Success Traits of Pro Athletes and Top CEOs with Todd Herman

Transcription

All right. Welcome back to the show. You’re in here and I’ve got another special surprise for you today. I’m digging back into the archives, and I’m pulling out a great interview there with my good friend, Todd Herman, who is the creator of the 90-day-a-year and he is also one of the most sought-after high-performance coaches for fortune 500 company CEOs and professional athletes around the world.

I’m a little bit jealous because he was actually able to go to Real Madrid, I mean arguably the best soccer club in the world of all time and do some work with them. I think that’s about two years ago now. But Todd on a different level. His brain is wired in a very unique way, and I think that’s part of the reason why he’s been able to create such amazing breakthroughs for not only athletes and top CEOs, but also entrepreneurs.

With his 90 Day Year program, he really helps entrepreneurs navigate the different parts of the journey of having their own business and understanding whether you’re starting or scaling or wherever you are, what needs to be done and what’s the mindset that needs to take place with that. I’m really happy that I was able to find this in the archives because it’s a really, really good interview and specifically he’s going to be sharing the top traits of top CEOs and pro-athletes in this interview and you’ll get a lot of wisdom out of this.

You’ll get a lot of great takeaways. Remember, it’s all high-performance. If you are a business owner, the traits that make somebody will world-class athlete are also going to apply to you as well. With that said, let’s welcome Todd Herman to the podcast.

Todd Herman:                   Yuri, thank you so much for having me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely, I mean so … I’m on a mission to bring as many Canadians onto the show as possible.

Todd Herman:                   Yeah. Well, I wear my flag proudly down here in New York City.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Not only are you just Canadian but you’re one of the smartest guys that I know. I mean obviously, you won the award for the best salesman in the world award by Olgivy a number of years ago, and you also wear some really cool colorful socks which is always a nice thing to add to your CV. Awesome. Let’s dive right in.

 

The traits that ultra-high-performers possess

You’ve worked with pro-athletes, Olympic athletes, top CEO. What is the number one trait that they all share in common that entrepreneurs could benefit from.

Todd Herman:                   There’s multiple traits. I mean I’m kind of one of these people that I really don’t like speaking in absolutes like if there’s one way to get to the top, it’s only this. I mean the reality is we’re all very different people. It’s kind of personality types. That’s one thing you got to be a good coach or advisor. I think you got to be aware of those things but at the end of the day, you’ve got to be taking action.

I think the thing that comes before execution or taking action, executions are the word I use all the time, is you’ve got to have some good solid grit because you’re going to get knocked down a ton. I mean you and I have had multiple challenges or obstacles along our path, and that’s no different than any high performer that I’ve ever worked with there. Really, I actually don’t call them high performers. I actually call them like ultra-high performers because I think the word high performances has been watered down almost nowadays.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Kind of like biohacking.

Todd Herman:                    Yeah. Everyone’s a biohacker. Everyone’s hacking something. It’s that perseverance. I call it grit. Many other people would call it grit too, but that is one solid hallmark. If you talk to any pro-athlete and you played at a very, very high level as well, all of my pro-athletes will tell me that there was at least one or two or three kids even on just one of their teams that had way more skill or talent than they did as they were growing up or coming up through the ranks, and yet they’re not getting paid to do the sport that they all loved.

What was the difference? They just kept on going, the clients that are there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I mean I have a perfect example of that as you just mentioned that I remember playing … This is several years after I stopped playing pro. I was playing in a men’s league in Toronto with a bunch of friends from university and we’re playing. One of the linesmen looked familiar to me and I was like, “I know you.” He came up to me after the game. He said, “Hey, Yuri, it’s Charles.” I was like, “Oh my god.” Well, we were 14 and’15, this guy was like the best soccer player on the planet.

He was untouchable. Now, he’s a linesman for a men’s league. As you just said like he didn’t have the wherewithal to continue and have that grit to keep pursuing. I’m not too sure what end up happening after his early 20s, but it was just really weird to see that it was really like a big disconnection there. Just came to mind.

