10: Redefining Education and Practicing Radical Honesty with Allen Isaacson

Chad:               You’ll also learn the importance of our inner voice and how that inner voice in our head, the way that we talk to yourself, how that influences our relationship building and what we can do to develop real trust with people you haven’t already. Be sure to subscribe on Itunes, go find this on youtube so you can subscribe to the channel there where you’re also. You’ll also get some other other videos and other content that will help you on your journey into connecting your way to your goals and if you want to learn more from us, go to arrowlight.tv where you can discover what else I have to teach you that hopefully can get you on track in your career. I do online workshops and I have a free class that I do every Wednesday at 2:00 PM mountain for one hour. It’s called Communicate Now and if you’re self-employed or a freelancer, you’re really going to benefit from this class.

Chad:               If you’re not, you’re still going to benefit and you’re going to gain a lot of insight that will help you in your career, but I will be speaking more specifically to those who are self employed or a freelancer or you’re doing your own thing. I’m the kind of tips that I give on networking and time management are going to be very relevant to you and so go check that out and sign up so you can come to our class on Wednesdays at 2:00 PM and so welcome to the show, Alan Isaacson. Glad to have you on today’s show because, um, I, I, we talk about connection on this show and you are somebody who has had some experiences with uh, and not only connecting with people but also connecting with certain awareness and certain level of mindset that helps people to move forward in our life. And so I’m really excited to hear from you. First of all, what brought you to where you are today? What’s your story and why you passionate about what you’re passionate about right now.

Allen:               All right, well first of all, thanks for having me. I’m excited to reach out to these folks. These are people that I really enjoy talking to. Um, I guess I should start at the beginning. Uh, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship used to be a dirty word. Now that back then they called it small business runs in my family and my grandfather ran small businesses in the bay area and we moved out here to Las Vegas and, and uh, out here we had, you know, a series of small businesses, you know, doing a lot of consulting. Real estate was a big one for us, was a big real estate boom out here. And um, my father ended up picking up the mantle and his business after it is grit his father’s business after he left the corporate world. And then I, uh, you know, in my infinite wisdom as a 15 or 16 year old had decided, oh, well, I don’t want to do anything that my, you know, I don’t want to do it.

Allen:               My Dad is doing because I want to go my own way. But I just couldn’t stay away from it. I just, I ended up, you know, I needed a summer job when I was 16. Uh, I had helped the family business a little bit with some web design back when it was still sort of edgy and um, and I ended up working with my father through his clients and helping them. And then when I was 18, because I knew everything, I was like, oh, I’m not gonna do anything business world. I’m going to go off and work for the federal government and try to join, which now it just makes me crack up. Uh, trying to see myself in that bureaucratic position. So, uh, what I ended up doing was going to college. I knew, I just knew I was going to go to college for four years and get my degree.

Allen:               I was going to go join the State Department and uh, by the end of the first year I knew that it was all going haywire. Um, I was facing a lot of personal issues with mental health and struggling around that, trying to keep myself going and that took a lot out of me and I wasn’t able to focus on school and I didn’t really enjoy it. I just didn’t have my heart in it. I still don’t have a degree, don’t feel like I need one on. I want to go back someday and wrap it up. But right now, uh, I’m enjoying a lot more having to focus on my business, helping people. And uh, and I also tried the corporate world, you know, I took a year off from school. I worked, uh, for Wells Fargo was a teller and I loved it. At first it was a structured environment than my management team switched on me and uh, things went downhill and I didn’t have the courage at the time to let go and realize I need to move on.

Allen:               And so I started coming in late and I was fired and uh, and that was a blessing in disguise because it, it forced me to drop the backup and that’s when I really started to hit the ground running and started looking at my business. A lot of people who are younger and have that pressure to go do what they’ve been told to do. Maybe it’s a degree, maybe it’s, you know, go take on the family business and they don’t want to do that. A lot of people have that pressure and I think that at some point you just have to be your own person and the people who love you and care about you when they see that you’re happy doing that will be proud of you.

