#121 New Research Reveals The Secrets To Unlocking High Performance (ft Ty Bennett)

Listen to leading author, researcher, and speaker on high performance tie Bennett, share new research on what drives high performance, what stops it, and how to unlock it. Pay attention to the full conversation and translate it to massive action and you will elevate your career and your entire life. Tie Bennett, what an honor to have you on the podcast. Industry leading researcher author and speaker redefining the world of high performance, helping people around the world to understand what drives high performance, what stops it, and how leaders can empower it in their people. I am so excited to dig into the world of high performance so our audience can learn how to apply it in their sales careers as entrepreneurs and probably across the board in their life. And also you're the largest, you're the largest, you're the CEO of the largest Ninja warrior gym, right? Can you, let's dig into that a bit, but then I wanted to ask you about your journey to speaking and I've got so many questions. But tell us about this Ninja warrior thing. How do you get it? Yeah, Chris, it's great to be on with you. Thank you so much for the invite. Yeah, Ninja warrior, I didn't find it. I had kids who found it. And so I have five kids. I live in Utah, I don't know, something that happens. I guess when you live in Utah. And my two boys who are now 15 and 17 about six and a half years ago, they watched the show American Ninja Warrior for the very first time and they become obsessed, just fell in love with it, started reenacting it. We started to build some obstacles in the backyard and kind of just support them, right? And found a gym, they started training and competing. Well, the short version is this is kind of taken over our lives. We now own two Ninja warrior gyms. I guess it's an entrepreneurial dad. Sometimes that's what happens. And the one I'm actually sitting in, I have an office here in our gym is the largest Ninja warrior gym in the world. And yeah, as soon as we finish here, we've got a local news anchor coming to interview me about the gym. So we're doing that here just a little bit. But yeah, it's been a really fun thing to support them. It's been a fun thing to be a part of. It's an awesome sport, great community of people. And it's, as you know, a metaphor that I use quite often when I'm speaking and sharing some of these lessons on high performance because I think it visually demonstrates some of the things that I talk about so well. I really enjoyed seeing you on stage at the National Speakers Association. Thank you. You had a Ninja warrior set up and your sons were doing these acrobatic moves. And you know what in the talk that you recently gave, there was some real drama at the end. Yeah, where your son, I think he failed on a move a couple times, but then he got it. I might have been the third. The crowd went wild. And I think we're going to talk a little bit about failing forward and learning from I feel later, but you know, to the theme of high performance, you were one of the best speakers in the world. And I don't say that lightly because I talked to other leading speakers like Mark Hunter, who I've had on the podcast at the top. Yeah, Mark said great guy. He was taking notes on your talk and him and I were nerding out on your talk after and you're an elite performer when it comes to speaking. And so I'm just curious, did this path of speaking? Did you choose it or did it choose you? It's a good question. And I know lots, I mean, you know, we have mutual friends that are speakers, right? Just like any profession, when you do something for a living, you kind of end up meeting all the people who do the same kind of thing. And I know lots of people who speaking found them, but for me, it was a very conscious choice. It was a decision I made. I kind of fell in love with the idea of it when I was in high school. I was involved in a program called DECA. It's like a business and leadership program. I was the vice president for the state of Colorado and one of my roles in that responsibility was actually to choose the keynote speaker for our state conference. And so I remember watching, I didn't know what I was doing, but I was watching demo videos of these speakers. And I literally handed this guy a check for $2,500, which is a high school senior thought that was crazy. And then I stood kind of backstage off to the back watching him just hold this audience in the palm of his hand. He had his laughing, he had his crying, like, and I was like, that is him. That is the coolest thing I've ever seen. And so this was a concept in the back of my mind. And then my journey was as an entrepreneur still as I guess, but I built a business in my 20s that we did very well, built it to about 25 million year in revenue. And as we built out our sales team, we had conferences where I hired speakers to come in and speak. And I hired Don Maxwell and Peter Vittemar and Les Brown and T. Harvecker and just all these different speakers. And so because I had that in the back of my mind, I would always take him to dinner and pick their brain about it a little bit and ask him, okay, how did you get into this? What advice would you give me just all those kinds of things? And so in 2010, I did a lot of speaking within our organization internally, but it's something that I wanted to pursue. So in 2010, I wrote my first book. You can kind of see, oh, runway, the power of influence right there behind me. And that's what kind of launched me into speaking. You mentioned Mark Hunter. He and I actually met ironically in Bogota, Colombia. We were sharing the stage at an event and we were there and then two weeks later that same group brought us to Santiago Chile. And so that's where I got to know Mark. He's a great guy. But yeah, I definitely chose to pursue speaking as kind of my next career after that first business. And that's been my main thing for the last 16, 15, 16 years. And obviously, I own a few things outside of that invest in some other companies, but that's been my main focus. So inspiring to people like me that want to fall in your footsteps. And maybe there's people in this audience watching this that's going to have a spark lit in them. And it's cool to hear that you intentionally created it. Because some might say, "Oh, it chose me. Some people just finds them." But the fact that you realize it's what you wanted to do and made it happen is very powerful. And before we get into some of the factors driving high performance things stopping it, it is so cool that you have your books displayed behind you. And I just wanted to get your take on maybe a little walk through the just super high level of each of them. And it definitely comes in that comes in too is like, "What are you most proud of?" But I'm sure you're proud of all of them, right? But yeah, interesting. It's real quick that the books. Yeah, so I'll walk you through. So the power of influence was my very first book. I'll give you just kind of an interesting lesson, I guess, for me. So when I decided, I still view myself as a speaker more than an author. That's my natural skill set. But I found, you know, as I was really