Name It to Tame It: Salvatore Manzi on Silencing Your Inner Critic

In this episode of Success Is Not Convenient, Bernie Gallerani and communication coach Salvatore Manzi explore the neuroscience of fear and limiting beliefs, growth mindset vs. fixed mindset, leadership trust-building, and why entrepreneurs get stuck in protection mode instead of scaling. Topics include the reticular activating system (RAS), identity and belief change, the "Name It to Tame It" method, motivation vs. consistency, leading from purpose, and how to build a team culture rooted in trust. Perfect for business owners, entrepreneurs, real estate professionals, and leaders looking to break through mental barriers and scale with clarity.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everybody, Bernie Gallorani, welcoming you to another episode of Success Is Not Inconvenient. I bring in to you a very special guest today, somebody I'm really excited about. As you know, throughout these podcasts, I always talk about business and also what goes on inside of our mind. And so my next guest today, Mr. Salvatore Manzi, is a leader in communication. He's a coach that helps leaders turn complexity into clarity. Salvatore has just authored his first book, Clear and Compelling, which has been depicted out by a New York publisher and is scheduled for its release in just a few months. He combines 20 years of research in neuroscience and psychology and organizational behavior with decades of communication and coaching to deliver practical strategies for turning insight into influence. I'd like to introduce you all to my guest, Mr. Salvatori Mancy. Okay, everybody, we are so excited over here at the uh Success is not convenient podcast to have my good friend. And well, I'll tell you, we are going to learn some really, really great things today. Mr. Salvatori Monsi, thank you, thank you, thank you for being on today. Um, for all of our listeners who are continuing to want to educate themselves on how to be better business owners, how to be better people. We talk a lot of things, um, Salvatore, on how we can be just be better in better relationships and how we can treat our people better. But really, what our podcast, Salvatore, is all about is this how do we become better business owners and then what happens inside of our mind? And I know you're the expert in all of that, and so thank you for joining us today. Um, I have some questions I would like to ask. It would be okay. Yes, please, let's jump in. Awesome, thank you so much. So I've watched a lot of your stuff online. Um, I've heard you do a lot of different videos through podcasts. Um, and what I want to ask you first is, and I've talked a lot about this within my podcast, is the fear that we develop that paralyzes our growth. Right. Because I'll talk a lot about like why people don't take bigger risks, why don't they invest in themselves, why don't if they are if they're business owners, why aren't they dumping some of that income they're earning back into their business and they're protecting instead of expanding? Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Protecting versus expanding, what a great lead in. Because anytime we approach something that is new and different, our amygdala signals that this isn't dangerous, let's not do this, let's stop, sends messages to the prefrontal cortex. No, remember last time you tried something new, it didn't go well, let's stop. So our brain is structured to protect us from doing new and different. And awkwardness is the cost of admission, right? So we have to embrace that awkward sense that we know we're trying something new, so it's gonna come with something new. I have a three-step practice for when that sensation of like, oh no, I have to stop. This is too like, we don't want to go there. First of all, name it to tame it. Once you name it, it goes from the emotional processing to the rational processing. We begin we can begin to work with it. Secondly, trigger, redefine your brain-body loop by taking a breath, getting grounded so that you can be present again. And then third, take one small step. What's the smallest next step that you can take to break out of that frozen, that fight, flight, freeze mode and start moving forward?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

The uh what does naming it to taming it mean? What is can you go deeper on on that first one?

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah, so I I'm in a situation, I have got this great opportunity, uh, this sales opportunity, this pitch. Oh man, I'm feeling a bunch of anxiety nerves. I'm feeling uh starts, I start to get thoughts of I'm not prepared enough. This might not work out the way I want to go. All that my goal is to, ah, I know what's going on here. I'm gonna name it. I'm growing, I am expanding beyond where my known parameters are. I'm moving beyond my known identity. I'm gonna start moving into the luxury market. I'm gonna start moving out of what I'm used to selling, and that feels weird for me. I'm gonna name it. That's why it feels weird. When it stays over here and it just keeps like the perseveration of what's going on, what's this feeling? It's gonna get bigger and louder. Once you name it, ah, this is growth. This is new, this is a change to my identity.

unknown 4:19

Ha!

