Getting Through Hard Times

Episode 929: Getting Through Hard Times, with Brett Gilliland

Getting through hard times is a trait every leader must have. Listen and learn from Brett Gilliland about getting through hard times.

If you’ve been listening to the show for a while now — you know that I like to bring you conversations with guests who are strategic — as well as practical and tactical — and who will generously give you the best of what they’ve got so you can take it and apply it — and move your business onward.

And each of us as business owners — as people — are facing unprecedented challenges right now.

Things many of us could have never imagined as a result of the coronavirus.

And each day — we need to show up as the best leader we can — because our teams, our clients, and communities need that from us.

The business owners I meet with each day are doing everything they can to help their team on getting through hard times.

But candidly, Onward Nation — today’s business environment requires another level in leadership — it requires proven strategies, a process, and the willingness to put systems into place.

And because of that, I’m grateful that Brett Gilliland, CEO and founder of Elite Entrepreneurs, said yes to my invitation to come back for an encore interview so we could talk through leadership strategies, processes, and systems — which you can take and apply into your business and be better for it.

What you will learn from this episode about getting through hard times:

• Beyond “flight” and “fight” — there is a 3rd defensive mechanism that we have — and as business owners — it can actually hurt us the most
• What are the steps to helping your team in getting through hard times
• Why the “Stockdale Paradox” is just a relevant today as it was when Admiral James Stockdale first shared it
• Why you need to go narrow in what you allow into your inner circle — from people to media — and why you need to block out everything else
• Now more than ever — business owners need to stay focused on the Big 3 of their role
• Why “Fighting F.U.D” should be your number one priority as a business owner
• Why Brett believes that the best leaders build the best businesses — and — the best businesses win
• Why helping and leading others begins with leading yourself to clarity
• Why you should rest easy — you have a 100 percent track record of getting through hard times…otherwise you wouldn’t be here

Resources:

• Website: www.growwithelite.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Read this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Listen to this podcast about getting through hard times with Richard Sheridan

 

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation. Thanks for coming back. For today’s episode. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while now, first off, thank you. But you know that I like to bring you conversations with guests who are strategic as well as practical and tactical, and who will generously give you the best of what they’ve got.

 

So that you can then take it and apply it and move onward in your business. Well, in each of us as business owners and as people right now, we’re facing unprecedented challenges. Things many of us could have never imagined as a result of the coronavirus. I mean, what was even that word just a few months ago? And each day, the responsibility, the burden is that we need to show up as the best leader we can because our teams, our clients, our communities, not only do they need that from us, they deserve that from us.

 

And the business owners that I meet with each day. They’re doing everything they can to effectively lead during these challenging and I’ll dare say, historic times. But candidly, Onward Nation, today’s business environment requires another level of leadership. It requires proven strategies. It requires a process, and it also requires our willingness to put systems in place. So because of all of that, I am over the top.

 

Grateful that Brett Gilliland, CEO and founder of Elite Entrepreneurs, said yes to my invitation to come back to Onward Nation for yet another encore interview so we could talk through leadership strategies so we could talk through the process. We talked through systems, which you can take and apply into your business and be better for it. So without further ado, welcome back, my friend.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Brett Gilliland’s Introduction

 

Welcome back to Onward Nation, Brett. Thank you Stephen. My pleasure. It’s an honor to be on your show and look forward to our discussion today. I’m looking forward to it too, because I know that you can be very, very helpful. And you come into each of these conversations with such a generous heart and spirit, and you’re all about sharing the best of what you have.

 

And I’m and like I said, I’m grateful for that. So thank you. And, you know, on Tuesday, this past Tuesday, you, you came to your audience with some things and actually you did a pivot. You were going to talk about something different. And then you thought, you know what? I can be more helpful on this other topic.

 

And so you came to your audience with some real in the trenches, like how to be best during these challenging times. And I know that there’s some big takeaways out of that conversation, and I’m hoping that we can step through some of that with Onward Nation. So, take us through just kind of give us a high level as to what that conversation was like on Tuesday.

 

And then we’ll start going through some of the bigger nuggets, if you will. Yeah. Okay. Well, as you know, we serve seven figure business owners. and what we’re going to talk about today applies to any business owner doesn’t have to be a seven figure. But in our community of seven figure business owners, just like in business owners circles all over the US and all over the world right now, there’s a lot of question marks about what to do in these challenging times.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Leading People Despite the Challenges

 

You used the word historic earlier. I agree with that sentiment that that description of what we’re living through right now and doesn’t mean nothing like it has ever happened, but nothing in this modern age of information sharing and people moving around via, you know, air travel. A lot of people move around a lot today. And we’re in this knowledge economy and the disruptiveness of the current pandemic is in different world circumstances than any pandemic that it’s happened previously.

