Multiply Your Success with Dr. Tom DuFore

277. How to Achieve Peak Performance in High Stress Situations—Dr. Eugene Choi, Neurohacking School

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Did you know that your brain is most likely in survival mode? And, if it is in survival mode, there are only 3 ways you respond? Our guest today is Dr. Eugene Choi, shares with us some neuroscience about behavior within ourselves and others.

TODAY'S WIN-WIN:
Our brains naturally have a fear of uncertainty, so help your prospective franchisees and customers gain clarity.

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Dr. Eugene K. Choi is a Transformational Mindset Coach on a mission to transform leaders, businesses, and communities. He teaches executive leaders how to achieve and sustain peak performance in high-stress, high-stakes and high-change environments. Dr. Eugene created a unique, science-backed process that teaches leaders how to activate their executive brain to dramatically improve results and increase clarity and focus in challenging and unpredictable situations. He has a background in clinical pharmacy, neuroscience and business coaching and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and executives optimize their mindset, reduce toxic stress, and lead with more impact. Dr. Eugene's expertise in audience growth has also resulted in him generating over 11 million views on his online articles and over 30 million views on his short films. His experience and expertise in both strategy and psychology have proven critical in helping clients produce tangible results in both business and in life.

ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.

The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.

TomDuFore:

Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I'm your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky franchise team. And as we open today, I'm wondering if you know that your brain is most likely in survival mode. When it's in survival mode, and this is for all of us, there are only three ways in which we respond. And we'll get to those in the interview today. Well, our guest today is Dr. Eugene Choi, and he shares with us some neuroscience about behavior within ourselves and others. Now, Dr. Choi is a transformational mindset coach on a mission to transform leaders, businesses, and communities. He teaches executive leaders how to achieve and sustain peak performance in high stress, high stakes, and high change environments. Dr. Choi also has created a ton of viral content and work, generating over 11 million views on his online articles and over 30 million views on his short films. His experience and expertise in both strategy and psychology have proven critical in helping his clients produce tangible results in both business and in life. You're going to love this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right into it.

Dr. Eugene Choi:

My name is Dr. Eugene K. Choi. I am founder of Neurohacking School. It's a company that helps people achieve a higher level of peak performance despite however much adversity or high pressure, high-stakes situations you might be in. And that's what I've been doing. I'm a former clinical pharmacist, turned viral filmmaker now, turned entrepreneur.

TomDuFore:

Fantastic. When I saw your information come across my desk in terms of what you're doing, I said, we've got to have Dr. Eugene on the show. I just think what you're doing is fantastic for this higher level mental performance. And so I'd love for you just to really give us a starting point to build from, to talk about why you're doing what you're doing and how you've seen it helping people.

Dr. Eugene Choi:

Yeah. So I've had the fortunate opportunity of coaching hundreds and hundreds of business owners now. And one of the things that I've noticed is majority of the time, the issue with the business owner actually wasn't strategy. They already knew the strategy. In fact, they've probably researched the heck out of it. They've heard it from multiple people. But for whatever reason, they're not executing on these strategies that can help them get the results that they're looking for. So that's when I found out oh, part of this is also psychology, mindset, the way that they're thinking about things. And that's where the resistance comes from. So that's kind of what led down my path of studying how the brain works, the neuroscience. I have a background as a clinical pharmacist. I used to practice for many years. So it helps me understand the science behind things. And I just started learning about that and realized, whoa, if people just understand some of the basics of this, it can be transformative from for them where they actually execute on these things that will help them get the results.

TomDuFore:

So as you started to go down this journey of investigating and researching, and now you've worked with hundreds of clients or coached with folks over the years, what is it that you're seeing, or what did you maybe find?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

Yeah, they just work a lot better. That phrase, work smarter, not harder, that tends to happen a lot as well. The results are really amazing to see. I mean, there's practical results where I've had a client who was only making 40K a year in their business from that to breaking the seven figure in revenue in a span of three years. Some other people who are like, I can never charge a high ticket price for their offer. And they come back that weekend going, whoa, I just closed four sales for a $15,000 package per person. So there's that aspect to it, but then there's also the feeling aspect to it. There's a lot of times we're emotionally feeling very stressed, strung out, burnt out. They just feel a lot better as well, both mentally and physically.

