The Heart and Relationship Economy: Tom Ziglar [] Transform Your Future w/Eddie Podcast Ep 7

 Resources: Tom Ziglar's Books
 - 10 Leadership Virtues in Disruptive Times Here
- Choose to Win Here
Video version of this podcast episode here

The Heart and Relationship Economy
Delve into the future of the economy as Tom Ziglar discusses the shift towards a heart and relationship-driven era, influenced by AI's growing role. This episode unpacks how individuals and businesses can thrive by focusing on building strong relationships and leveraging AI to enhance their strategic advantages.

Guest: Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar Inc.
Host: Eddie Isin

In this transformative episode of Transform Your Future, host Eddie Isin sits down with Tom Ziglar, the CEO of Ziglar Inc. and son of the legendary motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. Together, they delve into the evolving landscape of the economy and business, focusing on the emerging heart and relationship economy driven by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). Tom shares invaluable insights on how personal connections and the human element are becoming increasingly vital in a world where technology is rapidly advancing.

Timecoded Highlights:

• [03:40-04:58] Tom Ziglar introduces the concept of the heart and relationship economy, explaining how disruptions, such as AI, are shifting the focus from knowledge-based to relationship-oriented business practices.
• [06:25-07:22] The evolution from the labor and knowledge economies to the heart economy, where emotional intelligence and relationship-building skills take precedence.
• [10:51-11:16] Discussion on how AI can facilitate more profound relationships rather than replace them, highlighting the importance of human interaction in business and personal growth.
• [19:26-20:28] Tom and Eddie discuss the pandemic's role in accelerating change and the necessity for adaptation and flexibility in professional and personal life.
• [34:08-35:06] The role of accountability in supporting the heart and relationship economy, ensuring that individuals are motivated by their personal goals and dreams, not just their paychecks.
• [47:00-48:59] Tom emphasizes the significance of expecting the best, preparing for the worst, and maximizing opportunities as essential strategies for thriving in the heart and relationship economy.
• [53:53-55:04] The enduring value of the human element and personal relationships in an era dominated by artificial intelligence and technological advancements.

Key Takeaways:

• The shift towards the heart and relationship economy is not just a change; it's an evolution that emphasizes the timeless value of human connections and emotional intelligence in the business world.
• Artificial intelligence and technology will not replace the need for human relationships; instead, they will serve as tools that can enhance our ability to connect and understand each other on a deeper level.
• Adaptability, a forward-thinking mindset, and a focus on personal growth and development are crucial for success in this new economic landscape.
• Building and maintaining strong relationships are at the core of personal and professional success, now more than ever.

Resources: Tom Ziglar's Books
 - 10 Leadership Virtues in Disruptive Times Here
- Choose to Win Here

Subscribe to Transform Your Future Newsletter Where Eddie writes about personal development, reinvent & identity: http://transformyourfuture.com

Transcript

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Or step five is really easy. We call it the heartbeat of accountability. And so every week I check in and I say, Hey, Eddie. Last week we had a great conversation. You said you were going to listen to Zig on the way to work and on the way to your calls. How's that going? You said that you were going to take the first 30 minutes of the day and the last 30 minutes of the day of researching and getting some prep time done on your top five calls for the day. How's that going? What have you done? Right? And then you said that you were going to role play with John. How'd that go? And so as a leader, all I'm doing is holding somebody accountable to the plan that they created. But this is not me telling you what to do. This is me understanding what your higher cause or purpose is. You want to get out of debt, you want to buy a house, you want to put your kids through college, using that as the motivator, right? When you work for a dream instead of a paycheck, I mean, that's way better. Papaya. Hello all. Welcome to another episode of Transform Your Future with me, Eddie Eisen, where I sit down with entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and high achievers as they identify areas I can improve on and guide me to further my self-improvement practice. For more information and insights, join the newsletter@transformyourfuture.com. Today's guest is Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar, Inc. Tom Ziglar has had the rare privilege of spending his entire life surrounded by world-class leaders, innovators, and motivators. Family dinner included the presence of the world's top motivator, his father Zig Ziglar. As a result, Tom's arsenal of experience and information is absolutely unparalleled As CEO of Zig Ziglar Corporation for the past 28 years, Tom carries on the Ziglar philosophy. You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want. He's written two books recently, choose to Win in 2019 and 10, leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times published and released in 2021, which we will discuss in detail today. Both of these books expand the Ziglar branding and philosophy and personal development and leadership, and provide the backbone for the most innovative training and coaching programs in the world. Tom speaks around the world to billion dollar companies, small business owners