SPEAKER_01 4:19

Then you can switch.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

Does that give your brain permission to expand it itself? Is that why you name it and then give it permission to grow? Is because you're you're telling it it's okay in order to do that?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah, it's step one is naming it, and then you're gonna tell it it's okay. The the I don't know if you've ever read Teaming Your Gremlins. Yes, great, yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

That's it. Grover. Is it Grover?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

It's the author's name. I'm gonna get it wrong, so I'm gonna say where it's gonna be in the show notes, y'all. Okay, yeah, because uh but great, that is such a great book. Such a great book, and that is the name it to tame it. Name the story. There's a name tame in your gremlins, and the very quick is to name the message that's coming up. What's the story that comes up when you try to do something new? For me, it was always the perfectionist. I had the belief that if I'm not perfect, people won't love me, people won't listen, people won't uh accept my authority or credentials. And what I had to do is name it. I named him Perry, Perry the Perfectionist. And now Perry and I have a little conversation, you know, when I hear Perry's voice, uh, I'm like, oh, that's Perry. Hold on, I know that voice. Named it to tame it. I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:31

I love that. Because that's really, you know, there's a there's a uh I don't know if you've ever heard of Matthew Ferry, he's got a great book out that I've read years and years ago called Uh Sales Velocity. And so he's really kind of an NLP neurologistics kind of coach and trainer that I've worked with in the past. Um, but he talks about um the drunk monkey in your head. Drunk monkey. The drunk monkey, and he says, you know, and and I I've always thought the analogy, uh Salvatore, was a little weird, but he always talks about can you imagine if you let a drunk monkey in your house alone, what kind of havoc it would wreak inside of your home. And then I'm thinking, well, why does it need to be drunk? If you just put a monkey in your home, can you imagine exactly what it would do? But his analogy in that was your brain talking to you and creating chaos in your brain that then you start following the chaotic drunk monkey instead of staying in line with the things that you really are passionate about doing.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

The loudest voice in your head is gonna be what drives your thoughts, right? Your brain goes in search of answers to whatever questions you are asking. So if the drunk monkey is posing questions of like, are you prepared for this? Are you sure the right person to be in the salesperson? Are you sure your brain is gonna be, oh nope, I'm not, nope, nope, back up, back up, back up. So if you're letting the monkey drive, you are going to end up in a circus, right? And so you have to find a way to distract, work with, tame, control. But first step is to name it. This is what's happening. And to your point on the NLP, like where that comes in handy here is all of those drunk monkey stories come from some experience that we've had in third grade. When you went up to pitch an idea to your parents about this great thing that you had, and you got shut down, and this is what happened, and your siblings made fun of you, and you learned, ah, don't pitch new ideas. That message started in the drunk monkey now. When that new opportunity comes up, it's gonna come out there banging his cymbals and being like, no, no, no, remember when you were in fourth grade, you didn't work. And so you gotta name it. You gotta name that gremlin or monkey and then tame it.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

But you know what's interesting is share this with me if you have any insight on it. We know that a majority of our behavior comes from our childhood and our behavior and how we were brought up as children, correct? Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

So even though we talked about the drunk monkey and something happened to us in the fourth grade, let's just say, but we can't always relate to that. We just know it as fear because so how so what happens, I guess, and I'll let you to to weigh in on this, a lot of our behavior as adults came from us as child, child, and until we can identify it, how do we get past it?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, yeah. You have to be able to identify it. You need an outside perspective, and you can do that with yourself if you journal, meditate, do stuff like that. It's better to work with a coach or with an objective friend who can call you out, but we have to get down to those beliefs. And here's my aha. A belief is simply a thought that we kept thinking so often that we came to believe it as true. I can tell you your name is Bernie, right? You don't have any question about that. If I ask you what your name is, it's Bernie. You don't even think twice, right? And then you have that Luke, I am your father, that moment of crisis. That was a Star Wars reference for anybody who hasn't seen it. There's a moment where he says to Luke, uh, Darth Reed, I am your father, and Luke is like, ah no, oh my world is shattered. We have to find those beliefs and we have to break them. And we break them by asking the question, is this true? Is it a hundred percent true? What else is true? And if something else is true, what evidence do we have that that can be true? And then what's the new story we write? That's sort of the NLP cycle. First, you have to identify the monkey, the belief, and then you've got to take it through that process to eliminate and reframe that belief to modern day.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

You know, that's so interesting. And let's go with the word true. I I've always believed, and and I've said this a hundred times, so um, if you I'm gonna ask you to push back on me if you think you need to, I've always said that whatever we think is true is nothing but a figment of our imagination. In other words, what we believe is true, and I'll give you an example of this. And I think these are always interesting, funny things, and I have a bad analogy all the time, by the way. But if you always say things like, My wife are is the most beautiful woman on the planet, and then I would think, Well, to who? Well, to me. And that's really great because that's all that really matters, is that it's that your wife's the most beautiful person, or my kids are the smartest in the school. Well, to who? Well, to me, right? And so you look at this and go, anything I believe, this is Bernie's belief, uh, that anything you believe is true, uh, other than I think the Lord Jesus Christ is true, but if for some reason you don't, that's your truth, but I know what my truth is, correct? But I also look at everything else in my belief system and say, I may it may not be true. It may not be true, but it only may be what I believe.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Right? And so can you can you talk a little bit about how people get so fixated on who they are? Like this is who I am. Um, that's just not my style, that's just not what I like to do, because they're fixated on there's some truth to who they think they are, but who they really think they are only is who they've chosen to be. Would would you agree to that?