Chad:               I totally see eye to eye with that. Something you referenced as you brought up your, you know, unfinished degree. Um, I want to ask you about this because I think it’s an interesting thing that I see going on in, uh, in today’s professional world that and, and, and, um, and um, I love getting a variety of perspectives on this because I just think it’s really fascinating that for a while in our, in our country’s history a couple generations ago, I mean a degree really, really meant a lot and it was very valuable and practically necessary, uh, for most careers that, you know, if you want it to go into this field and you’ve got a degree in this specific thing. Um, and when I think about my grandparents on my parents, I mean they got a degree and then they got a relevant career to that degree and that degree help them get launched into that career.

Chad:               But I’m noticing that that kind of journey is starting to buckle on itself with the millennial generation and a degree is not what it used to be. Um, that is close. Yeah. You can show up to a job interview with a degree. Um, but if you don’t have the perceived value that this person is wanting, that degree’s not going to get us the traction that we think we have a lot of people exiting college. It’s like, okay, good. I got my degree, I’m a massive amounts of debt now. Uh, but it’s okay because of my career is going to take off because I have my degree and then it doesn’t. And there’s a lot of people in their twenties that are kind of struggling. What are, what are some more thoughts you have on why our degree is not having the value that maybe it used to?

Allen:               Well, first of all, let me say that for some people it

Chad:               is the right way to go. They love it. They learn the skills, they love the learning. I personally am passionate about learning. I’m actually passionate about academics. I enjoy writing and studying in depth topics outside of the standard curriculum. And that’s where I start to have a bone to pick because I think the standard curriculum has now gotten to a point where, you know, colleges are growing, they need tuition funding. Tuition has been rising to an all time high and everything is getting more and more standardized and less personalized and that’s a problem because that means that you don’t necessarily come out of college with that degree and the skills and lessons and experiences that make you a full mature person than you know. A big thing is most people come out of college with no idea how a network and that’s a travesty. It’s actually a tragedy because if you go out and come out, I mean that’s 80 percent of all jobs in the professional world are obtained through networking.

Chad:               Not through having a great resume. I mean, let me put it this way, just at the corporate level as a entering as a teller, the face of the company for Wells Fargo, I’m sure I was competing against people, people with degrees. The thing that put me ahead was that I had 10 years of having learned Spanish in school and I had lived almost three months in South America and so I had fluency in Spanish and I and so they hired me base. I’m sure they hired me almost solely based on that. I mean, I do great in interviews and whatnot. I’m sure they hired me almost solely based on that and that’s because I went and traveled and that’s not something that people tell you to do. People don’t. Most people don’t even do study abroad in college and that’s not focused on learning the culture, traveling and engaging and improving the skills and meeting new people and learning how to interact with people you don’t know and you don’t necessarily understand.

Chad:               Those are all important skills. Also being a customer service rep, you know, when I was broke and needed a job, made a huge difference and a lot of people sweep that stuff to the side and that’s, you know, that’s also a shame because those are valuable positions to learn and experience. Especially when you’re younger and you don’t have a lot of experience to offer, but you have a lot of time. Yeah, definitely. That is a. You said some key key things there about how we come out of college, having no idea how to network in that. That is the thing that gets us jobs. That was me. I came out of college having no idea how to network. I mean I always, always less social and so I, not only did I not know how to network, even if you’re outgoing, you still have to learn how to network.

Chad:               It’s a totally different skill than just showing up a party and socializing. But I was shy on top of it and so I all, I avoided people and I didn’t know how to and I was hoping I could just kind of quietly find my way and I had to find mentors and study and gain a whole new education on networking that ended up now being key to me actually gaining traction in my career. And it is, it’s a total tragedy that we, we learned how to be really good at memorizing all these facts and then we, and then we leave college not having the communication skills that are necessary, not having the time management skills that are necessary and the ending networking skills and those leadership skills that really turn you into somebody who can, who can be a real value. Um, and yes, like you said, for some people a degree is still a, a, a good option and an important one and it’s something that everyone needs to consider individually.