 

So it’s a different world. And we have business owners kind of scratching their heads. Maybe there’s a lot of uncertainty in their own minds, but they’re trying to figure out how to lead during these times. So as you mentioned, we had a regularly scheduled monthly webinar. We always share some topic, a couple days ago scheduled. And I just had one of those moments where I knew I can’t go forward as usual.

 

It’s not it’s not a go forward as usual right now. And knew that the whole community that we served would be interested in and benefit from a conversation about how to lead people through challenging times. And I was very thoughtful about that title. It’s not just leading people in challenging times. How do you lead people through challenging times?

 

So we made the pivot. We had the conversation a couple days ago so it was well received. And I appreciate your willingness to continue that conversation today. It’s a great title and reminds me of, so about a week or so ago, you know, our good friend here at predictive, one of our clients, one of our mentors, you and I have talked about Drew McClellan often before, when you and I’ve gotten together and and for context, Onward Nation, he’s the CEO of Agency Management Institute.

 

And he released an episode about a week or so ago. Now, as we’re listening to this conversation with Brett, but a week or so later, he said, Brett, that as the business owner, you are the captain of the ship and in your job, your number one priority is to steer your business into calm waters. Now, realizing that the waters that we’re in right now are rough using one of your words, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

 

And so being able to navigate those challenges does take skill, compassion, grace, being proactive and all of that. So, I’m so looking forward to the conversation that you and I are about to have because Onward Nation business owners are feeling that uncertainty, too, just like everybody else right now. and so your title of Tuesday is very appropriate.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Lead Others by Learning First

 

And if it’s okay with you, I will likely name this episode that same thing because I think it’s going to match very well with the mindset of where our business owners are at too. Yeah, absolutely. I think leading people through challenging times is the name of the game right now for business owners, regardless of the size of the team. I just had lunch yesterday with, you know, somebody that, you know, a good friend of mine, CEO of Keap. His name is Clate Mask. He’s been on your show a couple times. and he’s going through the absolutely same. 

 

You know, he’s going through the same things, absolute same things as a leader to lead people through challenging times. When I told him about the webinar we did or the call we did with our community a couple days ago, he said, can I get a link to that?

 

I’m going to send that to our leaders. Right. So it’s the same stuff. Doesn’t matter how many you lead, you’ve got to learn. You’ve got to figure out how I am going to lead people through these challenging times. So it’s relevant. Absolutely. So what were some of the big nuggets that you came to your community with your community, your business owners in that topic, what were some of the big nuggets?

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Talking About The Framing

 

So let’s take one step back before we do that, just talk about the framing. Let’s get everybody’s minds in the right place around their role as the business owner. Awesome. Okay. Or as the CEO, if you will, okay their roles. Now they do lots of things, but we like to simplify it down to these three things.

 

Number one, they’re responsible to set the vision right. Help people understand where we’re headed, how we’re going to get there, the clarity that the team needs. That’s the job of the leader, the business owner. Number two, responsibility is to build the team, to go make that happen. Sometimes that means hiring. Sometimes that means building existing team members might mean, in this case, not just developing people, but providing the support they need to build the team to get through these challenging times.

 

And then the third responsibility that every business owner has is the one that we’re all too familiar with. We usually call it don’t run out of money. Right. As business owners, we’re like, where’s the cash going to go to fare during these times? In our framing at Elite Entrepreneurs, we like to call it secure fuel for growth.

 

The only difference there being secure fuel for growth is more of an investment mindset. more on the offense. Right on the balls of your feet versus don’t run out of money if it comes from more of a scarce mentality. More defensive, reactive on your heels. So in most circumstances, we’re going to be advocating for secure fuel for growth in these trying times for businesses.

 

Most of us are going to try to naturally revert into this scarce mode of not running out of money. And it may cause us to make shortsighted short term decisions instead of optimizing for the longer term. So those are the three hats. Set the vision or the three roles of every business leader. Set the vision, build the team, secure fuel for growth.

 

And that’s the framing we want to have in the front of this conversation. Before we talk about how to lead through these challenging times, it’s interesting that you and coincidental and I because I love those three things. Those are the three points that you’ve really instilled in us when we’ve attended Elite Forum, which is awesome, by the way, Onward Nation, absolutely awesome. 

 

So awesome that we actually attended twice. but I was literally at a friend’s house recently and, and he asked me, he has a business going, you know, Predictive ROI. And, and I said, good. And but, you know, also preparing for what is to come in don’t know what that is. Right.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Fight or Flight

 

The uncertainty like we talked about and I said, I have one role with three parts to it. And he looked at me like, what? And I said, my job right now is totally focused on his vision team. And don’t run out of money. And so and I’ve taken those lessons from you and for him and so it’s awesome.

 

So thank you for setting that framework, for us in this conversation too. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So beginning with that as the framing as we walk in, we’re putting on our leadership roles. You know, we bear that on our shoulders. It’s hard to ever escape that. The number one thing right now, if I were to simplify everything we’re going to talk about, is that your role is to fight FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt.