studying the industry and how do you set yourself apart? Writing a book is a great way to do that. And I don't think you're writing a book as an easy thing, but anybody can do it, right? Like I don't think any of us can go play in the NBA. Or I don't know, maybe we could all climb Mount Everest. I don't know, I've never done it. But like something that distinguishes you, the process of writing a book though has helped me to distill ideas and clarify thoughts and really get to content that is valuable to people. So the process has been awesome. So I wrote the power of influence, but I was writing kind of like this broad book idea. Like, and I remember sitting in my office at the time, I had this huge bookshelf with all of the authors that I love. And Stephen Covey was one of those authors that had a huge impact on me. In fact, he was a personal mentor. I got to know him before he passed. And I was looking at my shelf, and on my shelf, I had seven habits. And then about 15 years later, he wrote the eight-pavit. These are big, thick, you know, college textbook type books. And then next to it, one of my other favorite authors who has been a huge mentor as well is John Maxwell. And I had like 60 of his books sitting there, right? But smaller, easier to read. And I just had the conscious thought for me, I like reading John Maxwell's books better than Stephen Covey's book. Just the style of the book, right? A little bit easier like digestible. And so in my mind, I went, that's what I want to do. I want to write a little bit smaller books. I don't need to write this huge college textbook, right? And so that's where I honed in on the power of influence as my first book, knowing that I had additional content, but instead of making it this ginormous book and influence is one chapter, I wrote a book on influence. So that's what launched me into speaking. That was my first book, came out in 2010. And then my next book was called the Power of Storytelling. It's right behind me, I guess I can move right there. So you can see that. That was conscious by choice to call it the power of, right? Like so kind of blended together. And even the subtitle is the art of influential communication because I was speaking on influence so often, right? And those two, you know, went together. I still speak on storytelling. That book came out in 2013. It's been updated, but I speak on, I'll be in Colorado speaking on storytelling next week. Storytelling I think is the most underrated skill in business, especially for salespeople. I think I do a good job of breaking it down and teaching it as a skill. So you walk away with really tangible ideas. Yeah, I wrote a story telling and then the next book I wrote is called partnership is the new leadership A leadership book obviously. I think that that approach So really partnering with your people is what derives commitment and engagement from your people I think it's the approach that leaders need in today's world. I still speak on that topic quite a bit and then My next book that I'm literally in the process of writing will be titled redefining high performance and We can dive deeper into this but the speech that I'm giving most often now is around that content. We did a national research study and published a white paper on our findings there and now I'm going to expand it even further to the book Wow, yeah, I love the talk and some of my questions for you today are based on some of the components of the performance you illustrated You got some great stories and it's all data driven to But we're going to link that white paper in the This video and podcast so people can check it out. Thank you for putting in all the work and to Do that research and also all the books you created and Sometimes questions spontaneously come up But it just seems based on hearing you talk about the process of writing a book that I mean Anyone can do it, but it's extremely difficult and it's such a small percentage of people who do it But it seems that the pursuit and process itself Produces value. Maybe it's like character growth refining our thinking aside from the outcome of the success of the book and sales so is that something that you would Um say is a part of any great endeavor Like the pursuit and the process itself shapes us like how do you think about that? Yeah, I didn't completely right because I don't know if you've ever pursued something that you Uh even if you attain it and it's like everything you dreamt of It's still fleeting right it still is a one-time event It does there's nothing that's lasting forever in terms of achievement attainment of something I'll give you an example So the speech that you just referred to where you saw me speak that's like a Rear goal speech right to speak on the main stage of NSA influence, which is the biggest Conference that the National Speakers Association puts on I've been involved in the Association for 16 years right that was a goal That was something I was wanted to do and I'll be honest It went as good as it possibly could have gone It felt amazing like I am so proud of loved it But it was a month and a half ago and it's gone like that that's the it like I've got video and I've got pictures and Like it's fun to maybe Relive a little bit right? It's not dating our website tie which we're linking I think yeah, okay, so so like it lives on in some ways, but the pursuit of creating that speech Is what has changed me right and we created something The beautiful thing is so that speech that you saw Obviously there were custom details for the National Speakers Association But that was given on Sunday that week we gave it on Wednesday in Florida for a group of School administrators and it was just as good Wednesday as it was on Sunday now there were some different custom details But then since that speech we've given that I don't know eight times and we've created something of value that we can now take to the world right That's that's the process that's that's what lives on in my mind So it is the journey. It is the like The ease of that that most people don't see the way that that the creation of that speech has consumed me For the last couple of years like constantly looking at it tweaking finding the right content like the right stories flushing all those things out Like that process is is what I think is the most amazing part So before I get to the the first factor that I think based on what you said is the most important factor driving high performance Which we will get to I'm just curious Does obsession play a role in your success? Sessed man, and it's like I was reading um, I do know Brendan Merchard because I feel like you and him are like peer I don't know him well. Yeah, but uh, we have we've met once or twice and I have mutual front like we have mutual friends But I like his stuff. He's awesome. Yeah, you two or it's two the people I look up to in this industry So just it seems like you're obsessed man in a good way so like What role does obsession and maybe curiosity ties into to being able to do great things So for me, I'm a pretty obsessive personality. Um, I think I have been forever and And it's obviously there I think any trait. There's good and bad to it right it is driven me It's