Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and this is a show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Diana Kokoska. Diana is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, author, and award-winning mentor. Dedicating 13 years as CEO of KW Maps coaching and training at Keller Williams Realty International, she played a pivotal role in propelling the company to become the largest and most profitable coaching enterprise in the real estate industry. She's a certified practitioner of neurolinguistic programming. Excuse me, that's a bit of a mouthful. A founding member of the John Maxwell team of certified coaches and actively participating in the strategic coach training program. As a lifelong learner, as anyone would be, who's been mentored by uh John Maxwell, she's been she has followed and been mentored by John C. Maxwell since the mid-1990s. And she's the author of the new book, Becoming More. You can't get to better until you get to different. Diana, I'm really looking forward to this. Thank you so much for joining us on the Christianity and Business Podcast today.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. I get excited every morning when there's an opportunity to add value to others as people add value to me. In fact, every morning at 7 a.m. my phone goes off, Darren, and it says, What will you do today to add value to people? And at 7 p.m., it goes off and says, What did you do today to add value to people? And so I just welcome this opportunity. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00I love that. I love that. I have a couple of I think that's something that a lot of us are missing is the opportunity to set alarms on your phone. It's such an easy, practical thing to do to remind yourself of like I've got three alarms actually that go off on my phone that say, open your hands. And in that moment, I just open up my hands and just surrender whatever is going on in my life to the Lord. And having something like just using your phone uh to remind you of the things that are important to you is just such a I love that just valuable practical nugget you just dropped on us right there.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love the fact that you open your hands to surrender. It reminds me of that Chinese finger trap. I don't know if you ever had that as a child. Sure. And you'd put your fingers in there and you'd pull and pull and pull to get them out. And of course, you ended up breaking the trap itself if you pulled too hard. And that's what it reminds me of the world, Darren, when we think we're in control. Oh, I'll just do this, I'll do that, I'll work harder, I'll do, I'll do, I'll do. Instead of just being and surrendering, because when you push the trap in, surrendering to the trap, you can literally become free. And I think when we surrender uh to Christ, we just become free and everything starts working out for us. So we we just got got started and we're off on a good start of technical principles, aren't we?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And I want to ask you more about some of your habits in just a minute. But first, uh, just so our audience can get to know you a little bit, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, I started working when I was five years old at the family-owned grocery store. And of course, mom and dad started out day with prayer and that. And it was pretty much, I have to tell you, it was about, oh, please help me sell more magazines so I can make some money, right? And that persisted clear into my teens and went into my 20s when I started real estate. It was please help me. I mean, I couldn't afford a babysitter, so I put my kids in the little red uh wagon and went door to door meeting people. And it was all about me and my aspirations and my goals and uh help me, help me, help me. And then there came a point when I realized that's not what God wants. But I don't know exactly when it was. It was just all of a sudden, as I was praying one day, it was like, please help me accomplish my goals. And I went, I am so sorry. I need to be helping other people accomplish their goals. And when I went from that point of my success to the significance, and just that jump or leap, I guess you could say, from success to significance made such a difference in my life. When I learned to take a stand for other people's greatness more than they were standing for their limitations, to allow them to borrow my belief in them until they obtained their own belief. And my world changed at that point. Literally, the even though I was doing abundantly well, I mean, my first year I sold 104 houses when the average agent was selling five, I was very, very blessed and blessed to give to other people. Yet when I decided to make my life about significance, the blessings came even more. And the ability to give, not only of my wisdom and my time, but the money I was making became bigger and better too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Reminds me of that classic Zig Ziggler quote. You can if you help enough other people get what they want, you can get everything you want. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing.