SPEAKER_01 10:57

100%. Whatever again, whatever questions you're asking the brain, it's gonna go search of answers to that. So if I believe a certain thing about Denver, I'm in Denver at the moment, I'm gonna go out and find those truths. And I'll explain the brain. There's the reticular activating system or the RAS. The reticular activating system acts as a gate to all of the sensory data that you're picking up. If you didn't have the reticular activating system, you would be overwhelmed by the sights, the sound, the smell, the feel of your clothes on your skin. But because the reticular activating is squashing that down and only bringing to your attention a few things, then you know, okay, I can stay conscious, I can stay present. Example, you probably weren't thinking about your left foot until I said your left foot. Now you're getting a whole download of information about where your left foot is. Is it comfortable? Is it moved? You just moved yours, right? Like this, and that's what the truth is. You can pro yeah, you're laughing. I'm self-conscious about that. We can't see it, it's below camera. But here's the deal: you can program the reticular activating system to search for the things that you deem important. So if I say I believe this, your reticular activating system is going out there and scanning the environment and bringing evidence of that belief so that you can solidify your truth. Now, you had an incident when you're in fourth grade, you just started developing a belief, something else happened, you resupported that belief, and throughout your life, you have become so accustomed to finding evidence of this belief that you no longer question it. Your identity has been created based on these series of experiences, and let's be honest, it's a form of laziness. We get comfortable in who we are and what we do and how we act, and to break out of that is not convenient. Success is not convenient. You've got to break out like you like that. You've got to break out of what feels comfortable in order to break out of that box, that identity, and start doing something no. So you've got to look at, like you said, look at okay, is this belief a hundred percent true? A hundred percent true. Well, what else could possibly be true? If it's a hundred percent true, then it's fact. You can't you can't fight it. But if it's not a hundred percent true, that means you have the opportunity to change your identity, your personality, your operation, and your ability to coach others around those things as well.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Wow. I mean, it's so crazy how the brain works. And what I love about having conversations with you is I I own a real estate company, and we have a title and mortgage and companies and all and all sorts of different other things too going on. But um, I get a chance to coach and train professional realtors in my industry, and to hear the things that they find value in that are negative about other sale the sales process itself, right? For example, everybody says no. Well, no, not everybody says no, only 99 out of a hundred say no, so not everybody says no. Right? In our world, it's actually it's actually it's actually ten out of ninety uh ten out of a hundred say yes and ninety say no. But here's what I want to say is listen, God, it's so great. Let's do the math on this for a minute. So because my my teaching and coaching, and and I've learned this from my mentors, is that if you want to get really wealthy in the real estate business, talk to as many people as you possibly can about your craft or your trade. But the minute they get um negged out, so they get five people that say no. Uh uh Salvatore, I gotta tell you a funny story. So I took a c a group of my of my agents to a big uh real estate conference, and one of them came back all fired up and said, Okay, I'm gonna call all these expires. They were just ugh, right? And they did it for a week. And they came into my office and knocked on my door and they sat down, they're like, Hey, by the way, uh, these scripts don't work. I'm like, Well, what do you mean? No, I mean I tried it all week, and not one person said um that they wanted to use my service. I said, Well, what makes you think you're good enough to convince them yet? Just because you have a bunch of words on a piece of paper. But Salvatore, what's really interesting is how it negs people out when they don't have success right away because they've never tried anything long enough. And so my message is, and I want you to highlight this they they enter into it, the brain pushes uh protection out and says, protect you, protect you, protect you, and then they neg you out and then you never knew for move forward. So not only are you not seeing the fruits of your labor in the business you're trying to perform in, but where else in your life are you have resistance and then you get paralyzed because you can't move forward?

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah, yeah. My favorite phrase is how is that like the rest of your life when somebody's complaining about saying it's true. And there's the difference between the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. I mean, kudos to this person for spending an entire week in what they began to believe was a fruitless endeavor, but it's the iterative process. It's the okay, it didn't work that time. What can I change? What can I tweak? Okay, this is the script, what can I move? What can I change in the tone of my voice? What can I change in the way I'm pausing? How can I make the script more my own? If I'm just running through a script for a week and then bad results, like yeah, let's this doesn't work. But no, there's growth opportunities with every mistake. Every time I hit a wall, it's it's data. That's all it is. I might feel pain from it, I might feel frustration, but it's data. And what do I do with that data? That's the inconvenient part. I've got to use it to try again, to get up and keep going, to keep pushing.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

I I love that. All right, I'm gonna ask you this question because I heard you say this on another podcast that you did, and so I want you to explain what this means. You said lead from a place of purpose.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Lead from a place of purpose. If I don't know my why, I can't connect with other people. If my goal is really just to please other people, to impress other people, to try to get status or be the most polished, it's not gonna work. If my why is driving me, then it doesn't matter how many times I fail because my why is gonna keep telling me, try it a different way, keep doing it a different way. It doesn't matter that it didn't work that way. My why, I seek to empower those who don't feel they have a voice in the room. You have a voice. That means you have a voice in the room. It's a matter of claiming it. And there's ways, there's techniques, there's strategies to shaping your voice and your message so that that room can hear you. And that's my why. That's why I keep doing these podcasts. That's why I wrote my book. I wish to empower people to use their voice to effect change in their lives and the lives of the community.

