The CEO's Playbook for Impactful Leadership with Gary Laney

Unlock the secrets to influential leadership with Gary Laney, the trailblazing CEO of Success Masters, as he takes us on a journey through his latest book and the evolving world of trust-based relationships in business. Prepare to be captivated as Gary peels back the layers on how to cultivate a commanding presence in any room. His tales of adaptability during the pandemic and the upcoming collaboration with the University of South Carolina are set to inspire leaders and entrepreneurs alike. As we pivot from philosophies to the nitty-gritty of strategic influence, our discussion with Gary promises to arm you with the tools for impactful leadership.

Embark on an entrepreneurial odyssey that defies the fear of failure and champions the spirit of perseverance. Gary and I dissect the emotional highs and lows of business ventures, highlighting the undeniable value of support systems and the mental toughness required for weathering storms. We challenge stigmas, celebrate the growth from setbacks, and underscore the importance of embracing risk. This episode isn't just about surviving the entrepreneurial battlefield; it's about thriving amidst the chaos and coming out stronger on the other side.

Conclude your listening adventure with actionable leadership insights that bridge the gap between learning and doing. From the intricacies of B2C and B2B dynamics to engaging with employees on a profound level, this episode is a masterclass in leadership versatility. And for a final dash of motivation, Gary shares a humorous, relatable tale that embodies the relentless pace of startup life. Connect with Gary, grab his book, "The Power of Strategic Influence!" and join us at the Influential Leadership Symposium for an experience that could redefine your trajectory.

Find Gary here.

www.ThePowerOfStrategicInfluence.com 
Newsletter: subscribe@6spheres.com 
www.linkedin.com/company/thepowerofstrategicinfluence
www.facebook.com/PowerofStrategicInfluence 
www.SuccessMasters.com 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to Voice Like Lion podcast. I'm your host, steven Pemberton, and today we have someone that I think we're going to find really, really interesting. I'm excited to get to learn from him his experiences and to get to hear about his new book coming up. So this is Gary Laney. He is the CEO of Success Masters, a 35 year business veteran, serial entrepreneur and author now two time author. Gary is a two time bestselling author. What was his story? Is this your third book?

Speaker 2: 0:24

So yeah, it's going to be a third one, and then what I co-authored with, so three. I guess you want to Amazing.

Speaker 1: 0:29

There you go. So Gary is a two time bestselling author, former high tech software executive and a serial entrepreneur, having been personally involved in 20 plus startups, gary was co-founder and CEO of Trust Stegrity, a professional networking company which Gary turned into a national organization. He's a dynamic speaker. Gary has presented to and motivated more than 100,000 executives, entrepreneurs, business professionals, sales and customer support people. Gary, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Hey, thank you. Nice to have this opportunity to be with you. Appreciate it, Steven.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Absolutely. I'm excited to have you here. I know we connected through LinkedIn because I saw a little bit of your history and what you've done, and I'm fascinated by your experiences. For me, I've been a business owner for the last four years. You've been in business significantly longer, and so I'm excited to get to learn, not only for everyone listening, but also, if I'm honest, a little bit for myself too. So, with being so, actually, first and foremost, tell me a little bit about Success Masters.

Speaker 2: 1:29

This is a kind of a holding company that I've had for many years. Actually, when I was in this, when I spoke full time back in my 30s so it's been a few years Success Masters was the name of my business and then, you know, the internet was just coming around. I know you're you weren't around back then probably, but the internet didn't allow you to buy domains, obviously back then. So we didn't have any domains, so I used it in my local state at the time and then I lost it and then about 30 years later I got it back. So Success Masters is now becoming the forefront of my business. It hasn't been in the past.

Speaker 2: 2:09

It's always been kind of the holding company of up to seven businesses at a time, and so now it's becoming the forefront for my speaking business, for my advisory business, for the events business that I'm developing and mostly, just so you know, during COVID I sold off most of my assets. I didn't think the events business was going to be around for a while and it wasn't, and but now it's coming back, storming back, and so now I've put Success Masters back in the forefront. I think it's going to become a good thing for me. So it's a good, good name. It's good. You know, I've always been a good name. I've always been into motivation, training, development, entrepreneurship, and so I think it's a good name for that. So I think I'm excited to use it.