SPEAKER_01Um, but well, no, you've got it because see, Zig Zig Ziggler, my dad sold tickets to the American Motivational Society. Zig was one of those speakers. Zig, Art Link Letter, Cavot Roberts, Norman Vincent Peel, uh, I mean, Robert Schuler. We've had all of those people to our house and Zig primarily. Uh, I grew up on Zig's uh laughter, humor, and all of those anecdotes. The best one was Diana, always be careful as to who you listen to, who you take direction from. And then he told a story, Darren, about how he was wanting to get, it was when he sold knives and or cookware, I'm sorry, and he was going from one place to another and he didn't know directions to Memphis. So he stopped at this little service station and asked the guy directions. And the man sounded so confident, and he wrote everything down, and he followed those directions to the uh T. And he said, Diana, 45 minutes later, when he told me I'd be in Memphis, I was still 45 minutes away. He had given me the wrong directions. But boy, I listened to him and he said, that's the way it's gonna be with the world. They're gonna give you directions, they're gonna tell you things that sound so good and so right. But he said, You be careful who you listen to. So when I met Dr. John C. Maxwell uh back in the 90s, right? I think it was 1990, it was when he wrote his uh 21 Laws of Leadership. And I thought, I gotta meet this guy. And I met him, and you know John, I'm John, and I'm your friend. So when he was signing books, Darren, I put my hand across the book and I go, Stop, look at me. My name's Diana, and you said that you're my friend, I will become one of your best friends. And we did over the years. He's been my mentor, he's been my coach. Um, I get to call him at any time and say, Hey, I need some help. When can we get together? And I'm gonna be seeing him. Well, I saw him at Highlands Church just yesterday, and then Monday I'll be going down because I sit on the board of directors uh for him. So uh yeah, be careful who you listen to. Long story, yet I think it's worth it.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, there's a biblical principle right there from Proverbs. If you walk with the wise, you'll become wise yourself. If you walk with the foolish, you'll become foolish. And you've certainly surrounded yourself with some truly amazing people. And I can tell you're an amazing person yourself. And uh I and I love that habit that you shared a little bit earlier about how you set those alarms on your phone to ask yourself, what are you gonna do to serve people today? And then what did you do to serve people today? What's another one of those habits that helps you become more Christ-centered in your approach to business?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think number one, getting up early enough to spend time in the Word, to center yourself. Some people call it prayer, some people call it meditation. I mean, you and I call it praying, right? And and to have my prayer bowl there to go through some days it's pretty short, and some days it's really long. It just depends what's going on. But to start that day, the other habit is before my feet hit the floor, I share five things I'm grateful for because there's so much when we come from gratitude, not for everything, yet grateful in all things, our days go so much better, as you already know. I don't have to tell you all of that, and I don't have to tell the listeners yet. How many times do we get out of gratitude during the day because somebody cuts us off in traffic? And instead of saying, Oh, thank you, you may have just saved me from having an accident up the road, we sometimes can get a little angry or a little frustrated or fascinated with how people drive, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, yeah, and it reminds me of uh a scripture actually in um in 2 Thessalonians, where it says to pray continually, right? But it says to stay alert in prayer with an attitude of thanksgiving. And when you lose that attitude of thanksgiving, you you can't pray. You can't help but worry, you can't help but complain. But when you stay in that attitude of thanksgiving, I think that's really what it means to pray continually.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's fear of faith, isn't it? You're in one or the other a lot of the time. And I want to share with you very quickly about a study that they did. They took 30 people. This was Dr. Eamon, and uh uh he has brain clinics all over where you can do brain scans and that. And he brought 30 people in and he asked them to write down things they were grateful for, everything they could think of. And of course, we start out with our family, our house, our cars, our faith, our whatever. And it gets down to where after five minutes you're writing down hot water, hot water pressure, I mean, a shower, all the things that you can the pen that I'm writing with. And then they did brain scans 30 minutes later on these people. Oh my goodness, everything in the brain was lit up. The joy, the happiness, the amygdala that helps us get take action, right? And the cerebellum where our intuition and our creativity comes from. It looked like uh just all lit up. And then he took those same people, Darren, he told them to think of what ifs. What if my dog died? What if I came down with a terrible disease? What if I lost my job? What if somebody hacked all the money in my uh bank account? And then they did brain scans. Nothing was lit up. There was no creativity, no intuition, no activating centers, no learning centers. The only things lit up were fear, anxiety, and stress. And boy, when I saw those brain scans, that was thoroughly convinced me to stay in gratitude as much as I possibly can. And every morning, our little staff, when we have our communication meeting at 8:30, we start out with three things that we're grateful for to just set the tone of that particular day for the entire group.
SPEAKER_00That's so powerful. What's a story of a time when you saw God's hand at work in your company?