it's provided things is probably driven some people nuts in the process too uh, but When I think about commitment for me Um, I think commitment is a huge differentiator right I think Years ago I I put up on my wall in my home office when you're interested. You do what's convenient when you're committed You do whatever it takes um and for me that Um, uh, that's a huge factor um, I think there's four levels of commitment the way that I look at it is the first level is Distraction right like It we say we're gonna do something but we're constantly distracted by anything that comes up anything that catches our eye It's like the shine magic syndrome right like okay now I'm over here. Well, you can't get anything done in any huge way when you're distracted The second level just a little bit higher than that is decision now decision is sounds pretty concrete um The word decision means to cut off all other options So you're actually eliminating distraction. You're saying okay. I'm done with that. I'm cutting off This is where I'm going But I think making a decision is simple managing a decision is hard Right, and so where you start to manage a decision and follow through is level three what I would call discipline Discipline is the follow through discipline is the daily actions discipline is This is where you put in the work. This is where you eat healthy every day. This is like there's consistency that starts to take place in that But I think what separates good and great is Level four of commitment which is devotion This is the obsession that you're talking about right when you're devoted to something when it consumes you when you can't Get it out of your mind. It's all we whether you're doing anything else It's always in the back of your mind and you're constantly ruminating on it and you're letting your subconscious think about it and you you Like see the world through that lens the the great singer tenor Luciano Pavarotti one time In an interview he said most people think I'm disciplined. I'm not I'm devoted and there's a huge difference between those two And so I do I think obsession or devotion to use a different word. I think it matters I think it's a big separator of of people who really create something of Significant something of impact man ties unlocking all the secrets to high performance for us And if you're looking to apply the principles of high performance in action in the text sales arena to land a better gig in Text sales whether you're breaking in for the first time or upgrading to a better role or if you're looking to crush your metrics as an SDR or an account executive and get your next promotion then feel welcome to book time with me at my Countly link to explore how our text sales accelerator programs can help you win on your text sales journey We've helped people like max launch their careers at top companies like rubric Ethan crush it as an SDR at mercury and Nick become the number one account executive in his org At splunk if any of that sounds like you and you're ready to become a text sales high performer Then I look forward to seeing you on a call where we can map out a plan to hit your unique text sales goals Yeah, I should so cool to walk through the four levels of commitment. It's just so such a useful Thought model and to to see how it progresses to devotion. I love that word and it makes me want to be devoted to my craft And I hope it inspires this audience to find something to devote yourself to I think there's a lot of meaning that comes from that and what I think is cool tie is that you're devoted to your craft And you have the balance of the you know beautiful family, you know And that's pretty cool that you have that multi-dimensional success. So damn I keep coming up with new questions and We're about to go anywhere you want You know we're flowing and that's what's fun about this, but how do you strike that balance of But you could call it work life harmony. I don't know how you think about it But you've got a great family while also building out Landish. That's a funny word career success so uh I am not going to claim any expertise in that I think it is a constantly moving target at least it is for me because I have five kids. I have a couple of businesses. I have a wife that I care about. I have Uh church responsibility, you know, just all of the things right life is busy So I think there's a couple of things that just come to mind as you ask that question one is I believe in The important of adaptability and this idea applies to this conversation because at different stages and in different seasons, my kids, my businesses, myself, my spouse, all that we all need different things. And so, there was a time pre-COVID that my kids were littler and I was doing about 100 speeches a year. That's not the season I'm in now. And so, I honestly, I don't even have an interest in it. About 50 speeches a year is good for me, 40 to 50 in that range because I've got other response fillings and so I'm trying to balance all of those things out, right? Also, I think my main job, so as my businesses have grown, I have teams of people that are helping me. It's not just me doing everything, right? And one of the main areas in which I look at as a reach job responsibility for me is in taking care of myself because I need the energy and the ability to show up in the ways that I need to show up. So, my health, my self-care, those things matter, like to a point that that is a role within my business that I look at. And so, even I'm coming off of being sick, that's why I keep drinking water. My voice is a little bit bad here, so I apologize for that. But though, some of those things like to manage all of it, it's not an easy feat, right? It takes a lot of work. And I think that it also is the way that you show up. I spend a lot of my time talking about leadership. I think that the way that I show up as a leader within my family matters more than anywhere else, right? And so, the way that I lead with my wife, with my kids, like those things prioritizing those things matter, we could go down, distrail a lot of different directions and talk about some of those things. But one of the things I love talking about high performance and some of these things is that I'm constantly talking about principles that I need to remind myself of too. And so, striving to live those things on a daily basis. Not easy, I fall short a lot, but we're keep pushing as hard as we can. We push as hard as we can, we do the best we can. And I love that you focus on leading your family first. You also lead yourself. You put your oxygen mask on to handle your own habits and well-being to show up at your best. So, really insightful. I just can't help but follow my curiosity as you share more and more nuggets and insight. And I want to go down rabbit holes, but I'm finally going to bring it to really getting in the thick of high performance. If we treat our business casually, it'll become a casualty. Now, I don't think I quoted you exactly right. So, I'd like you to correct me. Then we can get into that topic. Yeah, that was actually advice given to me as a young entrepreneur by a mentor. She said, if you treat your business casually, you'll become a casualty. And