Speaker 1: 2:52

I mean, that is an excellent name for that. Success Masters is an amazing domain name. Also, I heard you talk about events, so that's something that is one of my companies, that's Holoco. We specialize in online events, so I would love to hear what kind of events to your companies, what do they do, what do they put on?

Speaker 2: 3:08

So I'd love to know more about yours as well. So we'll have to exchange, you know, the information after. So, when I was in the networking business, I started this co-financial business in 2013 and 2020. I sold it and we did events throughout the nation, you know, in small pods if you will, with business people that wanted to get together. We formed groups and I would every week I was speaking. You know a couple of events.

Speaker 2: 3:34

This one is going to be different because the book I wrote, the Power of Strategic Influence all about self-development, it's about networking, it's about building your brand, it's about becoming who you can become. On the influence side of strategic meaning, it's not transactional, it's not a social media influence. We're looking for a relationship-based, trust-based type of influence and relationships. So the next book that I'm about to announce and I don't have the title quite nailed down yet, but it's going to be about influential leadership, which is the name of my newsletter. It's the name of the events I'm creating. So I'm moving quickly into the leadership side of events, not just motivational, not just entrepreneurship, but leadership, and that can run the gamut of entrepreneurs, who obviously are leaders, and many, many caps, and I've done that with 20 different businesses I've been involved in, but it can go to professional leadership, executive leadership and, in fact, the first event that is going to be live, that's going to be coming out announcement-wise for April 5th, coming up this year in conjunction with the University of South Carolina. I'm excited.

Speaker 2: 4:50

That's the first time I've really mentioned this event, but we're getting close next week to announcing it at large. We're working with the business school there, they're hosting it, they're partnering with me and we have a great lineup of speakers, including Nando Cesaron, who I interviewed to be featured in my new book several months ago. He's the president of UPSUS, an amazing leader and has experience that everybody needs to know about. So he'll be not only featured in my book but he'll also be featured as a keynote speaker at my event. We also have other amazing executives involved, including as well as the dean of business and so on. So I'm not going to give the whole agenda because I haven't really announced it, but you can look for it. It's called the influential leadership symposium and we'll have a lineup, a half-day lineup of speakers, including myself, to talk about the new book and be doing a sit-down, hopefully with some of them in a panel discussion.

Speaker 2: 5:50

But great people involved senior executives that have been involved for 20, 30, 40, 50 years, including myself. I stick myself in that realm. So excited about that, and that could become the model for many other opportunities like that in the future. What I'm excited about I love online, and so I definitely want to collaborate with you on that, but this is what I've been doing in the past. I'm kind of old school. I love the live element not only live, but in person.

Speaker 2: 6:18

And so it'll be great to get together on a personal basis and see how that goes.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Yeah, I love that. I think that that's an incredible way to discuss it, especially your new event. I think that that's incredible. The University of South Carolina Now, I'm from Tennessee, so I'm a little bit against the University of South Carolina since I'm a Tennessee Balls fan, but we'll let it slip on this time.

Speaker 1: 6:39

We'll let it slip, but there's something that you mentioned and we absolutely will connect. Afterwards I'll talk about the online event stuff. I love online events, obviously, if I have a whole company around it. I also love in person. In person is incredible to me. There's an element, if I'm honest, that you lose because I can't physically. Even if we're having this conversation in person, I can physically be going with the flow a little easier. We can see each other. If the audience is interacting, they do things. Now you've got hybrid events, which is people in person and online yeah, wonderful. Keep it going online. I think those are great because those people online can still just be in solely in person or solely online. It's a hybrid mix of both.

Speaker 2: 7:26

But you talked about something with Successmasters.

Speaker 1: 7:28

Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 7:29

Go ahead. I like the hybrid approach because it allows your audience to be larger. People can join from whatever time zone. You might have to get up early or late, stay up late. But I was involved in a worldwide event virtual event a couple of months ago. I'm gonna be involved in another one, so I was like they called me the inaugural keynote speaker, which I thought was inflated on my basis.

Speaker 2: 7:53

But it was fun nonetheless. I was there their main keynote. We had 45 speakers around the world, I think, five different continents. It was really a great way to do that, and you couldn't possibly do that in person unless people travel.