SPEAKER_01Well, when I first started, it was first of all, I took over a company that was losing money and nobody wanted to use them. It was known as a terrible company, terrible coaches. In fact, they were called consultants. You could hire them an hour at a time. I said, let's switch it around. And I truly believe that was my the intuition, God whispering to me. It's not going to work the way it's working. They've already proven that. You've got to get to different, right? So I started calling it coaching. I added events. If you were in the coaching program, the money that you paid per month included all the events. And I started going after great coaches, people that actually knew what they were doing. And I relied on him every day when I started doing my lead generation to give me the right words to share, to put in my heart the things that needed to be said. And I heard give it for free. And I went, they're already losing money. How am I going to give this for free and make money for this company? And yet I followed that voice. I found 10 people that were very influential. I coach them personally myself every week for 30 minutes and telling them three months you'll get for free. After that, if you decide to stay, it's going to cost you. And this is what it's going to cost you. And either way, I would love for you to tell people what you obtained out of these coaching sessions. In essence, you're going to be the poster child for the coaching program. And it was amazing how that worked out. All 10 people stayed with coaching, even went to other coaches because at this point I had hired some other people and I had to fill their buckets, right? I couldn't take all the clients for myself. I had to give them away. And it started taking off. And it was amazing how it did. But it was like that lesson that we all know the hand that's open to give is always open to receive. That uh scarcity mindset turning to an abundant mindset really did help because I think a lot of people get into that scarcity mindset. And my belief is we never have a money problem, we have a mindset problem, right? Yes.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, 100%. I want to hear more about this book that you've written, Becoming More, you can't get to better until you get to different. What's that all about?
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, uh, I truly believe that statement because if we keep doing the same things and expecting a different result, that's insanity, according to Albert Einstein. Well, what are you going to do different? We look at Blockbuster, Sears, Radio Shack. What do they all have in common? Well, they didn't want different, they remained the same and they faded away. They all went out of business. They're not even around anymore. And Blockbuster had an opportunity to buy Netflix and said, no, it's so different, nobody's going to want that, right? Yet Netflix is doing very well. And Blockbuster, well, they're not around anymore. So that's what I mean by different. We we go through this. I have an adaptive learning model that I actually picked up from my brother, who had a brain tumor, when he was young, and he had to learn how to walk and talk four different times in his life. And the first time, it was my responsibility, and now I look back, it was my privilege to help him. Where I would say a word, he would say a word into the recorder, then we would play it back. He would adjust, I would say the word again, he would say the word again, and he would adjust. In essence, we learn, we implement, we fail, we learn a new way. The adaptive learning model. Well, as he got better, he started reading little children's books. And one of those books, ironically, was The Little Engine That Could. And as he read that, I started thinking, is that true? I mean, I'm in eighth grade. I'm hearing I think I can. Of course, we hear that as a child. Yet I thought, okay, if it's true, why is it true? How does our brain work? And I really wanted to help understand his brain because why couldn't he walk when he could walk before? What was going on? And I learned about the reticular activating system that is like our Google search engine, where we tell it what we desire, and it literally allows us to see what we desire. That's why we pray, Lord, help us see, let us hear those people in need so we can serve them. And when we pray that prayer, our part of the brain, the RAS, I call it for short, literally searches out and lets us see those things. Yet if we say, Oh, I don't have time to help anybody today, I'm on a mission for myself, it makes certain that that's what we do that day because it's our Google search engine only showing us. The eyes will only see and the ears will only hear what the brain tells it to. So here I am with my brother. Then my sister, we discover, has a brain tumor. Hers is in the limbic system behind the optical nerve, it's in the neocortex partially. So between the two of them, I learned about the three parts of the brain, how they integrate together, and how we actually train our brain, Darren, to thinking the way it is thinking. We have a habitual way of thinking that we can change, just like people that are born again. I mean, there is a change. There's a change in their thinking, therefore, there's a change in their actions, there's a change in who they're being because it's different. Now, I know that was fairly long. I I trust I answered your question and gave you some input that will help somebody out there.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. Wow. Becoming more, you can't get to better until you get to different. Uh, such a powerful concept. And your website is Diana Kokoska.com. Um, D-I-A-N-N-A-K-O-K-O-S-Z-K-A.com. Anything else you want to share with our listeners about how they can hear more from you?