 

I’m not familiar with that term. it’s not one that I made up. Larger companies sometimes will use that little acronym. But fear, uncertainty and doubt, that’s the enemy right now. So our role as leaders is to fight fear, uncertainty and doubt. Let me just say something about that. We’ve all heard most of us have heard of natural responses, human beings or any living organism has to be in danger, right?

 

It’s fight or flight. Most of us know that, right? You either fight it or you run away from it. There’s actually a third response. That’s probably the most prevalent right now in the coronavirus. atmosphere that we’re living through right now. That third response is to freeze or to become, to become immobilized, to do nothing.

 

Right. So fight or flight is the natural survival response. But a third response that happens in situations like the one we’re facing now is to freeze, where we try to say, hey, we’re just going to, yeah. And I don’t want to use the term pretend, but like we’re, we’re doing to act like nothing’s wrong. We’re going to keep going, we’re going to try to keep things as business as usual as we can.

 

And so and not fighting or running away from anything and just, just kind of holding, holding pattern. And, that can be, if not equally dangerous. a response might be the worst response. So our role is to fight fear, uncertainty and doubt. We have to lead ourselves and others through that. So, you know, I don’t want to just ramble on here.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: The Nature of Uncertainty

 

Stephen, you’re a master interviewer. Why don’t you dictate how much we have a conversation? Because I could just dive right into lots of things to share. But I want this, okay? So be prepared somewhat by you. Okay. Before we dive into those things, to share before those nuggets, when you said freeze can be the most dangerous, I think there’s a couple layers there.

 

So, that’s an interesting point of view. Tell me more about why you’re cautioning business owners to not freeze. So what is the danger you see there when they just freeze? Well, just the nature of fear, uncertainty and doubt is a big question mark, right? It’s like, I don’t know. And so leaders are in the circumstance right now that they’ve never been.

 

In fact, I think you see in the world around us, whether it’s governments or businesses or, you know, you name it, whatever groups are dealing with things they haven’t dealt with and people are looking anywhere they can for leadership. Right. Like there’s this absence of leadership and you don’t want to be that for your team. You don’t want to be the leader because you’re frozen with your team.

 

They actually need you to be actively leading them through this time. And it may be at a level that you haven’t done previously. You might be comfortable engaging with your team at a level that I’m going to suggest today. Okay. Awesome. great context. So yeah, let’s dive into some of the big pieces.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Lead Yourself First

 

All right. So concept number one, I would say as to how to lead through challenging times. and I purposely omitted the word people this time leading people through challenging times because it starts with yourself. There’s a little bit of you’ve got to place the oxygen mask on yourself first before you can help somebody next to you. Okay?

 

And that’s an important point to remember right now, because if you are experiencing fear, uncertainty and doubt, you know, by the way, you would only be human if you were feeling those things. Right? How do you not get yourself to a place where you can lead others out of that? But you have to. You have to lead yourself first through, through getting that oxygen mask yourself first.

 

So here’s what I would do. Here’s a few thoughts around that. You need to be intentional about your mental and emotional health. Your own well-being around your mental and emotional state. You know that I love Jim Collins. We always talk about his stuff. Your listeners might not know that. That’s all right. So Jim Collins wrote several books.

 

One of them is called Good to Great. So one of his better known books in that book, he shares, a principle he calls the Stockdale paradox. And he named it that based on a man named Admiral James Stockdale. and he goes by Jim. So Jim Stockdale or James Stocks Stockdale was a prisoner of war.

 

He was the ranking official for the US troops in what was called the Hanoi Hilton. I don’t know why they chose to call it that. It wasn’t luxurious accommodations. Right. It was a prisoner of war camp, one of the worst ones. James Stockdale was a prisoner there for seven years.

 

Okay. Wow. Not seven weeks, not seven months. Seven years. And what Jim Collins came to call the Stockdale Paradox as a result of his learning from an interaction with Admiral James Stockdale, is that the paradox is that there’s two pieces to it. Number one, you must confront the brutal facts of your current reality. Okay. And so on.

 

One one side of that paradox confronts the brutal facts of the current reality. The other side is that you must maintain an undying belief that in the end, you will prevail. So there’s this duality between, like, I got to be realistic and I got to be optimistic. I got to maintain belief. Right. But that that paradox is what allowed James Stockdale and others to survive the the horrors of that prisoner of war camp as opposed to others who just kindly, who kind of blindly believed, hey, you know, I’m sure by the time Thanksgiving comes out, we’ll be home, or we’ll be home for Christmas, or maybe we’ll be home at Easter time.