Speaker 2: 8:09

So I think the online version is really cool, this one I'm talking about those specifically meant for a local community with a local business school and the University of South Carolina and people, some people flying in like me, so about half of us are flying in, the other half are local and all the business people. We're also inviting the business students from the school. They don't know that yet, but they'll be invited to come, have a certain limit, they'll be able to come in and not be charged for it. They'll have a free entrance. So I think it's a cool model and we're trying to bring the business community together with the students, our future leaders, right, so we can help see where that goes. I think it's gonna be a nice dialogue.

Speaker 1: 8:49

I love that.

Speaker 1: 8:50

I love that you're including the students, because you're not only being able to live with experience and the other speakers, but also you're able to pour into the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Speaker 1: 9:01

I think that that is an amazing thing to do, especially now. I think that that is the one, one aspect of being in business, and especially being a leader, that I've seen kind of fall to the wayside with the influencers and things that you see online is a lot of times people will become a leader or build a business, but then they'll turn around and they're trying to sell stuff to people instead of actually turning around and saying how can I actually help the next generation move forward? And that's one of the biggest things I've tried to do over the years. Every time I learned something, I try to turn around and teach it, especially if it's beneficial, if it can help somebody, because I've been there, I mean I'm, I know. I don't know how much of my story you know probably very little. Most people know very little of my back story, but I started a business very young.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Yeah, go ahead and tell me.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Tell me, I love love, started a business very young, started business at 20 with my wife and we lost everything within three months because I quit my job. I was the only one making money at that time and so I quit my job, came home, we had no skills and no financial backing, nothing. So we lost everything really really fast and I thought I was done with business forever. And then I spent five and a half years in the corporate job, moved up with no college degree, no connections, and moved up in a corporate job from the basically right above the janitor as a warehouse worker all the way up in the mid management. And after five and a half years my wife had started an Amazon company which then did really well, did a million dollars in a year, and I said you know what? The margins were terrible. The margins were 10% and we had a financial backer that took about half of that. So we left.

Speaker 1: 10:37

I left my corporate job. We went fully into business together to just restructure the whole thing because I thought, okay, I'm in supply chain and logistics. If I can restructure it to where we can get 20% without a win, cut back on what the financial backers getting, we're actually making a significant amount of money comparatively to what I was doing. So that's what I did and that's that's kind of my backstory in a nutshell. Then we had another business. I went to a million after that one, and so we've made a decent amount of money online. But every time we made money and we would turn around and we just give it away. Hey, this is what you do, this is what you don't do. Watch out for this, because I've been in those spots where I've been. Just somebody help me, somebody, give me my next step.

Speaker 2: 11:17

So I love that your event is doing that for the people that are there learning about business yeah, so hopefully the idea is to say you know future leaders, you know listen, because we've learned a few things and we transition, so you have a better start, hopefully, than what we have. And you know, I was fortunate in the in the ask respect that my family had a business I grew up in, so my father was an entrepreneur, my grandfather was an entrepreneur, my great-grandfather was an entrepreneur, and so I grew up in that setting with people that didn't work for other people, that work for themselves and and just knew at some day some the point I would I would be coming on to bear as well.

Speaker 2: 11:56

I really feel like was always an entrepreneur, I just had to be given the opportunity. But the fact that you jumped into it, you know, without hesitation, you and your wife at 20 years old, come on, that's great and then got these valuable lessons that you can teach other people going forward. Sometimes you know, I think that's even better, because what did you have to lose? Not a lot, because you didn't have a lot of assets to begin with and but you know you, you try to. You felled and you learned a lot from it. Then your wife started something that became significant as far as a small business. You just had to figure out how to make profits from it yeah and now you know you're working together.

Speaker 2: 12:35

I mean, my wife has been involved, so I've owned 12 businesses. I've got a 13, 13th I've started. I've been involved in others as a startup executive, but she's been involved in several of them and and we've you know we've had a lot of stressful times. We've had some really great times during the business, and one that she we built for her specifically and the great, great experience because she's a very talented writer and editor and so she was involved in one of the first online fashion kind of magazines or blogs ever called shishimicom back in the day was very popular. So I just really admire what you've done, stephen, thank you.