Chad:               Um, but it is not the only way. And like for me, I got a degree in, uh, in film and that’s not typically something that even that industry, you don’t have to get it. Most people in the film industry don’t have a degree at all. I wanted it because a, I wanted some of the experiences associated with, um, connecting with certain people at a certain school and being able to learn some technical skills that I didn’t have. Um, but the degree alone has not landed me a single job out of college. It was, it was, it was networking with the right people. Once I learned how to do that, that got me jobs with doing film and video and uh, and now building a new business, I’m having to learn it all over again. The importance of, of networking in, in, in, in all of that.

Allen:               Um, and also let’s, let me add to that. I mean, the other thing is that the industry has changed so much. I mean at the time that you were probably getting your degree, no one was teaching youtube, no one was teaching, you know, independent filmmaking necessarily a or maybe they were and I’m wrong, but those are now evolving technologies and if you look at the pace that things are changing, it’s exponential. I mean the difference between 2000 and 2010 is exponentially lower in our world and the difference between 2010 and 2015 and so on, the difference between 2015, 2018 is not as large at all as a difference between 2018 and 19 will be because it just keeps increasing at that rate. And I, and on that, I think that part of that is that standardized curriculum that you get, you know, um, standardization, in my opinion is the enemy of innovation.

Allen:               You go by what I had a, if you go by the standardized tests, I took as a, as a, as a young man or you in school as in high school, I should have gotten my degree very, very early on. I shouldn’t have been a rock star in my career because I hit all the check boxes so well, but they don’t capture a person and so now a days and value is established and held in your unique capacities, abilities and viewpoints as an individual person and not the check boxes that you hit on your resume for example.

Chad:               Yeah, definitely. And, and to play off what you said, how we are, we’re the industry of continued education is, is growing a lot where we now have so many platforms for education online that weren’t available before that it is. We’re redefining what it means to be educated. For Awhile it was you went where you went to college and you’ve got a degree, thus you’re educated. Now we’re, we’re moving more into a place where there is a lot of viable and valuable education online through so many online courses and books and they’re just education all over the place. In any industry, you know, we want to start a business. You don’t need to go get a business degree. Just go get a few books by some smart people and take a few online courses.

Allen:               What will change the game? I mean I am entirely every. I’m self educated. I went to college for quite a while, but I’m self educated because all the skills and experience that I employee everyday in my business or stuff that I taught myself to Google and stuff that I taught myself through trying and failing, trying again, fine tuning and adjusting and the stuff that I learned in my degree program. As much as I have a passion for knowing and, and exploring those ideas, I don’t use it unless I’m on facebook. Talking about politics with people and so I mean, which one do you think has more weight? I mean, Google changes the game and just being able to now with the networking set of opportunities and technologies, it’s a whole different story because now with networking, when you see someone who’s doing what you want to do, this is definitely something I want to talk about. I’m sure we’re going to get to, when you see something who’s doing what you want to do, you aspire to be like them. You respect them, uh, you admire them. Those are the people that you can now develop relationships with and you can emulate what they’re doing and it changes the game for you because then you can grow with them, not just be chasing their tails.

Chad:               Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. That’s a loop you just opened that I want to close in a few minutes because I want to talk about that with you. So for anyone listening, just stay curious about the importance of mentorship for a few minutes. I’m going, uh, just, just kind of finishing the conversation on a, on this, this idea of that we have education that is, that is continuing. Um, when you talked google changing the game for me, I don’t know about you, but when I, when I, when I Google something, when I try to find information, I’m constantly looking at the date and I want it to say 20, 18 and when I look in a blog or something else and they don’t have a date, I just exit and I go back and look for a new one because to me, the business, everything is changing so much and what works and everything else is the tactics, the strategies, all the information is changing so much that I want the most up to date information.

Chad:               And if I just come out of college thinking that what was written in that textbook written 10 years ago, it was the most up to date information. I’m going to hit a wall and I try to start a business and realize this doesn’t apply anymore. You know, this, this is now outdated. Information is changing so fast that the only way to stay up to date on on careers and business in anything is to is to continue your education throughout your life and realize that you’re a student forever and so you better learn how to get on Google and do some research and stay up to date throughout the rest of your life that don’t come out of college thinking that now you have your education, now you can go practice. You have to keep educating yourself because everyday there’s something new getting published online that just replaced the information that you knew yesterday

Allen:               and I agree with you. I mean there are tons of resources out there. Google’s a great place to start. I learned how to research very early on and I’ve gotten very good at it because I grew up with it, but a lot of things that people don’t realize that is Google has made us lazy in some ways. A lot of things that people don’t realize is that there are, especially for business and entrepreneurship, tons and tons. I mean, I mean so many resources out there that are free. I mean, nobody has ever heard of this better of the small business administration. Nobody talks about it and they just have so many resources out there, you know, people are going and looking for funding. I’m like, if you’re a small business person who happened to be, you know, a lot of new female entrepreneurs in the game, you know, who have opportunities for that because they love to give funding to those persons as well.