 

They were always sort of putting their hope and belief on a fixed date that it would be better by then, but they were missing. Confronting the brutal facts of their current reality. The date would come and go. They were still in the Hanoi Hilton, and they actually lost the will to keep going to win. And they didn’t make it.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Confronting The Brutal Facts of Your Current Reality

 

So that was the difference between those who made it and those who didn’t. Was that confronting the brutal facts of the current reality had to go hand in hand with that undying belief that eventually, right, not by a certain date, but eventually we will. We will win. We’ll find a way. So did I. No, I’ve not met Admiral Stockdale, but, and I know you’ve, you’ve spent time with Jim Collins.

 

So it was stock Dell’s mindset after that, which I can’t even imagine seven years of what that must have been like was his. It seems that I’m phrasing this wrong, but I think you’ll know where I’m going with this. Like, was his mindset even stronger leaving it after leaving that place seven years later because he had almost gone through seven years of mental conditioning.

 

Does that make sense? absolutely. And another person that we haven’t talked about, but who I’ve learned from in the past. His name is Dennis Deaton. He has a business called Kuma learning Kuma. Anyway, he teaches a class called the Ownership Spirit, and we taught it to all of our employees at Infusionsoft for years because it teaches the idea of developing tough minded ownership.

 

Right. So the idea of I’m, you know, the opposites of being a victim versus being an owner where things happen to you versus you create or you choose how to, how to respond to life. And so we, we taught this, these ideas to every single employee that we were onboarding at Infusionsoft for years because we believe so strongly that you create your own future despite any obstacles or things you may face.

 

Like James Stockdale didn’t choose to be in a prisoner of war camp, but he, through his mental toughness and others who he led, were able to get through that experience and actually become stronger on the other side of it as a result. Just like Us is awesome. Need to. Yeah, I love this paradox. So you must confront the brutal facts of your current reality.

 

And then at the same time maintain the belief that you will prevail. That is awesome. And I love how you’re starting off with this number one, this first nugget of leaving yourself. Is there anything else that goes into that category? Do you believe it? Yeah, yeah. So let’s get really practical with that because that’s all fuzzy ideas at this point.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: People Need to Know Their Choice

 

So what does that mean? How do you help yourself confront the brutal facts while maintaining an undying belief that in the end you will prevail? Okay, it does require some very intentional or what I’ll call disciplined optimism. You must feed your mind with things that will help you maintain that undying belief. The brutal facts are like slamming us in the face right now.

 

In fact, I would advise and I did advise my community a couple days ago when we talked about this, to only go to, you know, the 1 or 2 or narrow few sources that you must get information from to make good decisions and then then block out everything else related to the bad news that’s out there. Because whatever you feed your mind, that’s where it’s going to go.

 

If you feed your mind with all the doom and gloom, that’s exactly where you’re going to go. You can’t help but stay focused on that if that’s what you’re feeding yourself with constantly. And if you turn on any news source today or any medium, right, social media, radio, TV, where you’re wherever you get information, it’s all almost all negative.

 

Right? Again, we’re not trying to turn a blind eye to what is. We are trying to be disciplined in maintaining positive, vigilant optimism in ourselves while we get the right amount of facts to be able to confront those facts. So, my biggest advice here is that people need to know their choice. What? Where am I going to get the information that I must have to make the best decisions for my business, for my team, for my family, and then tune out from everything else?

 

If you can’t afford to have that constant negativity coming into your mind right now. So what? What should you be filling your mind with? Anything that helps you stay in a positive, healthy place? So we talked the other day about gratitude. We talked about, for people who practice some sort of personal spiritual spirituality, you know, whether it’s prayer or meditation, scripture reading, anything that would fill you with positive things, you need to make sure that you’re not you’re not skimping on those things right now.

 

You need to spend more time exercising, serving others, whatever helps you stay in a positive, healthy place personally that will allow you to lead others. Yeah, that is awesome. I’m so totally stealing that, your word or two words are discipline. Optimism. is awesome, I love that. Yeah. And it is a discipline, especially in times like right now, because the easy thing to do is just take everything coming.

 

You have to gracefully say, no, I am not going to eat that mental junk. Junk food. Right. That metal thing that’s not going to help me right now. And that’s it takes a ton of discipline because we’re all connected to devices and the information is just flowing. Absolutely. And the thing that I love about the discipline of optimism is that it is for me at least, and maybe I’m reading this incorrectly, but it shows me that there’s a choice.

 

There’s a choice to be optimistic. There’s a choice to have a victim mentality. Now, with that said, I’m not saying that bad things don’t happen to good people and so forth, but as you were just talking about with Stockdale, he chose to not fall victim to that. And that is an incredible thing. The power that, that, that, that he had over his mental state is amazing to me.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: The Power of Choice

 

Yeah. The power of that choice, I mean, people talk about empowering others all the time, right. But if you think about what’s at the core, what is real empowerment, it’s when somebody understands they have a choice to act regardless of the situation. Right? When they step into that choice to act, that is true empowerment. That’s what you’re trying to give to others.