Todd Herman:                   I could almost take a guess at what happened because I did a study when I first started out with my sports training like mental toughness company about 18 years ago, I teamed up with another guy, actually out of Montera. I was based in Alberta, Canada at the time, and I partner up with another guy in Ontario, and we wanted to kind of really figure out like what are some of the reasons why athletes quit along their pathway to wherever they’re trying to get to where there’s basketball, baseball, soccer.

We chose hockey because there was just a greater number of people to choose from in Canada because obviously of popularity. We took a look in Ontario. Of those athletes between the age of 13 and 14, who were ranked basically in the top 200 in their age group because they were going into what’s called the CHL, Canadian Hockey League, draft specifically the OHL draft. We want to see in four years’ time how many of them were still playing hockey. These are the top 200 prospects. Just out of 200, guess what do you think that number would be?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Out of 200, I would say 10.

Todd Herman:                   You went way lower than other people typically do. This is because I’m usually frame this as – “remember, these are the top 200.” The answer was 24. There’s 24 that were still playing. Then, we looked at, okay, well what was the precipitating factor like what are some of the really key reasons why and there’s always just like anything in life. There’s maybe one big influence and there’s multiple or smaller influences, but the biggest influence was parental or coaching pressures either dealing with terrible coaches who just absolutely deflate your experience and the fun that you have for your sport or parents.

On the parenting side of things, there’s this young guy that I was working with. I’ll call him Jacob, at the very beginning of my career. He was similar story to your guy who was the referee. He was just an absolutely … He was 13 years old, lights out amazing hockey player, best in the province of Alberta, which says something because Canada is obviously a hotbed for hockey.

He quit later that year. His dad was one of those guys who was at the board’s constantly screaming at him. The kid would score three goals in a game, and that was never good enough because he had three shots that rang off the post. I worked hard with Jacob on his … Like he would vomit constantly before games. He would vomit on the way to and after if you had to ride home with his dad.

I actually confronted his dad. I mean I fired him. I said like, “I can’t work with Jacob, and because Jacob’s not the problem. You’re hiring me to think with the lens that Jacob’s a problem and you’re the problem.” It just kind of knock-down drag-out fight. But it’s a common issue.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s crazy. I guess like the Sharapova as the Venus and Serena Williams, the Andre Agassi’s who have all had like tormentor like parents as coaches when they’re young, those are the anomalies. I guess those would be the 10% that have kind of still stuck to it in spite of that or is that a different type of animal altogether?

Todd Herman:                   They also were thrown into an environment with really great coaches though too, so almost like sometimes those coaches balanced out the negative effect of the parents and even some of those experiences but the ones that you highlighted as athletes, those kids also left home at a younger age and they weren’t around their parents 24/7 anymore whereas a young athlete that’s dealing with a parent who is just an absolute tyrant and they got to live with them, and they’ve got a coach that’s great, the coach just has a real difficult time counteracting that 24/7 osmosis of tyranny.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. I mean this is fascinating stuff. Let’s shift focus here to the entrepreneurial space. How does that tie into pressures that entrepreneurs or CEOs or business owners face?

 

Taking pride in the process

Todd Herman:                   Sure. I think there’s a really great study that just came out earlier this year, and they were trying to find a factor that measures risk tolerance, and they found that there are three specific groups that have the highest level of risk tolerance and entrepreneurs and athletes have the exact same on the scale, and it was like 81%, whatever that number even meant. I couldn’t even figure out, but what I saw from the graph was that entrepreneurs and athletes ranked exceptionally high.

The only people who ranked just slightly higher than entrepreneurs and athletes were generals in the military and really high-level sales professionals which is why sales professionals can oftentimes be good entrepreneurs as well. Risk tolerance is a big factor but getting to your question about for business people and athletes, the reason I brought that up as a studies because this kind of overlap between athletes and entrepreneurs when I first started flip-flopping back and forth between those who feels starting out in athletes and then I was doing so many speeches that entrepreneurs would often come up to me after and say. He was like, “All that stuff that you were talking about with regards to examples for athletes, they’re like I’m experiencing that in my own business, or how can I lead a better team so on and so forth.”

There’s a real hallmark that brings these two groups together, and that is that they are both exceptionally outcome-focused individuals. Athletes are taught, and we get it at a very young age. Mom and dad get really excited when you score a goal on the game or when your nine years old and you’re coming home from soccer and your dad who wasn’t at the game says, “Oh, did you guys win today?”

