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Imagine at the end of your life you were standing before your Creator and he asks you, “Did you use the time I gifted you each day to be a purposeful being? Did you follow your own path and make your time count? How faithfully did you tend to the dream I sowed in your soul?” This excerpt from The Motivation Manifesto begs the question of whether you’re engaged in the right habits to achieve your highest potential. When was the last time you stopped to ask yourself these or similar questions?
My friend, Brendon Burchard, has spent many years helping others achieve their highest potential and I know he can help you too. His lessons are researched-based, immensely practical and I know they will make a big difference in your life. As one of the most requested motivational speakers in the world, Brendon has shared the stage with the Dalai Lama, Sir Richard Branson, Tony Robbins and many of the leading influencers of this era. In this episode, you’re going to learn about the most effective habits for reaching long-term success. It turns out that six habits move the needle the most in helping you succeed.
If you missed our last episode, be sure to listen to A Holistic Approach to Wealth Creation.
Enjoy the show!
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High Performance Habits For Investors – Brendon Burchard
It’s my pleasure to welcome Brendon Burchard. He is widely considered the world’s leading high-performance coach. He is one of the most watched, quoted, and followed personal development trainers in history. He is one of the most followed public figures on Facebook and his videos have been viewed more than 100 million times. More than two million students have completed his online courses and video series. I had the pleasure of spending over three hours with Brendon at one of our mastermind meetings and it dawned on me that his message is perfect for my audience and that’s you. It is my great honor to welcome Brendon to the show.
Thank you for having me, Marco. I’m pumped.
You are an awesome public figure and your content is so amazing. I’m not sure if you have more than three books. I have all three of your books and I’ve gone through The Millionaire Messenger. Is that the title of the first one?
Yes.
I’m halfway through High Performance Habits and it’s absolutely fantastic. I highly recommend everybody to get a copy.
We’re six books in now and each one is a labor of love because it’s a deep dive into the research. It’s also getting people the most practical and tactical stuff they can do to be high performing in what they do. I know with your audience you get a choice. You can be an okay investor or you can be a high-performing investor and everyone wants to be the high-performing one. They want what those secret sauce strategies are or what’s the research share that people can apply. I’m sharing that with you.
The question is, how do you reach that level of high performance and how do you keep driving and moving forward, especially when some people feel saddled with a 9 to 5 job or they have a vision of what they want to do but they can’t seem to get to that next level? I’m excited about that because we’re going to peel the layers of the onion back a little bit. Brendon, you’re recognized as a worldwide authority on both human motivation and business marketing. I love both of those topics. Let’s start off by you taking a moment to tell our audience how you got to where you are now.
Everybody reading would have a very similar answer in that. They had to go through some long hardships and dark nights, hours of toil, sweat and hardship to figure out their stuff. To figure out what they’re good at, figure out how they want to serve and how they want to make their difference. I lucked out. When I was a nineteen-year-old kid, I had a car accident. Leading up to that car accident, I had been suicidal. I was a miserable kid. I had broken up with the first woman I ever loved and when we broke up, I fell apart. My whole identity fell apart because everything was tied up in that relationship. The relationship fell apart and I fell apart. I started planning my suicide and then I had the accident. The accident wasn’t a result of suicide. It was a random car accident. I learned in that car accident though that if we’re about to die, we ask questions about our life. We ask whether we lived our lives fully and completely and with real joy, sincerity and authenticity.
We asked if we loved because we think about who we’re going to miss and who we will miss, and we ask if we mattered. At the end of your life, you get to look back and you go, “Was there a purpose to it? Was there a reason for it? Did I do something with myself?” I call that mortality motivation. I didn’t know it was. At nineteen years old in a dramatic car accident, I figured it out because I asked those questions. As I was recovering from the accident, I was thinking about it, “What happened to me in those moments?” I didn’t want to sense regret in my life. I wanted to live with a purpose. I tell people this, “Don’t fool yourself in thinking you’re living with purpose if you haven’t thought about what questions you’re going to ask yourself at the end of your life. If you know what questions you’ve got to ask yourself at the end of your life, to evaluate whether or not you lived a good life, then you can live intentionally each day so you’re happy with the answers at the end.”
