Dealing with Goliath: Psychological Edge for Business Leaders

Therapy Room to the Trading Room: Insights with Bill O'Herron (#042)

March 12, 2021 Al McBride Episode 42
Dealing with Goliath: Psychological Edge for Business Leaders
Therapy Room to the Trading Room: Insights with Bill O'Herron (#042)
Show Notes Transcript

Bill O'Herron is a corporate executive, practicing therapist and writer who seeks to use his 33 years of financial sales management experience, 24 years of marriage, 15 years of counselling clients, and 8,500 hours of sitting quietly to help all his clients better understand, change and deepen their relationships.

Bill’s research shows that relationships fail for one key reason: a lack of understanding of one’s own emotions and reaction patterns created in childhood.

He teaches that all your relationships with others, especially your marriage, started in 4th grade, when your limbic-emotional body learned, absorbed, and inherited your parents’ lives and experiences.

We are all therefore married to our own old, unconscious emotions more so than to our spouse.

An underlying principle of his work is: Emotion is the key to and the driving force underlying every thought and action in human existence

He celebrates in and humorously expounds on the belief that working on yourself, which will automatically improve the dynamics of all your relationships, is the most important thing in life, and that what we do right now in our relationship echoes down through posterity, changing who our grandchildren's children become.

Topics Covered: 

  • Brain delineation when you hit your 30s
  • Sitting quietly he noticed all sorts of emotions he didn't know were there
  • Helping others know themselves better was 100% to Wall Street
  • One question cold calling completely changed them to talkative
  • Nobody really wants to just jump into the product
  • Great meetings from just building great relationships with the gatekeepers
  • The goal is to expire wide awake as Hindus say
  • The art of asking questions, feels fluid not stilted
  • Meditating with tears in your eyes
  • Vulnerability, the only way to build relationships
  • Relationships tend to dictate health
  • Remember the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
  • Where's the friction and the fire in our relationships?
  • Lack of engagement isn't harmony, it's apathy
  • Relationship is a verb, it never ends
  • Insights from his wife throwing a plate at his head
  • Things stored in our limbic brain start to pop up in our 30s
  • My book 'Waking Up Marriage' has nothing to do with marriage
  • Be that one person revealing a little more about myself
  • 80% of your skills in business are EQ based
  • The only way to increase EQ is to bring the right and left brain together
  • Meditation is the physicalising of increasing EQ
  •  Your heart sends 5000 more signals to your brain than vice versa
  • If you understand your own crap, you're more likely to understand others' crap
  • Why aren't you working on the one thing you truly can control
  • Counterintuitive: You flood yourself with the very thing that's killing you
  • Dialogue between your 35 and 4th grader selves
  • You bring the left brain adult perspective to the right brain child's anger
  • "As a kid you pick up what your mom and dad feel"
  • Jung: You can't change anything until you accept it
  • Be present with those younger parts of you
  • Ignore history, you're doomed to repeat it, true of personal history too
  • Participate in your life as it was to expand now
  • People want to tell their story, so let them
  • Oddly more time alone, can lead to more effective conversations
  • Listen to the intent behind what's being said
  • I'm being nice, not to be nice, but because I'm curious

If you're interested in more visit ▶ https://almcbride.com/minicourse
for a free email minicourse on how to gain the psychological edge in your negotiations and critical conversations along with a helpful negotiation prep cheat sheet.

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Al McBride  0:05  
Welcome to the dealing with Goliath podcast. The mission of dealing with Goliath is to sharpen the psychological edge in negotiation and high impact conversations for business leaders with skin in the game, who want to be more effective under pressure, uncover hidden value, and increase profitability. 

Al McBride  0:22  
With expert guests across the business spectrum. We deliver gems of wisdom delving into their methods, their thinking and approach to business, life and problem solving. This is the grand a cup of insight long form podcast interview, where we take the time to delve a little bit deeper into our guests experiences stories, and to get those priceless nuggets. 

Al McBride  0:43  
I'm your host Al McBride and my guest today is Bill o Heron. Bill is a corporate executive practicing therapist and writer who seeks to use his 33 years of financial sales management experience 24 years of marriage 15 years of canceling clients and 8500 hours that is a hell of a lot of sitting quietly to help all his clients better understand change and deepen their relationships. 

Al McBride  1:14  
Bill's research shows that relationships fail for one single core reason, our lack of understanding of one's emotions and reaction patterns created in childhood. He teaches that all your relationships with others, especially your marriage, started in the fourth grade, when your limbic emotional body learned, absorbed and inherited, your parents lives and experiences. We are all therefore married to our own old unconscious emotions, more so than to our spouse. And underlying principle of his work is emotion is the key to and driving force underlying every thought and action in human existence. Bill, welcome. No,

Bill O'Herron  2:03  
that's a mouthful, who wrote this.

Al McBride  2:06  
But it's a good, it's a good introduction to you. There's so much I want to talk to you about I mean, as we were talking before, in our previous conversation, before we hit record there today, you know, I love where you're coming from. With this, I've listened to a number of your other podcasts and from our conversations, there's so much gems, I want to dig out of your head for the listeners out there. 

Al McBride  2:29  
But it's just such a beautiful parallel, as we talked about that, you know, my whole thesis is I essentially coach people how to coach themselves and their counterpart to a better outcome in their conversations and in their negotiations. And it's, it's a good bit similar to what you do.

Al McBride  2:47  
 But before we get in there, let's let's go step back, get a bit of a big zoom out for a little minute. And that machine fascinated just someone who goes from raising capital in London at the time and and then later in Connecticut, and New York, and now in Austin, raises capital become a therapist, how does this happen? Great question.

Bill O'Herron  3:13  
I'm still trying to figure that out, you know, 25 years later, um, yeah, you know, came out of school, just do it. 20 year olds do and just jump into the business field, loved it and love the challenge. I love the psychology of the markets. I was a sales trader for 11 years. And then as kind of my into my ninth and 10th year, having really nice success on the outside my outside world living in London, living the life of Riley's we used to like to say, there was just something missing inside. 

Bill O'Herron  3:42  
And that sounds so corny, and so cliche these days out, like, oh, the financial guy, not happy. This is the mid 90s. But it was it just and then there's something beckoning and you know, when I when I we ended up doing a bunch of research on what happens when you turn your turn, and you get to your 30s is called brain delineation. 

Bill O'Herron  4:00  
But that's another topic. the punch line is one day, I just decided to stop and sit quietly. And I found a lot of stuff inside a lot of emotions that I didn't know were in there. And so that was the catalyst I, I took that as the as my buddy used to say, you know, the dog gets the bone in the mouth, I took the arm I just followed kept following that thread. And so I ended up quitting. 

Bill O'Herron  4:06  
And I just started reading and meditating and doing therapy and realizing there's this incredible kingdom, there's this amazing world inside of us. That a lot of it we've absorbed the name of my book originally is gonna be called the space in between because we absorb this world from zero to 12 years old. of our parents, and it's bio electric, it's biomagnetic we actually absorb and so um, I left the field the financial field to get this hiatus to get this go back to get a Masters run a juvenile justice program in Stamford, Connecticut, up until late Oh, Beginning of oh six and then in oh seven, I got my license. 