Kids start to internalize it at a young age that, “Oh, mom and dad, this is actually how to internalize. This is exactly what they’ve said to me.” I’ve worked with tens of thousands of them. They say, “Oh mom and dad love me more when I win or when I score goals,” because that’s just what they know. That’s sort of one of the few emotions that they get.

It’s natural that we have this outcome-focused mentality. Entrepreneurs, we’re all judged against where we on the marketplace, revenues, profits, numbers. Those are all important to have like where we’re trying to get to, but if that’s our sole focus, it breeds nothing but stress and anxiety because outcomes by their very nature, you do not have full control over them.

When I’m working with an athlete, I’m trying to untether them from that mindset of only focusing on winning. The want and desire to win is exceptionally important, but the need too is very different than that. I want to I want to untether them. I want to get them focused on the process because when we take a look at who’s really ultra-successful in athletics who are really the highest of high performers, they really take great pride in their process, their routines and their rituals that they’re involved in.

When we take a look at who are really, really successful at being entrepreneurs, they still might be stressed on individuals, but they take great pride in their process. Steve Jobs wouldn’t ever ship on a product with that Apple logo on it that was going to be crap. They were so hyper-focused on that process.

One key thing when I’m working with entrepreneurs is to get them to really appreciate that process of things whether it’s the process of really trying to establish a deep relationship with your customers or the process of establishing an amazing culture where employees are happy to go way beyond the expectations of not just the customer but the manager, the owner, the “boss itself.”

On that kind of mental toughness side of things, people really do need to kind of learn this I guess mindset of just process directed thinking.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s brilliant. Actually, I just did a recording for one of our episodes that was entitled … It’s funny I can’t remember the title of it, basically something about the happiness thing with respect to entrepreneurs. It was all about focusing on the process as opposed to the outcome because if you’re focused on the outcome like with sports, you might lose the game but if you’re not focused on the fact that you gave everything you did on the ice or the field, you’ll never be happy.

I think it’s such an important message because especially in our culture where the focus is when we think of success, we think of shiny cars, lots of money, and it’s never about the process. We think about these overnight successes but like what was the process that led to that. I remember when I first started my business and even for a while after, one of my dilemmas with process was when I was playing soccer, it was very easy for me to, for instance, visualize the process of going from X or from A to B like if I wanted to improve a certain aspect of my game, I could just practice that over and over my head or on the field.

When I came into business and I don’t know if a lot of our listeners might relate to this, but when somebody’s focused on moving from let’s say zero to a million dollars in revenue over let’s say a year or two years whatever it might be, how do you get them to focus on the process like what are the elements that they need to focus on and I guess every business would be different but let’s say in an online business, what might be the elements that someone wants to focus on from a process perspective that would get them to that outcome?

 

The 90-Day Year; assessing performance, strategies, and goals

Todd Herman:                   You know what? You bring a good point because it’s one thing for me to sit on the podcast ago. Just focus on the process, and all the sudden, people walk away hell with like, “Oh, okay, well, that’s just what I have to do. I should focus on the process,” but there has to be some sort of process for focusing on a process.

Over the course of all the years that I’ve been working with people on essentially getting them to higher levels of performance, I have what I call like a three-phase achievement model. I have basically developed a system for achieving goals or in the context of business achieving projects and in athletics, I always called it a 90-day sprint and in business and corporate where it’s been housed for a long time for about a decade implementing it. It was called the 90-Day Year because we all understand those are some business and entrepreneurs.

We understand calendars because we’re always kind of looking back at it or referencing it daily. 90 days is an important thing. The reason that 90 days is important is because in the context of goal achievement, 90 days is essentially the horizon line to the imagination in our heads and I say that because when you think that you can possibly have something working for you done a project completed a goal achieved 90 days from now, there’s this natural endorphin rush, the endorphin rush that we get because 90 isn’t too far from now like if today would say September first, geez, like 90 days, that’s only, what, December first.

Man, by December first, if I could have my business have these many products implemented inside of it or that revenue number sitting inside of my business whatever the case is, geez, that’s motivating. Then, okay, so now, we’ve established some sort of outcome or result. We’re trying to work towards.