and prestigious academic institutions, including Cambridge and Harvard. Tom's Sage experience keynote format draws out the wisdom in the audience and answers audience generated questions in real time while leveraging ai. The Ziglar brand is more relevant today than ever. Ziglar has exceeded 6.5 million likes on Facebook, and the Ziglar show has become one of the top ranked business podcasts. The world is hungry for inspiration, motivation, and hope. With Tom's innovation, Ziglar has become the go-to resource. Welcome, Tom Ziegler. Letti, thanks for having me on. It's a delight to be here. And of course, I always like talking about leadership and disruption. It seems like they go hand in hand, and I have good news for everybody listening and that, that I've done all the research, I've been researching this for ever since the pandemic started. And how does disruption impact people's values? How does it impact how we do business? How does it impact how we see ourselves, our overall happiness? I mean, all these things kind of play together, but here's the good news. Disruption is only going to increase in frequency and intensity. So why is that good news? And it's because when you understand that and you realize that if you have what I call a coach leader perspective, then you can embrace the disruption and use it to your strategic advantage. You can actually serve more people and solve more problems if you look at this as your strategic advantage. And certainly I identify with it being more frequently and having more often because it touched my life disruption like in 2006 and seven and 19 97, 98. And it's just been snowballing, snowballing, snowballing since then. It's like there's no stop to it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And the new one, and this isn't a new one, it's been coming along for a while. In fact, that was written the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, and there was a quote from the president of Columbia University, and she's a renowned economist, and she said that ai, artificial intelligence is ushering in the new economy, which she calls the hard economy. And so listen to this. I think it's a little counterintuitive for hundreds of thousands of years or tens of thousands of years depending on your perspective. We've been in the labor economy. It's all about muscle, right? It's about making bricks and building stuff. And then about 60 or 70 years ago, we moved into the brain economy or the knowledge economy. And that's where kind of data, if you had access to data to help you make good decisions, you had a big advantage. And so whether it was the internet or technology, even our universities changed for the stem science, technology, engineering, and math. And now AI is coming. And what the article said, what she said is that the new economy brought to us by AI is going to be called the heart and relationship economy. And so what does that mean? It means that people who have relied on this knowledge economy, they're about to be displaced. So think of engineers and CPAs and software programmers, all the things that people would do that they took this education and they would push this knowledge through to create something that allow them to add value. AI is going to do that near, instantly and near perfectly. And so what does that mean? It means that the people who are going to win in this new economy are the ones who know how to leverage what AI does and use that extra knowledge and extra time to build heart-centered relationships. So the heart economy, that's the virtues in relationships, I believe, is the coaching skill. So heart-centered coaching, and that's why 10 leadership virtues for disruptive times, that's what it's about. It's about a coach leadership, which is a view or a stance or a position or a belief that says, my greatest way to lead people is to coach them, ask great questions, and then equip and support them so that they can do their job in a fantastic way. So this big shift is happening right before our eyes. Yeah, I think for me, just again, it happens so quick and it takes over and it displaces everything. All the customer service jobs started going overseas because it was less expensive to pay a customer service rep to answer the phone call overseas than it was for them being here. And I remember I read, I think it was like in 2002 or three, the book, the World is Flat that talked about how everything was changing so fast now and it's just going to keep changing faster. And it has, and I certainly see, I think it was you who told me about the AI program that a person could be at home and would a joystick control a forklift in a physical warehouse moving the boxes around and loading from their bedroom where AI has now allowed them to work remotely. I mean, that's kind of crazy. Yeah. So there was a company that went public, I think it's over a year ago, maybe two years ago. They raised a bunch of money, and what they do is they have a software that is so fast now through 5G and everything else that the forklift driver can be working from home and driving a forklift a thousand miles away. And so when the pandemic hit, of course, everybody went home to work. And so the whole culture shifted from spending an hour every day driving to and from work to now I'm working from home all the time, and all these shifts started happening. How do we relate? How do we communicate? But what that meant is a company that had that software, they could run their warehouse 24 7 and employ a hundred forklift operators to where the forklift would never be idle. It would always be being driven by someone. And now we see AI driven forklifts that don't even need a remote driver to do it. So it's crazy. And we've seen the Amazon robots and all these different places that are doing stuff that people were doing. And so what does that mean? It means that the people who are going to add