Allen:               And there are tons of opportunities there to get that information. Now, I didn’t want to push back on one thing you said. I mean, I do agree at surface, at the micro level, uh, that you need to be keeping your eyes forward on the changing innovations, the changing tactics and strategies at the macro and the big picture. I really think that business will always be the same. It will always be the same. There are these undercurrents to it. And if you can understand the concepts and undercurrents and the things that you know, are nuances, but at a very deep level. And, and I’m blessed to have a background in old school, small business and school corporate environments that I had. I saw that early on and emulated it, and you know now the different tactics and strategies for how you express that and how you employ that in your business or in your career are out there. They’re changing, but if you don’t understand that base level and that’s where you should go back to the basic concepts. There are lots out there that you don’t necessarily need to hit textbooks or whatnot, but there are a lot of basic concepts stuff out there that will help you understand what’s going on in that sense.

Chad:               Absolutely. I completely agree with you that there are these foundational principles and concepts that are unchanging, that as much as at the surface level there is. Yeah. Like I was saying, there’s information that is constantly being updated as far as implementation in tools and technology. There’s these foundational principles that are unchanging in how to advance in their career in business and communication and in humans and people and what people want and if we understand those key principles that note. So thank you, thank you for elaborating on that because that is really important. Understand that we need to, we need to be updating our cell phone, what’s current, but always going back and understanding those traditional principles that are unchanging. Um, so let’s, we’re talking about how to connect our way to our goals and we just discussed a lot on of, of education, which is an important key part of the formula and connecting a way to any goal.

Chad:               You got to know what you need to know to get to where you want to be. And you got to know. So if there is somebody who is where you want to be, then you need to get, you need to know what they know. And a part of that is connecting to the right mentors that can get you there. So let’s talk about a key part of networking we network to find maybe leads for our business or anything else we network to find collaborators. But another key part of networking is to find mentors and teachers that are where we want to be, that know what we want to know and can help accelerate our progress. Do you want to tell us a little bit about maybe the importance the mentors have been in your life and also what we can do to find mentors that can help us to accelerate our progress in our career?

Allen:               Yes. So definitely, um, mentorship, game changing. If there aren’t people that you look up to that you can speak to, ask advice, you know, share thoughts with, bounce stuff off, then you’re holding yourself back. Um, you know, when there is someone you admire and respect, you aspired it to their level, um, you want to know what they know. You also want to know who they know, um, and how they know it because those are all the three different aspects. I mean, what they know is the base level who they know is the people and their network that they’re working with and how they know it is how they got there. And that’s learning process so that you can develop your own process that share similarities with it. So once you start to sort of not only own what you don’t know, because you know, as, as a lot of people say, the wisest men out there, uh, knows how little he knows and uh, and that’s a paraphrase for sure, but I’m definitely so once you can own how little you know and how much you have to learn and how much you have to grow, then you can also start to own what you do know and where you can, uh, throw input your, your, your unique skills and, and viewpoints and experiences and your own journey on linkedin.

Allen:               I found these people who are at the top of their game and also people who are interacting with those people because you got to understand the networks are our first degree, second degree, third degree. You know, they’re the people you know, they’re the people they know. And then there’s the whole world that they know and it’s amazing how wide network guess once you get to the third degree. So I would find those people who are doing great stuff, putting great stuff out there. I usually find them through someone else who I connected with who I am, you know, why wasn’t sure they weren’t doing too much, but you know, I could see that they were sort of trying to figure it out or whatever. Or we had a conversation and then they happened to know one of these people because that’s one of someone that they looked up to and all of a sudden I’m looking at that person being like, wow, I want to do that too.

