Redefining Success and Navigating Regret with Keynote Speaker Mark Sanborn

Hall of Fame keynote speaker won all of the speaking awards , including the Cavett Award , which is the highest NSA national speaker association award , because he's taught in more than 90 countries . He's taught everybody about this .

His book , the Fred Factor , is coming up with its 20th anniversary of its release , which is phenomenal more than a couple of million copies worldwide of salt . But today he's going to take you on a journey around being extraordinary and being successful . I think you'll really enjoy . Take a lot of notes , though . Mark teaches a whole bunch .

So , mark , I have to ask what is your definition of success ?

It's the progressive realization of predetermined worthwhile goals , and that's fine , although I'm one of the people that think goals really aren't nearly as motivational as other things are . But for me , I can define success in one word and I discovered this early in life and that is freedom .

Success is the freedom to pursue the things that make you happiest , that give you the greatest joy and make the biggest difference , and as long as they're legal or ethical , there's no reason why you shouldn't have that freedom . The problem , of course , is I think today , brad , a lot of younger employees , younger people forget that it's not an overnight freedom .

We kind of start with a note freedom we're in a crib and we're dependent on two people to feed us and love us and burp us and care for us .

And then , the older we get , the problem is a lot of people never leave the crib , they never pursue the autonomy , and so I've always wanted to make a lot of money , but not because of the lot of money , but because a lot of money gives me the freedom to do what I want to do .

I never saw parents come home at the end of the day to moralize or burn out because of this oppressive job and now they had three hours to drink beer and watch TV before they passed out . But I think the other part of it was I was lucky because of my involvement in different youth organizations .

I started hearing motivational speakers when I was in my early teens , and ideas are powerful . Your career , my career , they've been driven by ideas . I find ideas invigorating and whenever I ran across a good idea I tried to remember it , I tried to take note of it and then I tried to use it .

And so from an early age we had kind of a drip or a trickle system of success .

But if they had a son or daughter who needed a special operation that wasn't covered by insurance and cost a million dollars , I'm guessing if they didn't make it they'd raise it , and the reason is because they're really compelling reasons . So I think too often we tell people to set goals only to find out the goals weren't that important to them .

But for me , the power is in purpose . The motivation comes from mission .

For me it wasn't sports , but it was academics and related subjects . But I started speaking in a contest at the age of 10 where I was abysmally bad . I didn't think it would be that hard . It was really hard . And so that failure that drove me to finally crystallize , not just wanting to be successful , but more importantly , a successful at what ?

Learning to speak . Then later and it's funny because I just was going through my library I pulled this book out and December 25 , 1978 , I gave my parents a copy of Zig Ziglar's book Confessions of a Happy Christian , and I don't even remember doing it , but in the front I wrote that I knew they'd enjoy the book .

I just heard Zig Ziglar speak and I decided that someday I wanted to be a professional speaker . So , even though obviously the idea had occurred to me before then , it's fun to see a precise moment in history where I actually told someone . Sometimes we have these aspirations . We don't tell anybody because we're afraid later they'll go .

Hey , whatever happened to that dream , but for me at the age of 20 , I said wow , you can make a living at professional speaking . Now , of course , the challenge at 20 is I didn't have a whole lot of life experience or success . I'm just a believer that you need to do something before you tell others how to do it .

So I got busy in sales and marketing in some other areas .

It does happen but it's rare . My friend , michael , once told me that the bad news is it'll take me 15 years to become a success . But that's how long it takes to be an overnight success . We just don't see the 14 years ahead of that right .

So when my boys were younger and Darla and I have two sons , one's a Marine and one's a realtor we had a real easy prescription Try a lot of stuff , do things . Don't just take the idea that I could tell you you need to be this or someone your guidance counselor would say you need to be that . Try things . If you like them , keep doing them .

If you don't like them , move on . And I think over time we start to find out what we A enjoy doing , but B and this is key what we enjoy doing we're willing to work to become good at doing Both . My boys are really smart and I'm not bragging . I probably get it from their mother's side .

I'm not even going to get it to them how many grade that you get in school , as long as you couldn't have gotten a higher grade , because I was afraid that you know , if life comes easy academically , you can do nada in skate by with seats .