Bill O'Herron  5:03  
Ironically, I get my license to be able to counsel take insurance. I went back to Wall Street, I started commuting back to Midtown, to go back into the into the sales world raising capital. And what was interesting is that every single ounce of energy I put into trying to know myself better and tried to help other people know themselves better, was absolutely 100% applicable to my daily job. 

Bill O'Herron  5:28  
So and I still cold call, so I'm cold calling people. And I'm watching how I react. And I'm watching how they react. And I'm moving and bobbing and weaving, I'm calling cold calling people, I get the secretary. And I can sense right away that they're not interested in talking and I just dropped one question and oh, how's your day going? And suddenly, they get talkative. 

Bill O'Herron  5:49  
And my Modus is to build a relationship to get to her boss, right. So I use what I've been exploring on the inside for the last 26 years, every single day, my job is 100% applicable, the more I know about me, the more I'm going to be able to understand what you're going through out just on a quick conversation. It's amazing. And we've been able to teach that, to our to my colleagues have just a watch themselves, I would listen to their phone calls. And I wouldn't judge or criticize, and they would want to jump into the product. 

Bill O'Herron  6:21  
And you and I know they're all business together here they want because they were so thirsty and desires to do long be successful. I kept saying nobody really wants to jump into the product. JOHN, my, my colleague, my employee, until they kind of know you. He's like, Yeah, but that doesn't make sense. Like, they just want to know that. I'm like, No, no, just try it. Just try this say something that's not business related. 

Bill O'Herron  6:44  
Oh, you're in Miami, I love the dolphins. I don't like the dolphin just something to see what the other side like you work in negotiations, right? You're trying to understand what the emotional side of that person is. And then you're managing that conversation, you either drop it move right on, hey, is your boss there, and you just go for the hook. 

Bill O'Herron  7:02  
Or you keep working. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten meetings with Smart Financial guys that I want to be clients prospects that no one else can get meetings from. Because I was consciously building a relationship with his gatekeeper. And I was getting I was getting meetings, not even talking to Mr. Smith, the boss, man. And so knowing self, as you and I were talking before that before we hit play, I'm hoping you know, it really is and it never ends, the knowledge, who you are at your age and your 30s is completely different than who you are in your 40s. 

Bill O'Herron  7:41  
And if we're not following that thread of art, watching and taking stock and being aware, as the Hindu say, the whole goal of life is to is to expire, wide awake, why to wake, you've processed everything, you've gotten everything on the inside world, everything in the non physical world, in ul out into the physical world, that is the process. 

Bill O'Herron  8:07  
That's the creative process of being human. And so if that's the creative process of being human, I'll be damned if I won't continue to try to figure out who am I in every moment? Who am I in every interaction? Who am I with my interaction with my wife with my kids? And then taking that information good or bad, nasty crying, laughing and figuring out what to do with it and putting it out into the into the outside world? Sorry, that was a long diatribe. Not

Al McBride  8:34  
at all. It's it's phenomenal stuff, particularly interested in in that idea of taking that space. You know, because there's often this idea that, you know, you go slow to go faster. Which as you like your colleague would say it sounds counterintuitive. I mean, it's a business call. Yeah. And we're about business. 

Al McBride  8:54  
So if they want to buy the thing, it's because the merits of the thing and yet, and yet it's not I mean, if they want to know like, Can I can I trust you? Interesting, you remind me weirdly of a conversation I had in Japan with a few friends in Tokyo. And we went to an arrangement, amazing place, but we got chatting to this chap and a bar. And he was kind of quite, you know, senior executive guy. 

Al McBride  9:17  
And we were having drinks and chatting away fast on a front. But he said one thing is that the reason we all go when when people visit us here in Japan or we visit them to do some big corporate deals. The reason we all go drinking heavily is so that you can only hold the mask so long, right? So that when you're quite drunk theories, you get a sense of what this person really is. 

Al McBride  9:41  
And he says so it means that if I need to call you in London, or in Texas, there you go, Oh, you know, it's here, oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna answer the phone. Because I know him. So it's not just business, it's about removing, which is fascinating from society. You know?

Al McBride  9:58  
 That's all about having a All these social ways of doing things and saying things, you know, 18 ways of saying yes, that don't mean yes and no, that sort of, there's of that is what it's all about, is that I know that you will actually, you're a decent enough guy, you know, that's, that was the whole point. So it's that same idea of this emotional connection of do I know like and trust you, it's the classic mark, you know, marketing thing that we buy from people who we know, like and trust.

Bill O'Herron  10:30  
Exactly. And there's an art there, listening is the way to expound on what you just said. Because if I asked you questions, and I'm trying to help, but I'm not listening to what you're saying. And if I'm just waiting to ask that next question. It's kind of stilted, and it's, and it's not fluid. And so really the art is, is asking questions is the only way vulnerability is the only way to build a relationship. 

Bill O'Herron  11:03  
Relationships get built. You and I have a relationship, we talk we chat, right, we keep talking, chatting, and then I share something kind of that, you know, that softens me up like oh, yeah, you know, last week I cried on it, and like so then, and then you either meet me down there that vulnerable spot or you don't, right. 

Bill O'Herron  11:18  
And in business negotiations, of course, you're not going to it's not that vulnerability, but there is a sense of vulnerability where I could tell you so many times where I could tell a conversation really wasn't going anywhere, I would just add to nowhere share something Oh, yeah, that happened and selling the person knew that I was kind of opening up my chest a little bit to be human. 

Bill O'Herron  11:37  
And so it, there's a power, but you have to be confident, you have to know your own inner inner landscape be willing to be vulnerable. And so again, it all comes back to the only way I can develop a relationship with you is I have to be comfortable in my own skin to say, Oh, yeah, I meditate a lot. And half the time I meditate to get these tears in my eyes and stuff like that, and blah, blah, blah, whether it's important or not, I'm exposing who I am. 

Bill O'Herron  11:59  
And even in the business world, we expose a little bit who we are, you're going to find the human element, and you're going to develop a relationship that you wouldn't otherwise do. If you're not have that conviction and confidence in your own ability to share your emotions. And that comes down to knowing yourself,

Al McBride  12:16  
right. And what I would say is, you know, this, think of it as strength through vulnerability, because an awful lot of people are choose to, okay, so might just be out of the habit. So they might have the ability with the just to undo it. 

Al McBride  12:29  
But a lot of part of that then is also I suppose that they deliberately fear being vulnerable, they fear that exposure, whereas when someone can actually even start to just as you say, you drop in something, not a huge, not over share, which can be equally detrimental. But you know that as you said, a little bit of you bringing the humane, you're bringing genuine and human empathy there.

Bill O'Herron  12:55  
Yeah, I just got, I just got goosebumps when you say that. Yeah. And it's funny with women talking to the business folks in the business world, females. I'll often say yeah, most men were actually retarded, because it takes us it's really, it's hard for us to grow up. We don't understand we get end up being Mama's boys. 