TomDuFore:

How is neuroscience used to help create some of these permanent and transformative types of behaviors that you're able to help people through?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

Yeah, that's a great question. So basically, what I did was I created a framework because I realized a lot of this stuff can sound complicated to people. So one of the things I learned from my filmmaking days, which I was fortunate to work with a couple of people, we created viral content together that reached millions of people, that kind of opened my eyes to it taught me about marketing without learning about marketing. How do you create something viral, which is basically how do you create something that people like so much they want to share it with other people? And those people share it with other people. So it brought the same type of thought process to my mind of how do I take this content of brain science and make it easier to understand? And hopefully it's easy enough to understand that other people can share it with other people. So I've created a framework that I bring people through and they work with me privately, but I teach them basic concepts that once you understand it and you can see it, it should create some immediate shifts for you the more you practice implementing some of these things you learn. The first and foremost thing to know about your brain, it's really simple. It's this your brain can only operate in one of two states at any given time. It's one or the other. It can't be both at the same time. It's what I call either it operates in what's called a survival state or an executive state. So the thing to know about how a survival state works is it's the part of your brain that turns on when you feel threatened in any way. So if you feel threatened, your brain will try to protect you. But when it's in that mode, it cannot think. So you enter into this mode where you're reacting without thinking. Imagine you're walking down a path, you see a snake on the side of the path, you're not going to sit there and start thinking, huh, what am I seeing here? Your body will immediately react and jump away from the snake. So the problem with this when it comes to business growth is your brain's not thinking. So you're often reacting without thinking, which prevents you from experiencing these results that you want to see. If we compare that to what I call an executive state, this is the part of your brain where a lot of higher functions turn on. We're talking critical thinking skills, your creativity, your problem-solving skills, your empathy, your ability to actually connect with someone. And the list goes on out of all these amazing things that it's capable of. That's what an executive state is. So here's the big aha moment I had. It's kind of shocking. Turns out research shows that for a majority of our adult lives, some even some research even suggests it's for 70% of our adult lives, that we're not in the executive state where your brain's higher functions are on. In fact, you're in a survival state. So for a majority of our adult life, our brain's critical thinking skills, our creativity, our ability to solve problems are not being accessed. So the question is why? Why are we in a survival state for majority of our adult lives? Especially if survival state is only meant for life-threatening situations, like a hungry tiger about to eat you, someone's about to hurt you. It's only meant for those, but why are we in this mode for majority of our adult lives? It's because of emotional survival. So it turns out emotional pain can be just as painful as physical pain based on the way the brain processes information. So, what does this mean? We have to think about how often, every day, do we feel feelings that are uncomfortable? Stress, anxiety, frustration, depression, anger. All of these types of feelings that don't feel that comfortable actually kind of tricks your brain into thinking your life's in danger. So boom, your ability to solve problems, your ability to think, it's shutting off. So if we can understand this, that number one is can we see that? That you know what? Yeah, you're right. A majority of my life of my day is I don't feel that great. I feel stressed, I feel anxious, I feel frustrated. And because of that, you're not accessing these parts of your brain that you need. That's the first thing. If people can understand that, then we can move on to the next thing that help you kind of understand what I can do about this.

TomDuFore:

That makes a lot of sense. How can you use that information? I know about it, but what can I really do about it? Is there anything I can do about that? If I'm at 70%, can I reduce that to 50%?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