I learned that at nineteen and I went from this miserable sad, suicidal kid to a person who was fully alive and excited about life who wanted to earn my second chance at life. I would tell people the full story of the car accident, which is a long story. For those who want to see it, they can check out my Facebook page. There’s a video on there. What I learned there was that as I told people about the whole accident, as I told people to evaluate how you want your life to go and to live each day with greater intention and to have immortality motivation, people would say, “Write a book on that or tell me more about this.” I wanted to figure out more of it myself.
First, I did a deep dive into psychology and performance psychology. Then I wrote the first book and it didn’t do well. It made me so mad that here’s my life’s message in this book and I didn’t figure it out. I did a deep dive in learning how to do marketing and build a business around the book. Those two things, doing the deep dive in the psychology and the research then figuring out how to do marketing. Those two things together helped me figure out my message. Then share it with millions of people around the world at a time when that wasn’t happening in the personal development space at the level we were doing it. Everybody goes, “You’re the world expert in this type of thing,” and I go, “I had no idea what I was doing. I was a sad kid. I became happy. I shared how. I sucked at marketing.” I learned how and I shared how and it all grew beyond that.
Was The Millionaire Messenger the first book?
No, the very first book was the Life’s Golden Ticket. That’s what I felt I got when I had the accident. There was a moment after the car rolled several times and I was able to pull myself from the windshield. It was terrifying.
You said so much about that experience and how it has changed your life in the direction that has put you on. One thing I think about from time to time is coming to the end of my life or someone coming to the end of their life. All they can think about is what they could have done and what they should have done, those regrets. You don’t want to end your life thinking about all the things that you could have done because I can’t imagine anything more depressing than that.
That’s why it’s so important to get clarity and live each day with real intention, not just intention of what you want to do but intention on how you want to feel. Intention on the experience you want to feel, the presence you want to feel with your wife, with the kids, with the work or with the day’s tasks. What I’ve learned about high-performers, especially our audience, they’re awesome. It’s like you’ve got this unbelievable community. Successful people sometimes don’t realize that their number one danger in life, once you’re good, is that you’re good enough to go through the motions. When you’re good, you can get away with going through the motions because you’re good is everyone else’s best. No one notices that you’re going through the motions because you can.
They don’t notice that you’re not putting your full self into that because they see your performance and go, “He’s great.” Sometimes when I peel layers back with high performers, the truth is they’re bored. They don’t feel the joy in it anymore. They took on so many obligations because they are good that they can do anything. They end up doing everything, so they don’t feel connected to anything. The ultimate danger for successful people is that they can end up going through the motions because they can get away with it. I have the blessing on a daily and weekly basis of coaching the world’s top performers in any given industry. These are gold medal Olympic level people. This is when I get the call to work with an Usher or an Oprah. This is when I get the call to work with Fortune 50 CEOs and many people don’t realize that their next level isn’t the next level of achievement. It’s the next level of alignment and the next level of feeling.
When you realize that, you start aligning to the things that bring you back to life. You bring more of your life into the things and that shifts everything for people. I have learned that too. We’ve all been on stages in our career where we’re good and that’s when it’s most dangerous. You have to determine how much of you are you going to bring into your work and what is that work. A lot of people are busy. They’ve got a task that they’ve got to do. They’re good at that but their busy work isn’t always their life’s work. That’s why they’re suffering inside.
Do you believe in the concept that good is the enemy of great?
No, good is the gateway to great. I don’t think it’s an enemy, it is a necessary step. People view that wrong. It’s like, “I want people to get good at what they’re doing,” but then realize that’s the gate. Greatness is not always just another level of skill. It’s another level of presence, joy and confidence. When you step into greatness, you’re going to have to learn more skills. When you step into greatness, there’s going be more required of you. It might not be that you’re as good as when you’re reaching greatness. You might not have the skill level you have in another area where you were this good, because now more is demanded of you. People mistake this all the time. They think, “When I have greatness, I have total confidence and certainty.” The reality is when you have greatness, more stuff comes at you that you don’t know how to deal with.