I think that's perfect quote to add to the conversation we were just having. Because I think it's a plickable anywhere. If you treat your marriage casually, probably become a casualty. If you treat your kids casually, the raising of them, how you show up for them, that could be a casualty. And those things are more catastrophic. If you treat your help casually, like all of those things, right, we could apply it there. I think that's, there's a mentality when it comes to high performance of extreme ownership. And if you're going to take something on, then I mean, that's the devotion that we were talking about, right? Like that's the level that you have to show up. And if you were taking your business, your life seriously, and you're taking ownership, you realize how important preparation is to show up at your best. And so this is just really resonating from the talk you gave the importance of preparation. And I thought you said preparation is the single biggest driver. But I don't know that it is because you where there's others we're going to hit on you. We even mentioned another adaptability. We'll get more to a few others. But is preparation the number one driver when you think of it in that way? And what does preparation actually look like? Yeah. So according to our research, it is. It's the number one driver. It showed up, you know, highest in the scores in terms of how people see it, what separates good from great. I think there's lots of drivers. I don't think any success comes down to any one thing. Right. But I think it's it's a big one. And we could dive into lots of areas of it. The reality is preparation is not exciting to talk about. Nobody cares that much. Right? Like it's it's I resisted tile. I was preparing for this podcast and how I'm going to open it in this and that and it's like, but even then it's like, I'm tired from last night. And it's like, I resisted all the time, but it's so important the preparation. Well, let me give it to this way. So I think this is interesting. The speech that you saw me give like last month, I'm 16 years into my speaking career. I've spoken on some big stages, right? That wasn't the biggest audience I've spoken for. They're about a thousand people in the audience. You know, I've spoken to 18,000 people. I'm on your website, man, there's an epic pick of you like with a huge audience. So the audience needs to check that out. Yeah. So I mean, I think the biggest audience I've spoken to is like 19,600 people, something like that. But that speech that you saw me give a month ago, I think went better than any speech maybe I've ever given my career. Wow. The interesting thing to me is that that speech is also the speech I probably prepared for the most in my career. That's not coincidental, right? Like, when you, it's easy, especially for most of us who are listening, if you're listening to a podcast like this, you're probably already a high performer at some level, right? High performance is very subjective in terms of like how you measure it. It's the caution for people who are already high performers. It's easy to rely on past experience and know that we can show up and be pretty good. Right? You could throw me in front of an audience right now. I'd be pretty good. But preparation is a separator. And so if we will actually put in work to prepare that performance could be at a different level, right? It could open up new doors for us in that regard. I like to take the lens with my audiences to look at it from the cost of the lack of preparation, because for whatever reason, I think that that resonates with the fact that the other is an actual cost when I don't do this, right? Sometimes the fear of loss is greater than the prospect of gain. But yeah, preparation matters in a huge way. If you don't mind sharing, I had to ask you about how Nike lost deaf career. It's not a good example of the cost. It's an iconic story, man. Yeah, so in 2013, there was a group of Nike executives that were tasked to meet with Steph Curry. And Steph Curry had already been with them for four years. So the purpose of the meeting was simply to renew his contract for another four years. And they kind of thought it was a done deal, right? Like who leaves Nike? And so they really didn't put much preparation into it. And it started going south pretty quick that the head executive in the meeting started calling Steph by the wrong name. So his name is Stephane and he started calling him Stephane. And think about it. This is Steph Curry's playing in the NBA like people know his name. And so that probably didn't sit well. And then as the presentation starts going, they had actually recycled slides and didn't really prepare. So you start paying attention and Kevin DeRance name is on most of the slides. Oh no. I feel like sick to my stomach right now. Yeah. As a man, as a person, you know, and so at the end of that meeting, Steph Curry made a decision to leave. And he left Nike and he went to under armor. That was 12 years ago. Most experts estimate that that is cost Nike $12 billion up to this point. And that will be billions more. Be for the rest of Steph's career. And then long after Steph is one of the most beloved basketball players of all time. Right. He will his shoes will sell forever because of how iconic he is as a person and a basketball player. So yeah, there's a huge cost. Right. The cost might be for you and I, the loss of a sale. It might be lack of influence. It might be, you know, not being relevant in the conversation or it might be billions of dollars like in the case of Nike. For the audience of predominantly sellers and some sales leaders who, I mean, that's these are perfect people for you to speak to tie and don't you didn't you have a sales company, by the way, and a quick tangent. Yeah. So yeah. So my first company was the indirect sales of built and and led sales teams. And we speak to a lot of sales audiences. So yeah. Guys, that brings a lot of resonates. Seriously. Like, but it's cool. You know sales. But how relevant is it? I picture myself that, you know, I before I went all in on the podcast and entrepreneurship, I met with multi billion dollar company in the CIO and head of procurement. That was a critical meeting. I prepared, prepared, prepared, and it opened a door, which I ended up going on entrepreneurship. So I guess This isn't the best story, but I was going down a path to a massive deal. But if I didn't prepare, like, I mean, in the context of like enterprise text sales, you can be like one of my big deals at Google Cloud when I sold there was 10 million over three. You miss out on that. Some people are doing billion dollar deals. And the company is missing a billion dollars. The seller's missing a lot of commission. But it's cool to try to look at. There is a substantial cost to not preparing, to not doing the research, to not even like doing a dry run of the presentation with the solution architect. And then early sellers, SDRs, they're picking up the phone and making co-calls. Many people are waiting for the prospect to pick up and they're caught practicing on the court when they're hit with the objection I'm not interested. And maybe this loss and the cost is a little less. But