Speaker 2: 13:17

I had the training. I grew up in it. My dad trained me on every aspect of the business when I went to get my MBA at Northwestern Kellogg, which is an outstanding school Just ranked number two this year. I've been ranked number one many times as a business school, but I already felt like I had my first MBA. So what you've gone through on your own, with you and your wife, you're getting to experience a lot of MBA students never have. They come into it very smart academically, but not experience wise, so they might have theory in their minds and they might be willing to work hard. A lot of them do really well because they're smart anyway. But the fact that you've had the experience, you've had the opportunity to lose when you didn't have a lot If you were worth 10 million, you lost all. 10 million would have hurt a lot more.

Speaker 2: 14:08

So maybe you lost a few thousand dollars. I don't know what you put into it, but you have your whole life ahead of you, so I really admire what you did. I think more young people should jump in and both feet and lose a few things and then come out smiling saying that was a great experience. I didn't lose a lot compared to people that have a lot of money and I'm ready to go after. The key is not to fall off and then be deflated and walk away.

Speaker 2: 14:36

The key is to have a survival mindset, which is what I teach in my book. The first chapter is be prepared, because life's going to get tough and if you fall off, you should jump back on it. But you should start with a survival mindset that says no matter what life throws at me, I can survive. I've already made the commitment, I've already made a decision. So, failure or not, I'm actually prepared for failure. Let it happen, I'm going to continue regardless. And then you start working on what that means to going forward. But anyway, I really appreciate that. You shared what you went through and you have my gosh so much ahead of you, so I'm really excited for you.

Speaker 1: 15:14

Thank you, see, I love that that is your first chapter, because I wish I would have read that first chapter before getting into business. That'd been really good, because I think it's so interesting with people my age, and especially younger now, is people who are 20 or even up to into their 30s is they think that everyone's watching them, so they're just afraid to fail. So if they launch a business, if they have this idea, they want to be successful because they're afraid of what their mom, their dad, their best friends are going to say about them, the people at their church, whatever it is, but honestly, nobody's watching you. Like, now is the perfect time to fail, because in just really just giving a new shift, a new perspective to what failure looks like, failure is not the end of your life. That's when we lost everything. We had to move in with family and live in this basement with gigantic spiders, and I had a six month old son and I thought I was the end for me. I told my wife and I've told this story a few times I was having, I was depressed, I had suicidal thoughts because I thought that that was it. And I look back on that and I go that's insane, I was 20. It's like I'm 20 years old and I thought that my life was over.

Speaker 1: 16:22

So just being able to reframe what failure means. Failure is just you win both ways in business. If you start something and it fails, so called you learn something right. If you start a business and it's successful, guess what? You learn that way too. But just reframing failure to learning and just being willing to fail early and often, even in a business, even in a business like Google. Google is a massive juggernaut, but Google has a graveyard of ideas, of different apps, of different websites, of different things that they've done. Does that mean that they're a failure? Absolutely not. We still say, hey, go Google it. But the reason why they've been so successful is they're willing to fail early and often.

Speaker 2: 17:00

Hey. So there was a guy that I admire who talked about his mentors. You have a mentor helping your business. He said, yeah, I have two that are called trial and error. I mean that's really mentoring.

Speaker 2: 17:12

The best way to get mentored is to make a mistake, to try something. See your ad. It gives you a definition for your position and you step back, you resize the situation, you make a plan, you move forward and that's all business is. It's reiterative, so you can go. I call it sensitivity analysis. That's what we learned when I was in business school. You make a little change and see where it goes and you stop, improve, move forward and you don't try to change everything at once. You don't try to come in with all the answers. You come in with one that sounds like a pretty good idea. You try it. It doesn't work. You make a little adjustment, you keep going and that's just all it is. I mean even Elon Musk through everything at the wind, everything he had, from PayPal $170 million in something into three companies and fortunately they all worked out. I mean SpaceX he was down to the last launch, had no more capital, and somehow it succeeded and now it's worth $100 billion. So I mean we can learn a lot from his lessons, what he did.

Speaker 1: 18:17

There is a book that somebody sent me. It's called the Founders. If you ever get a chance to read the Founders, it talks about not only it's the journey of all the founders of PayPal. So the reason why I really enjoy this book I'm about halfway through it and it's a decent sized book but what I love about it is it talks about their stories.