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Do you talk about um that where for a place of purpose and how they can train their brain in your book? Yes. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Chapter 14 starts uh part four. It's on presence. Presence is really starts from what are your values? Have you sat down and done a values exercise so that you know what your top values are, that you can lead from? Are you leading from those five values? If you know your top five values, then you can define your purpose. And then you can drive forward. You could come up with your personal mission statement or whatever. And that helps you understand when you're in the middle of that sales process, what feels off here? Oh, I'm compromising this value or this doesn't align with my value. I need to walk away, I need to step back, I need to reframe this. If I don't have a sense of my values, and I'm just going in with a lot of hustle, a lot of grit, and that's great, but that won't cross the finish line every time. Maybe one out of ten, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Let me ask you, because Salvador, we we we and I want you to correct me, because I'm okay if you push back. I I'm I'm I I'm a leader and uh an entrepreneur who always understands that I only believe what I believe and I could be wrong with everything I believe, right? So I I'm open-minded to to any thoughts or ideas. But would you say that we talk about going for your truth or what you believe, could there be some protective mechanism in your brain that convinces you that's not who I am? In other words, like you talk about your values. Values, I I I respect values, but people can get conf confused with saying, I don't feel right. This is not um I want to do this, but I probably shouldn't do this because it doesn't feel comfortable for me and I don't think it's in alignment with who I am. Could there be some confusion in the brain protecting us in that conversation?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

I appreciate the nuance in what you're bringing up. The idea of I'm aligned with my values, but something still feels a little wrong here. And that could just be my brain telling me, don't do something new and different, right? Go back to what are the values. Is it aligned with my values? Yes. Okay, so that it's something else. I mean, in the heat of the moment, it's gonna be hard to parse those out. And I would offer, you can take a pause, feel into your body where is that feeling? What is the feeling you get from that energy and where it is in your place and your body, and then let that evoke what has to happen next. If I'm aware of my values and the project I'm on is aligned with those values, but I still feel resistance to it, then I have to ask myself, is this just my internal fear stopping me from going forward? What's the smallest next step I can take to test that? Maybe I can break it a little bit, see if I can stretch a little bit outside of my comfort zone and how that goes, and then continue to iterate from there.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Oh, that's fun. Um, all right. What's more important? Motivation or consistency? Consistency.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah. Motivation is a weird kind of thing. And I try to uh coach effortless, no, effortless action. Effortless action. Effortless action comes when I feel the natural flow of what I'm doing. It doesn't even feel like I'm working because I'm so in the flow with it. If I'm finding myself requiring a lot of discipline to do something, I need to change it somehow to bring it into flow. Right now I have a 75 push-up a day challenge with one of my friends, and that is not effortless action for me. That is something I had to, but what I did is I I can't do all 75 in one go. I break it up into three, 25 segments, and then it's easy. I drop down right before lunch, I drop down right before dinner, I'm done for the day. I do when I first wake up, and then I'm done. So I forget the question that we started on, but the idea being you might need motivation, but the motivation lead up, the way you ramp yourself into that motivation is reminding yourself how does this align with my values? How does this align with my purpose? Why am I excited to work on this? Oh, this is great. Now, how is it? And then you jump in and start to work.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Well, I was gonna say like motivation is only the There while you're feeling inspired by the action steps that you have to take, but as soon as you feel defeated in that, so your protective mode then stops you, then you lose and you wane a little bit of the motivation on that particular idea, right? Would you would you agree? So my I guess my purpose of this conversation is for let's just say so I so it's interesting, and I and I'll just go back to a quick little story. So I in in my business, my real estate side of my business, I was the company's done very well um for many, many, many, many years. Um I I financially it was very satisfying from where it was. Um but I'm a growth-minded person, so I camped out for so long on being satisfied, maybe I'll just say that, was more in protection mode um than I was in growth mode. And in a conversation that I had with my uh mentor, he called me out on some questions that I had regarding my struggles, and he just said, Well, let me ask you. He says, Are you investing as much time, energy, and money into the growth of your business as you did when you started it? And I'm like, Well, no. And he says, So you're frustrated because you're not growing, but you just identify that you're not doing anything to grow. And I said, Sure. And he says, Well, why are you not doing that? And I said, Well, because I'm protecting what it is I do have. And here here's what he said he says, you cannot protect and grow at the same time. You have to give something up. And it's okay if you protect what you have because you feel like, okay, I don't need to grow it, I feel pretty happy with where I am. But this is what you got, right? You'll never know what's beyond that. And and no decision you make is the wrong decision. I know I'm going long-winded here, but my point is once I changed my thought, too. As soon as I changed now, I camped on this for many years where I stayed very protective and okay with being protective. But once he opened that floodgate of that thought process, he then and then I said, Okay, let me do this. Let me write out what I would like to do. And so, just for the purpose of getting excited, because I did this a long time ago too, and it it helped me grow my business, is I said, What if I unshackled myself and thought, what could growth look like three times larger than my company or companies are today? And then I calculated what that income was and what that business would look like, and then it stirred up something inside that said, Okay, this is what he's talking about. So I then unla unshackled myself and started hiring really great people and investing money into the business, and it changed my enthusiasm. But my point of saying all this to you is it paralyzed me for like three or four years. And then when I finally made a different decision, it totally set me free to everything I was trying to protect. And so I say things to you like motivation. Motivation can go away if you don't find a purpose to get excited every single day to do something.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