 

Making the outcome/goal inevitable

Now, the other two phases below it is where really the rubber meets the road because like I said before, if we’re only focused on that number, that outcome, you’re going to be stressed and anxious. Now, it comes down to the two other phases which are performance and process. If you think about in the context of a mountaintop, the very top or you want to plant the flag is the outcome.

Then, that takes up a very, very small portion of the volume of a mountain, the very tip of it isn’t much. Yet, 90% of everyone’s time and energy gets focused on, what, the outcome. Yes, the mass of it sitting below is where really … is what separates high achievers from people who are just average.

That second category is performance. Performance is all about milestones and strategy. When you think about that outcome, what are the performance metrics in corporate we would call them KPIs, key performance indicators? For business owners, what are the strategies you’re going to do in order to make that goal achieved and inevitable?

Yuri Elkaim:                         That might be … I keep you in this case for online stuff might be an opt-in rates or conversion on a sales page or …

Todd Herman:                   Totally. I mean yeah. I mean in the online space, there’s very few metrics that change from the number of people that are getting to your website, so traffic, the number of those people that are actually converting into whatever the call to action might be. Then, ultimately, when they’re coming through that funnel, then the number of people that actually have pulled out their credit card and swiped.

Another key factor in business I just did a periscope of … I’ve been playing around periscope lately, and really, really like. It’s fun just because the interaction is that live feedback that you get, but I did one with another friend of ours, Nathan Latke. We were talking about the number one metric that everyone in business needs to track and measure more than many others is retention rates because everyone wants to go out there and try and hunt and find new business.

But what about keeping the people that you have because now you’ve worked so hard to get them, keeping them. That’s where really a ton of profit sits. Anyways, yeah you’re right. What are the key strategies that you’re going to be doing. One strategy might be a PR strategy. Another strategy might be a content marketing strategy. Then, it’s like, okay, well then one of the tactics.

Now, when we get down to the process, what are the tactics or the process you’re going to do in order to reach that performance goal? By the way, performance goals strategies are all about improving something. If I was to write out that goal, so if my number one outcome goal is to increase monthly revenues to $35,000 per month by December first, 90 days from now, one of my strategies is going to be improved my content marketing outreach.

Like maybe guest posts or something like that or increase my content marketing reach to 10,000 of views a month. Then, I break that down. I break everything down into two-week sprints then because when you track and measure something and you can close a feedback loop rapidly with a client, that’s when confidence really starts to blow up and most people set their goals so far out that there have to wait so long to get a nice feedback loop closed in.

The people who win at the confidence game are closing tons of feedback loops rapidly and we’re just stepping on these small little stepping stones which eventually get us up to this extremely high level of results or performance and when we look back, we’re like, “Yeah, it’s not too complicated what I just did,” but to everyone else, it looks complicated because they don’t see all those stepping stones you stepped on.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I mean your process is amazing. I’ve gone through an iteration of it, and it’s extremely helpful. I know this is, you guys, it’s not open all year round. You have it’s closed right now. It’s called the 90-Day Year for everyone listening and check it out, just follow Todd stuff. Actually what’s the best website for people to follow you?

Todd Herman:                   If they just go to toddherman.me, I talk about tons of topics meant business toughness, mental toughness, the art of like getting things done in execution which I feel is really, really important. Then, one thing I get asked about all the time because I’ve been lucky enough to some really great mentors and advisors throughout my life, Jim Rohn, was a mentor of mine for 13 years until he passed away.

We talked pretty much every single month over that course of those 13 years. All those people help shape. Yeah. I talk about all those kind of different topics. I’m not the kind of guy necessarily to come to your … You’ve already got them satisfied on the smart marketing side of stuff. I typically sit in the strategic realm of higher level thinking more often. I’m not necessarily the best at tactics.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I know. It’s great. I mean you definitely bring a lot of value to the table. It’s almost like what I find you do is you give people a really good view of their blind spots. This is one of the things that I’ve loved about strategic coaches while working on Dan Sullivan is that here’s a very similar type of thinking process where … Just the way of thinking about a problem or asking better questions, give completely different answers and better answers in a lot of cases.