I’m experiencing that myself. What you’re talking about ties into some of your habits particularly the third one. Let me digress here. I’m in the middle of your book. I read a summary, so I have the context of the entire book. I’m in the middle of High Performance Habits and it’s outstanding. In the book, it sounds like you believe success has little to do with some of the things that we’re all told by other gurus to keep a journal, self-quantify, play to your strengths or Malcolm Gladwell talks about lugging your 10,000 hours of practice. Why do you think it’s different?
Each of those has different arguments to them. The perspective that we have is a real blessing. For those who don’t know, High Performance Habits is the culmination of what is now the world’s largest study of high performers that’s ever been done. With data from people from over 190 countries who are validated to be high performers. These are people who tend to be the top 15% of the most successful people in the world in their fields. We’ve got the data. A lot of the people are teaching from what they think, what they feel, or what their personal development experience has been about. Mine is from two things. The deepest research that has been ever done in the field and two, I do the work in charge of the transformation of people’s lives.
It’s not like I’m theoretical in an Ivory Tower. It’s like, “I live to do this at the highest levels. I get paid if I get the transformation. I don’t get paid if I don’t get results.” We spent over a million dollars on the study with some of the biggest academic teams and the smartest people on the planet to make sure we did it right. We had more data. Some of those common things that people get wrong are very easy to explain. People think that your personality matters, take Myers-Briggs and figure out or take all these different psychological things to figure out what your strengths are. What we’ve found is high performers don’t necessarily work on their strengths any more than anybody else does.
They’re often asking a different question. They’re not going in every situation going, “What am I good at here and where can I excel uniquely because this is my strength at birth?” The Strengths Movement was all founded upon the idea that you are inherently born with specific strengths, that you’re born with these talents. That’s what the Strengths Movement is. That you naturally have an inclination toward certain things and that is true. Sometimes at the highest level, it doesn’t matter because to become great, you have to go beyond your comfort zone. Your comfort zones are your strengths. Sometimes to reach the next level, you’ve got to go beyond that. What we found is high performers aren’t so much saying, “What’s my strengths and how do I apply them there?” Instead they walk into a situation and say, “What is required to be of service here and how do I grow into that person or develop the skills that would be required to succeed here?” No one walks into the passive investment field and goes, “I’m naturally born with this.” It’s like, “No, you’ve got to learn.”
If you want to succeed, you’ve got to figure it out. You’ve got to develop. You grow into greatness, you are born with it. That’s the data. That’s super clear. The high performers are as much likely to work in areas of their strengths as other people as average performers. It’s instead of the specific habits. It’s not about their personality, it’s about their practices and how they go about things. Let’s talk about Malcolm Gladwell because a lot of the people haven’t seen the research on that or heard Malcolm discredit. Malcolm Gladwell borrowed the 10,000 hours concept from a researcher named Anders Ericsson. He wrote a book called Peak. Anders is the world-renowned leading expert on how to develop expertise. He is high above anyone else in that field. What Malcolm got wrong is he was saying, “Do your 10,000 hours and that’s what makes the difference.” Anders wasn’t saying that. It’s famous in a lot of Malcolm Gladwell interviews and a lot of interview with Anders has helped explain how Malcolm got that wrong, which he admits.
What Anders was saying is it’s not just the hours of practice, it’s the type of practice. If you do a skill over and over again, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get better at it. You need to have a specific type of feedback as you’re doing it and specific challenges as you’re doing it to be able to get better. You can do a skill a million times. You could put 10,000 hours doing it by yourself. If you put 10,000 hours on and you had a coach watching you, giving you feedback, giving you higher challenges, you would get better with that type of practice. That was what was missed.