still, you're missing on opportunities. So the cost of an action, that story was so powerful. And how many billions of dollars did it cost them? 12 so far. So far. So let me just add to this point. I believe that there's a lot that lies on the other side of preparation. So let me explain. The example you just gave Chris, you prepare for these big meetings that you have coming up. If you're prepared, it doesn't just mean that you have this rehearsed and you know exactly what to say, you've got to script down. It probably means that. But it also allows you more importantly to be present in the next on the other side of preparation, you can adapt on the other side of preparation. You can probably be funnier on the other side of preparation. You can show up and be yourself on the other side of preparation. You can read the other people more because you're less in your head, right? It opens up this space for you to be able to then be successful in the way that you need to in that given situation. I think all of that happens on the other side of preparation. You know what? This doesn't just apply to sales scenarios, but interviewing scenarios when you're trying to land your dream job and type a big theme of this channel predominantly as people are breaking into tech sales or landing a dream job. They're winning large clients. So it's funny how they're both selling their both high stakes. But when I ended up getting hired at Google out in Austin, that was a big deal for me at the time. I'm a millennial. I'm like Google, the brand, Austin, and I did prepare so much. I spent a month preparing and I got interview questions in advance after networking with people. And then I was able to to your point, surrender to the preparation and trust and then be present. And you know what the presence led to? This is so quirky, but I broke out in a singing lean on me in the moment in one of the interviews in the Google-in-ness interview, which they're culture, they say, bring yourself to work. That might not have flown with another company. But it's because I was present, I was able to do spontaneous things like that that was memorable and unforgettable, asked better questions and tune in. So just to recap what you're saying, preparation allows you then to be present. And is there anything you'd expand on in terms of the importance of presence, being able to tune in to others and adapt in the moment? Well, I think what you said is perfect, right? I think that the intangibles is customization, right? I give speeches for a living, but the same concepts would apply to interviews, to presentations, to sales presentations, to one-on-ones as a leader, right? We could apply them in all those things. In that moment, when you read the audience and you adjust and you adapt and you say what they need to hear, not what you need to say, what they need to hear. Those are the things that matter, the little touch points. Even if it's just like you're going to say the same thing, but because you've paid enough attention because you're present, you can say, isn't that just like this? Right, you can tie it to them in a way that's more meaningful. You can personalize it. Those things make a huge difference. Ty, that is like what I built my whole tech sales career on was thoughtful personalization and you can only do that when you are able to focus on others and tune in. Appreciate you hitting on that note. I love how your concepts of high performance, and we'll see if we can fit in a little storytelling. It applies to sales. It applies to all domains. One more thought, Chris, before you move on. The other thing that it does for, when I think about you in that situation in tech sales, you put in the preparation, the other thing that does for you is it gives you a level of confidence going in that you wouldn't have otherwise. If you've done your research about the potential client you're sitting in front of, you know all these things. You probably aren't going to use all of those things, but you have them and you have a level of confidence going into it that you go, I can speak their language. I know it's important to them. I can pull on this string if I need to. I can go this direction if I need to. I can tie this point in here. Just gives you a level of confidence going in that comes across. So glad you stopped me there to hit on that point because that really seems to be a secret to true confidence in high stakes moments. It's directly in our control, our preparation builds confidence for this beach, for the discovery call with that billion dollar account for that interview. And so I want to go to adaptability in a second, but when you're entering in a high stakes moments, like given a big speech in front of NSA, I might assume like, a time might not get nervous anymore. He's a pro, but I don't know if that's true. For how do you speak to yourself as you enter into high performance moments after knowing you put in the preparation? It's just time to execute now. So is there any way you speak to yourself for little, even physiological habits or things that you do to tune yourself to shine in that moment? Yeah. I think we all have our own practices. We start to figure out. For me, right before a speech, that's not the moment of to rehearse. If I'm running through lines of what I'm going to say, I did not prepare the way that I needed to. So for me, right before my focus is on energy, it's the energy that I have and how I want to show up. That's where I'm trying to focus in at that moment. So if it's big audience backstage, one, I'm an extrovert. So I gain energy from people. So often before a speech, like break before whatever, I'm going out and I'm meeting people. I'm saying hi, I'm shaking hands because I gain energy from people and I want to build some connection. But then backstage, I'm like literally like jumping, hopping up, like building up my energy, getting ready to go. My focus then is, okay, I want to show up and be present. I've prepared what I'm going to say. And if I'm thinking about little things, I'm thinking about connection points. Like what are those personalization pieces? What are the things that matter in that way? And I host a podcast as well. It's called the redefining high performance podcast. But I most of them, I'm just me sharing like some of our research around high performance. But last week, I broke the mold a little bit and I interviewed somebody. It's a guy who's named Kai Vex Tran who just won the show American Ninja Warrior. So high performer literally just won the show and two days later, you know, I'm sitting down with them talking about it. We were talking about nerves because obviously right before you run a course, right, you're walking up to the starting platform, you're going to feel that. And he made a point that I thought was really interesting. He said, your nerves, the worst they're going to be is right before you start anything. He goes, I feel nerves right on the starting block. But then as soon as they say go and I start doing what I do, as soon as my body gets in motion, those nerves dissipate. As soon as I start the first obstacle, then I'm locked in. And so I think it's good for all of us to remember that. Like there's nerves