It’s almost a matter of like I really encourage entrepreneurs. Sometimes, just slow down and kind of step out of the business for a second to consider these things because it’s very easy to get caught up in a lot of doing of stuff without really having a strong kind of strategic direction to what you’re doing. I think I mean the stuff you do is awesome. That’s why I’m happy to have you have a podcast.

 

Being a thought leader vs. being a thought repeater

Todd Herman:                   Well, yeah … Thanks for that. I mean the litmus test you can have is… I mean if you get to the end of a month and you feel like you’ve been running like a hamster on a wheel and you know that you did a crap-load of work and whatever a crap-load means. But you did a lot of work throughout that month but you really don’t feel like you got any traction, then , hat is a byproduct of you operating from a bad plan or it’s a byproduct of you asking yourself and focusing on the wrong questions like even the one that I used with people and I know this resonates with many people when I’m always delivering the message about whether that three-phase achievement model of the 90 Day Year.

When I get to that second stage and I say how can we make this inevitable because that’s why … Like for me, the moment I write down what my outcome goal is, it has basically been achieved. I actually don’t stress about it, and that’s because … I’ve been doing this for so long, but that’s because the hard work of choosing the goal is the hardest work and that’s why many people when they get into … It’s not like everyone on this podcast listening right now has ever not heard of the importance of goals.

No one person on the planet has ever said goals are not important. Not one person has ever said that. We know that goals are really important, but most people get really frustrated with goal achievement or the idea of goals or they avoid it or when they’re looking through Yuri’s thread on all the other topics that they could listen to and they see this one that could be on goals, they’re going to skip by it because if they feel like they’ve heard everything.

But the reason most people avoid it is because it’s a reminder of all of the failed attempts that they’ve had. We know that most people will happily stick their head in the sand and avoid the topic because of all the self-judgment that they might have. But for me, a key question is that asking people is how can we make this goal inevitable. It taps into a different recess of your head.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a good question.

Todd Herman:                   That’s why I mean just like just like Dan, I mean I love searching and trying to find out the right question to ask. I mean even Einstein said you give me an hour to solve a problem, I’ll spend 55 minutes on asking the right question and five minutes on the solution. Yeah, what does everybody do? They jump straight into the solution, straight into action.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I think it’s also … I mean if you think about what tends to work well online just from a list … to a content marketing perspective, it’s all solution-based how to … three ways to whatever. We’re never stepping back to really taking the time to ask these questions which can give us much better direction.

Todd Herman:                   I mean you and I have been a part of a group together for a long time, and there was a discussion that came into the group a long time ago about books and how often someone reads and so forth. One person had said that there’s no excuses why you shouldn’t be reading a book a day. Now, Jim Rohn was very deliberate with me when it came to because he knew that I was going to try be building out a thought leadership business.

I was 22, and he knew that that was going to be the path that I want to be walking down. He said, “The mistake that you don’t want to make is you don’t want to be a bad imitation of me,” because he already … I mean he could feel it. There was this reverence that I had for him, and I didn’t know who he was before I had actually met him because I sat next to him at an event where he was speaking.

I just happen to be sitting at a head table with him, but he said when you’re sitting down and reading all these books about personal development or leadership or marketing whatever the case is, at some point in time, you need to stop. Put the books aside and ask yourself the question, “What do I think about leadership? What are my thoughts about leadership? What do I think the values a person needs to have with regards to being a leader need to be,” because until you can do that, you will always be a thought repeater and never a thought leader.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a huge distinction because I’ve often talked about this where a lot of entrepreneurs especially when they’re looking for guidance get lost because they follow one person who’s completely out of alignment with how they operate or it’s completely opposite end of the spectrum in terms of their personality. Whether that’s following somebody’s advice as a “guru” or even reading their book because as you just said, like I mean if you read 100 books, you might be getting 100 different perspectives, 100 different pathways to the same goal.

A lot of times, I mean it can be downright confusing. It ends up being like a shiny object thing where you’re just chasing, oh I got to try this next and do this next. I think as you just mentioned, sometimes, the answers are almost already within us.

Todd Herman:                   From my perspective, I think that they are. Now, is the right answer for who you’re going to be 10 years from now inside you right now? No, but for right now, the right answer lies for you because I choose to look at people as you’re the leader that you need to be right now like right in this moment, you are the leader that you need to be, not I’m not your leader. You’re the leader that you need to be because I don’t want people walking around putting me up on pedestals because I have a specialization.

