very communal team oriented Enterprise at different stages of the operation wonderful uh thanks for sharing a

bit of that uh experience and for me one of the things I said to John was this is going to be my first Venture into the publishing world and you've been there many times and so I just want to hold your hand and uh you know Pat me on the head give me a cookie and uh you know we'll go from there there's another question here uh from Cheryl how do you get your inspiration for your daily blogs and how do you decide what to write about good question and I'm glad that you asked because people almost always ask how you know you've been doing this for 15 years how do you do this so long how do you come up with ideas and I what I want to say to you I think is useful to every single person on the planet it's an unalterable law of energy and that is you have to pour in order to pour out you got to pour stuff into your life and here's what I know if I get up any morning and now my body my hands are ready to type I mean when I wake up uh and because I've done it so frequently but when I start to push like I don't know what I'm going to write about that is the signal that the tank is running low and it is a problem for leaders across the world they're pushing and they're pushing and not realizing what pushing really means your tank is empty and you just can't we just can't Thrive we just can't do our best when we're at the uh you know when the gas tank is on E all the time and so I love it when people ask me about you know how do you get these ideas and how do you do it for so long and it's not about gritting your teeth and you know white knuckled tenacity and I got no I got no discipline I you know I'm but I and here's how I here's what pours into my life you got to figure this out for yourself I uh what pours into my life is uh conversations I have with people uh tonight is a little big and I you know I wish we could all just talk personally but your feedback and watching your comments those things energize me the people that I coach our conversations like the young fellow today that said I'm I've learned I'm learning that uh I'm not really that important everybody else is important it like man it floats my boat and I just love that so and the other place where I'm getting uh fuel for leadership freak obviously is reading and when I say reading uh it's not necessarily leadership books and I get leadership books practically every day in the mail so when you look back up here you see these books and uh I haven't bought very many of those books uh they've all been sent to me and so it's a one of the really benefits of for me I had no idea I mean I been writing for about three months and I get this book from Harvard press it's like wow this is great you know and so I do read and I get a lot of leadership management books um and that's a so useful but here's what I love you look at each one of those shelves every Shelf has conversations on it I can go across every shelf and not all of them but some of those books I can pull off that book and know I had a conversation with that author I talked to them they taught me I show up to learn from them and oh that is such a gift so you know it that that's where I get my energy and the other thing I just wanted to say to you that I think is so important is on my bookshelf there are uh there and up by my bed and in my Kindle that have nothing to do with leadership so I'm reading uh poetry I'm reading uh a little fiction I would like to read more fiction I'm reading uh right now I'm on this kick of uh Bazar or uh Glazer glaz balasar I anyway he's 1700s he wrote a book called The Art of worldly wisdom I agree with about half of it but I'm reading it and uh he wrote another book called a pocket book for a pocket mirror for Heroes I read it every night and I read every night I read a portion lots of times from the daily stoic some of you are familiar with that so I'm reading way outside of leadership um and then I read about writing and some writers I read just because they are great writers and my favorite writer is uh eie white uh he's the uh and I would highly recommend his essays to you uh they are engaging and they are older so you may not some of it you may appreciate but his ability to write well is just astronomical uh so I love to read eie white and see how he crafts sentences and the same for John when I'm you know I love to see how people craft sentences I just had have to tell you I just had a conversation with a um IA Ian herminia ibera so she has these she's re-releasing her two books one of them is work working identity and the other is uh act like a thinker a leader think like a leader and I said to her when we got on the call I said I just want to say you have written some great sentences so for me and by the way she just beamed of course you know she loved that so where does the energy come from and the big principle is this um pour in more than you pour out pour in so you can give serve I it I know it's weird and you're not used to it but I just want to encourage you so and I have not been watching questions John do you see something else there to think about well I just want to kind of