value to the economy are going to be the ones who know how to build the right kind of relationships and more relationships. Yes. And that's what it's all about. At the end of the day. That's what I believe. That's what you taught me. That's what your father taught me, right? This whole thing is it's about relationships and it's about helping other people. If you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want. I know I'm butchering the statement, but yeah. So tell me about the virtues. Tell me about the actual specific virtues. Yeah, so the book itself, 10 Leadership Virtues, it's really kind of compartmental, not compartmentalized, but it's broken up into three sections. And the first section is all about mindset. It's about approaching disruption with the right mindset, thinking of it as our strategic advantage. And then the middle section, which is the larger part of it, are the 10 virtues that we believe every leader should have. And there's some virtues that people would expect and maybe some ones that they wouldn't expect to be in there. But kind of the punchline to that is that everybody says, love your people, but nobody tells you how. And so the 10 virtues is how you love your people. And then the last section of the book is really the intentional coaching conversation that Gallup says that every leader has a silver bullet. And that silver bullet is a weekly goals focused conversation with each person on their team. And so what we do in this book is we take that up a notch and we call it an intentional goals and growth focused coaching conversation. And growth is so important because really as a leader, my job is to help the people on my team to become more effective tomorrow than they are today. That's what my goal is. And so I treat 'em with the virtues, but I coach 'em intentionally and specifically to become more effective to tomorrow than they are today. And the way I do that is through questions. Because if I ask you questions on what it is, what is your definition of success? And a year from now when you're here, what does success look like to you? And then why is that important to you? And if you achieve that level of success, what does that mean in your personal life and in your family life and in your business life? So when you start asking somebody on your team, Hey, what's important to you? Oh, you'd like to make more money. Well, why would you like to make more money so you can get out of debt? Oh, so you can buy that house. Oh, so that you can send your kids to college. When you start understanding why something's important to them, then you can ask them deeper questions. Well, you know what? I want to help you get that house. I want to help you send your kids to college. And I think the best way of doing that is for you to be more effective in your job, to you to make more sales or solve more problems or whatever their job description is. So that over time, that comes with a promotion, it comes with an increase in pay, it comes with higher commission. Because really when we think about the world, the way we compensate people ultimately is based on their contribution. Now, there's some positions where that's a little bit more difficult jump to make, but in most of the business, that's the way it works. And so if I ask you those questions and then you give me the answers and then I say, oh, well, what attitude would help you be more effective? What skill would help you be more effective? And then that person answers those questions again. They all of a sudden have created their own plan. They have created their own plan, and when somebody creates their own plan, they have ownership of it. And so that's kind of the idea. We've got to have this mindset that disruption is our friend. It's always going to be here. And because we are focused as a team and as a business on learning and growing, it's our strategic advantage. And then we're going to have this intentional coaching so that people can develop that plan. And then we walk out the 10 virtues. Your question was really, what are the 10 virtues and where are they? These are virtues like kindness and humility and respect. And I can go into any of 'em that you like in whatever detail you like, but not any one of them stands alone. It's like they're all connected to each other. For example, can you really respect somebody if you're not also kind? You can't think about it. Kindness is, it goes with everything. If you don't like somebody, you're not going to respect them. Absolutely. And kindness also gets kind of a bad rap. A lot of times when you think of a strong leader, kindness is pretty far down the list because people think that, well, kindness means you're kind of a lay down. Kindness means I can walk over you. Kindness. Kindness is a weakness. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, well, I can take advantage of that person kind. Well, not so much. When you think about the true definition of kindness, imagine if you had a 2-year-old and your 2-year-old says to you, dad, let me down. I want to play in the street. Would it be kind to let'em play in the street? Of course not. And so kindness means that as a leader, when we see teams misbehaving or individuals doing things that aren't in their best interest of the company's best interests, according to the mission, vision and values of what we have, kindness means you have to go to 'em and have a difficult conversation because it wouldn't be kind to let them continue to be that way. So all of these virtues, they play together, and sometimes they're misunderstood. And I love digging into them and sharing with people how they make that difference. When we were talking about strategic advantage, I was just thinking about how there were times in my past. I worked in film and video produced and directed a lot. And when the digital revolution began in the late nineties, I embraced it. I embraced