I have focused and honed my skills that are very specific craft for a long time. Now, does that mean that I’m a complete performance guru on nutrition? No. I know quite a bit about it but I would never actually compare myself to you. I mean I’ve gone to you for nutrition advice in the past. To your point, it’s one of the big issues that I have with people that are in that personal development and people would probably, a lot of times, put me in that category but I tell people all the time that, listen, trying to say that there is only one pathway to get somewhere, and it has to be this pathway is a very obtuse and narrow-minded way of looking at success because even anecdotal success, I think, is weak success when someone says hey this worked for me.

Of course, it’s going to work for you. Be very cautious of those people because that means that they have not tested their methodology in a broad swath of people because we all know there’s lots of different personality types out there. Those are lots of different other circumstances that we’re all coming from and bringing to a situation. Not everyone has like for me launching a new business online, I have the resources and money to spend lots of dollars to go and buy traffic to come to me.

Not everyone has that. if I go out there and say, “Well, the only way to grow a business online is to buy traffic.” Some poor soul goes out there and wastes their last thousand dollars. Well, I’ve just done them a massive disservice.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely. It’s great. I mean that’s not a really, really important message that I like. As you’re listening to this, you probably say, “Okay. I’ve heard this now several times,” and there’s a reason for this because it really, really is very important.

Let’s go back to goals for a second. How does somebody know they’re setting the right goal. Then, whether they’re using the 90 Day Year or your process or any other kind of goal achievement process, is it best to be looking at those goals on a daily basis and keeping them visual as of people of set in the past like what is the process to making sure you’re setting the right goal and then sticking to that plan day in and day out?

Todd Herman:                   I don’t think it has. I mean whether or not you want to go and create a vision board for yourself or you want to go and have that read that goal to yourself every single day, I mean that’s just semantics, I think. I think what really matters is that you know that blocked-off in your calendar is some sort of focused-action towards the achievement of it.

It’s great to know picking up your head and seeing that you’re climbing up the mountain. Great. Yeah. I’m still on the path to climb up to the toughest mountain, but I need to … Well, there’s some stumbling rocks around me and there’s a tree that I need to avoid up here so I’m going to continue moving forward. That key is just making sure that every single day in your calendar is there’s some sort of focused action towards it.

Whether it’s five minutes of time, we need to be doing something especially if we’re sort of climbing back on this horse of goal achievement, we need to flex the muscle of focused awareness. That focused awareness is about letting our minds know that, hey, this goal is important to me or this project is important to me. The only way that we can do that is through daily focus.

 

Moving forward with a “wow” brain and staying on track

Does that mean that you can’t take your Sundays off? If I’m talking from the stage, that’s exactly what I say. No. You cannot take a day off. Now, I’m not saying you got to be working the entire day on the goal, but spend 10 minutes because it keeps it fresh in your mind, and it keeps it staring back in front you but now here is a massively key important part of this process. This is where I have a principle called the aww Brain and the Wow brain. There’s aww brain people out there, and there’s wow brain people out there.

Aww brainers are people … it’s the pain brain. Wow brain is the gain brain. Success minded individuals have this naturally grooved track that they’ve developed on the wow side of things. When they think about a goal, they automatically will start to think about all the things they’re going to gain from it, what opportunities might arise that are the achievement of it, what they might grow and learn and explore about themselves along the pathway to achieving that goal.

Aww brain people given the exact same goal, they’ll start thinking about the obstacles, the challenges they’re all going to have to overcome. It’s not wow brain people won’t. The great thing about really successful people is they have a tendency to actually think very negatively meaning that they’re not afraid to think about the risks or the threats or the weaknesses in their plan but they’re going to take action anyway.

Aww brain people will again like I said talk about the obstacles, the challenges, all the things you’re going to miss out on, oh, but if I give up chocolate cake this month, that mean I’ve got my nephew’s birthday party. That’s a real experience of those people. Now, I’m not completely a wow brain person. There’s parts of my life where I would probably go aww brain on things.