And there's a lot that I heard there. Number one, protection is perfectly normal. You talked to me about your children. You have a you were protecting a lifestyle that you had created and real people that would be impacted from that. So there's a reason to go into protection mode, but you can't have protection and growth. And what you did is you visualized a new ideal future. You were able to visualize it that like naturally brought up within you the inspiration, and from that inspiration, you took inspired action, not just discipline, you took inspired action based on that visualization that began the growth that you were wanting to head towards.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

So that's good. That's good. So, how do I how do we, if you're talking to leaders, because that's really people who watch these are business owners and leaders of companies, how do we instill trust in the people that we lead? I know that was something I heard you say on something that I watched recently. Um and so how do I build trust within my team and how I lead them?

SPEAKER_01 25:56

It's so this is such an important topic because our team will not follow us if they don't trust us. And trust is built one marble at a time. Each time you say you're gonna do something and do it, they begin to trust you on it. The second part, so one is just staying accountable. Staying accountable to what you're committing to, what you say and do, you're accountable to it. And uh, I don't know if you've read Chase Hughes or watched Chase Hughes at all, but uh he has a whole part on there about if your internal house is not cleaned up, if you know that you haven't done your laundry and you have taxes from last year that you didn't file, and that you are if you know that you are out of integrity over here, how's that like your life? It's gonna affect your business and your employees are not gonna trust you because there's a part of you they can tell is not in sync and it's gonna show up sideways and little comments and things like that. So clean up your house, take little steps to keep creating that trust. And the third thing is to reveal the lessons learned. What a lot of leaders fail to do is boast about their failings. That creates trust because they don't have to believe that you just made it to success. They are able to understand how you got to success, and they're going to feel free to talk about their failures and how they can move forward because you are talking about them as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Do you think I I think for for part of the uh challenge that I've had in running my business is I was a high-producing person as an individual um uh real estate agent back in the day when I was selling a lot of houses, and then I I impose that thought process on all my people. And what I've learned is um my belief during the time I I'm I'm gonna say my talent, everybody is talented in any way they choose, they want to be talented. So I gotta be careful how I say this. Yes. Um I choose I chose to uh do things that other people were not willing to do in order to excel at a high level. And for many years running my company, I instilled those values in all those people. And Salvatore, what it did was it pushed a lot of those people away because they could never measure, they could never measure, correct? And so I asked myself a question last year, um, and I said, you know, even though I've had a fairly decent sized team for so long, and I told you I'm working on expansion, so I had to really change a lot of how I thought. Um because I had to meet people where they were and work with them through. Uh Jim Rohn, I don't know if you've ever followed him, he's a motivational speaker, but uh, he's passed away a few years ago, probably ten years ago or so. But he always I love what he says, and he says, you know, you you have to meet people where they are, and if you're meeting a three, you might be able to take them to a five, but you're never gonna take a three to an eight or a three to a ten. You'll kill yourself trying to motivate really somebody that's not motivated in that area. So I guess what I'm trying to share with you right now in this conversation is talk to us leaders about our expectation and others that if we don't change how we approach it, because I realized, Salvatore, that I wasn't scalable in the business that I was trying to build because I was trying to meet people like me, and there even though I think everybody could do what I wanted to do or do what I did, I realized that they didn't really care about doing what it is that I cared about doing. And so, how do we as leaders really just adapt to where they are and take them to where we can?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