backstage. You're going to feel that, right? And then as soon as you start the process, engage, ask that first question, start the speech, whatever it is, I think those nerves start to go away and you lock into what you've prepared to do. Just start and lock in. Really good insight right there. My father is a Lakers fan and his favorite player of all time is Kreme Abdul-Jabbar. You made an argument in your speech that he might be the greatest player of all time if you look at the stats. And I'd love to hear a story about him and how he embodies adaptability because you've already had adaptability, but it was powerful what you shared with us. Yeah, I think Kreme, there's probably, in my opinion, five or six guys that deserve to be in the conversation of the goat, the greatest of all time, in the basketball sense. And Kreme's the guy that always gets left off the list. I don't know why because arguably, when you put together high school college and pros, he has the best career of all time. And most of these guys that were having the conversation, they didn't spend four years in college. If you took Kreme and put him in the pros, like straight out of high school, like the LeBron or Kobe or somebody, I think his stats are even crazier. But yeah, the short version, Kreme, dominated through high school, goes to UCLA. dominant at UCLA is sophomore season, leads the NCAA in scoring, leads the NCAA in field goal percentages, national player of the year, and they win a national championship. I mean, completely dominant. But then that summer, the NCAA made a rule change, where they outlawed dunking from the game of basketball. And over time, it's come to be known as the cream-evedel-jabbar rule, because it was actually a racist move by the NCAA to try and stop his dominance. So put yourself in cream shoes. Everything's going great. You're killing it. And then all the rules change, right? And it's not fair. I mean, it would have been easy to go, I'm taking my ball, I'm going home, right? That would have been understandable. But cream chose instead to adapt his game. He went back in the gym. He started working on different ways to score. And he went back to a shot that he had used a little bit in the high school in college. And he perfected it. It became a signature shot, the skyhook. So he comes back as junior season. Without being able to dunk, he does the same thing. He leads the NCAA in scoring. Field goal percentage, he's national player of the year. They win a national championship. Same thing as senior season. He's the number one pick in the draft. He ends up playing 20 seasons in the NBA, 19 of which, he's an all-star, six of which he's the MVP, which is the most ever in NBA history. He scores the most points in NBA history. And that record holds for the next 35 years until LeBron James broke that record. So pretty incredible. Staff, pretty incredible story. But for me, what stands out to me is his adaptability, right? Most people can't be completely dominant have their main thing taken away and reestablished dominance at an even higher level. I don't know. There's very few examples of that. And yet he created the most indefensible shot in basketball. So think about this. He's seven foot two. He has a seven four wingspan. He puts the defender on one side of his body. He releases the shot at the very highest point on the other. I was just looking this up yesterday because somebody asked me, most people have measured it. And he released the shot between 10 and 11 feet. So some of these sky hooks, he's shooting down at the basket. Nobody's blocking the shot, right? Like it's not going to happen. I had a speaker friend named Mark Eaton who lived here in Utah, played for the jazz. He was seven foot four, one of the best defenders of all time. And we talked about him defending Kareem. And he's like, dude, it was impossible. I'm seven four with this massive wingspan. Like, there's enough space that he's created. Mark blocked it maybe once or twice. One of the best blockers of all time. Wow. And he's like, Kareem, just you couldn't stop it. So, but to me, it emphasizes this idea that adaptability is a game changer. And our research showed that 79% of Americans believe that adaptability is the most crucial skill for you to be successful in today's world. Because you think about how fast our world is changing, all the things that we're dealing with, we have to be able to adapt. We have to be able to adjust. We have to be able to learn. We have to be able to grow. Otherwise, we become irrelevant very, very quickly. What a relevant point to sellers in a world where AI, and generative AI is disrupting everything. And their idea is I'm not saying that AI is going to take a seller's job, but the people who use AI will take other seller's jobs who aren't. So that's an example. We got to adapt and leverage AI in our sales process. Also, I talked to buddies like Mikey, he's a real world seller I had on the podcast, who has blown out his quota and midway through the year as company changes the quota and ups his number. Or, you know, back when I was at Google Cloud, we had they eliminated different, you know, sales ords and restructured their go-to-market. The playbook changes. So maybe the play that you're used to, the dunk, now you got to create a sky hook, like a different go-to-market angle to hit your number. So adaptability is so important. Is there anything else you want to add? Because then I want to take us to another, a couple other principles that you would share from your talk. They're so good. So anything else you want to add to? No, we can go wherever you want to. I think adaptability matters for all of us. And it will continue to. That's not going to change. The rate of change will just keep going. Yep. And the reason I check in with you is you have so much insight beyond things I don't know. I don't know about what you know. So I just always like to check in if there's any cherry on top. So you had mentioned a learning list and an unlearning list. Now the unlearning, you heard the emphasis in my voice it surprised me because I never thought of that. But can you just speak to the importance of, like what's behind the learning list? Obviously, I imagine continue learning is important. And after I can ask you a little about the unlearning list as well. Yeah. So I think, for me, I look at, okay, if we want to be adaptable, then, you know, how do we do that? Well, ultimately, I think our rate of learning has to keep pace with the rate of change. Right? I think that's that's what keeps us relevant and allows us to adapt. And so then I looked at and said, okay, what's like a daily practice, right? You go to a conference where you listen to podcasts, we get some learning, but how do we do that on a regular basis? How do we make sure that that's something that becomes systematic within us and not just happens when it happens, right? And so this idea of a to learn list is kind of like a to do list, but a to do list is about performance and execution. Nothing wrong with that. Keep that. But start a to learn list. Add to it ideas, like as we're having this conversation, you're listening, maybe something sparks your curiosity and you go, oh, I want to