that, and I started selling all my film equipment and buying all digital video equipment and rolling with that. But later when again, technology shifted and everything was going to YouTube instead of being on MTV anymore, and they turned to reality programming, I didn't roll with that. I didn't see a strategic advantage in that for myself. And so consequently, I just kind of got out of that. I just cut that off instead, okay, everything changed, so I'm out. I'm in on this, I'm out on that. Could you sometimes, what's the challenge in really finding the strategic advantage? So the way I look at it is this, when there is disruption, a lot of people are upset. They get frustrated. Just in your own situation, the way you did film, the way you captured a message in whatever context it was, not only was the way you capture it changing, but the platform it was being presented on was being yes. Yes. It's like a one two punch. And so the mindset where we embrace disruption is, well, there's going to be a lot of people who are going to have problems with this. It's like when the lockdown happened, everybody suddenly had to work from home. What I saw was in our audience a mindset issue, oh no, this is terrible. This isn't what I'm used to. This isn't the way it should be. We've been doing this for hundreds of years, going into the office and doing all these things. And I said, well, wait a second. What if it's simply not better or worse? What if it's just different? And so the first thing we want to look at is the situation of, well, maybe it's not actually worse, maybe it's just different. And of course, people are change resistant. We don't like change. What do they say? The only thing that likes change is a baby. A baby with a wet diaper. Everybody else likes to do things the way they've always done. And so what happened though is immediately people's acceptance of communicating via zoom went up. People's skill levels went up. It wasn't very good. I remember in the early days, everybody was like, oh, no, did you see that person? They got caught on camera doing something right because they didn't understand that the camera's on. It's catching everything. And so there was this frustration, and then people started rolling into it. And then I started in the first six months of the pandemic, I did over 300 webinars. And what I was really doing was just trying to bring a message of hope and encouragement to people wherever they are. They were all isolated and at home. And then I learned a new skill, and the skill was in a webinar format to ask questions constantly. And because if you've got just a bunch of people watching, there's not a lot of engagement. And so you have to manufacture the engagement. And so what I was doing was asking questions and people would chat it in, and then when somebody would chat in and answer, I would read it and I'd say, Eddie, that's great. I love your insight there. And so that then when I started going out to speak again, it changed my whole style of speaking because it used to be you would just go in and you'd do a 45 minute keynote and it'd be a one-way conversation. Now, my keynotes are far more interactive. I'm asking a lot of questions throughout, and the engagement level of the audience is going up. And so why am I mentioning all this? Well, I could have said, this is terrible. This isn't going to work. And I could have just backed out and not even tried to go in that area. Instead, it made me more effective everywhere else that I went. And so a true leader, a coach leader, what they do whenever there's disruption is they look around and they say, who's being disruptive? What problems do they have? How can I help? And so the first problem I identified was people were feeling isolated, lonely. They needed encouragement, they needed a good word. And then when we got on the Zoom, I realized that nobody really knew how to engage in this new format. And so I just started asking lots of questions, and I made it really natural and normal for people to answer the questions. And that's been a huge help. And so in your business, if you're listening to this, whatever business you're in, how is AI going to disrupt you, your partners and your customers? And then how can you come in and solve a problem for them in that area? Because what you'll find is is that the world's going to adjust. It's kind of like a hundred years ago when automobiles took over from horse and buggy days. Those companies didn't want to leave horse and buggy manufacturing. They like that, but then all of a sudden it happened and it grew, and now we had the advantage of the car and the automobile in that transportation. Same thing's going to keep happening here. The question is, are you going to be at the end of the curve trying to catch up or are you going to be like, I think Wayne Gretzky is the one who said it. They asked him, you're maybe the greatest hockey player who ever played the game? What makes you great? And he said, I skate to where the puck is going to be. Yes. And so if AI is bringing in the heart and relationship economy where a lot of the busy work that people have been doing, like a salesperson for example, who might spend four hours a day researching, building proposals, doing prospect analysis through social media and different softwares, maybe instead of four hours of doing that, AI just automatically creates the avatar and put in parameters, and then it pops up the a hundred people you can contact and that takes five minutes. You get better research and a fraction of the time. So are you going to spend that extra four hours making more calls, building more relationships? If the answer is yes, then you've got a competitive advantage and the heart and relationship economy, what it's going to boil down to. Yeah, it's interesting you were talking about creating that experience and that interaction with people. And it just reminded