Speaker 1: 18:36

I didn't know that Elon Musk had actually so we hear about his successes now and going all in from the PayPal stuff but I didn't know that he had actually gone all in on a different business that ended up becoming PayPal. He had a business called Zip2. And Zip2, whenever they exited, zip2 sold for over $300 million. He got, I think, $21 million of it. He started what was excom then and then he poured in I think over half of his entire net worth at that time into this business. So he poured millions of dollars into this thing, which then eventually they merged with another company called Confinity. It becomes PayPal.

Speaker 1: 19:12

But I just think that that kind of mindset because being willing to, most people would walk away with $21 million. I had an angel investor on the show who one of his companies exited for $21 million and I asked him I said why did one of your portfolio companies exit for $400 million and why does another one only exit for $15 million? And he said well, a lot of it is not actually the success of the company, a lot of it is the owner, the founder. They decide, hey, if I can exit this thing for $30 million and go home with $20 million, then why would I not? That changes my life, changes my kids' life, my great-grandkids' lives, and so just a hear of a founder who won, like technically making $21 million on exit, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2: 19:52

And then deciding.

Speaker 1: 19:53

I'm ready to go back in with all of it to build something that he then PayPal. Same thing. I'm going all in again. There's a lot to learn from that.

Speaker 2: 20:02

We don't all have to become Warren Buffett or Elon Musk, and so, first of all, let's just put that out there, because not everybody has the expectations and some people have different priorities. But Warren Buffett, you know, berkshire Hathaway is the name of his company, first business that he acquired, and it failed. And for some reason he wanted to take that name and prove to the world that he could succeed, and so everything underneath that umbrella has been marvellously successful in so many ways. And Elon Musk, I admire him so much that he put everything into it. I heard that when he invested in SpaceX and Tesla, et cetera, that the guy was like living in a trailer or something.

Speaker 2: 20:43

He had nothing to live on, his cash flow was zero and the guy just had this headstrong attitude that he was going to succeed in some way, giving SpaceX I think like a 10% chance or something. I forget what his estimation was, but it wasn't a huge number, but it turned out. So the guy now is considered a genius technologically. He's willing to take the risk, he's willing to bring the right people together, he knows how to build the right kind of team. I mean, you learned that. That's how you learn, but first you have to first try it out on yourself. You have to learn on your own merit. One of my capable of can I withstand the struggle, the adversity, all the things that come along your way? And so that decision up front that's why I always say it, because I've managed and trained thousands of salespeople you have to go into this thinking okay, this is a lot of averages. Don't get discouraged because someone said no. Don't get discouraged because something you worked on fell and didn't go forward.

Speaker 2: 21:44

You have to look at the perspective of the future and say you know, first one could be a win, could be a not, could not be a win, it doesn't really matter. It's learning the business, it's learning the skill sets, and that's why my second book that's coming out is going to be about leadership competency. So everybody gets into a business. They have one competency, something they're really good at. They help some succeed Might be their technological ability. They can really be programally well. They might be good at sales. If you want to continue and sustain your leadership, you have to learn how to learn other competencies too.

Speaker 2: 22:20

How do you relate to the people in your business You're hiring? Unless you have some idea of what they're doing, you don't have to be an expert at it. You have to have some level of expertise in terms of understanding. So when you get together with them, they relate to you. You relate to them, you can give some perspective, you know that they're on course and they look at you as an inspiration. So I think that's why I'm focusing on that so much now, because I think one win, one opportunity that went well does not define you. You might just have to get out and retire when you're 25. But look at the waste, the opportunity. You'd have to do much more. Maybe you want to sock away 15 of that and take 10 million and do something marvelous, like you could transcend what you did the first time. But your life is to be lived and you have to treat it like it's a living aspect of your thought process. Otherwise you give up. You'll probably die when you're 30. I don't know, but so it's important to have that kind of perspective.