That's a great question. So, yes, you can do something about it. And the first step is all about awareness. So, awareness is what gives us the power to change something we want to change. So, what do I mean by this? Imagine you have a piece of broccoli stuck between your teeth. Do you have the power to remove that piece of broccoli unless it comes into your awareness? Someone either has to point it out to you or you might see it in the mirror and you become aware of it. Now I'm aware of it, I can change it. So here's this interesting part. Many of us are not aware of what our own survival state actually looks like. So this is step one is we need to become good at becoming aware of what this actually looks like. So that's what I teach. This is the first thing that I teach to clients, or when I'm up on a stage teaching, this is the first thing I teach is we need to know what survival state looks like in our daily lives. So your brain, when it's in survival state, remember it's reacting without thinking. You're doing it without thinking about it. You just do it. It can only do one of three things. Your brain only has three options when it feels threatened in some way, and you enter into survival state fight, flight, or freeze. So, for people who are familiar with what that phrase means, it means it's those are the three options that your brain tries to execute on to try to survive from an actual life-threatening situation. So, in a physically life-threatening situation, it's really easy to understand and know what this looks like. You might pick up a weapon to fight, because if you're in danger, you're going to pick up a weapon to try to fight to stay alive. You're going to run for your life and run away in flight, or you play dead and freeze. So, possums are great at doing this because their predators actually like to eat their food alive. So, possums play dead, they don't get killed. Humans have done this too. If you ever see those war movies where there's like a pile of dead bodies and you see the enemy coming, you kind of play dead so that you don't get killed by the enemy. So now that's easy to spot. What becomes harder to spot is what does emotional survival look like? What are we doing when we're stressed, when we're anxious, when we're worried, when we're frustrated, when we're doubting? That's the thing to spot. So, what does an emotional fight response look like? It could be imagine someone says something, it hurts your feelings, and now you're arguing with them, you're fighting back. So your brain in that moment is actually viewing that person as a threat and you're ready to attack them. Usually it happens verbally, hopefully not physically. Unfortunately, it can happen physically, right? But you're verbally attacking this person in the fight mode. The worst part is if you're doing it to someone you love, because your brain got triggered, you're not thinking anymore, you're actually your brain is actually attacking that person because you're feeling emotionally threatened. Some people who are in fight mode, it could be physical fights as well. Or if you ever see road rage happen, that's a fight response. Because I feel a certain way when you cut me off and now I'm trying to cut you back off. And you see what I'm saying? That's a fight response. Uh, flight response can be things like procrastination. Why do we procrastinate? It's because the thing I probably should be doing right now, there's some sort of fear and security around it. What if I do this now? I look stupid. What if I do this now and I'm right, I get judged? Or sometimes it's physically avoiding someone. It could be an ex, I don't know, your in-laws if you don't like your in-laws, or whoever people that you might not want to be around, a boss, a colleague. So you physically avoid them. One funny story I like to share about that is when we're in a flight response, remember, you're not thinking, you're just reacting without thinking. I used to take the subway to high school in New York City where I grew up, and my friend and I are heading to the subway station. You see one of these Korean ladies with a bunch of those pamphlets, and she's clearly trying to promote something, which is promote her church, trying to convince you to go to her church. And my friend and I immediately feel that reaction of, like, oh God, like we just want to get to school. We're not wanting this whole spiel about, you know, going to her church. But we see her approaching us because my friend and I are both Korean as well. So she sees that we're Asian and she walks over and she says to us in Korean, Hanguk buniseyo, which means, are you Korean? And remember, your brain's not thinking in flight mode in survival. My friend looks at her and responds, Anya, which means no, but he just responded to her in Korean when she's asking her, Are you Korean? So our brain can make very stupid mistakes when we're in survival for that reason, right? And I we've all experienced stuff like this, right? Where we kind of make a silly mistake. And freeze mode is when what happens when you feel like put on the spot. Your brain can't think anymore. Someone just called on you in the meeting and you didn't expect it. Or people who get caught in a lie, your body freezes up because it's their brain going, quick, pretend to not exist so that this person stops interrogating you. So if we can see what fight, flight, freeze looks like, you're giving your brain the ability to snap out of survival so that you can access these higher functions of your brain. So now it's important to get really good at this, though, because it gets very subtle. There's a lot of things people aren't aware of that where it gets deeper. So, what do I mean by this? What's a deeper fight response people might not notice? The need to prove yourself. Why do you fight to prove yourself unless you already view yourself as not so great of a person? Unless you already have some sort of insecurity about yourself or self-doubt. Why do you need to prove yourself? The need to be right all the time. You ever meet those people? The people who always have to be right? Why are people like that? It's because usually at some point in their life they might have gotten shamed, blamed, rejected, or embarrassed for being wrong about something. So they fight because that emotional pain didn't feel good. So they fight to be right all the time. Or the people who just overly interrupt you. Ever meet those types of people? That's a fight response too. Overworking can be a fight response. People who work too hard to try to prove