me for a second about how when you're on these webinars, sometimes they're recorded webinars and they try to trick you that they're engaging people by saying, oh, let's see where you guys are from. Oh, here's from Toyota Tampa, here's from Wisconsin, whatever. And that's their engagement. And then they just go into their thing. It's just kind of funny. Sometimes it's not like an authentic actual engagement of asking questions and getting information. I could see how that's a heck of a lot more useful and interesting for people. One thing that I'm curious about is as far as when you're working on that second part in the coach role of helping these individuals to understand their intentions and get them to buy into it and create their own plan, can you just define that a little bit more about how that kind of the dynamics of that with a person? And so in our coach leadership program, when we work with a leader and we help that leader coach their people, so coach leadership is really about a leader coaching their people to be more effective. And so we have a very simple five step coaching process that we work with leaders on, and it's detailed out in the book, but here it is, the first question is, we uncover what it is that individual wants. So we lay the foundation, what do you want? And if you hire somebody, they're brand new on the team, it's kind of awkward first day in to go, what do you want? But at the same time, you hire somebody brand new on the team, or maybe they've been there for five years and you've never asked them, Hey, what do you want? You can come in and you can say, Hey, Eddie, man, you've been here for five years. You've been doing a great job and you really have added a lot to the organization, but I'm kind of embarrassed. I've never really asked you, What does success look like to you here? We're already at the end of March of 2024. If 2024 was a great year, what would that look like? What would success look like? And so you could start telling me, oh, I would get this project done, or I would make these amount of sales, or we've just added three people to my team and I want to elevate and raise them up. You might say any of those things and I'd be fantastic. So then we asked the second question, right? We've got some definitional. What do you want? And by the way, people open up over time. They won't tell you right out of the gate what they want. So it might take more than one conversation to get all this out. Yeah, okay, so you want to develop your team, you want to make more commission, you want to tell me why is it that you want that? Why is that important to you? What would that allow you to have if you did that? And then they might say, oh, well, if I can get my three new team members up and running, that's going to give me a little bit more time to focus on what's really important to me. Well, what's really important? I've got this plan that I want to put in place here. Or if I make more money, then I can pay off my debt. I can pay for my kids' college education, whatever it is. So we move from what do they want to, why they want it. And then the third step is we call it kind of defining performance opportunities. And so I would say to a salesperson, I would say, wow, really? I see you want to get out of debt. Would it be okay if we put together a plan to help you sell more so you can get out of debt? Well, yeah, that sounds good. Okay. So what attitude could you demonstrate? This is a question again, what attitude could you demonstrate that would allow you to be more effective in selling? And so as the leader, we listen. At this point, we don't tell 'em what their attitude should be. We are really trying to get awareness here. We're really trying to know if they understand what that means. And some people are going to be new, they're going to be clueless. And some people are going to be very experienced. Like an experienced person might say, well, that's pretty easy. I'm kind of an introvert, and my face doesn't really show my emotion very well. And so when I am meeting with the new prospect, I probably need to show up with a little bit more energy, a little bit bigger smile, a little bit more tone in my voice to convey that I am excited to see 'em, right? And so I asked that same sort of question in three categories. What attitude can I demonstrate to help me be more effective in my job role? What effort can I demonstrate? In the sales example, well, effort. Well, gosh, I could do background research on 'em. I could find out what other products or services they've used that are similar to ours. I could find out if the company's growing or not. I could find out that individual's role just by going to LinkedIn and doing some basic background information. So that's effort that I could do. And then what skill is the third area? What skill could you demonstrate that would help you? Oh, the sales skill of asking good questions. I probably need to have a list of really good questions to ask. And so there we go. So that's the third step. So we're defining the performance opportunities and The fourth step is co-creating the plan. And I say, well, Eddie, wow, you've really covered a lot of areas there. So how are you going to develop that encouraging, happy, smiling, engaging, energy laden attitude in yourself? How are you going to develop that in yourself? How are you going to do that? And of course, I know what you'd say. You'd say, well, I'm going to listen to some Zig Ziglar audio on the way to the sales call, right? That's right. I'm going to get myself activated. I'm going to walk in and go, papaya. That's right. They're not going to have a chance. And I'd say, well, write that down. That's a good plan, right? You're going to do that. And then well, what else are you going to do? What else are you going to do? And then I'd say, okay, effort, you said here that you're going to do a lot of due diligence