On the other hand , if you're a B student or an A student and you're skating by with seats , then dad's got a problem . So I think it's the idea of really applying ourselves . And you know , I subscribe Arnold Schwarzenegger's new book is out and I subscribe to his daily email , which is really quite good , and he said something the other day that rang so true .

He said you know , the biggest problem in our culture is an unwillingness to endure discomfort , and success comes from hard work , always . Now the hard work can be enjoyable , but it's still hard work and it doesn't happen overnight .

When you fail , it has , you know , an emotional impact that causes you to want to figure out how not to feel that way again . You know , in financial services we know that the fear of loss is higher than the hope of gain .

People are always 10 towards , in general , the pain minimization , and so I think when we have , you know , I remember clearly I was 10 , so my first speaking contest was 55 years ago . I remember vividly the room and the table and the lectern and the audience when I sucked so bad at my first speech . I don't remember anything from the age of 10 .

I mean , I remember vaguely , but why is that ? Because failure has such an emotional impact .

The problem is most people , when they fail , they got a decision tree and what , brad , will people say so much is that didn't really matter no big deal and of course I found maybe you've observed whenever somebody says that that's usually not true it mattered a lot , but they didn't want to feel the pain , but the other decision tree is where you say that really

mattered . I don't ever want to do that again . I don't want to fail . I don't want to feel that way and that's why I think people who are successful while they enjoy success , they learn a lot more from failure .

How do you teach people to get through that or change from that thinking to using the failures or using the mistakes ?

And this was a big epiphany for me , brad , because I was an ag econ major , having grown up on a farm . And he said well , you know , my grandfather is a doctor , my dad is a doctor , what else would I be ? And I was like , really , my grandfather is a farmer , my dad is a farmer and I'm majoring in ag business .

And it dawned on me that it was not anything more than a lack of awareness . Right , I mean , I just assumed . Right , you grow up on a farm , you become a farmer , you have a doc as a dad , you become a doc . And that was so profound . You know , we can't be everything we want to be , but we can be anything we want to be .

And so few of us , myself included , realized that until it's too late . So the whole idea of somebody changing and using failure as a lesson is making them aware of how they frame it . They probably never thought about it .

They probably just didn't grow up in an environment we kind of are parents of our parents for many years , and if your parents basically suppressed the fact that they were unhappy and failed , that's what you do too , instead of looking for a lesson .

That's energy , that's commitment , and we have mutual friends and Scott McCain and Larry Wingett and Joe Callaway and the four of us we talk about that a lot .

Passion is actually very overrated for this simple reason . Passion isn't the starting point , it's the add-on . Process without passion is sleepwalking , it's sterile , it's un-exciting . But passion without the process is nothing more than undirected emotion . So I wrote a book that talked about the encore effect . It says you need both Process and passion .

To me , passion is the fuel . There's different kinds of fuel . You put bad fuel in an engine , it won't run well . You put good fuel in it , it'll run better . And that's , to me , what passion is . But the question becomes how do I create value in my passion ? I mean , there's a lot of things I'm passionate about .

I'm never going to make a nickel from it . My son and I love F1 racing . I am never going to profit from it . If anything , I'm going to make the people who own F1 richer by paying for merchandise and tickets and things . So that's a passion , but it's not what I would call a sustainable career passion .

The real goal in life and I learned this a long time ago is to find the intersection in your life between money and meaning , finding a way to make money doing what is meaningful .

When I was young , I did a lot of crap that wasn't that meaningful , but I knew over time that would give me the freedom to reach a point where I could do what was meaningful and still profit from it , even though others were profiting from the value I created .

I think that there are a lot of things that make our lives purposeful . You're a person of faith . It's a little easier because you have a higher standard , a God or someone that you worship . But at a practical level , I think saying that you've got one thing is a disservice .

A friend of mine called me years ago and he's , you know , he's our age , right , so even years ago he wasn't a young guy and he said I can't find my mission , I can't find my purpose . And I said , well , I can't help you there .

But I'll tell you this Until you find your purpose , do whatever you're doing purposefully , because I'm a big believer that purpose resides in everything we do , whether it's interacting with a neighbor over the back fence , whether it's how you drive in traffic .