This is great. I work with a lot of companies making a transition, a cultural shift. And the idea is find out where they align with the values that you are presenting. I have an idea of something that I wish for you to execute on, get motivated on, incorporate it into the way you're working and get going. What part of that resonates with you? Let's go back and forth until we come up with a strategy that works for your style of operation. I can't simply have an expectation, and this is, you know, 80% of all difficult conversations are around assumed like unexpressed expectations. I had a I had an expectation of you as my uh new employee, and you're not meeting it. Well, you didn't tell me that's what you wanted, right? So speak about expectations up front, get alignment, what aligns around this expectation, what feels right for you, and then create a strategy for that person based on their operation of how they're gonna make it happen. If I could want to tip my hat to Harvard Business Review's seven leadership styles, what you talked about earlier was the pace setter, Steve Jobs, pace setter. People around him burnt out, dropped like flies, couldn't keep up with it, but he drove that success. The ones that did survive went all the way up there. There's nothing wrong with a pace setter. And you want to be able to adapt to all seven of the management styles so that you can approach the right person and uh pull from them what they need to be pulled from to keep going. Pace setter is gonna be appropriate sometimes. Sometimes it's gonna be the coach, sometimes it's gonna be a different style. So take a take a little inventory for yourself. Where do you predominantly fall? Where do you lead from? And when you think about that person that you want to motivate from a three to a five, what's their style? What do they need from you to get them to that five?

SPEAKER_00 31:22

I love that. And that's I think that's the lesson we all learn as we get older. Yeah. And we have believe, you know, we always talk about beliefs, right? We started this conversation off with beliefs and what we think may not ultimately really be true. Yeah. And so I what I used to always think was, well, the way I did it was the best way to do it. But what I also realized is the way that I did it and that I um crammed down other people's throat um also choked them out to where they left. And then I had I had low retention and high turnover, right? So you're going, okay, well, this is I think I'm right, but clearly I don't really need to be right. I just have to make sure I'm serving other people at the highest level that I that I possibly can. You know, being leaders and dealing with people, as you probably can relate to, um when you're a leader running a company, you have a different mindset. And when you're working with those that want to be a part of your company, they have a different mindset. And somewhere you have to try to get along. But to shift to shift gears a little bit on on meeting with people, um, I've always said this about a man and a woman, right? And getting married, and you have these uh two beautiful souls who were born, they were raised in different families, and then they fell in love, and then and I and I've this is the bad analogy, I got a lot of bad analogies, but I always say it's like two tornadoes. Okay they're coming up from birth, they have belief systems, and then somewhere along the way they meet, and those tornadoes are still they're still spinning, right? And and they're going to clash at times because there's different belief systems, right? Um what you think is right and you might not think is right, and what you think is wrong, you might not, the other one might not think is wrong, and so um so you have these two tornadoes and they have different belief systems. The difference from them being employees is that they get to go home at night and you don't have to see them until the next morning, you only have to see them five days a week, other than a spouse, you see every single day, right, and you live your life with them. So I'm a big believer that I never have to be right, I only have to make successful people, I don't ever have to be right to my wife, I just have to be a great husband. Um, because if I'm right, that makes her wrong. And if she's right, it makes me wrong. And if you try to make somebody wrong, it's not a it's a it's a disaster for a relationship.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

My phrase is you don't have to be perfect, you just have to be present. And I love the idea of two tornadoes coming together and the idea that the employee is a tornado that goes home, so I can contain the tornado for a little bit. I can, okay, I can operate around this, I see some stuff flying. I'm from Kansas. You had to bring up tornadoes at home. Like I can see some stuff flying, I can deal with this, but I don't have to resolve it. And that is the difference. I don't have to, as a as their boss, I don't have to resolve everything about their world. I just have to guide them where I see openings and inspire them to be better than they were yesterday.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

All right, here's another one. That's so good, by the way. And I I brought the tornado. I've only used that analogy a couple times.

SPEAKER_01 34:24

Yeah, and I'm curious to talk to your wife now. Like, what kind of a tornado is Bernie? Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Bernie is like an F5 friggin' tornado sometimes. Um as my as my daughter will tell you too. Um But here's the thing, here's what's cool about getting older. Um, you get older and you're just like, listen, I just want to have relationships with people, just want people to love me and I want to love on people, and I don't ever have to be right, right? I just want to get along and and and build the best relationship with people that you possibly can. But yet you're still fighting the tornado, right? I mean, no matter what happens, your past doesn't leave. And I love what you said earlier is you have to name it, right? And you have to understand what it is. And I think as you go through life, you look at it and go, where did that because I had something in my childhood that was pretty an interesting thing that I think shaped me. And I love what Tony Robbins says, and he talks about your parents, like your mom or your dad or something. And he'll say, you know, if you're cursing your mother or you're cursing your father for however they behaved when you were young, he says, instead of being upset with them, love on them and hug them and say, Thank you so much for who you were to me because you made me who I am, and I wouldn't have been the great motivated human being that I am without the behavior that you had. And so I try to look at my life and everything, saying, you know, there's some probably weird things that a lot of people have weird things in their life, a lot of people have bad things that happen in their life. But how do you use that for good? How do you learn from that lesson?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