We have a whole chapter in High Performance Habits where we talk about this concept of progressive mastery and how a world-class swimmer would attain it, a world-class investor, a world-class runner, a world-class violinist or a world-class academics. There’s a way to progressively develop mastery faster. The problem for high performance habits is if do these specific types of practices and regardless of your personality profile, regardless of your strengths, you’ll get ahead. In any given field, anyone who has any life experience is recognized in any given field at the top. There are lots of different people with lots of different personalities who succeed even sometimes despite their personality, so it can’t be about personality.
You said you grow into your greatness. That is so spot on because you do.
One of the most important things for people and I’m passionate about this like you are is helping them with education because if you leave your growth to randomness, then you’ll always be locked in the land of mediocrity which is what most people do. They hope they get better but what high performers do is they architect it. You’re an architect in your growth by joining masterminds, by going to events, by doing continuing education, by interviewing people like this. If I show up into someone’s life I’d like to say, “Open up your laptop and show me your calendar.” If I look at their calendar for the next six months and I can’t see scheduled time for personal and professional development, literally blocks or days of time, when they’re working on something, they’re masterminding, they’re taking a class, they mark at this time to read this book or finishes an online course then I’m like, “They’re just leaving it to luck.” Your learning to luck is guaranteeing mediocrity.
That is planning to fail. You’re planning to fail. Brendon, you believe peak performance comes from building the right six habits and this is what your book is about, what you call the HP6 or High Performance Six. The first one is, I want to say it’s obvious but it probably isn’t to many people and that is to seek clarity. Give us an overview of what this chapter is about.
For someone who speaks, this is probably obvious. What we found in high-performance research, studies and coaching is that common sense is not always common practice. You’ve got this situation where everyone knows it should be seeking clarity and those that say, “Get clarity.” One of the quintessential things that differentiate high performers from average performers is when they wander in situations, they actively seek clarity. For what’s required to win there, for what’s required of them there, for what they want, how they want to meet and contribute, what skills might be necessary to win there? The same thing when you walk into a meeting, the average performer just strolls in a meeting dumb to the world and a high performer has stopped through. What does each person in that meeting need? What’s the outcome we are after?
They are always asking themselves questions to get clarity about how to win. They don’t do it when they turn 30, 40, 50, 60. Most people, the only real clarity they seek is on New Year’s Eve when they are inebriated. Very few people sit down on Sunday, look at the week that is coming up and think, “What do I strategically need to do to add more value in these upcoming meetings? What do I need to do to win this week? Let me get clear about what I should cancel and what I should focus on. Let me get clear about my goals.” Everyone says the goals are important while so few people look at them every day. Everyone says, “I need to be clear about my mission, my values. I need to start each day with intention. I need to be clear about what makes my marriage successful. Common sense is not always a common practice. Very few people think about clarity until they’re in trouble and that’s why they never become high performers.
I don’t think it starts with the meeting or your goals, it has to go all the way back to what brings you meaning and purpose as a person. You’ve got to start at the core of it and then work out. If you’re doing something and you’re achieving your goals, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be fulfilling. It goes back to there are successful people who know how to write out and achieve goals, but they feel that there’s something missing, that there’s something else out there and they’re not happy.
We did hundreds of interviews with the high performers and asked them, “What exactly are they seeking clarity on?” It came down to this framework The Future Four. They are seeking clarity on who they want to be in the future, how they want to treat and interact with other people and what skills they need to develop to advance and win. What service they can provide, do or be a part of that would give them meaning and fulfillment. It’s self, social, skill and service. They think about those four areas more than the average person and that’s why they get above average results.
I had a friend of ours on an episode here, Dean Graziosi. One of the exercises he does is he has people ask the question why at least seven times to drill down. Every time you answer the question, “Why?” ask it again, “Why did you answer it that way?” You get down to the core of it eventually. Sometimes it brings emotions and tears to your eyes but ultimately, that’s where you get down to meaning and purpose.