learn that or I want to get better in that. Right? Throw it on your to learn list. And then keep, you know, maybe there's a point you deep dive in it or you ask for feedback on it, you explore it, you practice it, depending on what it is, a skill, knowledge, you know, but you're going to add to that on a regular basis. And then I think part of that is that there's skills and things we need to unlearn, not just learn. Right? I don't think growth is linear. I think that sometimes there's things that aren't serving us, right? Sometimes what got you here is not what it's going to get you there. And so I have a on my phone on the note of my phone, I have a to learn list and I have a sub category that's the unlearn list. And sometimes I'm like, I got to throw that on there, right? I mean, simple little things like I'll notice about myself of like the other day I notice, I feel like I'm critical in this specific area with my kids. I want to I want to unlearn that. Right? Like that's not serving anybody. And even just for me, that's like, let's explore it. Figure out where did that come from? Why? What is it triggering me? Why do I feel like I have to say that? Or right? And so you're just constantly adding to that and the goal is to continue to learning it better. Powerful. Well, you got to add the to the to learn list, the power of storytelling right there. I want to be a better storyteller. So I might add that to my to learn. Yes, I'm sure the audience to do so. But man, just to just to be vulnerable, like there are things that they there could be even beliefs and thought patterns that I need to give up, like say I bring on a big guess like you and it's like, Oh, you know, don't put tie on a pedestal. And I'm not saying I'm doing that. But it's like, I want to unlearn like that. Oh, where's that coming from? Why am I doing that? Is there a belief or something going on? There's other things like I'd a mentor say Chris, you use your hands too much. I don't think I'm doing it today. But I see it and I'm like, Oh, that's actually distracting. I need to unlearn that. So those are couple examples, right? It could be in the sales context, you hit on it earlier, like I might ego's getting in the way and I'm sometimes talking just to prove I'm valuable, especially like when I was an SDR entry level sales development or after starting out on text sales as with senior sellers and executives. And I feel I noticed I wanted to prove I was like trying to prove your worth, right? Yeah, right. And so I'm learning that. And so, man, this is so good. I have to get now to another concept, you know, building off of adaptability that really stood out to me in the talk. And this is something I keep talking about. I'm sharing with a bunch of others. But you showed us a music video of someone that it was just cringe-worthy. And then you showed us before and then and after. And the guy I knew right away who was, I couldn't believe it. It was post-malone. One of the greatest, you know, artists of our time with a record, I think you might know the numbers of podcasts, lessons and the MTV Music Video Awards, but he was really bad at first. And now he's unbelievable. You showed us an original music video is cringe. And then a current day music video that was unbelievable. And by the way, I think of Gary V. If you look at his first wine critiquing videos of YouTube first now, it is, it's a crazy difference. And I came away, Ty, from your talk, saying I want to be the post-malone of like, say, podcasting and even with the speaking business building. I have a long way to go. But it was so encouraging. So can you walk us through? Now we can't see it visually, but kind of the overall example and what we can learn from it about. I'll tell you, if you just go on YouTube and type in post-malone first music video, it'll pop up. Okay. He's in these short shorts. There's like this weird, like dance clapping. It's so bad. Right? It's just like my, my son showed it to me. It's like, that is the word, like we just laughed and it's awkward, right? It's just, but when you think about where you started, where he is, I mean, we could dive into so many lessons from it and talk about how innovation happens, talk about embracing failure and how you learn and grow through that process. But yeah, he's turned himself into, according to Billboard charts, the number four artist of the 21st century. The 11th most downloaded or streamed artists in Spotify history, right? I mean, dense and incredible things. That happens because he realizes that, you know, he's pursuing something and he's going to continue to work at it. And yeah, I love that you walked away from the speech with that kind of inspiration, because that's what I hope, right? And I think that's what I think is, we all start somewhere. I think if I go back and I've tried to erase these from the internet, but if I find like, early demo videos of me speaking, they're cringe worthy. They're bad, right? And hopefully I'm better now, but I also hope that in a couple of years, I'm way better and kind of embarrassed by what I'm putting out now. That's the process that we're all going through trying to pursue something. I think he's just a great example of it, because you can visually see it in such a big way. Ty, this might sound dramatic, but through your speech, like you're building a legacy and like changing lives and causing ripple effects, because people like me are seeing that, okay, I can have permission to fail, I can feel forward and someone like Postmolone could be that bad and that extraordinary. You know what, if I just keep failing forward, my success is almost guaranteed if I stay committed and I apply the concepts that Ty taught me. So I just really appreciate you for giving us permission to fail and really remove what I think you said was one of the biggest barriers to success and high performance. Would you say, you know, like real quick, we said preparation might be the number one driver, although there's many drivers. If you had to pick a barrier to high performance, is fear of failure number one or at least up there? Yeah, according to our research, it's the number one thing that all does back, right? Because it shows up in so many different ways. I mean, we could call it lots of different things. Like you might call it in post or syndrome, you might call it perfectionism, you might call it procrastinate. Like, but it's all based the fear of failure, right? We don't want to feel dumb, look stupid, go outside of our comfort zone. It causes us to hesitate. We don't try new things. We don't push the envelope because we're afraid. We don't often say that. We don't go, you know what I'm really afraid right now. We have a lot of ways to justify it, but there isn't a, there isn't a path, a simple path to success. There just isn't like you are going to fail through this process. And the way that you frame that in your mind, the way that you adjusted the way that you see it differently and learn from it and grow. So it's not final, it's feedback, it becomes something useful. That's what allows you to move forward. It's not final, it's feedback, but talk about how unstoppable we become. We're literally in support if we can shift our