Bill O'Herron  13:12  
But we match that with this insecurity and go out make a lot of money. And so when I say men, men are basically retarded, it softens the whole thing. And my wife said, you got to stop using those words. And I got three daughters. Like Dad, you can't use that word retarded. But I'm like, something funny, and honest. And true that, you know, us men were smart, we've got good EQ, but we're a little bit boys, like every man is a walking around 15 year old, you know, trying to figure out their life. I don't care if they've got a rose or anything, get the painting up mentally. 

Bill O'Herron  13:44  
Exactly. developmentally, if a guy can get beyond 20 years old heroics to him, because I'm still like, stuck at 17. Um, but yeah, that that vulnerability, you know, I call it vitamin V. It's the only way it's the only way I believe to to build relationships. Now how important relationships Harvard did that 80 year longitudinal study, right, the grant study. And they, they studied the class of 4142 and 43. 

Bill O'Herron  14:11  
Out of Harvard that graduating class men, I think it was like 80 men, and they studied in their entire lives, and they're now studying their grandkids. What What was the single sentence? It's on my website that came to the Grand study came up with I'll tell you, the most important thing in people's lives is relationships. it dictates the economics that dictates their health. 

Bill O'Herron  14:29  
It's, it's, it's relating with other people, as mammals were built to relate. And if we're not working on self, because that's the first relationship we have to understand is what's our point is yes, right? Because at any moment, it could be the 10 year old owl, it could be the 15 year old owl in whatever whatever mood you're in whatever someone else is setting you off in the insecure hour, the Power Hour, all those things, because you are all those things and so if you don't know Which, if I don't know which bills coming out right now, then I'm just a train wreck. And I know I can be a train wreck without you know. So the point is, knowing self, as Harvard said, relationships most important thing, but it's got to start with self. It does.

Al McBride  15:15  
It's a fascinating I hadn't read. This is the audio book of rapport, which was all about exactly this. And the prince was over and you mentioned the health levels of social connection, or a better indicator, than diet, and even smoking for how long your life is how likely you are dark disease and strokes. So like, it's that level, you know, and again, purpose at work, you know, that's the other thought it sparks is that you need you need literally or sorry, your happiness at work, you need sense of potential or your essential purpose in a sense of connection, a sense of autonomy, but that sense of connection is key. 

Al McBride  15:57  
I mean, that's where humans, we weren't the strongest, yeah, people at all, it was the fact that we could work together better, not only use tools skillfully, but work together better, and give that information to the rest of the tribe and to the younger generations without them having to learn everything afresh. That's why we are so dominant as a species, for better or worse. Yeah, this literally the secret of our success is

Bill O'Herron  16:23  
to connect, correct. And that's right, I took it I took that I took that exactly said that relationships are super important. And I'd read that your while ago, and then I said, well, what's the best arena to work on relationship, it's the arena that causes the most friction, because the second law of thermodynamics says, the two bodies in space will continue to be friction based, and then they'll balance out. 

Bill O'Herron  16:49  
So where is the fire in our lives, the fires in our relationships, and the biggest fire is in our primary relationships, which is our spouse, but it's also our parents and our siblings. So what happens is we retreat from that intensity, but it's in that intensity, that it wakes up all the parts of me. In other words, I could go meditate, and I could go on the mountaintop and spend years meditating, getting all these insights, this is great, I understand self. 

Bill O'Herron  17:15  
And then as the Buddha says, You got to take these insights to the marketplace, get off the pillow, get off the cushion, go to the marketplace. And it's in the marketplace where all the friction is. And so that's the basis of all the work that we've been doing for the last 15 years is your relationship is going to constantly kick up in your relationship with your spouse especially is going to kick up all that insecurity, all that fear, all that anger that would otherwise be laying fallow. It's in there, right?

Bill O'Herron  17:39  
So think about I've been married for 24 years, I can guarantee you at some point today, I point out there in the in the ether when my wife is she's going to kick up frustration and made anger, you know, she doesn't understand all this stuff. And that's just a Thursday afternoon. Right? And we've been at it for 24 years, the point is face to friction go into the friction because that's where the intensity is. And most men. You know, this is their back. I relate when I'm comfortable. Okay, great. That's what are you actually getting when you're comfortable? You're not, you know, peeling away the layers. So that's really been standing the fire has been the message.

Al McBride  18:14  
 It's the David Bowie tune changes, you know, turn and face to strange, it's uncomfortable. That's the one turn and step up, you know? Exactly, exactly. If you remind me of that. There's new book, Adam Grant. And he was talking about this with the opposite of conflict is in harmony, it's apathy.

Bill O'Herron  18:36  
And I love the way you love that symmetry

Al McBride  18:39  
problem when you don't engage time and again, time and again, time. And again. You're not you're not getting to harmony, you're getting to that apathetic state where then the other person in that dynamic, whether it's a business partner, whether it's a relationship partner, whether it's a child, parent, or whatever, or sibling friendship, you name it. They just go out here. What's the point? Yeah, yeah.

Bill O'Herron  19:02  
Yeah. And the apathy creates this wall where you get angry as soon as somebody starts poking. And that's why you know, the word relationship is a verb, it comes from Latin, relotis, right? That's a big, big thing. So relotis means to carry back, right, look it up. And so I took that when I was really like, I've got to understand this, this thing called relationship, I want to get to the root of it, I found the Latin root of it. 

Bill O'Herron  19:32  
That means that you and I are in relationship and we can have a great time, it will always be a good, but you're going to kick up something in me, sooner or later, you're going to kick up something. And so what I do is I take what you picked up in me and I carry it. I take it to my therapy to my meditation to my room, whatever I'm going to do, and I could start within I open up to like, oh, I'll just kicked up this sense of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what do I do I carry this insight back to you.

Bill O'Herron  19:56  
 I go, you know, when you did that, I'll just want to let you know when you did that. So you're like, Oh, really, I can't believe I did that, oh my god. And so something's happened. Our relationship, it's shifting, it's moving. There's actually electrons in the space in between you and I, and it shifts. So relationship is a verb, it never ends. We're always relaxing those carrying stuff back. And if we're not carrying back, there's the apathy. We don't want to pick up the pail of self and carry it to you to the space, then we're not really going to, we're not going to finish life up my, my desire is to finish this whole thing. And it's just left everything out. Like I just, I'm just not

Al McBride  20:38  
always evolving, always. Yeah, yeah. By the way, on that note, it's probably a good time to tell us the story and the implement implications of your wife throwing a place at your head.

Bill O'Herron  20:56  
I can hear the angels singing right now.

Al McBride  21:00  
It was a classic, that seemed to be the sparking moment of a whole different trajectory.

Bill O'Herron  21:05  
I liken it to you know, I read a bunch of of Einsteins work and I'm, oh my god, the guy that wrote the green dragon anyway, he talks about, you know, when the rational when they started splitting atoms, they realize that the everything is one and everything's connected, the rational mind couldn't fathom the allness the crazy, you know, uniting forces of the universe. So we don't, we'd only known each other for about less than three years. 

Bill O'Herron  21:33  
So you know, we were in our we were in our early I was 32. She was 35. We got married, we had a kid moved back to the suburbs. And so there was kind of this. We had created this brand new suburban world, we'd left the urban world and, and she got so angry at me because I was upgrading the kids. And we had, I think we had were two at the time. Or one on one on the way and I was being a little bit just to demostrated. 