Even the act of asking why is seeking clarity and that’s what high performers do more often.
I teach my daughter this but most people don’t ask the question of why. I say often enough but sometimes ever. That’s a good skill.
Most people don’t ask any questions. Asking a question is a proactive thing. Most people are reactive. They show up and take what’s there. They take instruction. They show up and do what the world says to do and that’s why they struggle. The promise of high performance as we get to these habits is that to be academically clear for people high performance isn’t a myth or a concept. It’s something you can truly measure. What’s magical about it is that you can reach high performance, which is defined as achieving long-term success and sustaining it over a period of time versus the standard norms of your industry or topic area. In order to have it, it’s correlated directly with achieving well-being and maintaining positive relationships.
I bring that up because a lot of people dream of something or they think of something and they think they have to ruin their life to go get it. They do have clarity, but they don’t have clarity on exactly what they’re after. You want long-term success, but you want long-term success only if you can maintain positive relationships and maintaining your health and well-being. If you compromise your health and well-being or your relationships, that will ultimately steal from your long-term success or at least make it feel hollow. When you’re seeking clarity, know that the success you’re after and the only one that can be maintained over a long period of time at the highest levels is the one where you are also clear about the fact that you’ve got to create awesome relationships along the way and you’ve got to take care of your health and well-being. If you compromise any of those two, you compromise the third.
You break down seeking clarity into the self and that is acting like the person you want to be, so you develop those skills and those strengths, you set goals. One of my mentors taught me this. He says, “Be the person you want to become.” I think about that a lot. I always put myself out of my comfort zone to be the person I want to become. In that way, I find that I act and talk that way. It helps me to grow because it’s stretching that rubber band and it doesn’t go back once you’ve stretched it.
Some of you will have that intention, let’s give a tactic to do that. We talked about it in the book. If our audience would identify three words that would describe the best of who you could be. These are three words you would love to have on your tombstone. These three words you would be proud of. These three words you would feel like, “If I lived with the intention to be these three words in life, I would be a good human and I would achieve my goals.” The simple tactic is once you have those three words put them in your phone as an alarm label to go off three times a day. As I go throughout my day, my phone vibrates and I look down and there’s an alarm going off and the label says, “My three words.”
I’ve taught millions of people to do this. I know the biggest names in the world. I know the words on their phone and they love this activity. Your phone can either be a weapon of mass distraction or you can use it as a tool to get better. The alarm that goes off with your three words on it, no matter how long you have that thing set, you’ll forget about it. It will buzz and you will look down to your words and you’re like, “Am I living those words right now? Am I becoming these words that I’d be proud of?” It trains you to live into your best self. If you have to look at it multiple times a day every day, it trains your brain to be more intentional about those things and you become it.
I went through a similar exercise in one of my mastermind groups and someone was speaking and I forgot who it was. They had us describe ourselves and then reduce it down to seven words and no more. You cannot go more than seven words including the word ‘and.’ This is similar to what you’re talking about. I reduced mine down to the following seven and I’m going to share this openly with the world. It’s this: successful, investor, entrepreneur, mentor, father and husband. If I was to do what you said, put that in my phone and have it pop up as a reminder, that’s ultimately what I want to keep in front of myself.
Then one-layer deep is, how do you want to be in each of those? When you take successful husband, what are three words that describe what that is or what are the three phrases that describe what a good husband is? We can all say, “I want to be a good husband,” but if we go one layer deep and say, “A good husband means to listen to the wife, showing gratitude and appreciation.” Put those three things, “Flirt with your wife.” When those pop up, those are actions and directives to achieve the good husband stuff.
That’s a good exercise. I’m going to do that.
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Brendon and I went on for over an hour, so I’ve had to cut this episode with him into two parts. Stay tuned for part two. I hope you’re enjoying our conversation about high performance habits. He is a dynamic and amazing person so do look into his book and his programs. Also, stay tuned for the second part of this episode where he has a little freebie for you. I hope you enjoy it. We’ll talk soon.
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