themselves, for example. You know, I had a client of mine and he had this aha moment where we're going over this fight, flight, freeze response because the rabbit hole goes deep of what they look like, what it looks like. And he had this aha moment, and he's this this is a guy in his 60s, very successful, had the multi-million dollar business, the beautiful home, the beautiful family, everything. And he was wondering why am I still so anxious and stressed all the time in my 60s, even though I have everything that I thought I wanted. And he says, Aha moment going, Oh my God, I spent my whole life fighting. And I'm like, What do you mean? I spent my whole life fighting to prove to people that I'm better than my older brother. So his older brother was an NFL football player, and he was sharing a memory with me that when he was in high school, his football coach said to him, Don't even bother, you're never gonna be as good as your brother. And that pain causes us to fight reactively. So, how do we fight? We try to accomplish more, get more status, and even though you get it, you don't feel as happy. So the fight mode, a lot of the people think you need your fight mode because it's what's productive, right? But I found that it always leads to a lack of fulfillment and it always leads to burnout 100% of the time. Because if you're just in that fight mode working, working over, working, over, working, you're bound to get burnt out at some time. And one of the signs that you're doing this is you might accomplish something, doesn't feel that great. And you just move on to the next thing. That's usually a sign that we're in a chronic fight response, if that makes sense. And another client of me argued with me, and I think this is what a lot of successful business owners struggle with, actually, is they're great at fighting, they're great at doing stuff, they're great at executing, producing results, but something's behind the scenes where it's starting to fall apart. You're feeling burnt out, you're feeling anxious, you're feeling stressed, and it's not going away. So another client of me was arguing with me. He's like, No, you need this fight response. And he was bringing up a really good point because you're sharing a story about how he hit rock bottom. His second wife was leaving him because she was cheating on him. His first wife cheated on him too, which is why she left him. Still, the judge ordered that he pay over $2,000 a month in child support. He had a couple of kids. Went broke. His son was asking him, Dad, can I have some ice cream? He had no money. So he's scanging for coins throughout his house. Go to one of those Coinstar monies and, you know, those coin machines that you put them on. And that machine takes money from you too, right? Because they charge a fee. And he ended up with only enough money to buy his son ice cream. He couldn't even have enough money for his own ice cream. And he realized he was telling me that was the moment I needed to fight. I needed survival. Where I was every day, I needed to put my shoulders up and my head down and I had to bash through whatever concrete wall is in front of me after concrete wall after concrete wall. And he's like, you need survival at those times. And I was like, you know, that's a very fair argument. But what if this is not what you should, I'm not saying you should have done this, could have done this. Like, this is just a thought exercise. What if, because you've developed the ability to activate your executive state more often, even if it's for a moment, you have the ability to put your shoulders down for a moment, put your head up. And what you might see is those concrete walls that you thought you had to bash through were only three feet wide. What I mean by this, it means what if there were other options, better options, faster options that could have gotten you the same result that you got. Because in the world of that saying, work smarter, not harder, when we're in the fight mode, we're just working harder, not smarter. We just keep spinning through the same loop. One of the main reasons this happens is when your brain is in survival, it develops tunnel vision. So imagine a hungry tiger walks into the room. Are you gonna look anywhere else except where that tiger is? So when we're stressed out and we're in this tunnel vision, there might be a better option, such as franchising, right? There might be a smarter option, but your brain just doesn't see it in the moment because of the stress, and you develop this tunnel vision. So this is why it's so important to be able to be aware: am I in a fight mode? Flight mode, where it gets more subtle, is things like when we numb ourselves. So there's no judgment around any of this. We all do it, we all numb ourselves at times to emotional pain. It's important to be aware of it, not judge it. By the way, judging someone can be a fight response. It's usually because we are insecure about ourselves. This is why a lot of people gossip and say negative things about other people. It's I'm insecure about me. Maybe if I put that person down, it will help me feel better about myself in some way. So it's important not to judge. Numbing ourselves in flight response can be things like overindulging in things like television, food, right? Alcohol, sex, drugs, to the point of addiction. It's to numb this feeling I don't want to feel. The problem with that, again, is you're not accessing the higher functions of your brain. Subtle freeze responses is when you hear some traumatic news, like some shocking news, your body freezes up. When you hear something shocking, you didn't expect. This is also why I found out that I don't think there's such a thing as laziness. Someone might label a person as lazy, but something's going on in their brain that's probably a chronic freeze response. We can't make decisions. It's usually because of some sort of emotional pain that's been happening a long time, whether it's from their own upbringing or whatever the case may be. But if you can spot these fight-flight freeze responses that happen in everyday life, it's usually easier to spot it in other people. It's like, oh, there's that person procrastinating, there's that person not taking action, that there's that person that has anger issues. But the big challenge is can you spot it in yourself? Because we all have it. And the better you get at spotting this, I can guarantee like it's going to be a transformative experience. And that's just the beginning of the conversation. But we need to be able to spot this first.