Speaker 1: 23:22

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly because of a couple of different things. So, with Amazon, facebook, shopify, that's where our success was originally in e-commerce, and what's fascinating about e-commerce is there's two different sides of it. There's the side that all the people online see where it's oh wow, look, you're traveling all the time, you're able to do whatever you want to. For the most part, you're making really good money and you see it from influencers. Well, here, go learn how to drop ship or whatever it may be. But you don't see the other side of it, which is in a B2C setting. It's fantastic because you're getting these micro wins a lot of them a day. For us, it was 300 orders a day, and so you're getting micro wins all the time. But honestly, it doesn't if you hit the jackpot, like we did, which is what it felt like when we went from Amazon and we transitioned over to Facebook and Shopify, because, in the matter of time, that transition happened. Within three months, we went from zero to doing close to $100,000 a month, and when that happens, we didn't build the resiliency. With B2B, like you said, there's the law of averages. So how many times are you getting on calls? How many times are it's okay if people tell you no, but when you're so used to 300 orders a day, 3,400 orders, and you go from that to switching into a B2B side, which is what we have now, it's much different. But the thing that I do love about what you talked about with leadership is I love the concept that you just said and I don't want people to miss it.

Speaker 1: 24:51

When I was in corporate, I my first endeavor into leadership. They let me be over a entire warehouse in East Texas and at that time I think I was the youngest manager in this Fortune 500 company. At that time I was 23. And what was amazing about it was I came in and it was the worst location in the entire region by far. And so I come in and it was a absolute dumpster fire.

Speaker 1: 25:17

But what I did because I'd worked my way up in that same vertical that when I got there, I was able to go to each and every one of the employees and ask them just a couple of simple questions hey, what do you, what do you love about working here? What do you hate? What do you wish was different? And I was able to learn what I could fix. There were certain things I had to go to management for above me to get you know, get the right approvals. But if there was things that I could handle, I fixed it and I didn't just tell them I knew the job. I didn't just rally them and say you guys got this, you can do it. I was out there with them. I showed them. I know what you feel like. I've been there, I've done this and so I could promise you that if you do these things I'm asking you to enact, it's going to get better. And we went from the worst location that and then within 90 days we were the best and all it took was buying.

Speaker 1: 26:01

So I love the. I love that concept that, as a leader, it's about getting the buy-in and showing the people that you're not just there to talk to them. You're not a talking head. Most people on the front lines, especially frontline workers, they hear the talking heads all the time but they want to know do you care and, if so, how much do you care? That's what I've seen from frontline workers. They just want to know that you care and how much you care.

Speaker 2: 26:23

Hey, steven, I've managed a lot of people and I remember one of my managers one time told me she says you know, my experience is the higher you get in an organization, the dumber you get. I said what does that mean? She said because you know you lose contact, you lose perspective of what the business is about. You're not in the trenches, you're not relating to the people doing the work, you're just looking at the numbers. You're waiting for the number and the report so you can go to your boss and say I'm doing a good job. You can get a pat on the back. But you know, the leaders that do the best are the ones that are influential and I like that term, because you can't be influential unless you're inspiring people. You can't be influential unless you are competent and they respect what you know, what you do in your example. You can't be influential unless you're in the crowd. You know we're not going to get into politics here, but there are politicians and business leaders out there that are much more influential because they relate to the crowd, they get involved with them. They relate to them, they talk to them on their terms. They don't just, you know, give you the next buzzword and say learn it, because you know we have to act like we're in business. They relate to the people because of the job they're doing and they can, you know, contribute if they have some knowledge of that. So I really think you have to be. You know, benjamin Franklin is one of my heroes because he learned at a young age 20 years old, by the way he decided that he wanted to perfect his character. Now try that one for size. Character characters are very, very wide attribute and it includes, you know, dozens of things you need to do to become the strong individual and have the traits that people respect on a variety of variety of levels. But at age 20, he said I'm going to. There are 13 virtues I care about, because I think my behavior and those 13 things are not acceptable. So every week I'm going to spend a week working on one trade, one virtue In business. I'm trying to teach business people. I have, for 40 years, by the way, my salespeople.

Speaker 2: 28:32

I used to do the same thing. I'd say, okay, pick 13 things. I'd say, why 13? Well. I'd say, well, how many times does 13 go into 52? Oh, wow, it goes in four times. That's kind of cool.