Allen:               I want to. I want to start building what they’re doing, start building their networks. And then once I looked at that person’s stuff, I started finding other people who are gravitating around that person and those people also want to connect and collaborate. So I think mentorship is way less of a hierarchy game. Like where you look up and then people and then you’re helping someone because they’re beneath you. And way more of an equality gay. It’s lateral and not vertical. Because when you’re mentoring someone, let me tell you someone, something, a good relationship, a good mentor, mentee relationship is to weigh all day, so that means that your, you may be sharing something, teaching something at some point, but you have to learn to that process and keep your mind open to that because if you don’t then you’re not gaining the benefit. I have always. My best way of learning something has been to teach it to someone else because I tried it once and I did it right successfully and someone else said, oh, I want to learn how to do that. But I wasn’t able to sharpen my focus and figure out how to communicate that. So I was teaching now. So that’s a two way street.

Chad:               Totally. Yeah. I’ve had many experiences where I was a sharing advice with somebody or giving them some mentorship on something and there was a slice of it that I kind of Upfront, oh, I know what to say. And then in, in the act of just teaching them, all of a sudden there was just other stuff that came into my mind of like that. I W I was like learning as I was teaching, I was learning as I was mentoring this person, um, and it’s a really cool experience and so it’s, it, it, as much as it’s important to connect to mentors that will help give us the knowledge and the training that we need to get to wherever you want to be. We also need to look for opportunities to, to mentor others because if we stay in that student slash teacher state, we, like you said, we just, uh, we, we grow very quickly and we learn a lot as well as we teach and as we learn. And yeah, it’s totally a two way thing.

Allen:               Just really quick. That’s another thing to wrap wrap back. That’s another thing that college and traditional education struggles with because they do have those hierarchies and you are supposed to listen to this person and follow what they say and do what they say. And the best types of professors have always been the people that you can sit in their office and just chat about nothing relevant until all of a sudden you’re, you’re building that relationship and then you’re more open to what they have to say. And then they’re also open to what you need so they can deliver what you really like. The thing I always tell people when I get on a song, because I do so many phone calls with people who are, I don’t think they’re below my level at all. I think they’re right and they may look up to me, but I think that they’re doing awesome stuff and I’m jealous in a sense because I’m like, Dang, I wish I was going through that journey part where like with the knowledge that I already had going through the journey.

Allen:               So like I want to help them by sharing what I know so I can help you. Like maybe not make the same mistakes but also just do way better than I did. And that’s going to elevate me because that’s my passion. And, and I get so excited about that. But when I’m talking to them, it’s never. I never start with, oh, let me tell you what I know. Here’s what I did. Let me tell you what I know. In fact, that usually gets me down here really fast. The first words out of my mouth is, why don’t you tell me about your journey. Tell me about what you want and where you’ve been, and where you want to go so that I really deeply understand your needs and really deeply understand how I can help you and deliver the best advice. And that is something that has always been really expansive for me and my soul and in my career and in my personal life.

Chad:               Yeah, you’re not just a, you’re not just lecturing, you’re, you’re meeting them where they’re at, and then figuring out the right questions to ask and figuring out what you can show the really is relevant to them. And so yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. I want to kind of just recap the two main things we’ve gone over so far. Education and mentorship to things that are vital to our career advancement and they’re completely of our network and journey that we need to network our way into mentorship and network our way into education. Let’s, let’s go a little deeper now and discuss kind of what something that you had to disconnect from to move forward in your life and what’s something you had to connect to in order to move forward. And let’s talk about some of these deeper philosophy elements of just disconnection and connection and the importance of that.

Allen:               Well, let me just lay it out from the top right away. Disconnect from complacency. Disconnect from all the excuses you make. Telling Myself, okay, I’m doing okay. Like, yeah, it’s okay to be nice and say, yeah, you’re doing fine. But also just sitting there and going like, I’m, you know, I’m okay where I’m at, I’m, I’m sort of getting by, but I want more. But if you want anybody can sit. This is something that someone I look up to very much. Gary Vaynerchuk, he’s at a huge level. Um, and also that something that, you know, other people I look up to who, who Adam Connors, for example, who’s a networking and a lot of ways, you know, um, they, they said this a lot in different ways, which is anybody can sit on the couch and look at what they want and point at it, but it takes someone special to get up off their ass and start doing it.