agree with you for a moment just to say I mean it's something that comes up again and again in the go-giver books you know in the go-giver marriage the most recent book there's five we call secrets to lasting love you everyone has love but for it to last what makes love last a lifetime and the fifth secret because almost the fifth of the go-giver secrets are always like contrary to the first four they're always like a thumb to the other fingers and the fifth of these Five Laws um it is about giving to yourself the first four about giving to the other person about being generous living the living with a spirit of generosity but the fifth is living with the spirit of generosity for yourself nourishing yourself you know the idea there being that a relationship can only grow to the extent that you grow what you bring to it has to be a growing person and that's a sort of a a Twist on with the same idea you're saying Dan which is if you want to have an impact in the world if you want to be um nourishing the people around you nourishing the world around you got to be nourished growing there's got to be substance that is that is moving uh and that's certainly true about writing for sure but I agree I think it's true about everything it is it is selfish not to take care of yourself because if you want to be generous and if you want to live generously the only way you can do that is to take care of yourself and pindar says as much to Joe you know that uh that it is insane to try to give without receiving and everybody Bob and I have heard this for years about the go-giver that they people have say to us all the time those first four laws feel natural to me but the fifth law is challenging and the fifth La the go-giver is is that the secret to ongoing uh giving is to be open to receiving open to rece yes and it's so

true I'm following some of those uh questions uh someone Jackie says you said I'm sorry that you know I don't know if we'll get to all of them or not uh so let me just apologize up front before I uh respond to Jackie do me a favor if you would if you have a copy of the book would you take a picture of yourself and send it to the vagrant book gmail. com take a picture of yourself with a book uh I'm assuming you're going to give me permission to shamelessly say look somebody else bought the book maybe you should too so but it would be so helpful if you would do that and then uh leave a uh review hopefully a positive review on Amazon uh they tell me that uh that really helps and you know if you bought something on Amazon what do you do if you've never bought it before you go and look at all the reviews you know and what do you look for the bad review I and then you know I look down I think and if I see something and it's four and a half or a four and it's got a lot of reviews I know you can't please everybody every T all the time but it's a good product so please if you wouldn't mind I appreciate uh send me a picture of yourself with the book if you have it on Audible uh like I know Tim has probably and or on Kindle figure that out I'd love to get a picture of you and send it to the vagrant book gmail. com there it is that's what I want Tim Tim's holding it up so uh U he's on the screen I don't know who gets up there but Tim get up there so uh you said something in a post Jackie says dan about no leader has ever asked you about how to love employees more and uh that really struck me Jackie says and makes me wonder what you worry about this uh the most with the state of leadership ship today uh Jackie I think you should

you know we need to appreciate that the leaders that I work with are definitely High performers definitely uh highly motivated uh I've only had one coaching client in my life that I fired and that's just because of you know taking on I don't fix people I don't work with performers I work with people who want to get better don't call me if you got somebody you're ready to fire saying Dan can you fix this person I already learned that ain't for me right so uh my take on this Jackie is perhaps skewed or narrow but I find in leadership uh exhaustion uh fatigue um I see uh Steve is trying to enter here um I see fatigue I see a lot of stress the world is turbulent and the people that I work with are very caring uh highly motivated leaders and if I could Jackie just say something to that controlling managing your calendar is managing your life and if you can't manage your calendar your life is out of control so I just want to let me encourage you know for yourself and for some of you I know are coaches and you have people working for you build some space in your calendar and I'll give you the practice that I'm doing on a regular basis and by the way I am learning and trying making sure that I am not backto back as much as possible but I take first of all make a rule in your company if you don't mind me saying here is the first commandment uh the first leadership free commandment make a rule in your company that all hourlong meetings are 50 minutes and all 30 minute meetings are 25 give you got the right to go to the bathroom before meetings so instead of rushing to the next meeting you know what I'm saying so uh and there's some big companies I work with a couple of really big companies and uh that's hard for them oh and they're working at it it's like I'm trying to get that 50 minute hour Dan I'm just trying uh and to and I'll give you a tip on how one of the things to do when you run your meetings make sure to do the important stuff first so what we typically do in your meetings is we say oh we got a few small things to take care of and those small things kind of snowball and snowballs get bigger and they get colder and they get wet and they just grow and what happens is you really you spend 4 five minutes talking about let's do these quick things before we get to the meet of the meeting no and then you rush through the important thing things so make sure just an encouragement on managing time put your big stuff at the beginning let's dig in after of course per perhaps say some sort of however you're going to start your meeting uh with a something personal and that kind of thing but dig into the big stuff first and then if you have to rush through the small stuff right rush through the smaller things but uh build in I would encourage you shoot for a 50-minute hour the other thing I do in my practice is before every single