TomDuFore:

One thing it made me think about we work with entrepreneurs, help them franchise their business. And so someone takes that step. They pass through, I'm sure, some of this fight, fight freeze kind of mode. They get through the survival mindset to take that step at some way moving through it. And then it makes me think about them selling a franchise and for franchise ours that are in the business of selling franchises. Well, that prospective franchise buyer probably has a lot of fear coming along with this purchase. So maybe it's not you going through that, but maybe it's a customer. In this case, maybe it's a potential franchisee going through. What are some things that you might maybe suggest or maybe could help that prospective franchisee come through that process or help them understand what they're looking to get into here?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

That's a great question. So your brain naturally just doesn't like uncertainty. It's actually what kept us all physically alive all of these generations. It's because our prehistoric brains don't like uncertainty because if you go into uncertain territory back when we lived in caves, you might get killed by a wild animal. So this is why our brains naturally have a fear of uncertainty. So if you're the franchisor about to sell someone to a franchisee that's very interested in purchasing, anything that you can help them have that sense of clarity will help them move forward. So there's a saying that in marketing world where it says, if you confuse, you lose. What that means, if you confuse someone, you've lost the sale. So it's it's like that experience of if you've ever gone to like a fine dining restaurant where they have really fancy food, and you know how they have each dish there and it lists all the ingredients out. And like imagine you're like, oh, this food looks good. And then there's this one ingredient, you're like, I don't know what that is. Does that make you go, oh, I want to try this now? It actually causes aversion. So anything you can do to help a person have full clarity, like, hey, look, this is exactly the step-by-step process. It's a four-month process. Here's what, here's a document for you that you can look at it week by week of what to expect. Like any sort of clarity you can provide for that person you're making a sale, like that's potentially interested in purchasing with you, that's the best way to get their brain out of survival. Because if they're in survival, they're either gonna fight with you and argue with you and nitpick on every little thing because they don't trust you, they're gonna flee from you, which is avoid you, ghost you, not purchase with you, or they're gonna freeze. They're just not in a mode. I can't make a decision right now. I'm too overwhelmed, I'm too scared, I'm too nervous. So, as the franchisor, it's good to pay attention to. Is this person I'm dealing with right now in a fight mode, flight mode, or freeze mode? And the more that you can see that, now you can know what to do to help them with that.

TomDuFore:

You had mentioned about your framework and some process and things that you take people through. How can people learn more about that or get in touch with you or learn a little bit more about what you're doing?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