 

As a leader, you have to be there yourself. So that’s the mental, emotional kind of stuff that we must do. We can’t just write that stuff off. And I’m sorry to, you know, if any of your listeners are like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is the stuff that’s going to separate those who actually lead powerfully through this time and those who just get knocked around mercilessly by the waves.

 

I doubt that any of them are going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right now. I think most of that we’re probably like, oh, I want to learn more from Brett. So all right, well, here’s the other thing that you need. Aside from the mental emotional health aspect for yourself, you need clarity. And you might say, yeah, I would love to get clarity.

 

It’s hard right now. Yep. It’s really hard to get clear right now. The best leaders build the best businesses and the best businesses. When, that’s what’s going to happen. As a result of all of this shake up, the best businesses will emerge as winners and the other businesses will, you know, at best, struggle and finally recover after a long, painful time, or they or they won’t make it at all.

 

Right. So we have to get more clarity for ourselves. one thing, Stephen, you participated in, in, an experience I created around getting clear for yourself as a leader, right? A personal off site. That was awesome. I usually advocate doing that on a quarterly basis in, in, quote unquote normal times. right now, it might need to happen more than that.

 

And I don’t mean like one full day a week. I got to be in personal offsite mode, but whatever, whatever the required time frame is for you to feel centered and clear as a leader before you go into the interactions with your team members every day or every week, you need some form of. I’m getting clear before you can go help others get clear.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Figure Out Your Options

 

Okay, so let me just stop you there for a second. So clear around what? Because that’ll be really helpful for our listeners. Yeah. So clear around what the specific things the business needs to do during the turbulent times. Okay. And if that, you know, if top of that list is to figure out what our options are, you know, before we can choose.

 

Then go get clear about what the options are, right. Whatever level of clarity, however far you can see. Last week, I was driving down from the mountains back to my home. We were in spring break mode with our kids and we had one of these late winter snowstorms. Believe it or not, here in Arizona it was up in the pine trees.

 

Heavy snow is falling. And, you know, from living in Wisconsin, you know what that’s like, right? You’re probably like, yeah, right. What you were going through is kids play or child’s play. But our version of it was I couldn’t see very clearly. I couldn’t see very far. Right. There was enough snow that we had to go slow because we couldn’t see very far ahead of us.

 

So sometimes clarity means clarity at 50ft, right? Sometimes it means clarity at 500. Sometimes it means I can see a mile down the road. Whatever the current circumstances allow, you have to get as much clarity as possible. Okay. Awesome. So let me give you back this quote here to make sure that I got it right in my notes.

 

I think I did, I think I heard you say the best leaders build the best businesses, and the best businesses win. That’s right. That’s awesome. That’s powerful. Yeah. And for you to get clarity, let’s let’s get more practical. It’s not just time by yourself. Although that would be important. It’s also time with mentors, coaches, peers, advisors who again, whoever you think is going to help you get clear.

 

Go spend time with them and be careful spending time with them also invites them to fill you with negative stuff, right? So only go to people who can help you be productive in getting the clarity that you’re looking for. Yeah. Okay. 

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Somebody Is Going to Help You Stay

 

So let’s loop that back for a second here. Back to Stockdale. So, I think what you’re saying is, you know, you certainly want to go to peers, mentors, coaches, spending time with oneself focusing on positive and but probably also investing time with people who are going to help you see the brutal facts of your current reality. 

 

But then, but then also help you keep the perspective in maintaining the belief that you will prevail, right? I mean, would that be an ideal mentor who helps you with the kind of Stockdale paradox?

 

Yeah, absolutely. Somebody is going to help you stay, not just stay in the belief by cheering you on, but helping you by arming your belief, right, with facts and ideas that would support you, not falsely sugarcoating it. Right. So I have a good friend named Tyler Norton who talks about this principle in a very relatable way.

 

I think it’s relatable in the analogy, not because any of us have actually done it, but he talks about sending a team into battle against an enemy who’s heavily armed, and you’re sending the team into battle with a pocket knife. Right? That’s that’s not that’s not going to be high on the belief scale for your team. So you have to arm them.

 

With what? Whatever’s necessary for them to believe. Oh, we have a shot here. You can actually not not only have a shot, but we’re actually better off against the enemy because of these things. So it’s not just sugar coat coated belief in, you know, apple pie and lots of things like that. It’s here’s its mentors, coaches, peers, advisors who can help you see why you should believe, given the current reality, the brutal facts of the current reality.

 

So it’s a wonderful blend. I encourage all of you listening to to think through those people in your life who can bring you that nice combination. And if you have to piecemeal it and get brutal facts from one person. Reasons to believe from another, because those might be distinct gifts from different people, that’s fine. Just just be really clear with yourself about why you’re going to both of those sources to get the right blend for yourself.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Help Your Team Fight Their Fears

 

This is great. And anything else in the leading yourself category? No, I think that’s great. Let’s give some practical ideas for now, helping others. So all the same things we talked about around your own personal well-being mentally and emotionally. Your team, they’re in the same place, right. And one advantage I have in this area is that I live with people who have anxiety and depression in my immediate family, and so we’ve spent years with therapists and counselors and lots of professionals.