Bill O'Herron  21:56  
Or to to, like, sit up straight, you know, and she's like, she got so pissed. She stood up, I stood up and she took a plate, she whipped it on my head. Thank God, I duck. But in that moment, I realized out that that was her 10 year old or 15, or that was really, really upset. But the insight was she that anger towards me. She didn't know me long enough to beat to a built up that much of a callus of anger towards me. In other words,

Al McBride  22:26  
well, you

Bill O'Herron  22:27  
can get you can get. You can get angry me right now for something if I just said something, but that anger could only be if you get so angry, like two standard deviations angry, you know that it's something inside of you that I just triggered. And I knew in that moment, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe she got that angry. There's this world inside of her. That's blowing up. And now that's that's the exit point. And so what we did two weeks later, we went to therapy. I dragged her into therapy. And she's sitting there and she starts talking about that that yet. 

Bill O'Herron  22:57  
Bill's a jerk. Bill's a jerk. And she went into this kind of quiet, almost hypnotics on the couch, and I'm looking at the therapist going, where are we going here? And she's like, oh, gosh, she's such a jerk. He's such an asshole. I can't believe he made me ride horses, when I was that years old. And we're like, well, her dad used to come to the table a little bit liberated never, never heard or anything, but was just mean and, and callous. And basically, that was the aha moment when she realized, Oh, my God, Bill, you're just you're you represent my dad, you kicked up my dad response patterns. 

Bill O'Herron  23:32  
And right there in that moment, Alice swear to god, I'm like, I'm following this trail. And I will not give up. And I realized, our childhood world creates these patterns. And until, and we create one of young and then they get stored in our 20s and 30s. And then brain delineation happens in the left and right brain start to merge in our 30s. And suddenly, these things that were stored in our limbic brain start to pop up. 

Bill O'Herron  23:54  
And we're like, the hell's aphrem, who is like I started saying things that my dad would say, when I was in my mid 30s, with two kids, and like, Who said that? Oh, that was me come from. Yeah. So there's this unconscious world of emotions that gets kicked up. And And in that moment, when the plate was at my head, and I ducked, I realized, okay, there's something much bigger going on here.

Al McBride  24:14  
As you were saying, I mean, the ones marriage is one is one of the obviously the most key relationships in particularly in the day to day importance of your life for years on end. But let's bring that down for a moment and parallel and into the office. Because often, you know, when certain people don't get along, and as you said that he that those parallel patterns have, they're not talking to that person. They're talking to their mother, or their father, whatever.

Bill O'Herron  24:50  
Yeah, I also my book is called waking up marriage but it's and it has nothing to do with marriage. It's really about what I just described was the was the plate at the head, but my old boss kicked up the same thing. My colleagues, it has nothing marriage is just a great big template to use. 

Bill O'Herron  25:04  
But every single relationship you're in my relationship with my neighbor, my relationship with my, my two biggest clients, all those interactions are going to kick up parts of me that if I'm not aware of I, I do dumb things and silly things, we do dumb and silly things because of those emotions that come up. And it's all about awareness. That's the only thing I can do is watch up. Know, my old boss is like, oh, there it is. There's bills a 15 year old, you know, looking for a look and looking for something looking for dad to recognize me, whatever that might be. So marriage is the most obvious template, but it has nothing to do with the marriage itself. It has to do with the intensity of marriage, because we're in four walls 24. Seven,

Al McBride  25:47  
but COVID know. Exactly,

Bill O'Herron  25:50  
exactly. But what like, just look at every relationship, you can literally list every single relationship mom, biggest client worst clients, everybody's kicking up something and Bill, everybody's got their thing, and it's going to fire something up in me. And if I'm not, if I'm not, I'm understanding the stream of stuff moving through me. You know, I'm, I'm not that effective. And I can help them as a as a, you know, I know 250 new clients, we brought in over the last 15 months in our in our private equity fund, I have a relationship with it sounds crazy, I have a really, I have relationship with three quarters of those people, that I could pick up the phone and understand kind of where they're at, just because I take it as the challenge of knowing where they're at what they need, what they don't need, you know, what makes sense. 

Bill O'Herron  26:43  
And just that, to me is the fun part. It's the hard part. But I feel like I've done a lot of work on building them. I can kind of oop, there it is, they're frustrated. Okay, this is a way around. So it's all about business, you know, really, I mean, there's, to me, there's no divide between our personal life and our business life. 

Bill O'Herron  27:01  
Now, I'm not going to share it a business negotiation, I'm not going to share what I would share with, you know, a friend of 30 years necessarily, of course, but I'm gonna go right to the edge of that, because I want to be real and authentic, because I want to know, how much more our business relationship can do for each other. Yes, money wise, but more like connection wise, and, you know, growing together,

Al McBride  27:21  
this is I mean, it's such a good point, because it deals that have are rated as high trust between the two parties, create an average of 35% more value. Wow, 35%. Now, think about some of the deal sizes, you do 35% of the money. Yeah, I was thinking about this. So it's about 80 or 90% of negotiators wish to have high trust negotiations. However, very few of them actually bring signals of that trust into the negotiation room. 

Al McBride  27:57  
So there's this kind of priming, for danger. And for, I don't want to get screwed, and you know, all that I don't want to be seen as weak I did, we made a fool of all of these sort of things. So of course to do, if both sides are doing that, they're not going to find that trust, they're not going to find that rapport to build that trust. And so that value was immediately dropped. And so amazing, that's an amazing line, it also means that your your deals are far less robust, because there's no personality there, there's no trust to find that extra value that will all the hidden value that I talked about. 

Al McBride  28:30  
You find that when you're open enough to actually bounce ideas around, but how you can meet each other's needs in more creative ways than just the obvious. Yeah, that's what it's all about find value. But they can't do that. Because they don't have that trust, because they're not willing to be that little bit vulnerable. And as I said, we're not talking about Oprah overshare.

Bill O'Herron  28:51  
This isn't Dr. Phil, but yeah, it's exactly. I always want to be the one person taking that next step down into the revealing more about self. And I can do that by asking you a question like, Oh, you know, how's your relationship, blah, blah, blah? And then I'll take that and go, Oh, yeah, mine is this and, you know, oh, my God, I can't believe and suddenly, I'll take it down one more layer, just to see if the person wants to go down there. 

Bill O'Herron  29:17  
And if they don't, I quickly I know how to write but if that person wants to talk about that topic of, you know, family, or you know, their dad died, it's, you know, still upsetting to them. Boom, boom, now we go down that next layer. So, as you were talking, what does Dan Goleman say? Dan Goldman's the godfather of emotional intelligence, right. He wrote the book in 1995. He's like the reason one, what does he say about what percentage of your skill set once you get? I think it's 10 years or 12 years in the business world. What does he say about emotional intelligence

Al McBride  29:49  
is the most important factor

Bill O'Herron  29:51  
80% of the skills in your success are EQ based? How does one build one's EQ? By getting the left brain and the right brain to come together to get the left brain, right brain, the physical action and exercise, these are my words. It's Travis Bradbury. And it's kind of taken Goldman's work and taken to a whole different level, the only way to increase EQ is to bring the left brain and right brain together. That's the physical icing of increasing EQ. How does one do that? meditation?