Yeah, absolutely. So, my work, what I teach is that's just step one is the fight flight freeze response. The where the value really comes in, where it becomes even more deeply transformational, is it turns out your brain, by the time you're about 35 years old, 90 to 95% of the brain goes subconscious. So, what do I mean by that? It's on autopilot. So, for a lot of us, our survival state is on autopilot, which is why every day, if you ever have that experience, I know what's good for me, but I don't feel like I'm doing it, so I'm not gonna do it. I know I should work out to get my body healthier, but I don't feel like it. So I'm just gonna stay home. So it's because your brain goes into this autopilot mode. It's for efficiency purposes, actually. This is why you don't go down the stairs going, I'm gonna put my left foot forward, my right foot. You don't think that for each step, you just do it without thinking. So the skill that we want to develop is how do we change that autopilot that's not serving us, right? Creating good, just like you create good systems to the in order for a franchise to work successfully, the systems need to work well, right? What most people don't realize is our brain runs these systems as well. So it's a habit of thinking, feeling, and acting. We think 70,000 thoughts a day, 90 to 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as the day before. Majority of those thoughts are negative thoughts about ourselves, which causes more survival state. Same thing with the feelings, your body can get used to a feeling. If your body's used to the chemical feeling of anger, it's what it wants, it craves it like a drug addict. You might not feel angry one day and your brain goes, Hey, I need that anger. Can you give me my dose of that chemical of anger? Because our feelings are chemicals. And your brain might think about something that's it's stressed about and you're going, Oh, I'm so pissed off. Well, your body's your brain's going, I'm so pissed off. Your body's going, ooh, that feels so good. Right. And your body gets used to a feeling, and that becomes a habit as well. And then because of these feelings, we might react without thinking on a daily basis. We procrastinate all the five life response we talked about. What I teach now is how do you change that autopilot? Right. There's a lot of things that you can do to change that autopilot, but that's what I started my community for. It's called Neurohacking School. So this is an online community where it has all the, it has my course and we meet once a month online to talk about it, with answer any questions. And I also have the Neurohacking Podcast. So that's a free podcast that people can listen to to learn more about how do you change this autopilot? Because a lot of our autopilot works against us, doesn't it? That's what bad habits are. So that's the name of the game is if we can get really good at at least seeing what five flight freeze looks like, that makes you ready to learn about well, how do I actually change these habits that I keep doing each day?

TomDuFore:

Well, Dr. Eugene, this is a great time in the show, and we make a little transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go. And the first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey and something you learned from it?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

I was actually transitioned careers quite a few times now. So I started off as a pharmacist when I went into the working world. After three years, I quit to actually make films online. Uh, I was working with a YouTube channel. They got pretty big. Now they're it's called Jubilee Media. They went from pretty much zero to 10 million followers across YouTube. So I was working with them when they were starting off, and we made multiple, multiple pieces of short films that went viral. I think the biggest project I work on got 23 million views online. And the miss was after doing all of that, I still ran out of money because we're all living off our savings. YouTube, just to give you a frame of reference, YouTube, you need to be every video you make needs to be making millions of views for you to make decent money. So, for example, one project I worked on with uh the first Asian American basketball player, Jeremy Lynn. We did a film for him, got three million views on it, 5K. That's all it paid off. And we were a team of like seven people, right? And we're all just living off our savings. That money went back to the company. Ran out of money, and it taught me a lot. Like the miss here was yeah, like all of the financial aspect of things, the business aspect of things, I didn't know any of that. So there are times, the thing I learned from that is there are times where passion itself, the feeling of passion itself, also needs to be paired with competency. There are certain things that it's good to become competent in, like basic business foundations, sales, marketing, how it works at the least, so that you can combine the two and then produce more value for your audience. Yeah, that was the miss for me. It's like I've run out of money multiple times because of that reason.

TomDuFore:

Let's look on the other side. Let's talk about a make or a highlight, a winner or two you'd like to share.

Dr. Eugene Choi:

It actually stems from the same story. It's the concept of leverage. How do you make the most use of your time? I think out of all the businesses I've coached, so this is the big aha moment for me that comes to mind now. Is I did these pieces of content that went viral. We're talking like it generated millions of views. There are plenty of business owners who would kill for that type of exposure. So that experience helped me leverage that, where whoa, like I know how this works. So I did that with my writing. And one year, my one article I wrote generated seven millions of view, seven million views. And at the time, I was getting mentored by a CEO of a big business, and I was a business coach for that. They hired me as to be one of their business coaches. I originally hired them to be my business coach. And they hired me because they're like, whoa, in a year, you got a million views on your work. How are you doing this? You know, all of uh there's a lot of businesses that are struggling, getting more exposure for their business. I'm like, I don't know, I just learned it from my filmmaking days and now I'm just doing it for my writing. And then one year my article went viral, 7 million views on it. I made in a weekend what the company was contracting me with, paid me for the whole year. So it got me thinking a lot about like, how do you create these moments? How do you build, look at the right information, create the right skills so that you can leverage your time the best? So ever since then, that's why I'm a huge component of like if you're starting a business, work from the top down. What's the most expensive thing that the highest price item you think you can offer that provides value for the problem you solve? If you can get a few of those, it's a lot easier than trying to find 10x, 100x of those people paying for a fraction of the cost, like a $10 product. You know what I mean? So that was a huge win for me because I was fortunate enough because I learned those skills during those days when I got mentored, how to do sales, marketing, all that. Yeah, my first package is out the gate when I started my business for a higher ticket item. And it got me thinking a lot about that, right? So that was a huge win, which led to a lot of the bigger wins, right? Like getting into corporate now. And you know, that they pay five figures for like a 60-minute talk, a 90-minute talk. And that's average. That's actually pretty average for a corporate company that brings in a keynote speaker, for example. So it just that was a huge win. It was just like learning, like, wow, you can leverage your time a lot better. But then from a heart perspective, it's just like, whoa, it's nice to know that you're capable of these things you didn't think you were capable of before. Because prior to that, you might not have believed that it was possible for you, if that makes sense. Right. So that was a big win for me. Yeah.