 

And what I’ve learned is you cannot you cannot fight fear, uncertainty, doubt things that you cannot fight with logic. All right. So there’s a really important tidbit here. You cannot fight the fearful lizard brain place, the amygdala that everybody’s gone through when they’re feeling threatened. You cannot fight that with straight up logic. You have to relate to them.

 

You have to assure them. You have to help them feel safe first and then you can bring on maybe some logic. You can give reasons to believe beyond that. But if you just start hitting them with logic and facts, they can’t hear you. It’s like a different wavelength. So, just know people might be coming to your interaction, your communication with you.

 

They might be in a very fearful spot. You may have to acknowledge that and help them see, hey, we’re not we’re not in our frontal cortex. We’re not in our best logical reasoning thinking. When we’re in a state of fear, it’s hard to be creative. It’s hard to be collaborative. We’ve gotta get out of lizard brain survival mode and get into more creative and logical reasoning thinking to be able to handle the situation best.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: People Need to Feel Understood

 

This is really huge because when you said you can’t fight fear, anxiety, doubt with logic, I thought, well, there’s there’s a big mistake in my communication pattern or style because that’s that’s absolutely where I would go is the facts and data and figures and, you know, logic or however, however else you would describe logic.

 

And so then when you said that if you try to do that first without assuring and relating and helping your team feel safe, they’re going to be on a completely different wavelength. And I’m like, wow, I made that mistake five times this week. Yeah, we all do, Stephen. And even with all of the, you know, quote unquote personal training I’ve had just because of experiences in my own family, I still, you know, I’ll still go to that really quickly.

 

I’ll try to talk to somebody who’s in a very irrational, fearful state, and I’ll try to convince them why they shouldn’t be very logically right. Does it not work? It doesn’t work. I’m thinking of a conversation right now. Yeah. Well, a lot of us do it especially, especially, you know, not to be stereotypical, but a lot of male leaders will do that.

 

Yeah. And we can’t do that. We have to start. I mean, think about, Maslow’s hierarchy is another angle at this. If people are concerned about their basic physical needs. Right. My safety, my physical security, you can’t talk to them about anything else beyond that. So you have to establish safety and assurance and, you know, calm them down and feel comfortable and safe first before we can go to anything else.

 

So what would be so this would be some great coaching for me. So I’m totally asking this question selfishly, but I got a double dip here. Yeah, personal advice and hugs for others, but, realizing there’s probably some Onward Nation business owners who are struggling with the same thing as me. So how then how can I like when I think about, you know, assuring them and helping them and feeling safe?

 

I know I can improve in that area. So how would you suggest a business owner like me or me in particular? What would get better in that area? Yeah. So people need to feel acknowledged. They need to feel understood. They need to say, hey, it’s absolutely normal for you to be feeling what you’re feeling right now.

 

Okay? And it’s sometimes difficult that most of us aren’t dealing with these types of concerns on a day to day basis. And this environment that we’re in, is forcing leaders to enter a little more personal space with people than they’re used to doing. And so it’s okay to have a recession about, hey, what?

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Boost Up the Belief as a Team

 

Let’s just get it out as a team. Let’s talk about what are some of our fears or worries or doubts or uncertainties right now, whether you think they’re rational or not. Let’s just get them out. Let’s talk about them for a few minutes. So a lot of expressing, listening, validating. These are all super normal things to be feeling right now.

 

I’m not surprised. You know and you share being vulnerable with others about how you might be, have, have felt or experienced some of that. All of that allows for an environment of safety. It’s okay. Right? Then once we acknowledge it, we say, hey, and then and then we can calm down a little bit and say, okay, let’s just acknowledge that we’re wired to respond to danger.

 

This way, for us to worry about our safety, we’re right wired to worry about, you know, our family. Are we going to be able to support them? We’re white wired to worry about the economy. Am I going to lose my house like we’re wired to worry about all these things? This is normal. And if we look back on our own experiences, your experiences in life and my experiences in life, we have I love, have colleagues, former colleagues.

 

His name is Mark Chesley. I love this phrase of his. He says I have a 100% track record of getting through hard things. I think about that for a second. Me individually and us as a team. We have a 100% track record of getting through hard things. We’re still here, we’re still doing it, and most of us can look back on some really hard things and say, that was hard, and we made it through that, you know?

 

By the way, together we went. We’ve been through some hard things before, and here’s what we did, here’s how we came together and here’s how we overcame that. So you can use people’s own experience with getting through hard things in the past and the team’s collective experience to boost up the belief that we will figure this out as well.

 

That’s that let me give that back to you. Make sure I have Mark’s quote here. Correct. or we have a 100% track record of getting through hard things. Yeah. Is that right? Hundred percent. You never did it, right. It’s funny. I mean, it’s funny, but it isn’t funny. It’s like it’s really profound because obviously you wouldn’t be sitting here today if you hadn’t.