conversation I take uh at least three minutes I review the notes which I usually done way before that but I review the notes from previous conversations I sit here I close my eyes I relax I breathe for about a minute depending you know some I might pray I you know it depends but I'm going to be quiet it for about a minute I'm going to think next about the person I'm going to talk to and what I respect about them and just our conversations and then before we jump on I'm going to think about how do I want to show up for them and uh lots of times during that Mo those moments I will jot down something that comes to mind a question or something to ask them about and uh many times it's useful to them so I would encourage you that's where you need that 50-minute hour and you take just a few minutes and just be quiet and here's what that will do for you it will oh my it's 7:57 see I'm in love with my own voice I'm Bob but if you take just a uh a few minutes before these meetings what you do through the day now is you create stopping and starting moments and now your day does not feel like one giant Rush at the you know those days where you go home at the end of the day and you like what happened if you can just take throughout the day just little moments of quiet and stop something and then start something I think it will help so my big concern Jackie is uh the the fact that leaders are very you know they're just overcommitted and it's hard to learn to manage your calendar and I apologize for talks John did you see something on there you want to respond to yeah I just want to say you know Larry just just uh CH chimed in and said you can build in pause moments and I think that what you're saying on the macro scale can also happen on the micro scale which is to say when you're addressing a group or when you're having a conversation or if you're a guest on a podcast or whatever situation you're in where you're interacting with others if okay to stop and gather your thoughts and we're so used to jumping in to fill the silences but silences I mean the Quakers know this right silences when you're in communion with other people are golden um often what rushes what you know what comes into to fill of silence is a new thought and uh so I think it's is leaders are almost inevitably speakers right it kind of comes at the territory and in speaking one of the most valuable things that I think you can do is to slow down and not feel like you need to fill every space but thanks Dan for all that was

great to hear yeah thank you and uh for all of you who are here uh just oh I so thrilled and I think what I would like to do I just got so excited about seeing you and I'm I just I'm disappointed that uh that I couldn't see everybody that I'm gonna maybe do a monthly leadership freak family gathering and you know half an hour something like that and just you know but have more open like we started those of you were early we chit chated back and forth and uh and that's just people hate that idea Dan they definitely do not want to do that I can see this in the chat yeah yeah really shooting that idea down there so um any final words John uh no I just it's an absolute and utter joy to meet you all and see you all and you know like Dan I'm sorry we can't interact more direct ly more fully more completely as as in everybody but your every oness is felt you're all there we we feel you we see you and it's really delightful to spend this time together okay I'm seeing suggestions uh and thoughts about uh you know next time and uh time of day all of those things matter uh so and my understanding is you can once I close this meeting you can still chat to it you can I don't know if that's true I uh but anyway uh if you can't still chat to it send me an email Dan at leadershipfreak docomo uh thank you thank you uh for being here tonight and John thank you for your help in my life changed me and uh I'm so thankful for the vagrant and what came out of our relationship thank you for that 15minute phone call man yes it's funny my friend Scott safer just entered the waiting room uh I'm I did click on it so but anyway see you all and uh thanks so much and until next time I would love to uh try to do this again I am going to hang for just a sec here and uh all right turn off recording