Allen:               And sometimes the thing that’s stopping you is not just complacency, but it’s that voice of self doubt. It’s, it’s those reservation. That’s, that backup plan you’ve got is the thing that, you know, you’re like, oh, I’m not sure. It’s scary fear. I did it. It’s human, it’s real. But courage is when you take that fear and you take that, that, that discontent and that discomfort and you harness it so you can get to that level where you’re like, I’m no longer afraid anymore. So I think that those are excuses, complacency and that voice of self doubt and that voice of, of like, you know, looking for failure, that looking for failure is just setting yourself up for failure. So don’t do that from the beginning. Don’t do that. Just get going and give it a shot. And you know, if you mess up, you’ve got time to figure it out. Sorry.

Chad:               Definitely. Thank you. Yes. Yes. I as well had to separate. I had to disconnect from various voices that were telling me that I wasn’t going to get where I was trying to go and voices that was telling me that, you know, Oh, I’m, you know, I had voices of like, you know, you’re too young or you know, you’re supposed to, you got to pay your dues and spend 20 years just working hard before you can have any kind of. Yeah, yeah. Yes. And, and so, uh, that’s really important. So disconnected from some sort of internal voice stuff. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what our inner communication has to do with our ability move forward? Because we talk to ourselves all day long. We also talked to other people. So how does that enter communication the way that we talk to ourselves, like how does that help keep us stuck and what have you found is as common as something that’s common with people in their inner communication that does keep them stuck and what can we do about it?

Allen:               Okay. So first of all, the inner voices. I should also say sometimes that inner voice and something you’ve internalized from external voice. Sometimes it’s your mom, sometimes it’s you know, your grandfather or your uncle or that one friend who’s always whining or complaining or you know, we all have that. Someone who gets in our heads and we sort of emulate that voice in our own mind. And so sometimes that inner voice is an external voice that you’re taking in deep communication. I think between your inner voice, your inner journey and your inner knowledge of who you are has to be completely open to the communication of your external environment and the people you surround yourself with. I mean, connect to positivity. First of all, when someone says, you are the product that Adam Connor says, I know I’ve dropped his name a bunch of times. He says, when you know that thing that people say, you are the product of the five people closest to you is 100 percent sure it’s 100 percent true.

Allen:               If you look at the five people closest to you, the people who are always nagging on you and ragging on you or the people that get you down and then get you feeling negative about yourself and the people who get excited about seeing you succeed are the people who want to take you to the next level and make you feel like you can’t and so that that makes such an. It takes such a huge weight off your shoulders when you start to realize, if I can’t control all this stuff around me that you know, makes me scared of, I can’t control the five closest people next close to me. I can’t control them. I can control who I pick and choose to spend time with who I pick and choose to develop those relationships with. I, for better or worse, and maybe a little bit of both, I practice radical honesty.

Allen:               Um, it doesn’t mean that I go out of my way to say something hurtful or to say something that I feel, you know, someone needs to hear. Sometimes you need to keep knowing to keep your mouth shut sometimes if you don’t have something nice to say, you don’t say anything at all, but you also have to realize that when someone’s asking you a question or they’re asking you for advice, you know, they’re asking because they need something real to get them to that answer. And sometimes it’s not what they want to hear, you know, honesty can hurt and there are ways to soften the blow, but at the end of the day, honesty can hurt and some people are prepared for that and they aren’t. But you can’t control that. And I think that practicing that radical honesty open also opens yourself to allowing people to practice that honesty with you.

Chad:               Yeah, definitely. So would you say so with that, but how, how do we build a mutually beneficial trust based relationship? Like what’s one thing you do that you’ve found is very helpful for establishing that trust so you can have those quality relationships in her network.