and preparation on each account. How are you going to do that? And so you might give me four or five ways you're going to do that. I say, write that down. And then you said skills. I said, how are you going to raise your skills? You might say, well, I'm going to write down a little like an introductory kind of sales script with four or five questions in it, and then I'm going to role play it with John the best on the team. Right? Exactly. Train every day. Yes. Yeah, I write that down. And then I would say, as the coach leader, I would say, wow, those are some great plans there. I love your goals. I love what you've written down. Is it okay if I hold you accountable to your goals? Well, what are they going to say? It's their goal. It's their plan. And so that's an ownership. So that's step four. Step five is really easy. We call it the heartbeat of accountability. And so every week I check in and I say, Hey, Eddie, last week we had a great conversation. You said you were going to listen to Zig on the way to work and on the way to your calls, how's that going? You said that you were going to take the first 30 minutes of the day and the last 30 minutes of the day of researching and getting some prep time done on your top five calls for the day. How's that going? What have you done? And then you said that you were going to role play with John. How'd that go? And so as a leader, all I'm doing is holding somebody accountable to the plan that they created. But this is not me telling you what to do. This is me understanding what your higher cause or purpose is. You want to get out of debt, you want to buy a house, you want to put your kids through college, using that as the motivator. When you work for a dream instead of a paycheck, I mean, that's way better. So that's why you're going to work on your attitude, your effort and your skill. Okay, how are you going to do that? And so we get really concrete and then we have accountability built into it. And so every week we teach that you should have an intentional coaching conversation every single week. And why is that? Because things change. Disruption happens so fast. If people, a great Zig Ziglar quote is, we got to, and I don't know if dad said it first, but he may have made it famous first. He said, we got to inspect what we expect. So as a coach leader, when somebody on my team makes a commitment to do something, I expect them to do it. But the way it gets done at a higher level with a higher chance of success is if I inspect it every week. And in this case, it's just an ongoing conversation that we have. I'm remembering. I know when you discussed this before with me, one of the things that you brought up was the opposite of being a coach leader like the T-Rex. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. So when you look at history throughout time and in the book, I wanted to create a character that was easy to identify with, which we call the wrong kind of leader. So I came up with the character of the T-Rex leader. And so the T-Rex leader has sharp, and I don't even know if leader is the right term. I think I even The T-Rex manager, okay? Because I believe there's a big difference between a manager and a leader. We manage things and we lead people. So the T-Rex manager has big sharp pointy teeth just like a T-Rex. And so what do they do? They lead out of fear. They bite people's heads off it's Do it because I said, so. It's a positional type of leadership which is not earned. They, they're the leader because they got the title, their voice is loud, they don't ask questions, they tell people what to do. And so the T-Rex also has very short arms. And the short arms that represents control T-Rex leaders like to control everything. Everything runs through them. They're the conduit through which all things happen. And that also becomes a choke point because if people are fearful of what the T-Rex is going to say, then they're not going to have initiative. They're not going to take care of problems on their own. They're going to get answers and feedback constantly, and that builds up that control. And so a T-Rex is a dictator, and a coach leader is a guide a T-Rex is about do it because I said, so a coach leader asks questions, and at the end of the day, if the team does great, the coach leader says, it's because of my team. The T-Rex says, it's because of me. If the team doesn't hit their numbers or has a challenge or something goes wrong, the T-Rex points it as people and says it's their fault. The coach leader says, oh, this is all mine, right? I'm not doing what I should do. And so coach leaders, they lead from a position of humility and respect and kindness and self-control and positivity and being alike and standing firm, all the things that we talk about in the book, because at the end of the day, it comes down to integrity and character and coach leaders are walking out these virtues so that when you sum 'em all up, it's somebody who leads within character and integrity and somebody who leads with love because all of these things added up. That's what they represent. And I think all the things that I've learned about personal development over the years, and my journey all started because of Zig Ziglar and because I met him in Dallas at an event, and I started following everything that all his books and all his tapes. And I just feel like this whole journey for me has been kind of spiritual in a way. And I always, my skills have to be rooted in those kinds of things that you're talking about. Humility, patience, kindness, tolerance, those types of spiritual beliefs and spiritual virtues. So I think that's why I love what you did here so much is because it's so connected to all of that really in it, for example, you do best when the pressure gets intense because self-control is second nature to you. In fact, you have learned that personal attacks handled with self-control