 

Right. Exactly, exactly. And by the way, all those natural things that are trying to protect us in our own brain, those were present back then and they helped us. However, they helped us. So we’re going to say thank you, lizard brain. Thank you, amygdala, for trying to protect me. You’ve done your job. I am aware of the danger now we’re going to move on to more healthy, not more healthy.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Music, Exercise, and Humor

 

A higher level of thinking and reasoning and collaborating to problem solving to get us through this challenge. That’s awesome. So what else goes in the category of helping others? So, another thing I learned just in our family life, with therapists and people who are stuck in negative thinking patterns, especially depression and anxiety, those those two, there are three things that like can’t coexist with those negative feelings, or that when present those negative feelings, you can’t dwell on them.

 

So here they are. Okay. Music, good. Good music, anything that is uplifting to you from a music standpoint. Exercise. So physical activity, physical exercise, you can’t stay in that very place if you exercise. And then the third one is laughing humor. So you may not feel like laughing. You may not feel like good music. You may not feel like exercising.

 

But if you can bring some of that into your own life and into your team’s life, it will pull them out of some of that where you state or that down, you know, a negative place is like physically impossible for you to stay there when you’re engaged in those activities. Yeah, I love that. So that sounds like a recipe for helping teammates get unstuck, especially if there’s depression and anxiety afoot.

 

Right? Yep. So that’s on the mental and emotional health side. And then just like for yourself, you need to get clear for yourself and for the business. They need that clarity. So what will it take for the business to win. They need that clarity. And even better, if you can enroll them in problem solving to go do that.

 

Right. so anything that you can help them see clearly about what it will take to win. Right. Reasons to believe we can go into battle and win and then their role specifically in that bigger picture. So what are they going to have to do? What is their focus need to be during these times? I’ll give a quick example Stephen, okay.

 

So you know, I share a concept called the big three where every role in the company knows these are the key three responsibilities they have in the larger machine. Right. The business here’s what you must own as the owner of this role, three measurable things they own. It could be activities or results, but they’re measurable ownership items.

 

Well, when your world kind of gets turned upside down or there’s all this uncertainty out there, some of those measures may become primarily either irrelevant or less important. And there may be new things that need focused attention. So you have to help every team member know exactly what’s expected of them during these times. That, and they can see how that connects to that bigger picture of helping the business win during this challenging time that’s awesome.

 

And not just for the clarity piece, but when I think about, I mean, you know, that I’m a big fan of the Everest mission and, you know, getting the big three in place and the measurables and all of that, it’s also an accountability piece. And but, you know, what will it take for the business to win?

 

Outlining each person’s big three? It just makes things so much easier and much more efficient. And then in, when we have this limited amount of time and whether we talk about mental capacity or just a limited amount of time, we have to make the right choices as quickly as we can during these challenging times. Focusing on the things that truly matter and not being stuck in the thick of thin things.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Best Practices for Leaders

 

The big three are awesome. It’s super awesome, especially during this time, and you just need to make sure that it maps right to what we agree as a team is necessary to go win in these challenging times, right? Right. So there may be an adjustment to the regular beat on that. But then once you get clear about what we have to do next, then you just align.

 

You align everybody’s efforts to that through that big three clarity and I’m happy to go as long as you would like to on this, Stephen, I’m going to acknowledge this probably has gone a little bit longer than you anticipated. I have a couple more sort of very practical best practices for leaders during these challenging times that I’d love to share.

 

I would love that. Thank you. All right. So we talked about what it takes for you to be well emotionally, mentally and how to help yourself. Be clear. We’ve talked about how to do that, that you have to do the same things for your team members. So what does it look like day to day as a leader? So during challenging times, the mantra in leadership is always good communication, right?

 

Like good leaders communicate well during times like this. When there’s uncertainty, when there’s fear, there’s uncertainty, there’s doubt. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Can’t be sad enough, right? So if you weren’t doing daily huddles before, do daily huddles. If you were doing weekly one on ones, continue doing them. But maybe you do them longer and you know, maybe you invest more time in that.

 

if you weren’t communicating to your people that, hey, my door is always open or my phone is, you know, you can always reach out to me. This is a time to really overdo it on the I’m accessible, whatever you need to talk about, I’m going to do lots of informal checking in. Just want to see how you’re doing, because your job is to make sure they’re not going back down into survival mode.

 

Right. So you’ve got to be constantly assessing where you are at? How are you pulling them back up? So communicate with lots of daily weekly communication rhythms right now. Even if it feels unnecessary to the team members just checking back in, how are you doing? What’s going on? What can I do for you? What do you worry about, right?

 

Just lots of communication. Then the other thing I would say is, you gotta keep them focused. You need to understand what’s happening externally. You need to share enough of it. Not with them, to make good decisions. But you can’t let what’s happening outside consume the team as much as possible. I’d encourage you to shield them from all of that noise.