Al McBride  30:23  
Wow,

Bill O'Herron  30:24  
meditation is the biological 10 minutes of meditating is literally the all the science for Don't, don't take my word for it, follow the science is the most powerful way to increase EQ. In fact, it's probably, it's, I don't wanna say, it's the only way but it's, it's what the Hindus and the Buddhists is what these guys have been doing for not 1000 years, not 2000 years, by the way, they were all meditating 200,000 years ago, around the firepit. Um, you know, and being able to being able to understand symbols and understand meaning of our lives is done through intuition. It's done through the quiet in the, and the unseen. And, but anyway, in terms of EQ, it's the whole To me, it's the whole ball of wax.

Al McBride  31:08  
It's an amazing point. Because, you know, I mean, most of us have heard a ton of the research that's been going on the last 20 years around meditation, mindful meditation and whatnot, and how, you know, it lowers your blood pressure, and it makes you more objective, and you're less emotionally reactive, which sounds like you're more in control, and, but you're not cold or your do your sort of bringing forth that better self more often. so fascinating that you're linking that to, and it's completely logical when you say to, to business performance, but also to intuition and insight, that you're able to hear that quiet voice that's usually blocked out by all the chatter of the rhetoric. And

Bill O'Herron  31:53  
exactly, here's another powerful stat, so your heart sends 5000 more signals, 5000 times more signals to your brain than your brain sends to your heart, your heart puts out, I think it's 60,000 times more biomagnetic energy than your brain, this, your brain, sorry, your hardest 40,000 neurons that are exactly like brain neurons, your heart thinks independently, it grows independently understanding the bill, your heart doesn't need your brain. Think of that. 

Bill O'Herron  32:21  
Your brain is responding to what's living here, and all the neurons in your belly, your solar plexus, this is the gut feeling. This is the world of EQ. So what we're trying to do is send the information stored in here from als world up into the brain. So the brain goes, Oh, that's how I respond to feminine time, male calm, whatever it is. The challenge is when we bring this stuff up, there going to be memory sensations and feelings that we just don't want to revisit. 

Bill O'Herron  32:50  
Yeah, a lot of that's a simple bankable stuff. It's it's uncomfortable. And that's standing in the fire, right? We don't stand in the fire of our relationship with our boss, we don't stand in the fire of our relationship to that that ornery client, it's hard. But it's not hard. If you've stood in the fire at your cushion, then your therapy of your bills. Crap. I understand Bill's crap, I guarantee you might have a better sense of Mr. Smith's crap. Right? Or that guy that cuts me off. I know exactly why he's frustrated, you know, like, his sense of self is built on like, so it's really knowing self and standing and fire self.

Al McBride  33:25  
It's bringing that empathy back in where again, someone says, oh, screw you, buddy, or boo, and they're rude to you, or as you say, they, whether they cut you off in a business deal, context, or whether it's in traffic or whatever, is that you can again, take that arm's length, take a breath and realize the emphasis. It's unlikely he Okay, he is physically shouting at me. Is he actually shouting out? You know,

Bill O'Herron  33:50  
exactly. shouting in his memory was his daddy shouting, it's something he shot. He's shouting at old memories. But the old memories are invisible. So he's just gonna point whatever's whatever's The most obvious Absolutely. Or else as he said, he

Al McBride  34:04  
had a thing with the wife that set him off in the morning. And now you happen to be in the way and re triggering the emotion that's already on pleasant and unpopular. Absolutely. It can be totally different from you, you're not even triggering it. You're just in

Bill O'Herron  34:17  
the way. I'm just gonna wait. Yeah, and that's often happens in all our relationships, you know? salutely

Al McBride  34:24  
Absolutely. And it's, as you said, that empathy and one thing I do my clients a lot is that idea of an you're a counselor, so you're literally doing it but is remaining in that kind of neutral space where you're neither aggressive, nor are you defensive, but you're fully present fully emotionally present. 

Al McBride  34:44  
And it's amazing what happens when people are getting bold, she getting aggressive, and, you know, they're gonna, and you're just you're there, you're not you're neither attacking them, nor are you trying to defend yourself. You just let it wash over. You're still there for them and you're you're engaging and The amount of rapport that that can build, as you said that trust is incredible.

Bill O'Herron  35:05  
It really is that as you're talking, I'm just re experiencing remembering when when, when heavy emotions pouring out from somebody else kind of pouring our way. Um, you know, I just feel like I've trafficked so much in my own crap, that I just, I just see that that's literally electrons coming out that, you know, and you just, I just identify and say, you know, you're right. 

Bill O'Herron  35:30  
You know, and we always say, your emotions, your your reactions are 100% accurate. You know why? Because they're yours. They're 100% accurate. And there's one thing in the world we can control, what is the one thing in the world that we can control?

Al McBride  35:46  
how we think. And then the tech says, how we feel, how we feel,

Bill O'Herron  35:49  
the only thing we can control is how we feel aka how we respond to the world. That's the only thing I can't control anything. So if I can't control all this stuff, why aren't I working on the one thing I can fully understand what should help me out there? And so when that person's throwing that crap out? You You're right, Mr. Smith, you are 100%. Right? How can I? 

Bill O'Herron  36:13  
You're totally right. We screwed up here. We didn't process this trade, right? Like, we screwed up, and I'm gonna get to the bottom and I totally apologize, and blah, blah, blah. Now, No, that doesn't always work. Because there might be a bigger issue going on. But if I haven't, if I don't know where my place is, in his stuff, aka if I don't know my place in my own stuff, that makes for a much different dialogue.

Al McBride  36:37  
Absolutely. So if people are listening to this, and they're thinking, Okay, Bill, this is this is hitting some chords with me here. You know, maybe they've done a little bit of reflection, they're doing this and the other. And they're going, you know what, yeah, people say things to me. And sometimes I realized later, yeah, I think I overreacted there. 

Al McBride  36:55  
So and they hear what you're saying that hang away? They were hitting buttons from patterns from long ago? What is something that they can do next? What what where would you direct their attention? What should they do? What should they try? What should they great? What action can they do to even maybe doesn't solve the problem, at least puts them on a good path.

Bill O'Herron  37:18  
That's perfect. And I have a really simple exercise. And that is, the next time a strong emotion gets kicked up boss, Mom, sibling, spouse, whatever it is, right? What's that emotion, anger, perfect, write it down. Anger. And then we're going to go, you're going to take that piece of paper and you're going to go someplace quiet. And you're going to start with where my body my feeling anger in my neck, in my chest. Great, okay. We want the anger by ourselves in this process to wash through, it's like, totally embrace dance with scream, whatever you need to do feel all the anger you can possibly feel. I know that sounds counterintuitive. Oh,

Al McBride  38:02  
but you lean right into it, then you lean on

Bill O'Herron  38:04  
flooding. It's a classic therapeutic process. It's what the government has been studying for 120 years post World War One is PTSD, right? Really all the research we've done and all the therapeutic process is reflective and correlated to the government's work on PTSD. How do you do it, you flood yourself with the very thing that's killing you, which is your emotions.