elevate your leadership influence over time. Yeah. Can you expand a little bit about that. Bit? Yeah. So in the aspect of self-control, this is a loss of self-control is the fastest way to sabotaging your leadership influence. So think about that. If you want to lose your influence, your credibility, lose your SelfControl and things always, I mean, life is not fair. Things always happen outside of our control. And no matter who we are, but especially leaders who have to take a stand, a lot of times we're going to get attacked for that unjustly. And one of the things that we talk about in the book is that, hey, when you get attacked out of proportion, and we've all been there, maybe something happened with a customer and it was disappointing. You didn't provide the product or service to what their expectation was, but they just go nuts. They just lose it. And I've seen this happen. One of the things that we do is we teach our coach leaders, Hey, when that happens to 'em, you just have to ask yourself the question, would a secure person do that? And the answer's no. Well, if you know that somebody that you're dealing with is going out of control and they're attacking you and they're an insecure person, then your mental state changes from defense to, I can't believe they're doing this. I'm going to attack back. Your mental state actually changes to I feel sorry for 'em. And so when the chaos is everywhere and everybody's having a hard time and people are getting out of kilter, if you look out as a coach leader and you say they're out of kilter because they're insecure, they don't know what to do, then that allows you to keep that calm and to settle in and to kind of be that light in a dark place, that standing firm for what you believe in, but also responding in a way that doesn't escalate or exasperate the situation anymore than it needs to be. Take that time to reflect. And the more change that happens, and we see this everywhere, the number one issue from a productivity and profitability perspective for large companies is the mental health and wellbeing of their people. And people who are struggling with their mental health and wellbeing are the very ones who we see on the news because they were on a flight from Dallas to LA and they freak out and they get 'em on camera. It's everywhere. And so if we know it's everywhere and we realize it has nothing to do with me, maybe we could be that person who's got the calm, who helps that individual say, Hey, you know what? I'm here to help. How can I help instead of escalating it? Yeah. That happened to me just last week on Thursday, I was talking to somebody and they got all flushed and hung up the phone on me, and I immediately wanted to call them right back, but I said, okay, let me pause a second. Let me just check my motives. Let me just inspect what I'm thinking here. And I reflected, and my reflection was about, well, obviously this person is immature and there's something going on with them because I didn't do anything to them. And my goal is I'm trying to help this person. I'm trying to help solve a problem in this person's life. So yeah, I should call them back. And so I called them back, and immediately my first thing was I said, okay, I understand you hung up the phone because you didn't get the information you expected. This is not going how you expected. If you just give me a chance, I want to help you. And then it went on and I moved the process forward. But it's just really interesting because there are times in my life in the past where I would've took that personally and I would've said, how dare you? What are you doing? Hang up the phone on me. Or maybe I would've called back and I would've lied, and I would've said, I'm sorry, the phone got disconnected somehow. I don't know what happened. Did I hang up on you? But yeah, I appreciate that. And so it's about looking at that. My favorite quote that got pulled was rather long, but I'm going to read it real quick and then we can discuss it. It says, expect the best. Prepare for the worst, maximize what comes creating the future you want depends on how you see the future. How you see the future determines your thinking. And your thinking determines your performance. Looking for the best means, you are looking for the gold, not the dirt. Looking for the best is not only a virtue, but also a mindset that is incredibly valuable. And creating alignment, especially when disruption and challenges occur with those you are leading. Looking for the best when your people are struggling means that you are constantly searching for new ideas that would help them to grow through the most difficult challenges. That's my favorite one. Yeah. Well, I would say that that is pretty close to my favorite one because it is, and I haven't really ever said that I haven't really ever picked a favorite one. And the reason I say it is because it's all within our choice. And so there's two big thoughts there. You've probably heard the term toxic positivity, and that's kind of this like, well, everything's great. Everything's always great, even though there's a yellow tape around your house because it's being repossessed by the IRS, your car just got towed off. I mean, obviously things are going on. So that's not what we're talking about when we say expect the best. Dad said, Zig Ziglar said that a positive attitude outperforms a negative attitude every time. That we always want to expect the best when we hire somebody, we want to expect the best. When we enter into a new relationship, we always want to expect the best, whatever the situation is, because going into it with that mindset gives us the best chance of making it as good as it can be. But we also have to prepare for the worst. If I hire somebody onto my team and I expect the best, but I also don't have an onboarding process, I don't have a regular check-in system. I don't have clear cut