 

And and the biggest challenges there are, you know, they have their personal device, they’ve got their phone. They’re constantly connected. And so you can’t you can’t physically run around and shut off everybody’s devices. They are going to hear stuff. But you can help them understand why it’s important to keep that disciplined optimism going. And you can build into your communication rhythms, practices like positive focus.

 

How are we winning today? What’s going well? And then talk about what’s the one thing we could do differently today to make it even better. So we’re just going to be in a constant rhythm of helping them stay in a positive place and avoid all the negativity out there. And then, make sure that their basic needs are being met so they can focus on winning.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Positive Focus

 

That’s awesome. You know, in our first couple of interviews, when you said yes to joining me here Onward, I don’t know that we ever talked about positive focus. I love positive focus. And we use that as part of our leadership, team meetings. Although, we do have daily huddles and we’ve not blended positive focus into that which we’re going to start doing.

 

So, could you give Onward Nation business owners the sort of the and I know it’s a quick little recipe, but the recipe behind positive focus and why you’re such a proponent of it. Sure, sure. So it goes back to some of the brain science we’ve already alluded to earlier. If if our people or if we are coming into the office or a meeting in any place of negativity, we can’t be in our best thinking.

 

We can’t be in our highest order thinking where good reasoning, good logic, good collaboration, good creative problem solving exists. If we’re in a negative place at all, we’ve got these, you know, little chippers in the back of our mind telling us something bad happened. And it could be something as silly as, you know, I got cut off on my way into work, and I’m.

 

I was really mad at that. Right. Or I had one of those, you know, lovely interactions with my teenage daughter. And we were having this conflict, and I’m carrying that around. We all sorts of things that that bring negativity into our minds as a simple practice, positive focus on the front end of a meeting where we each share something we’re positive about, just brings that positive, creative energy into ourselves and into the meeting that gets the meeting started off in the right place in our in our minds, in the right place to do good work.

 

Yeah. It’s awesome. I’ve seen you do that in groups of, you know, ten and I’ve seen you do it in groups of 70. And it’s super powerful. Yeah. It is, it sounds like just a, you know, not a simple, I don’t know, maybe an elementary practice, but it is powerful. It’s one of those things if you’ll adopt a consistent habit.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: Last Golden Nugget from Brett

 

We already talked about disciplined optimism. This is one of the ways you can just install a little bit of disciplined optimism into your company on a very rhythmic basis. When you get together as a team. Awesome. I kind of took you down a tangent with positive focus, but thank you for going there. So I think it sounded like there was another nugget that you wanted to share before we wrapped up and said goodbye.

 

I think we’re good with nuggets. Stephen, the keys again. You have a role as a leader to set the vision, build the team and secure fuel for growth, or don’t run out of money. Right. And, you know, now more than ever, those three things need to be on full display in your leadership. The best leaders will rise to the occasion during these times, and everyone else will kind of look everywhere else for direction.

 

You can’t be looking everywhere else for direction or just you’ll wander aimlessly all the, you know, just changing direction based on whoever you’re listening to. You have to get clear. There’s a leader first. You got to take care of yourself, and then you got to take care of your team and help them get clear. Help them believe that in the end, together, you will prevail through these challenging times.

 

Well, that right there is a big, big nugget of what you just said on full display. And the reason why I say that is because, you know, if if we’re truly leading with disciplined optimism and we’re taking, the Stockdale Paradox and we’re and we’re using that as, as a way to drive our mindset and so forth, then then yes, we’re leading by example, like we know that we should be, but if we’re doing it on full display, realizing that now more than ever, our teammates, our family members, our community stakeholders are going to be looking to us as examples, maybe of just one little piece of clarity in their day, then that could be really, really powerful. So, this has been a great conversation. 

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times

 

Getting Through Hard Times: How to Connect with Brett

 

I knew that I would be so grateful that you said yes. Brett, thank you for your generosity. Before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, can you please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you? Absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate the opportunity.

 

You lead entrepreneurs to the name of my company. We’re super passionate about helping lead entrepreneurs grow meaningful businesses. Our website is GrowWithElite.com. So that’s GrowWithElite.com. And if anybody wants to reach out to me directly, especially during these times, I’ve been giving out my direct email lately. It’s Brett, which is [email protected].

 

Thank you for that my friend. And Onward Nation. No matter how many notes you took or how often you go back in, re-listen to Brett’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is you have to take what he so generously shared with you. Take it, learn from that, but take it and apply it right away.

 

And Brett, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And again, my friend, I am grateful that you said yes to come back to Onward Nation for a third time, to be our mentor, our guide to help us move our businesses onward to that next level. Thank you so much, my friend. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

 

Thanks, Stephen. This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Check out this blog from Grow With Elite on how they helped people in getting through hard times