Allen:               Really important question. I have already gotten harped on honesty and transparency. I think that those are essential being open to people’s honesty with you being a developing and being earnest with your honesty with them. Another really, really, really, essentially important one that nobody likes to talk about because it hurts accountability. You mess up and you got to own it because if you’re not learning from those mistakes and those lessons so that you can move forward and grow and what you’ve done is you’ve wasted your time. You’ve wasted that pain, you’ve wasted those mistakes and you can’t. Waste is the enemy. You have to grab hold of everything you can. That’s valuable. I see every failure, every mistake, every time I could have done a little better. Every time I hurt someone, I see it as an opportunity. I see it as valuable. Um, and, and that may sound odd, like, oh, you hurt someone and it’s a good thing. Yes. Because next time it means I don’t have to do it again.

Chad:               That’s huge. Thank you for a linking accountability to being able to build, um, to be able to build trust based relationships because to build on that, I see it as like you’re accountable in that relationship and in that conversation, but your ability to be accountable in all of your mistakes and all of your actions outside of that conversation, outside of their relationships, all the things you do in your daily life that this person has no idea about where you are holding yourself accountable. It’s going to affect your communication and it’s going to affect the way that you are expressing yourself to this person and they are going to trust you much easier if you’re just an accountable person and somebody who just accountable and is not and is not pushing blame on people and other things. It just project a certain type of a, like you said, transparency.

Chad:               You project a certain type of openness and, and, and, and, and trust where it makes the other person feel a lot more safe. Getting to know you and being in that relationship with you and it doesn’t even matter if because sometimes you might think, oh well, they don’t know that I wasn’t accountable with all that other stuff because they don’t know about that other stuff, but it’s affecting your communication with this person whether you like it or not, and so the way that you behave outside of this conversation is totally affecting where this relationship is gonna go. So vitally important.

Allen:               I asked myself how

Allen:               the people around me feel. If they knew that I did that no one will ever know, but how would they feel? Fine. They knew how I did that. And then the next question is obvious to me is how do I feel about knowing that I did that? And oftentimes the question, the answer is very, very unpleasant. I think what you said about the things outside of not just outside of what you’re saying or doing that relationship, we will affect everything that you do within that relationship. I think they affect them and that’s because they affect who you are as a person. Um, a lot of people say what you, what you say or it’s what you do, not what you say. Words are cheap. Words are powerful. Two words are cheap and I’m someone who, you know, because I’m good with my words. I’ve always had the ability to be a manipulator if I wanted to sometimes have regretfully done so. And when I recognize that, I realized that the things I do have more power so that when people see what I do aligns with what I say, then that respect it, locked in right there. And almost nothing will ever shake it.

Chad:               Thank you. I think that’s a really powerful statement. It kind of closes conversation on that you, uh, especially circling back to the whole theme of communication that when you do what you say it is, the ad is just the foundation of trust. And you can say things all day long and be a great talker. But once people see that you are what you say and you do what you say, the trust is there, the respect is there and now you’ve got a great mutually beneficial relationship. And so guess what? Unfortunately, that means that you got to behave, you gotta, you gotta just you gotta be congruent 24 slash seven and you can’t just talk the talk and act like this kind of person when you’re, when you’re networking, getting to know people, you’ve got to be this type of person all the time and again, we’re not pushing like perfection expectations on you like we’re, we’re, we’re always trying to where I was going to fall short of our expectations and we’re trying our best, but if we’re rolling, as we’re trying to keep becoming a better version of ourself that’s going to show and that’s going to cause people to really open up to us and trust us

Allen:               and you do it one step at a time. You can’t do it all in one day. I mean, I screwed up my life over many years so I’m not going to expect that I’m going to fix it. You know, it’s gonna take work. It’s going to take time. It’s follow through. There are two sides to that. It’s followed through and its execution and follow through is. Those are the things that people struggle with. You know, you say you’re going to do something. I struggled with a right now I’m procrastinating on stuff that I told someone I was going to get you a proposal. Yeah, yeah, Yup. And now I’m like two weeks gone and I’ve been running behind on other things. Now I feel bad about it so I’m procrastinating on it more because I want to avoid the feeling and like I gotta own that within me and be like, shoot.