TomDuFore:

Let's talk about a multiplier that you've used to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or any of the organizations you've run.

Dr. Eugene Choi:

Yeah. So that's the main multiplier is through my content. So I tell people all the time, it's like if you find yourself saying the same thing over and over again or teaching the same thing over and over again, why are you spending your time doing that when you can record it once and multiply it? In the marketing world, there's a phrase called the rule of seven. It takes someone up to seven times being exposed to your brand, your name, who you are, before they even remember you or even decide to trust you or not. It's evolved so much. It's not the rule of seven anymore. It's the rule of seven hours. It's even harder to win someone's trust these days. It takes about seven hours of them interacting with you to decide do I like this person? Do I trust this person? So then if you want a multiplier, it's great to record content as an example. Because who has the time to spend seven hours with every new person you meet, especially if you network a lot? So if you can multiply yourself by creating. Recorded content or systems, creating good systems in your business that can be replicable, that's a great multiplier. The way I did it was through content marketing, right? One piece of content, 7 million views. Another piece of content, 23 million views. But I'm not I'm not doing it 23 million times. I did it one time and 23 million people saw it. And Dr. Eugene, the final question we ask every guest is what does success mean to you? Success means to me, especially of now. I have three little children, right? They're little toddlers. Success means to me being able to have that autonomy and freedom of choice and being deeply connected with my family and the people I serve, and being able to cultivate a safe space. That's always been my mission. From a neuroscience perspective, that's because that's when your brain performs at it at its best, when it feels safe. It's not feeling threatened, not feeling worried, not feeling anxious. And yeah, that success to me is being able to be have that autonomy over my time and also cultivating safe spaces wherever I go, whether that be with a client, my family, my friends.

TomDuFore:

As we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven't had a chance to yet?

Dr. Eugene Choi:

If I look behind the scenes of like, what is it really getting in people's way from this bigger success, this bigger opportunity for them? And it actually stems down to this one question. There was this leader that asked this really powerful question. This leader was being asked about relationships, about romantic really. How do I find the perfect partner? As if there's such a thing as a perfect partner out there that you can hold responsible for your happiness, which doesn't exist. It's a security survival state, security policy, like an insurance policy people create. Maybe if I find someone I can hold responsible, then at least I have someone to blame when I'm not happy. So it doesn't exist. So this leader asked this powerful question Would you go out with yourself? And I remember this was such a powerful question because my first reaction was, no, I wouldn't. It's easy to spot things you don't like about yourself, be negative, be self-doubtful, and all that kind of stuff. But the bigger aha moment I had was, do I actually have a healthy relationship with myself? Because if I don't, I'm gonna be transactional in my relationships. I'm gonna use other people. And unfortunately, I'm not proud of it, but I've used my family for that reason. How do I know this? I might claim that I'm sending my kids to the best, we're you know, sending them to a nice school or whatever. I buy all these things for them because I love them. But if I don't have a healthy, loving relationship with myself, I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for me. Maybe if I do these things for my kids, I will feel better about myself. I will feel less stressed, I will feel more happy. Maybe if I do these nice things for my wife, claiming it's because I love her, I will finally feel better. I'm using them to feel better about myself. How do I know this is true? It comes out in an argument. What do I say? Well, I do this and this for you. Why don't you do that and that for me? Why did I keep track of those things? Usually when we don't have a strong, healthy, supportive relationship with ourselves, it's what's preventing us from performing at a higher level. And we enter into a lot of transactional relationships. Who likes transactional relationships? Nobody. I do this for you, you do this for me, or it's just business. Business is very personal too, especially when you're talking about bigger deals, bigger things that you're working on together that make big impact. So that's what I realize is if we get good at developing better relationships with ourselves, and that all starts with looking at our inner environment. Because when you're in survival, it focuses on the outside. Because if you go to a dark forest, for example, you hear a scary noise, where do you focus? Your brain will focus on the outside, going, where's the sound? Where's this noise? The problem is when we feel emotional survival, your brain does the same thing, going, where's this pain coming from? It must be from the outside. It's because of this relationship, it's because I don't have this much money yet. It's because of this circumstance. The most courageous thing we can do is look inwards and see what's there. And the better we get at looking at that, being aware of it, having a better relationship with ourselves. Honestly, that's the key ingredient I've seen when people skyrocket their success. They're working smarter, not harder, but they're also feeling better. They're more connected with the people around them. People enjoy being around them. Yeah, I think that's what comes to mind of like, that's what it all came down to for me is if you get into a better relationship with yourself, because it takes courage to do that. No one likes looking inwards because there's all this junk that you don't like. That's why we don't do it. It's like that feeling of imagine you go on a spending spree and the credit card bill comes in the mail. You don't want to open it. That's what personal development feels like, honestly. It feels so uncomfortable, but it takes a lot of courage to do that. And it requires a commitment to your own growth. And that's what I noticed behind the scenes is people who don't blame others, they take full responsibility for their growth. This is on me, my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions. It's because of me. And I'm willing to take ownership over it. So we don't do that unless we have a healthier relationship with ourselves. So that's, I don't know, that's what came to mind when you just asked that question, because that's what was most transformative in my life was to commit to my growth and take responsibility for it, regardless of what circumstances outside of me are happening.

TomDuFore:

Dr. Eugene, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. And let's go ahead and jump into today's three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is that your brain can only operate in either a survival state or an executive state. I found that interesting, and that for most people, about 70% of the time today, our brains are in this survival state. And so takeaway number two is when our brain is in this survival state, we respond in one of three ways. We respond with fight, flight, or freeze. And what I found really interesting about this, because most of you have probably heard the fight, flight, or freeze from a physical standpoint. But I thought it was very interesting how he applied it to the emotional standpoint. And the first step to help support you in figuring this out and how you respond is through awareness and oftentimes noticing in others. Takeaway number three is in marketing, it is no longer the rule of seven, which was seven impressions or seven touches in marketing with a customer, a prospective customer. It's now the rule of seven hours. The customer wants to spend seven hours with you before they're looking to make a decision. I thought that was great. And now it's time for today's win-win. So today's win-win is uh thinking about Dr. Choi's interview and really starting to think of it from a franchise perspective and a franchise sales perspective. And I thought it was interesting when we we spoke a little bit about that. And he said our brains naturally have a fear of uncertainty. And he quoted Donald Miller, who says, if you confuse, you lose. So thinking about how you can apply that to your franchise sales structure or engagement with your franchise prospects, being clear, helping them understand the process, trying to eliminate ambiguity will be helpful. And I really liked when he was at that session and he talked about how at one point he was at this leadership program, and someone in the audience had asked about how you find the perfect wife or something to that effect. And the response back from the presenter was, would you go out with yourself? And it really made me think about applying that in this case to the franchise sales perspective. Now, my experience in working with franchisors is that most founders would not necessarily buy their own franchise because they're entrepreneurs and they're creative and going out that way. To me, it made me think, okay, let's walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Let's walk a mile in that franchise prospect's shoes to help provide context to the decisions you're making in the franchise sales and franchise marketing process. And I thought that was a great win because if you're pursuing and approaching it in that way, it's going to be a win for you and a win for the prospect to gain the clarity and make the process easy for them to make a decision to decide to go with the franchise or not. And so that's the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to our podcast and give us a review. And remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at BigSkyFranchise Team.com where you can schedule a free, no obligation consultation with myself or one of our team members. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.

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Tom DuFore

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