If you hold yourself to a higher purpose and that is being kind , being of service , being a peacemaker , not a divider then you don't have to necessarily say you know , I was put on this earth to make sure that everybody's puppy got vaccinated . I'm obviously in the infestation and that's great . By the way , if you find that out , god bless you .

Most of us we try to do things purposefully . Somebody locked up my dogs and my wife's keeping them quiet , so somebody's knocking on my door even though we're in an oscilis of neighborhood . Maybe if somebody's searching for purpose . I'll get with you later . Go away , go away .

He said you know what , brad , sometimes you find your calling in life and sometimes you're given your calling , and I think that relates to a lot of whatever you're given as you're calling , or whatever you find or decide as you're calling , because I think finding it and deciding it are two different things as well .

I want to touch on , though , my favorite chapter , which is just more my personality . I guess in here was where you talk about the scorekeeper system change the score , change the way you think . Can you explain that to everyone ? Because , again , my personality is drawn to that nature of learning .

I didn't have a time to do a deep dive , but I found that , you know , there's basically four ways you can keep score , you know . And the first is results . And we all know people . They're all about the results . They're hard workers , by the way . They may or may not be highly successful monetarily , but they do create results .

And then you've got the people who are into , you know the riches , right , they make money only to make more of it . And I'm neither condoning nor condemning , it's just , we know people , I know people that you know . When you say how much is enough , their answer more .

And the third is creation , right , and the recreation part is the guy with the boat and the jet ski and the ATV and the Jeep and skis and all the rest and everything they do during the week is a means to the end of recreation . But the fourth one is relationships . Now , typically we say you know , people are .

You know , some people are relational , some aren't . You know , everything in life is ultimately a choice . You might be born an introvert , but you can still learn to be an extrovert . I'm actually a borderline introvert , extrovert which most people don't believe , but it's true . So here's what I found .

If you're only about results , at the end of the day , life suddenly goes on dim , you know . And if you're only about riches , you've got no one to share those , those riches with . And if you're in the recreation but you haven't focused on on relationships , you're on your boat by yourself , which makes water skiing very hard .

But what I you know , what I found , is that the people that focus on people , that focus on relationships , tend to have all four . If you have good relationships at work , you're able to get results . If you have good relationships with your , your business partners , your customers , your vendors , it tends to be profitable .

If you have good relationships , you don't have to buy a boat , because three of your friends have a boat and they invite you to go with them on the weekend . Not , again , a very big oversimplification , but in it there is this idea that where you focus is where you're going to be most successful . Just the .

The warning is don't wake up later and say I picked the wrong arm .

The word extraordinary is something that you are synonymous with . Tell me more about this whole , how to be extraordinary .

I do worry , however , that people look at extraordinary as only big and not sometimes small . It sounds like , wow , that was an extraordinary YouTube concert at the spear . Well , it was , but you know what A lot of little things went into making for an extraordinary conference , the idea of the spear and the pixelization , however , many years ago .

So Alan's like to say extraordinary literally means a little extra from ordinary . It doesn't say how much . It doesn't say mega extraordinary . You know , brad , we talk about . You hear speakers say this all the time you've got to make a quantum leap in your life . In physics they really , by the way , use quantum , they use quantum jumps , quantum jumper .

Quantum leap is the smallest distance Adam can travel from one orbit to another . It's the smallest distance Adam can travel , but what makes it powerful is the occurrence . So if you make enough little moves , funny thing happens over time cumulatively you experience the big leap . If you can solve cancer and world hunger , god bless , you go for it .

But more often than not it's those little leaps that create extraordinary . In the book the Fred Factor , I call it the ABCD principle , above and beyond the Call of Duty , just a little bit more . Somebody says how do I get to the HR office ? You walk , you don't tell it takes you 15 more seconds , your day's not shot .

And when you go through life looking for ways , little things , you make a big difference . It's pretty easy to be extraordinary .

When I've stayed there , sometimes they're amazing and sometimes they're terrible , and from that I formulated the idea that it is better to be consistently good than occasionally great , because consistency is your outward facing brand . It's what you're known for over time , not a flash in the pan . We all know one hit record , one hit wonders . We know that .