Allen:               All right. All right. It’s time. It’s time to just start and make a little progress so I can see that I’m actually feeling better. And by the time I started, I mean I’m rushing, I’m feeling good all the way to the end, you know? So that’s followed through. And then the net and like if you, if you connect with someone and you really want, there’s someone you want to talk to, you don’t reach out to them. And Adam Connor says this name drop again. Adam Connor says this, if you don’t reach out in the next 24 to 72 hours, they’ve already sort of mentally checked you off.

Chad:               Yep. That is what then gives her words actual power and uh, just to kind of, you have referenced Adam Condoms a few times. Adam Connors, I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago for this show, so make sure to check out his episode because episode, his episode will be live by the time the Allens goes live. He has a lot of great things to say on networking and I’m glad that you brought up. I’m glad that you kind of gave us that last tip of just following up with people and following through, following up, following through you execute in that way and you’re going to build a strong network that will lead you to your goals. Allen, where can we see, how can we connect with you? How can we learn more from you so that we can continue that relationship?

Allen:               Well, I appreciate that. Um, you know, shameless self promotion right now. I did just launch a new website. There’s one page, it’s about everything else is updated articles, videos, photos. So that’s a good place to start. Dot Consulting, forward slash updates. Um, I’ve got a bowl theories that I’ve been doing out there. I’ve got a story series about people’s deeper stories and how that contributed to their success. I’ve got a series about mantras was the first one I did most of the time. You don’t go to a business space in there. Right? And that was something talking about people who I knew were successful by my definition and their definition of asking them what their daily or weekly monitored or that keeps them going and it helps them stay focused, going get them going and growing a linkedin is my biggest number one. That’s where I’m on most of the time. That’s where people reach out to me and I’m developing those relationships all the time. You need a word of advice, you just want to chat, send me a message. I’m here, you know, day or night. I’ll get back to you soon as I. let me put it this way.

Allen:               Helping people succeed in their business and their and their personal and professional lives. Helping them get going and growing is what gets me up in the morning until puts me to bed with a smile on their face and if there are ways that I could do that better and I want that feedback. Another thing I like to say is your feedback is my lifeline. Feedback is everything in this game. If you’re just continue putting stuff out there and you never listen to what people have to say. If you’re not even aging report, they have to say, I’d go and make a point with every post I go out there, someone comments. I make a point of taking the extra minute or two to make to post a thoughtful comment back on every single thing that they say on my content because that keeps. It shows that I care and it gives me a chance to really develop that feedback and implemented and what I’m doing with teachers. Be Better at doing what I want to do, which is helping people and hopefully making some money while I’m at it.

Chad:               Those are. That’s a variety of ways that we can connect with you, Alan, and I’m glad that you kind of closed up by sharing with us a little tip about just online networking, uh, that we, if you’re on Linkedin, take advantage of that. I mean, I’m, I’m new to Linkedin only in this last year and I’m realizing how beneficial it is that what you said, follow up on those comments, respond, show people that you really care, get out there and just serve people and seek for opportunities to help and it does circle back around and help you advance in your own career as well as you’re just going out there to help others. And Alan, you’ve shared so much wisdom with us today and thank you so much for giving us what you know and I’m glad that you’re able to be on our show today.

Allen:               Thank you so much for having me on

Chad:               building upon something that Alan said. He, he talked about the importance of just being authentic. When we network, when we communicate with people and uh, thought I had was, well, how do we be authentic? How do we be authentic? And it in my own personal journey, I’ve always been so concerned with being authentic that I wasn’t being offending it all because I was thinking too much about myself. I was overthinking it. And so one closing thing I want to give you, that you can take away from this is that to be authentic, all you have to worry about is just being interested in the person you’re talking to. Don’t think so much about yourself and whether you’re being authentic or not because it’s, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly. It’s hard to put a, a dot on what, who we are, you know, it’s hard to describe to somebody and ever even know fully who we are.

Chad:               Um, it’s hard to put that in words and even a picture. And so if you want to just be authentic and be who you really are, just be really interested in the person you’re talking to. Be really interested in them and just listen. And that will naturally cause you to be more authentic. Again, if you haven’t already, make sure to go subscribe to youtube or itunes so you can follow this show. I also have other videos that are released every week, actionable tips on how you can communicate your way to your goals and advance in your career. Have a great day and I’ll see you next week.