What did you learn when I look back and I think about those moments that became defining moments of resentment or whatever? When I began to stop and ask, well, what did I gain from that? What did that teach me? How did that project me into the life that I'm living now? How can I be grateful for that rather than resentful? And then it dissipates all of the negative energy. I start looking with appreciation for what it could have been so much worse. I'm still alive, I'm still breathing. Like so it couldn't have been that bad, right? And I can find appreciation and then I don't even want to call it forgiveness. I just naturally bless them for playing the role that they were playing in my life and providing me the wisdom that I gained from that experience to be who I am today.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Yeah, I love that. All right. One of my last questions says imposture syndrome. Hell yeah. Imposture syndrome says, Tell uh tell me why um we need to grow as people, why it's important about growth for us humans.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

If you stop growing, you stop living. It might feel comfortable for a while, but I know humans. They get bored. And when they get bored, they do bad things. I mean, you could lead to the endless scrolling or alcohol or whatever. You you want to avoid boredom. The only way to avoid boredom is growth. You've got to do something that scares you every day, something that causes you to take a breath every day. Find something, and that's how you know you're alive, is those moments that remind you that you're alive, and there's a reason you're living, there's a reason you keep growing. So if you're not, I like to say if you're not experiencing imposter syndrome, it could be a sign that you've stopped growing. And that's that's a red flag for you to look at and think, okay, where have I become too comfortable? Uh, before a part of me unconsciously blows stuff up just because I need something different in my life, what can I do to take intentional action to start growth again, to get into that awkward phase to grow out of that boredom?

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Yeah, and I love it, you know, Tony Robbins talks a lot about um growth is one of the six human needs. And I've really thought a lot about like if you look at our country or the world in general, and you get people that are just stuck. They're stuck where they are, they're afraid, they don't really grow at the level, they're unhappy. And as you well know, with the amount of prescription antidepressant drugs and everything else that's being uh ministered out there in the world today, and you look at the going, well, you're depressed because you're not doing anything, you're not growing as a person. And if you don't grow as a person, depression certainly is going to be something that's going to uh take over. Now, with this video, I might upset a few people that are going, Well, you don't understand, and that's fair. I I I I would be empathetic that I don't understand. But my belief system here is um when you do grow, and I love what you said, like you have this um this fear of this butterflies in your stomach, and something my mentor has always said is it's that feeling of uncertainty that knows that you're growing, that's actually the feeling that you want to have. Most people run away from uncertainty. So here's my question: how relevant is certainty in our life? In other words, there's so many people, and I've said this to uh to other folks um who've either um owned other companies or have worked for other companies, and they'll talk about certainty. I want the certain paycheck, I want to know I have medical insurance, I want to know I have that. And I and I'll say things like, Well, what's really certain about that? You're only you don't there's no certainty in that because somebody else is actually making that decision. You don't have any certainty. And if they call you in your office and they fire you tomorrow, then how unhow certain was your position? And so let's talk about certainty if you don't mind. Tell me a little bit about why the brain feels comfort in that certainty level.

SPEAKER_01 39:39

Yeah, your brain is trying to protect you, and but it that's its goal is to keep the meat sack alive. So the brain is always trying to protect you, and the only way you can do that is with certainty. I would break it into the eight life elements, you know, wealth, health, relationships, career. You don't want absolute certainty in all of them, but if you don't have enough certainty in this one, you can't start to build over here. And if a person is experiencing depression, that's a very real thing. And if you're taking medication to deal with that depression, do it. And also look for other ways to get out of that depression as well. And part of it might be just getting your physicality up to speed, bring more certainty into your day-to-day health and your sleep patterns. So your brain requires a certain level of certainty, or it goes into survival mechanism. I could go into a whole diatribe of how America maintains the class system by keeping certain elements in survival mode. If people don't know where their next paycheck is coming from, it's hard for them to build certainty around this over here. So the brain needs certainty, but not absolute certainty. Look at the five- look at all of the eight elements of the life. Find out where they're imbalance, where there's certainty and uncertainty. I'm a nomad. I'm a full-time digital nomad. I have no certainty about where I'm sleeping next month. And that is my choice. It's my way of like staying on top of things and like creating a little bit of fire because I'm also certain that I know how to book an Airbnb and I know how to drive my car to a new place. So I have some fallbacks on, but it gives me enough grace to build up resilience around the complete discomfort of trying to figure out a new shower every three days. Like you have no idea. Like some of them are backward tabs, it's ridiculous. That's funny.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

You got to get used to something. What's cool though about that is you have backwards tabs trying to figure it out. And you I I gotta tell you something funny. I had somebody come stay at my house a couple years ago, and I have this little special like knob in one of my showers in my guest room where they couldn't figure out how to get the shower head on because they had to pull this thing down, which wasn't indicated. And so they're they're doing a birdbath thing because they couldn't figure it out, right? And you're and they come out and they're like, How do you get the after they did their birdbath? Yeah, yeah. They're like, Oh, there's a little ring, and and they were like, Well, how was I supposed to know that I'm like, I I I don't know. I should have probably put a little sign up there, but it's funny you say that because just something different like that, one thing different, throws people completely off. Now, I'm not knocking my my my my guest who came and stayed with me, but how many times do people do something that is so out of the norm of their normal thing and they just shut down and get paralyzed?