perspective to embrace failure and say, I welcome it. And then I actually know this is the gateway to my greatness and unlocking my potential. Here's what I'll tell you. I think that we all know that the doing is hard. Right. In fact, in our research, we found this big performance gap 75% of people said it's very important to embrace failure. We asked those same people how often do that 40% right and that's probably a lie. If we're being honest, that's in research, you'd call that a performance gap. The difference between know what you know what you should do and what you actually do. And the quickest way to raise performance is to close that gap. So let's talk about why. Okay. There's a couple things to come into play. Some of that is just courage, right. It's when that fear shows up, I'm going to step forward and do it anyway. Some of it's discipline. We talked about that a little bit earlier, right. It's the daily execution. But some of it's, I would call integrity. It's aligning your values with your actions. Right. You can't tell me that this is what I truly believe if you're not actually doing it. It's you don't not enough to push past fear, not enough to try something uncomfortable. Like this is the example that just came to mind, but you can't tell me that you value your kids' education if you're not saving any money for them. That's out of alignment, right. You can tell me that you think it's a cool idea, but not more important than, I don't know, Netflix or whatever it is, you're spending your money on, right. So all of those things start to come into play, but yeah, if we can close that gap, we increase performance. So I think that most of us consciously know that failure is part of the deal. We have to push through it. But then we also go, what if I could avoid it? I don't think you can fully avoid it. I think we can learn and get better for sure. But I think that there is an element of you have to embrace it. What a deep concept is we start to finish off the conversation, a land on the gap between knowing and doing. So we could know and have the knowledge today that you provided us, but we might not execute on it. And that's the difference maker. There's that execution gap. And I've invested in some like leadership seminars. I don't know if you know like landmark or PSI seminars that were interesting. I've done the side seminars. I went to years ago. Just the whatever the intro. That's cool and we're a little bit of a common language, but part of me going through some of the things is I wonder this is for discussion is, just some people think they're not worthy. I'm sure that's the lead to not taking action. And I feel like, and then you could be aware that I don't think I'm good enough. I don't think I deserve this or whatever. I realize awareness is not enough, but just taking action anyways, regardless of how we feel is the opportunity to disprove limiting beliefs and actually collect evidence to the contrary and almost tells our subconscious. Like, because I'm acting anyways, I actually think I'm worthy. I know that's kind of deep, but it's just a thought. It is, but I also think what you're describing is a level of self awareness and practice to find that self-awareness that most people don't go through. People talk about it'd be cool to be successful. I'll give an example. I had somebody I was related to a friend cousin. I'm trying to remember how he's related. But at one point, he, he literally set out loud. We would all love to be as successful as Thai, but I don't want to work that hard. And I was like, at least you did admit it. You know, like, I don't know. Yeah, I just think most people are not pursuing an understanding of who they are, what holds them back, what, what they need, how they grow and develop. To me, that's the point. I think that's why we're here. We can, I'm not trying to go religious. I think we're here to grow and become our best, the best versions of ourselves. Otherwise, what, what's the point? Like, I, I think that that's the whole purpose. And so when I'm talking about high performance, this means something to me, because I think that's what we're here to do. And if in the process of me pursuing that, I can hopefully inspire somebody like you to pursue that for you. And there is a little bit of a ripple effect. Like, that's the coolest thing in the world to me. Oh, man. I love to experience the heart behind your message. And it's amazing to see someone who's on fire, a line of their purpose. And I will say that aside from, like, maybe if we take the self-awareness, we at journey and we peel back the self-awareness onion, which I jokingly say the more layers you peel back, the more you might want to cry when you're looking in word. And besides maybe discovering that, oh, I don't think I'm worthy, like maybe something happened and you created a story as a kid in response to trauma and we won't get into that. But that story is there. Another thing could be you kind of hit on this, people don't want to put in the work, but they're not facing the reality of that. Where there is a, there is a false hidden benefit of avoiding our greatness and playing the victim. I know our brain likes to be right about, oh, I'm not going to good or whatever. And it's like we get to be right about our current shittiness, excuse my French, and we get to stay comfortable. And so I do think, Ty, you hit on it. There's a deep inside, like a lot of us too, just we're not honest with ourselves. We just don't want to put in the work. Yeah. And that's sad. I think the greatest loss in life is the difference between human potential and actual performance. That's why we're here. That's what we need to pursue. Yes. And Ty, like what a great note to end on. We're going to land the plane now because we need to help you transition your next thing in your day and we got two minutes. But I'm going to save the power of storytelling for hopefully in the future would be wonderful to have you back on. And we could maybe talk about that or you know your new book that's, you know, of course we talked about high performance today, but we could get more into it and make sure to promote it. I'm going to encourage the audience to make sure to check out your website, link in the description, the white paper you mentioned any other calls to action. I mean, I'd encourage them to connect with you on the link to in but any other calls to action. Yeah, happy to connect with everybody who's listening. I'm pretty easy to find if you just search Ty, then it. And you know, reach out on social or whatever makes sense. But yeah, Chris, thanks for doing this awesome work that you're doing excited to see all the great things that you keep doing, but thank you for having me. Ty, thank you for generously sharing your insight and inspiration and impacting me personally and the people that are going to see this as this floats out into the YouTube evergreen sea and on Spotify and Apple. Enjoy that interview. I know you got someone coming over, have a great rest of your day and I really appreciate you into the audience to your success and text sales entrepreneurship and in life. Happy selling and happy living. and we'll see you in the next one. (upbeat music)