SPEAKER_01Well, basically they can see it on Facebook, Diana.kokosuka, or on Instagram, Diana Kokosuka, or at becoming more book.com. I actually have a mindset assessment very quickly, Darren. Our mindset lives in our subconscious mind and our attitude, which is different, lives in our conscious mind. We set goals with our attitude, and we obtain the goals with our mindset. So if those two are not in alignment, we're not making goal. Therefore, how do we know what our mindset if is, if it's in the subconscious mind? I developed an assessment you can take for free when you buy the book, becoming more book.com. You put in your purchase order number, it gives you the assessment for free. It tells you what your mindsets, I said mindsets, because there's more than one. In fact, when I Googled it, there were 150. I narrowed it down with the help of John Maxwell and all the interviews that he's done. I looked for patterns. I got down to seven that limit us, seven that liberate us. And it will tell you the percentage you have of each and every one of them, plus five to seven steps you can do every single day to move from a mindset that's limiting you to a mindset that liberates you.
SPEAKER_00Well, well, that's getting me excited. That definitely sounds like an assessment that I need to take. Um, and I loved what you were saying about. And could you repeat your statement about attitude and mindset and the relationship there?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, see, the attitude lives in the conscious mind. You can adjust your attitude that fast. Uh, you can go from a negative attitude to a positive one. The mindset lives in the subconscious mind, and you've trained that mindset. Therefore, you've got to retrain it to a new way of thinking. Let me give you an example. If you have a judgmental mindset and a positive attitude, you will express that judgment in a kind and thoughtful way. If you have a curiosity mindset, it will depend on the attitude that you have as to which questions and how you'll ask the questions. So, yes, having a positive attitude is very, very important. Yet, unless you couple that with an abundant, grateful, positive uh mindset, well, it may not work for you quite as well as you think it does, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. You have to have both of those in alignment. Uh, that's well said. Diana, what's one action you'd want people to take in light of what they've heard today?
SPEAKER_01Well, the number one action to me would be to stay in gratitude as much as possible. That's going to help us have a grateful mindset versus an entitlement. Also, watch the words that you speak because those words that we speak. For example, I had a person I was coaching and she kept saying, Oh, I'm so devastated about this, or I'm depressed about that, or I mean, there was always something that she was frustrated with. And so I said, Hey, let's do this, let's give up those words. And let's say I'm working on this, I'm working on that. And we're not frustrated because that shuts the creative part of the brain down. We're fascinated, which opens the creativity up. Oh my word, Darren, you would be surprised at what actually happened to her life and her business because it's about who we're being. It's not about what we're doing, it's not about what we have. And a lot of people think, well, if I have what people have, I can do what they do and I'll be like them. You already know it. It's not have, do be, and it's not do have be. It's about you gotta be it before you can do it, and then you'll have. But I want to add one more, then you can give, and that's the most important part.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Be, do, have, give. That's so powerful. Uh, and yeah, another word that came to mind that we tend to slap on ourselves is busy. You know, how are you doing? Oh, I'm I'm busy. What do you say to your your clients who are kind of stuck in that rat race?
SPEAKER_01You know, I'm accomplishing a lot.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because when we're accomplishing a lot, we're actually letting that neural pathway of our brain focus on accomplishment instead of busyness, right? Because don't mistake movement for achievement. They're two different things, that's for sure. Yet what are we telling ourselves about ourselves? I mean, I could go into the storytellers in our head. Of course, the book goes through every brick, like John Wooden's Triangle of Success. This is the triangle of going from the story of your life to a new story, a better story that leaves a legacy that you're so proud of.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful. Well, becoming more book.com is the website. Everybody go check it out, get a hold of this book. Diana, thank you for encouraging our audience and just inspiring us to have a more thankful perspective because that is um that's what's going to help us to be able to see more of the goodness of what God has made available to us and to just have the right attitude and the right mindset and to get those into agreement.
SPEAKER_01Well, I love what you're saying. And I do want to say that if you've loved this, just honor God for the gift that He's given us, the gift to be able to write this book, the gift that Darren has on doing great podcasts. And you are a great interviewer, Darren. I've really enjoyed the podcast, but we all know where it comes from. All of the gifts that we have, and you are multiplying your talents. And I just honor you for that.
SPEAKER_00I receive that. Thank you for that encouragement, Diana. And I know our listeners have been blessed today. Thank you so much for sharing your time and wisdom with us today.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.