But how we can groove that part out of ourselves is the key difference between these … An aww brain person has the goal of climbing the mountain, so does the wow brain person. They both started in day one and they make the exact same amount of progress up the mountain. This is where the difference happens. The aww brain person picks up their head and looks to the top of mountain and goes, “Holy crap, look how far I’ve got to go. I don’t even feel like I’ve made a dent in this process.”

Wow brain people pick their head up and they look over their shoulder, “Oh cool. Look how much I’ve improved.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s huge.

Todd Herman:                   They focus on improvement. They focus on how much they have moved forward. That is what we need to be doing. If you want to journal anything, if you want to give gratitude to anything, journal your improvement. You will start to peel that pain brain, that aww brain, out of yourself and naturally go to gain brain. It is a skill. It is not something that is going to be you for the rest of your life.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I totally agree with that. That’s incredible. That actually leads me to my last question which is I guess you’ve part of the answer day which is when somebody set a 90-day goal or an outcome and they’re moving towards it and they’re not seeing the results they want to see kind of those small milestones, how do they stay confident? How do they stay on track?

Todd Herman:                   Well, it’s natural part of it. When you get going on this, here’s the reality. You’re going to suck at it and it’s because I have done this now. I’ve had this program online for entrepreneurs now for nine months, 10 months. There’s a very specific way that I mean … There’s basically people, the broad overview of it but just following that outcome performance process methodology, I had a lady come into one of the groups that said, “You know what? When I first started this, I got so frustrated with that performance part because I didn’t feel like even knew I was setting the right goal in there.”

But I just stuck with it. I stuck with it. Now, nine months down the pathway, I cannot not think about all of goals I want to achieve in a three-phase methodology plus and this is the most important part of this. You and I were kind of talking about this before we got on the call or even I just referenced it a few seconds ago, I’m a strategy person. What I know is it’s very easy for most people to think of an outcome goal that they want.

A lot of times, they’re actually … They’re pretty vague about it. They’re a little bit too general. We need to get more specific, but that’s easily coached. Then, people are very good at tasks, how to process. Well, that stuff that’s just in the process area where most people, 90% of people are very weak and we see it in corporate America or corporate wherever or entrepreneurs is the middle part the strategy.

When you get good at this, in the beginning, you’re not necessarily going to be very good at choosing the right strategies to achieve the goal, but that’s the point of this process is you are trying to develop a strategic mindset. It’s like you. When you first started out in your online business and the strategies that you used to scale it up, if you were to go back with the exact same resources except you had your mindset now, would you do it the exact same way?

Yuri Elkaim:                         No, not at all.

Todd Herman:                   Not at all because you’ve just taken so much action that you’ve learned what not to do and what to do plus you’re more strategic. The same thing goes with this three-phase model of outcome performance process or whatever goal system you want to use, just sticking with it which gets us back to the very first point of the broadcast when you ask me what is one of the hallmarks. Grit, perseverance. It’s too many people I think take the attitude when they’re learning something is, oh I’m going to see how this goes. You know what? That is not the commentary in someone’s head who is a high achiever.

They’re going to say to themselves, “I am going to extract as much blood from this rock as I possibly can.” I am going to take from this thing what I can, not I’m going to see how this goes. You can’t do that. You’re going to get eaten alive out there nowadays.

The great thing about today’s day and age is it has never been easier to start a business. The problem is it’s never been easier for 6.2 billion other people as well.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yup. Absolutely. There you go, guys, from the man himself, Todd Herman, one of my kind of go-to mentors in some way, shape or form with respect to strategy and just amazing thinking. Again, check out his stuff, Todd Herman. That’s with one N.me. Follow the stuff. I mean it’s just a different level different levies. If you’re spending time with them, you know that his brain operates in a very unique manner. Obviously, it serves a lot of people which is amazing.

Todd, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been amazing. There you have it. Hope you enjoyed this interview again pulling that one out of the archives, my good buddy, Todd Herman. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe to the Healthpreneur podcast on iTunes. Leave a five-star rating or review if you’ve enjoyed this as well as the other episodes.

In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Don’t go anywhere because I’m not going anywhere. There are lots of good stuff coming your ways to help you take your expertise and turn it into a very successful online health business. In the meantime, continue to get out there. Be great. Do great, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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