Bill O'Herron  38:24  
So get that anger, let yourself be flooded with it. Now you do it in a quiet spot, you're in a safe spot, you know, if you need to scream and yell anger, where in the body, and then go try to find upstream where this kind of the first time you felt this anger, frustration for me, I kind of know the beginning pumps, it's good to try to go upstream to the real to the thing that that pool that started this flow river of this emotion, anger because anger is old. 

Bill O'Herron  38:52  
And so you feel it, you embrace it, you dance with it, and go find the source of it's like, oh, gosh, that was that was fifth grade, when that blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. And then suddenly, you know, you have a better understanding of where it came from. You're just trying to understand the anger, you're not trying to get rid of it. Because anger means you care. Like you're not going to get rid of caring. And anger is a reflective piece of caring. And so there's many layers to the anger but essentially means you're not going to get angry at somebody you don't care about. 

Bill O'Herron  39:24  
You care about the boss, you care about your job, all that stuff you care, so you get really angry. So follow the trail up. Where's the roots, I don't know, the roots will stay with it. Some at some point, you're gonna find the roots, that kind of core beginning of where anger really showed up in your life. And then the next layer which is kind of a whole lot of processes. You take the 35 year old and the fourth grader where the anger began and you start dialoguing. 

Bill O'Herron  39:48  
The adult 35 year old starts dialoguing on our inner world with that fourth grader, a fifth grader and you start just understanding the routes that started when you weren't able to process you weren't able to kind of cut things off and express yourself right you can't do that in fourth grade because you're just a kid you know wallowing in the world. But now you're an adult. 

Bill O'Herron  40:11  
With the fourth graders anger, you got to to have them come together and process and kind of hand in hand go, okay, we understand the anger was then on the adult now we're going to be able to process through it in the right in the in the outside world that you couldn't do before. And you basically bring, which is essentially EQ, you bring the left brain adult, back to the right brain,

Al McBride  40:33  
right,

Bill O'Herron  40:35  
child, right, for the first 12 years of your life. You're purely limbic. First of all your life, your purely limbic, your purely right brain, 80% of what you pick up from zero to 12, at home is nonverbal. You're not picking up what your dad says, you're picking up what your dad felt, you're not picking up what your mom says, you pick up how your mom feels about him about the world. And you stored all this stuff up your limbic.

Bill O'Herron  40:54  
So you're taking the adult rational self, and you're bringing it back to the child, limbic self, and now you have a united front. So the next time if you do that enough, next time that boss triggers you like that, you're like, there it is. That's the fourth grade self. Okay, I got it, I got this, we're good. And you?

Al McBride  41:11  
Are you reshaping the meaning of what happened back there.

Bill O'Herron  41:15  
You're processing it, you're reshaping it, you're understanding it, because Jung says you can't change anything until you accept it. Right? But accepting isn't like, I accept my anger. I'm good. No, accepting it as being in it going all I had that anger, because that teacher really pissed me off. And I was right to be pissed off. And the 35 goes, absolutely You are right, you could process it. 

Bill O'Herron  41:38  
I've got it. Now we're going to do it together. You've accepted it. No, this could take years. Trust me, I'm 25 years into this, and I'm still trying to figure it out. So I know it sounds great. But by accepting it, you start modifying it and responding differently. And that's really what we're trying to get it out just responding to our life in a world slightly differently. And people will pick up on it. So anyway, don't get me started. Sorry.

Al McBride  42:04  
I know amazing. I mean, this was something that that's come up recently, as I say, this idea of re parenting oneself as in these incidents, which even if they're a fairly innocuous to anyone who was around and not even this is, you know, trauma with a very small t and I'm always wary to use that word. Because you know, trauma, the big T is is much is horrific stuff. Yeah. And you feel even guilty isn't the same word. But I think we need like a trauma light. Yes. Oh, yeah. Because even using the word you feel wrong, you know, anyway, it's triggers those incidents, though, that stick with you that, as you said, cause this emotional wounding, and scale that sticks with you still there was, as I look

Bill O'Herron  42:53  
at all the books that I've read, and blah, blah, blah, I could get rid of all of those books and just have one. And it's called homecoming by john Bradshaw. And that's the re parenting book. He wrote that in 90 or 91. And he completely changed, reintroduced the therapeutic paradigm to re parenting oneself. And it's the most powerful work you can do is that reparent it's exactly what you said, and I know there's more modern versions, but that book, you just read the first 30 pages, you put it down, you're like, Oh my gosh, I am a child. I'm a child. And it's not a bad thing. 

Bill O'Herron  43:28  
That's and that's how I have all done it. You know, even even Christ says that he says, you know, only the what is only the heart of the child, only children go to heaven. He doesn't mean only eight year olds go to heaven, He means only the heart, the opened adult heart, which reintroduces us to the child, love and beauty and openness to the universe. That's heaven. And all the Native Americans, I've done Native American work, and I was shocked when the first thing the shaman did was okay, we're gonna go back to childhood. I'm like, okay, every single culture has been doing the same thing. Go back to childhood, figure it out, carry that religious carry that wisdom back to the 56 year old. And you have a different lens on life, you have a different experience. It's not easy.

Al McBride  44:14  
It's not easy. I'm picking up middle period, because when we were talking before, and you're looking at some stuff from my website, you said, Oh, that question, what would you say to your 20 and 30 year old self? That's a great question. And what I'm fascinated by is because this is sort of that middle ground, as you said, when you're not you're, you know, a to six to 14 year old self and you're not you're, as you said, where the full limbic integration with your irrational prefrontal cortex, your rational thinking mind is fully, you know, done yet. Yeah. So what was it about that question that really resonated with you as sparking all sorts of thoughts?

Bill O'Herron  44:58  
I think because I've done a lot, so much. much work pre 15 of like that, that part of me because I feel like so much is built in, right? But when I saw that, you know, what would you say to your 20 or 30 year old, my 25 year old would never listen to the 56 year old. So I was kind of chuckling at the fact that my, my, my fourth grader would be much more receptive where my 25 year old I was hell bent for leather, right? 

Bill O'Herron  45:19  
And so even if, like, I came back with flowing robes, and I could, I could go back to whatever London in a trading room or New York when you know, my 25 year, like, that's really interesting, like, what I would say to him was, just be prepared, you know, listen a little bit more, you should probably slow down and take stock of all these deep emotions, because they're going to come back up. And there's nothing you can do now necessarily, but just know it's coming. And what

Al McBride  45:49  
would your 25 year old self respond to that? Screw you Oh, man, right. Yeah, pretty much say, hey, that's

Bill O'Herron  45:55  
really good insight. But I'm really busy. And I appreciate it. I'm trying to learn what the world is all about.

Al McBride  46:00  
That's the polite response. Okay, that's the polite response. Exactly.

Bill O'Herron  46:03  
And I think my my 32 year old, so I was 32. When I first sat meditated at one time, um, I think he would have been unbelievably much more receptive. So probably only 567 years past 25 year old, I would have been really receptive and open. Because I really was my inner world is really coming up. And it was such a shock to see that we had all this stuff, or I had all this stuff inside. 