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah, and this is why I tip my hat to anybody out there brave enough to be in real estate, because you're helping people navigate out of the complete comfort of certainty of their home, their trained patterns, their known habits, their definition of how much space they're allowed to take up. And you're helping them get from there to a new home, a bigger space, a different thing. Picture themselves there, give themselves permission to live. Like, yes, your kids can have separate bedrooms, like whatever it is. Like it's mind-blowing that the way that a realtor will hold hands and help like help a person go from that complete imposter syndrome, fear of change, into yeah, this is possible. I can see myself here and still deal with the late night calls, and I don't think we can do it, and this is it. You know, God bless all of you. Like it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 43:12

It's like our mentor always says to us um keep the emotions between the lines and keep the lines very narrow. Very narrow. Very keep your emotions very narrow. Well, I want to say, so tell us about your new book. It just has just come out, right? Tell us a little bit about it's called Clear and Compelling.

SPEAKER_01 43:30

Clear and compelling, it's uh communication strategies for big thinkers with bold ideas. And what it is, it's 20 years of communication coaching put into frameworks, strategies, and techniques that you can use. You just open it up, find a strategy, try it for the day, see how it elevates your ability to connect, communicate, make your message land and elevate. It actually comes out in October, but it's available for pre order right now. You can go to Clear and Compelling Playbook. That's clear and compelling playbook.com. It's my website. It'll drive you to the places that you can order it from. You can order pre-order it now, and if you send me the receipt of the pre-order, I can send you the electronic version in advance.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Well, I appreciate it. I know that just came out when you said yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

I got my first print copy this morning at 8 a.m. This is an advanced copy. It's not available at the end. I love that. So I'm going to go back. After two years of the case.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

Well, you know what? My this interview with me, I mean, you and I, you know, I talk get a chance to talk to a lot of people all the time doing this podcast. And what I loved about you and I talking today was we I this is a passion of mine of how this whole thing works. And I'm just fighting my childhood, is all I'm doing, right? I'm just fighting. I'm not saying my parents did anything wrong, but I'm just fighting um whatever I chose to accept that has limited my ability to grow. And so I love talking about the brain because the brain and the behavior pattern of the brain is what sets, if we can identify that, we it it sets us free. It really does. And if you and I and I always say my my daughter, my other daughter, not the one that you've just got a chance to meet, but my daughter taught me something when she was in college. She was a psych major in college. And I remember talking with her one day, and and she says, Dad, she says, if you look in the mirror and you blame all of your faults on you, you can change everything. But if you blame everybody else, you can change nothing. And so I started thinking a lot about that, going, why don't I just look in the mirror and go, I'm the reason I'm not successful. I'm the reason I don't have a business that I'm super proud of. I'm the reason I'm not physically fit. I'm the reason why I'm not educated at a level that I want to be. I'm the reason why I am where I am. And if I want to change what I what my outcomes are, I have to change how I believe in myself, and I have to take action towards the things I want to do. And so I use this as saying if I look in the mirror and I blame everybody else, nothing will ever change. And if I look at it and just say it's all my fault, then I'll change it all all the time. And then the second thing I learned from her, which was another very compelling thing, and it says, control the controllables. Don't work on the what-ifs and depend on somebody else. Just work on yourself, control what you can control, your attitude, your approach, your expectation, what time you get up, how much work you do, um, did you finish your calls? Did you have your conversations? Did you practice your scripts and your skills? Did you do all of those things? And if you did at night and you controlled everything you can control, the rest of it will take care of itself. Amen. Right? So I want to thank you, and I want to do this again if you're open in the future to doing it. Um, I'm gonna get this book, I'm gonna buy this book, I'm gonna read it, and then you and I are gonna talk together again because I'm gonna have a lot of really great insight on that. So I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. How can people get in contact with you if they need to?

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Find me on LinkedIn, Salvatore Menzi, uh, or go to clearandcompellingplaybook.com and share with me. Share with me where do you find um you you somehow shrink or not fully authentically yourself in a situation? Let's unpack that. Let's talk about strategies that can drive you into a fully expressed authentic person in every situation. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

That is so great. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you do for all of us who watch you and all the work that you've done. It's a super blessing having you on here today, uh, Salvatore, and I wish you the best of luck moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 47:27

Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye bye, everyone.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Thanks, guys.