Speaker 2: 28:41

So every week we're going to work on one of the things you care about. I don't care if it's closing, I don't care if it's learning how to open a discussion, I don't care if it's about how to approach and make someone comfortable when they first meet. You Work on that for an entire week. Do nothing else that entire week, but work on that one attribute. The next week you go to number two, next week number three, so you get to 13. Now you have 13 weeks of working on your attributes, one week at a time, which is a lot of emphasis, not 10 minutes, like a lot of people say. I have got these 10 things I want to work on. I'm going to work on them 10 minutes a day, an hour a day, whatever.

Speaker 2: 29:16

Try taking something you care about and work on it for one solid week and see how you feel at the end and evaluate yourself. Did I learn from it? You may not perfect it you won't, obviously but you will understand it much better than you thought you understood it before. And then do that whole series four times a year, like Benjamin Franklin did until he was toward the end of his life. No wonder the guy was a statesman. No wonder he was an inventor. No wonder he was so talented in so many things. He'd worked on it his whole life. So I think we have to learn from people like that and there are people today alive that do stuff like that but I think he was an amazing example. I like to use him.

Speaker 1: 29:59

That is genius. So talking about having it 13 and breaks it down into 52 four times and then doing one thing a week, I know for a fact. The question is this in your book yes, okay, so I need to get this, it's coming.

Speaker 1: 30:14

It's going to bleed out because I'm I'm thick into it, my head's into it, so, yes, I need to get this book because that is one of the most genius concepts I've ever heard, especially when you talk about personal development. Personal development is a hot topic. That's something that a lot of people are involved in. But just thinking about that on a granular scale right, because everyone wants to have, like you said, I got 10 things I want to work on this week, but what if it was just one thing? What if you just were working on one thing every day?

Speaker 1: 30:40

I think that that getting it on a granular level and saying this is what I'm focusing on, this is what I'm working on this week, it's easier to see. Well, I improved in that area, or I didn't. I learned or I didn't, because, instead of it being 10, because 10, you're going to be scattered. One thing is much easier to keep up with than many things, so I love that. So when your book does release, I will make sure to update it and have it in the show notes, because I want people to get this thing.

Speaker 2: 31:05

I'm excited to do that. But listen, I'm not talking about tasks. We have dozens of tasks we have to work on. You can't get away from doing the business. We're talking about self development, which you mentioned. How do you develop yourself? You can't divide yourself. I'm going to learn how to sing, how to write, how to become an artist, and I'm going to spend 30 minutes a day at all those things. Imagine if you sit for one week. I'm going to learn how to do art and you have somebody that actually mentors you in some way. There's trial and error and then I'm going to, at the end of the week, look at it and say how was I at the beginning of the week compared to the end of the week? Is?

Speaker 2: 31:43

there a difference and I know there's no question that it would be better and different and improved. And then, 13 weeks later, you do it again for a solid week. If something is super important to you and you have to it's critical to your business maybe you focus on it for two weeks or a whole month, but the concept is 13 and it is genius because it allows you to repeat it and repeat it and never stop. It's continuous, it's perpetual and in the end there's enormous results. I've seen it in myself people how they've taken something they really wanted to work on and then next week we're going to the next and over a three month period, seeing how they enlarge their capacity, and it's just enormous. It's just really cool, wow.

Speaker 1: 32:28

So, gary, I want to give the audience an opportunity to connect with you. How would people connect with you?

Speaker 2: 32:33

A couple of ways so the name of my book is also one of my websites.

Speaker 2: 32:38

So the power of strategicinfluencecom that's my first book. It was the number one Amazon bestseller. This is my baby, because for 35 plus years I taught concepts from influence that I learned from Stephen Covey way back in the day, when he was alive and just becoming popular, the author of seven habits of highly effective people. But of course, his was kind of a philosophical approach. I needed to turn it into a practical approach to the way salespeople could actually do something with it, not just get psyched up, and so that's why that book came out. I interviewed 12 people that are tremendous leaders six men, six men, six women, my new book.

Speaker 2: 33:23

I'll have also a website for it, but just so you know, it has two men, two women, because I have four sections. One of the leaders is Nando Cesarone, who I mentioned, president of UPS, david Meltzer's in the book, cindy Bigelow's in the book you know from Bigelow Tea, and then we also have Jody Richards, who's the CEO of Process Technology. So those are the four that I focused on in my first, the second book. They exemplify the principles that I'm trying to teach as far as competency. So take management, franklin on a character initiative, and now let's, let's substitute that character word with competency. So how do we become competent with 13 that we choose? There are hundreds of competencies you could mask, you maybe not master, but at least acquire, but there must be 13 that really matter to you most in your life and in your business.