Bill O'Herron  46:27  
So my 30 year old with a much more receptive. But as you asked a great question, it really gets me thinking that I probably, it would have been interesting to have that dialogue and be able to share some insights. But it really wouldn't have changed the trajectory because I do realize life has to flow and life really is the teacher and it's only I only get insights when I'm ready for and I don't think I was ready for anything more 32 than what I actually got. And even the 56 year old sat with myself at 32x Ray cup place in Sloane Square today. The 32 like that's great, like, but what do i do that

Al McBride  47:04  
i like you're not ready, I'm not ready,

Bill O'Herron  47:07  
I couldn't understand it. I did have the hand fully

Al McBride  47:08  
process what you will

Bill O'Herron  47:10  
re accelerate. And so what that has taught me to do is just be present with those younger parts of me, I can't tell you how many times I'll all go back to my bedroom in the 70s and I'll just spend time with my 14 year old will be hanging out with you listening to music and my eight year old be there just so I can really tune in to those younger sensibilities in me I can see that the blue carpet on the floor I've got the green and white wallpaper like I can see the whole thing I got my Sony Music machine that I got it when I'm 1976 whatever it is just being in that space makes me feel connected. 

Bill O'Herron  47:46  
What am I connected to? My emotions my my sensibilities like how powerful were you at eight years old? super powerful. What do you dream of? What did you want? What did you didn't want? What were you afraid of? What did you love who your heroes. That's all living inside of you today right now. And so when you connect with that power, and that that unabridged appreciation that we had at 10 years old, that our adult world kind of gets calloused over him like all you know, the life is hard and politics suck and all this stuff, right? When I go back and tune into those that those moments. It's really it's really

Al McBride  48:23  
funny. Imagine it was the first thought that came to mind at eight years old is sitting on Saturday afternoon, watching the amazingly boring football results being read out really slowly. Oh, come on. And eventually then the theme shooter Come on the a team and it was like, it was the highlight of my week.

Bill O'Herron  48:44  
I love it.

Al McBride  48:45  
Right? So just

Bill O'Herron  48:46  
get tuning into him. It's wild. What comes up I know it sounds so crazy New Agey. Oh, tuning into the younger parts. But I'm telling you, it's it's fascinating stuff.

Al McBride  48:55  
It is. I mean, it can't be new agey, but I mean, it makes a lot of logical sense as to going back to where you literally came from, like what what you're the things you're interested in what mattered is what didn't matter. What, you know, views you had on certain things, almost an emotional view, you know, before you got maybe super self conscious again as a teenager and all that sort of stuff, you know, kicks in? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It's the equivalent of doing a personal history. They say people who don't, who forget history or ignore history are are doomed to repeat it. Well, there you go. Right. And I just thought of that now is that it's exactly true of ourselves.

Bill O'Herron  49:35  
Exactly. You know, Joseph Campbell, I'm really talking about the grandfather of wisdom. You know, you got got Goldman, you got young, Robert Monroe, Joseph Conrad, incredible. He basically studied every single culture since the beginning of time and saw these unifying forces. And he said every single culture had the ceremonies of participation. In other words, to, to, to merge to understand nature because we are nature. 

Bill O'Herron  50:04  
 And so when I, when you were talking, I get this I reminded me of what Campbell studied the year after year, people got to read Joseph Campbell, just just googling. Participation means understanding. And what you're saying is go back to the eight year old, you're going to participate in that flow, who you were then, which will expand your participation of your life now, which expands your participation with everything around you. 

Bill O'Herron  50:31  
And really, if you kind of sum it up is knowing oneself is really knowing the stream, like you said, the history that you come from, and that stream still flowing through us whether we believe it or not, and we can tune into that stream, participate with our life experience so far, and then, and help it kind of enrich and thicken and expand. In our daily life. In our adult world. In the promise, we get so rationalized, we get so logic seeking, that we forget all this massive world inside of us. 

Bill O'Herron  51:02  
And if we can combine the two with our EQ, we're just gonna have a different experience of our of our business world of our personal world, it's participating with self means I'm gonna want to participate with your world. I want to hear what you have to say I want to, I want to know what your stream is. I want to know who you were 10 years old, like, Well, that wasn't important. But yeah, it's fun. It's your history. I'm an I'm a history attic. I want to know people's, I'll have 10 minute conversations with strangers. My girls like that. What's your problem? Why do you ask people those questions, because I'm fascinated with the human experience. And Michael's curiosity

Al McBride  51:36  
about this bill, because I used to hear this, where someone would say, I've known that guy for two years. And you've known him for an hour. And I've learned stuff about him that I never knew. And I see him in a whole different light. Now several people said that to me over many years,

Bill O'Herron  51:56  
hundreds, I would imagine that you have the exact same thing, right? I've cold called people over the phone. And they've said in 15 minutes, I've never said that to another person. proud of that absolutely be silly not to be proud of really what I'm doing is people want to tell their story. You know what, what is the great sales guy? 

Bill O'Herron  52:18  
What's your favorite word in the entire universe out towards Al McBride. It's your favorite word. Right? whether we know it or not our favorite word on the planet was a science. Our favorite word is our name. Even though we all know but so we want to it's it's Dale Carnegie. Dale Carnegie says what's what's your what's the so that's why he always says when you're in a negotiation, you don't just say you say out, you say out over and over and over again, because that's the word. Hey, Bill. Hey, bill, bill. Hey, Bill. So the point is knowing understanding that, you know, we just knowing oneself, I think it's the most is it all comes down to that it

Al McBride  52:59  
all comes down. But as he said, it's the it is knowing oneself, it's being interested in the story of other and often when people are too caught up with the Whirlwind said the most of their own chest for a better word that they forget, or they're just closed off to what other people are going through or where other people are coming from all that stuff, whereas it is. So when you're a bit more balanced with your own stuff, then you go, 

Al McBride  53:29  
Oh, that's interesting. Oh, that's good. I said something again to you last time, we were chatting and you said, Oh, that's a great. I just said something that somebody said to me years ago, which is don't get mad, get curious or don't get sad, get curious. People are aggressive, or their butt down or whatever. And it's that curiosity, isn't it that you're you're out of your own shit enough to actually be curious about what this other person is, as a human being, who happens to be in front of you, for a brief period of time is actually about to amazing.

Bill O'Herron  54:01  
It really is being curious. And so you know how many times you've had a conversation with somebody where I've had 45 minute conversations where I've said, probably four senses. I just asked a question, and then they just go off. And then there were hanging up on bill, that was the best conversation. You're such a nice guy. They wouldn't know me from Adam. 

Bill O'Herron  54:18  
If I hung up the call again. They wouldn't know because they did all the talking. Because people want to tell their story. Every single human being you want to tell me your story. Right? The reason why like that's what you want, we want to tell who we are. Because that's how we identify Am I really in the universe right now? Well, how do I know I could talk to myself but if I talk to like how does a tree know it's a tree I think it looks another tree going oh, I must be a tree. Like how does owl know is owl

Al McBride  54:43  
isn't that ironic, though, that by spending more time alone, you're more effective actually having those conversations, rather than just having like conversations all the time, neither going deeper with people nor spending the time alone. Nailed it.