But here's the funny thing we know the song , we rarely know the artist , and so you have to find a level where you can deliver consistently so that people will be able to think of you as distinctive in your category . Consistently good , consistently great , consistently bad , but cheap , which is , by the way , typically how the hospitality industry shakes out .

You stay at a cheap hotel , you stay at a Ritz and they don't deliver your room service on time , you're angry . You stay at a cheap hotel , you don't get murdered that night , you're happy . And the reality is about this consistency in the brand . So , yeah , consistency is important .

And , by the way , the more you are good , the easier it is to be consistently good . The more you are great , the easier it is to be consistently great You're on the Big Success podcast .

good . My theory on this is simple , and that is that Amy Lowe is a regret . Minimization process .

So if you , you know , if your self-esteem says you know , I just want to make sure I feel good about myself , don't try much and you won't be too disappointed . If , on the other hand , you want to be great , start trying great things . I was asked recently by a client you know , what's your biggest regret or variation ? What would you tell your younger self ?

You know I would tell myself 20 , 40 , 50 years ago to aim higher . I think I wasn't afraid of failure , but I think I underestimated what it took to be great or what it took to be really successful . You know , nido Cabane at High Point University says you know , most people are hunting rabbits when they could be hunting elephants .

Now , by the way , if you remember Apeeta , we're not talking about literally shooting rabbits and elephants , but most people are pursuing small game when the reality is it's the same process to pursue big game .

If we say , okay , we've gone for the massive goal , those that are getting there , what's the difference ?

See , when you're number three , you emulate number two . When you're number two , you emulate number one . When you're number one , there's no one to emulate . And that's why I'll emulate to learn , but innovate to earn . Because when you are number one and this is the mantra I tell my clients better always beats best .

There's some upstart , there's some hungry kid or company that's looking at you and saying , wow , they're good at what they do , but we can do it different and the way we do it different , the customer like better , better always beats best . So in a way , you know and my clients are like yours , brad it's a self-selecting audience .

So the people that would benefit most from the sermon probably aren't going to church , and the clients that would benefit most from what you and I do in our work , they would benefit , but they either can afford it or won't afford it .

So our clients are successful people who want to become more successful , and that's why I wrote a book called the Potential Principle . It was based on the speech I called how the Best Get Better , and it was designed around this idea . How do you keep getting better , no matter how good you become ?

And the outer world of responding , that means you're not necessarily doing something , but you're responding to something . I call that learning . And you say well , wait a minute , Mark , doesn't learning take effort ? Well , of course it does . But you can't learn what doesn't already exist .

Right , you learn from other people's experiences , you learn from books , you learn from seminars . Then you go in the inner world , and the inner world of doing is called thinking , planning , strategizing . The inner world of responding is the hardest place for most people to even access , much less do , and that's called reflecting .

And to make it easy , there's a lot of ways you can define reflecting , but reflecting is what happens when you slow down enough to let a good idea catch you . It's why sometimes you're sitting around drinking a beer and you go .

That's it , Because when you fill up your mind , instead of making it go after things , things come to you , and so the big message is to make sure you don't hang out only in one quadrant that is predominantly pleasing to you . Believe it or not , I've pulled audiences . There's moderately even smattering of people who prefer each of the four quadrants .

I'm in the thinker quadrant . Give me an internet connection and a stack of books . Give me a loan . I'm in talk , talk , but that's not going to make me a successful speaker or advisor or trainer or teacher or writer , so I have to ultimately convert that into the performing . But each of the quadrants complements the other three . Yeah , perfect .

The one other quote that I have kind of assimilated into something I say , which is what I try to live by fear nothing but to waste the present moment . You take care of the moments . The moments become your life .

Sanborn . Big success podcast . We're gonna be back next week with more success for you . And that's the big success podcast for today . Hopefully you took a lot of notes , learned a whole bunch and , if you need to go re-listen to it , we dropped a lot of information right there today . Big success is what it's all about .

And , by the way , if you haven't subscribed , hit that subscribe button so you're here with us every single week on the Big Success podcast . I'm Brad Sugars . That's BS . Big success is what we're shooting for . Check the show notes for all the links . Make sure you follow through , keep learning , keep coming back .

Oh , and , by the way , share this with any of your friends who you know are up for success . I'll see you next week on the Big Success podcast .