Speaker 2: 34:15

And so, to get ahold of me, you can go to the power of strategic influencecom. You can go to my personal website, which is GaryCLaneycom. You can also go to Amazon. You know where I've got my books and there's ways to read about the author. Get ahold of the author. So probably the best ways, and I'll have a new website up, you know, in the next two months as well, and so, by the way, the people we're looking hopefully to invite, if you're from South Carolina or their boss within a metro area and you want to be able to attend this event, the event's called influential leadership symposium and both business students and business people can attend that event. It should be a great event.

Speaker 1: 34:59

I love that, so everyone listening that will all be in the show notes so you can see it. If you're watching this on YouTube, it's in the description. But before I let you go, Gary, I always ask this question, which is tell me a funny story about a time that you're in leadership.

Speaker 2: 35:15

Wow, okay, I've not had that question for a long time, I don't think Funny story. So I, we were involved in a startup. We were doing retrofit things in California because the utility companies back then PG&E and SoCal gas would give you credits if you installed things that help you save energy. And so you know startups, you do crazy things and people don't sometimes realize what you have to do to make things happen. So we were doing this in California, even though I was from Utah and we were on flights going back and forth. We were trying to develop this business and so it's been helpful for the people to umaçete vances. One morning we had to get, so we got in late. We had nowhere to sleep, so we slept in the office and we just slept on the floor. I mean, I can't believe we did that. And then, about I don't know, it was 40 minutes before the flight, somebody woke up and said we're gonna miss our flight. It was kind of like Kevin you know on what's the Christmas movie? Oh yeah the.

Speaker 2: 36:29

Home Alone, home Alone. Thank you so much. I haven't thought about it. I couldn't have the title until just now, but they woke up and they're rushing to the airport. They leave Kevin behind, so that was what happened all about. So no one got left behind, but we, literally, through our coats on, we had blankets on the floor and we ran to the airport, made it. You know, by the time we would get out the door, we had 30 minutes to get to San Francisco SFO and we were probably 15 or 20 minutes away. That's not possible today Because back then 9-11 hadn't happened. You did not have to go through security, you could get to the airport and you could run into the plane and we were like the last people on the plane. We made it. So that's my funny story, I guess, for the day. But the trails, the trails of trying to become an entrepreneur, trying to make something happen, I guess.

Speaker 1: 37:21

Yeah, that's hilarious. I love that Because that reminds me of the first time after we moved halfway across the country. After I moved halfway across the country from Tennessee to Fort Worth, texas, I was flying back to have Thanksgiving with my family and I showed up early. I got off of work really late, because working in the warehouse we were working 12 to 14 hours at the minimum and I remember specifically I was like okay, my flight's at 7 am, I don't wanna miss it. It's already three o'clock in the morning. So I went there early. I'm sitting at my gate, I'm looking it's five o'clock, I go, okay, so we should start boarding pretty soon. Six o'clock rolls around 6.30. And I go, there's nobody here. This is weird. I look the gate had changed and it was all the way in the other side of DFW International, so I barely made it. I was the last one scooting in, so I completely understand that.

Speaker 2: 38:10

Well, DFW is not an easy airport. To get around here you have to take all those trains and things that get to your gate Exactly.

Speaker 1: 38:16

And I got lucky. There was a train pulling up right as I was running up the stairs and I was able to just jump on and go. If I hadn't been able to do that, I would have missed it.

Speaker 2: 38:24

Wow, good job. Well, you know, it's the fun of entrepreneurship and trying to do something to make flights, but flights are a little more difficult today, so you better plan ahead. So don't take my story and try to do that, because I'm probably one of them.

Speaker 1: 38:36

Oh no, Gary, thank you so much for joining me today on the show For everyone listening. Make sure that you that you not only listen to what Gary's telling you, but to take advantage of the books that he has for sale already. And if you're in the South Carolina area, be sure to see him at his events, and when his new book comes out he'll also be in the show notes. I'll make sure to update it. Gary, thank you again for joining me here on the show.

Speaker 2: 38:58

Likewise, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. I'll look forward to the next time. Thank you.