Bill O'Herron  54:59  
You Nailed it. You nailed it, the more time you spend the return on energy, the ROI on time spent by yourself 10 minutes a day. 15 minutes old, with your back straight. You want your spine straight with your eyes closed. Just listening to your heart and your heart open up 15 minutes a day will change your life forever. And I know that sounds corny. I know again, new agey, but what is that going to? 

Bill O'Herron  55:20  
What's that going to show me my heart's going to send me signals and it's going to open up. And it's going to tell me where I'm at today. In this moment, when I wake up, I sit pretty much every single day, and I tried to do half an hour. Some days at zero, sometimes it's 45 minutes. But my day is different. Because I'm aware of this, this the energies going well, the energies a little stuck on last night, whatever it might be, doesn't matter. I don't judge what's coming up, I tried to understand it.

Bill O'Herron  55:47  
 And now I apply it. And when we hang up, I'm gonna apply it to the 15 phone calls I gotta make where I'm at. Good, bad or indifferent. And then, so I tried. So I do I do the silent work, which helps my active work. I do the deep, long hours of what people would look at is nothing of doing nothing worse for me. It's it's girding me and it's opening me to the high activity that I need to do to be productive. That question

Al McBride  56:16  
on the win before you said you make some of those calls are important meeting or whatever you check in, what am I at right now today? Oh, okay, there's a bit of this popping up a bit of that. And I presume you then go into acceptance before you can but but do you just accept and then go into the meeting? Or do you actually accept and then go? How do I want to feel and then actually start doing that? re changing the trajectory? 

Bill O'Herron  56:42  
Great question. If I feel if I can change it with insight, or knowledge or learning something about the other person, or just tweaking my sense of where I'm at right now, feeling less than feeling big and bold, whatever it might be, I tried to do it. But I, I, I realize that consciously with my with my egoic, right, left brain rational self can have a little bit of a tweak. But if I'm in that flow, I just tried to manage it, I just tried to to, to harness it, and restrain it in whatever way I need to do in order to be super productive. And I just think listening, I think net net, it makes me really good listener. 

Bill O'Herron  57:22  
And I'm not listening to the words on listening to what's behind the words I'm trying to listen to as you do the intent behind what that person is saying. Are they saying no? Because they don't feel like saying Yes. Are they saying no, because they truly know what the fart I'm doing and what we're trying to do? And if both is the case, then that's fine. But if it's No, just because no is easier, um, I look at myself and go, I do the same thing. And I try to use that up, okay, I know where you're at. I'm gonna keep probing. I'll keep trying, and then I'll just let it go. But I don't I can't tweak it that much. I'm not that good at it.

Al McBride  57:59  
That's it, as always, are sparking different thoughts the whole time. Early, the first thought that came to mind was, was that idea that you know, if you're particularly stressed, nervous, it's a lot more difficult to get to calm than to, to relabel and read maneuver that that feeling of intensity to you're not nervous, you're excited, your body is actually going this is important. That's very difficult to get to come. It's much easier to go, Oh, no, this is exciting. What's exciting about this, and then you go Oh, yeah, this is exciting. This opportunity is exciting. That's why I'm having this. Okay, great. So from being kind of, as you say, feeling less than feeling maybe too vulnerable to be no, this is great. This could be great. There's great stuff here. That's why I'm kind of that kind of jittery, it's like slightly. It's that idea of not trying to actually compress something it's running with it. As you said, you as you rightly say flowing with it. Yeah, amazing. It's

Bill O'Herron  58:58  
funny that came up yesterday for me it was it that big discussion with those two very wealthy folk. And I'm just in the middle of kind of putting those two people together before the call. I was nervous, I'm thinking, I don't normally get nervous. And I think because of the the size of the of the kind of the bank accounts of boats, guys. I just wanted to go, I just wanted to go well, I didn't want to screw up as the call started. I just dropped into, you know, checking in. And I just kind of do what I normally did. 

Bill O'Herron  59:30  
So to your point, I did, I couldn't undo the nervousness, which was definitely excitement, but it was, you know, like, I might be more or less than than I thought. And I didn't I didn't try to change it. I just I just quickly made a comment. We got a little bit of dialogue going and I was able to basically let them roll in you know, anything went fine. Um, but I you know, I caught myself I'm like, wow, I'm actually I don't normally get that nervous, but there's some big cats on the line. So, like you said, there was nothing I could do. I could just had, I just had to be with it and understand it and see where it went from there.

Al McBride  1:00:05  
This is an acceptance that Okay, that's how it is. That's all right. Yeah. And often when you accepted it takes a lot of the actual It is, yeah, it let's let some of the steam out. You know, that's the pressure of the hope

Bill O'Herron  1:00:17  
comes out, right? Because there was a desire, you know, all our all our emotions are based on desire, there was a desire to make that deal work. Well, there's nothing I could do to make that deal work except put those two bodies together. And by the end, I asked some really good questions. I thought were good questions, because it wasn't going, you know, what they weren't meeting which is all fine.

Bill O'Herron  1:00:35  
They weren't meeting on terms. And I got super clear on what would need to happen in order for those terms to happen. So I was able to at least, you know, understand, see through my stuff and just get to the bottom line, which is really what we're trying to do in business. And we can get to the bottom line for me a lot quicker. Knowing that I'm just going to do whatever I can do in my fullest in that moment.

Al McBride  1:00:59  
Fantastic stuff. It's It's a beautiful, natural point to hit the pause button until our next conversation Bill. Yeah. It's been fantastic. Thank you so much for love it.

Bill O'Herron  1:01:13  
I could come on the show, as my wife says on bills and capable, small talk, like I could just keep talking on and

Al McBride  1:01:18  
on. You could have worse attributes.

Bill O'Herron  1:01:23  
I think I do. But

Al McBride  1:01:26  
you must be great at barbecues.

Bill O'Herron  1:01:29  
Oh my god,

Al McBride  1:01:30  
don't put a couple light beers. Just Just ask about sports. Okay, just let's just keep the score.

Bill O'Herron  1:01:37  
My girls like that. Why do you care about the person serving? You know, the food at the restaurant? Like, I don't know. I'm just curious. And here's the funny thing, and we'll end with this. My girls have always been mortified to get three girls incredible, credible women. There was always embarrassed like, Dad, you have so many questions now. I find them are started. They're starting to ask questions. And they're doing it because it's fun. And you never know what comes out of it. You know, it's it's amazing. People want to be nice to each other in the end, and I'm not being nice to be nice. I'm being nice, because I'm curious. Right? And then they're like, Oh, you know, we got this special. Whatever. Like it's fun. You gotta have like, you know, life life can be so heavy. If you're not having fun with other people then it just gets heavier

Al McBride  1:02:25  
as recipe Rasputin supposed to set up What's life without a bit of fun?

Bill O'Herron  1:02:30  
Did he really?

Al McBride  1:02:31  
I don't know. I heard it somewhere. It's one of those things where you hope it's true. It doesn't matter if it is or not. But yeah, he was

Bill O'Herron  1:02:38  
a he was a character that man

Al McBride  1:02:42  
crazy life without a bit of fun, Bill. Yeah. Fantastic having you on the show. Thanks so much for all right, you're gonna have you take care. Thanks again. Okay.

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