expectations, expectations. I don't have training and development lined up that they can go and get. In other words, I'm expecting the best. You're going to know how to do all this, but I'm also going to prepare as if you might not. And then I've ultimately got to think of, okay, so what's the timeline here? What is a reasonable expectation for somebody to achieve growth and advancement and success in this process? And if that doesn't happen, what am I going to do? Right? If I don't close that deal, that's going to save the year, what am I going to do? And so even though I'm expecting the best, I've also got these plans. Maybe everything's going great and the world shuts down because of AI or the pandemic, maybe my dream job I've always wanted. And then suddenly 70% of my time can be done by ai, and the company I work for comes in and they say, Hey, we don't that role that you were in, we don't have that role anymore. Well, we've got to maximize what comes. And that's where we've got to be Wayne Gretzky looking into the future. And so I'm going to be where the puck is going to be. And so the whole statement, we create the future that we see, I think every single one of us, at least once a year, and I would say probably quarterly, we got to look 10 years down the road, five years down the road. And we've got to ask ourselves, who am I at that point? What am I doing? What does my life look like? And we start seeing this future for ourselves. And then as we see that future, we can create it. And so for me, I've been really intent on how is what we do at Ziglar, how when we serve our coaches, when we serve leaders, when we serve speakers, when we serve our customers, how can we adapt and be ready for their needs? With all this change coming, what can we do different? And so I'm always looking at ways to do that. And one of the ways we do that is we bring knowledge and information that starts to get people to think a little bit down the road of how they can adapt. I can tell this millions of people over the next five years, they're going to have some serious mental, I won't call it trauma, but I'll call it some mental gymnastics on how their life is going to change. And it might not happen suddenly. It might happen subtly over time that their job is going to change, or the way they do life is going to change because of all the technology that's coming in. But guess what? That's always been that way. And so my question is, what are you passionate about? Are you passionate about serving and solving the problems of the people in your life? Or are you passionate about doing it the way you've always done it? And if you're about serving and solving the problems of the people in your life, your family, your friends, your coworkers, your customers, whatever that case is, well then all the change is like a playground, right? It's just like, oh, wow. I get to learn more stuff that's going to help me solve more problems for more people. And at the end of the day, that's where our value is to the world, is in the problems we solve for those around us. Now, intrinsically, our value is who we are, not what we do. And that's something else that part of the Ziglar message is too many people buy into the lie that we're in a transactional world, meaning your values based on what you've done for me, instead of your value is who you are. And so this is another cool thing about that, the President of Columbia University, her statement, AI is ushering in the heart economy. What she's saying is, Hey, we're going to value who you are, your heart. That's pretty cool. And so how do we win in this new, we become the person who leads with the virtues and who is expert in building relationships to heart and relationship economy. Yes. Yes, yes. I agree a hundred percent. And that's definitely what I've been doing, what you've been doing for a long time. And it's something that's not going to go away. AI is not going to take over that. Absolutely. Now, ai, there's two things AI will never have and never be able to do. It'll never have wisdom. AI will have an enormous amount of knowledge, but it won't have wisdom. And so what is wisdom? It's taking the knowledge that's out there and pouring it through the filter of these virtues. And then you combine that with experience. So AI will have knowledge, but it won't have wisdom. And the other thing is AI will never build relationships. Now, I do think that AI can allow us to have more relationships because of how much time it's going to save and even deeper relationships because of how quickly it can help somebody figure out how to serve somebody else. So if at the end of the day, how am I serving more people at a deeper level, that's what the heart and relationship economy is all about. Is there anything else that you want to discuss about your book 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times? I think we did a good job. Of, I think we did. I think we did great. I've covering it. I would just tell people, if this resonates with you and you want more information on it, you can just email me directly tom@ziglar.com. Of course, 10 Leadership Virtues book is found everywhere. Amazon Audible bookstore at Ziglar headquarters. We got 'em there too. So. Absolutely. Listen, I really enjoyed talking to you, as you know, and the Ziglar legacy is strong and alive, so I appreciate you spending some time talking about this, and we'll talk more in the future. I talk to you soon. Yep. And I'm so grateful for our relationship with you. You're carrying on the Ziglar message, and so if you're listening to this and go, gosh, I need somebody to help me out as a coach, Eddie, I'm just glad that you're on the team and you've got your superpower in your area. So thank you so much for what you do. Thank to, I appreciate that. For more information and monthly topics of interest, please go to transform your future.com and join our news there.