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I believe that every human being is created in the image of God, and the image of God is excellence.
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There's nothing in God that is anything less than perfection, and every single one of us is given gifts and talents in which we can exhibit excellence.
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And I believe that whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we write, whatever we think, should be set up against the standard of excellence.
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Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back.
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This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast and I'm your host, john Gallagher, today.
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I've definitely got an uncommon leader for us today.
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I'm going to read down just a little bit of some of the, if you will, statistics for this individual that are going to tee it up for the great conversation we're going to have today.
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Chris Widener is one of the top 50 speakers in the world.
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He's in the Motivational Speaker Hall of Fame.
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He's been named by Success Magazine as one of the top 10 sales speakers and I know he probably gets tired already.
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He's like John, we don't need to talk about this but Inc Magazine is one of the top 100 leadership speakers in the world.
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He's recognized for that and he's written 25 books, which is really what we're here to talk about today in terms of learning about him.
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Not all 25.
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We'll never get through all of those, but I'm even interested in some of his favorite stories about those he's mentored and been mentored by, and that's John Maxwell, zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn.
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So, looking forward to the conversation today, chris Weiner, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast.
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Thanks for having me.
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And you know I got to tell you I must've sent you an old bio because three days ago I was named the 17th best sales speaker in the world by Global Gurus, which is a big worldwide sort of speaker monitoring kind of thing.
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It was a total shock.
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I just I got an email said hey, we just named you that I'm like I'll take it Excellent.
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Well, that's you're talking about 2,500 times.
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You've spoken all over the world, so that's probably been a few more since you wrote that as well.
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So I can understand how, if you can do it that many times, you're going to get really good at it.
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One of the coaches that I have says if you want to get great, he says you do the first thousand of them, you're really bad, and then you get really good after that.
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So I think I got about 992 left to go in terms of speeches, but we'll see how that goes.
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So, hey, I'll start you off with the first question.
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I always start my first time guests and it's really great to have you on the show.
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But tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today, as a person or as a leader.
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So I had the great fortune at the age of 11 to become a ball boy for the Seattle Supersonics and I spent seven years working in the NBA.
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The first two years I was in the Sonics locker room.
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The second, third or the third, fourth and fifth I was in the visiting team locker room, and then the last two years of high school I was in the Sonics locker room again, and my very first year here I am 11 years old.
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My very first year I fell off a roof and I broke both of my arms and so I literally had casts on my arms like this.
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And I went to work at a game and I walked in and Frank Furtado was our trainer.
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He was the former wrestling coach from Seattle Pacific and I was terrified of Frank.
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He was my boss and I'm 11 years old and he was taping the ankles of Dennis Johnson, dj.
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Most people don't know DJ For the Sonics.
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They know him as on those great Celtics teams.
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In fact, larry Bird called Dennis Johnson the greatest teammate I ever played with, and DJ was not famous.
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Yet.
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This was the first year we ended up losing the World Championship that year to the Washington Bullets at the time in seven games.
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The second year we won the World Championship against the same Bullets in five games.
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So at the age of 13, I had the highlight of my career.
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I was in a ticker tape parade with 500,000 people as part of an NBA championship team.
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I'd be like, where do you go from here?
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Right, how do you ever top this 11 years old?
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Yeah, I'm done, I've lived it.
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But the story that profoundly impacted me was I came walking into the thing arms in casts and they both kind of laughed at me at first, like what happened to you?
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We ended up and I said can I keep my job?
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And Frank said you can keep your job if you can do your job.
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And I said, okay.
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Well, one of my jobs was to make the five-gallon jugs of Gatorade and water one Gatorade, one water and to haul them 500 yards to the court.
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So I'm like, oh boy, how am I going to do this?
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And we didn't have carts at the time.
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So I go into the room where we filled them and you know I had.
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We had these paint sticks.
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You know clean paint sticks that I stir them with.
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So here I am, stirring a wedget into my hands, I'm stirring it up, and while I'm stirring it up.
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Dj, now done with getting his ankles wrapped, he comes into the room and he says hey, tell you what, wait for me and I'll walk out to the court with you.
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And I said okay.
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So I drag these things, one at a time with both hands, drag them like this, and I'm 11.
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I'm like maybe not even five feet tall at this point.
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I go out the main door into the hallway and I sit down on top of one of them and I wait for DJ.
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He said you want to walk out to the court with me?
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Okay, dj comes walking out with a basketball to do the shoot around.
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This is before many of the fans have gotten there.
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They go shoot around, then they come back and then they do their team layup things.
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You know, you know that way.
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So anyway, I'm sitting there, he walks out, he hands me the basketball and I go like this and he scoops up both of those containers because he heard Frank say I could only keep my job if I could do my job and one of my jobs was getting those things.
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He knew there was no way I was getting those things out to the court.
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So we walk about 200 yards down this tunnel and then the way it worked was you came out of the tunnel and the bottom concourse was there and they had red ropes and so you had all these fans against these red ropes and you walked maybe 50 yards and then you disappeared underneath the bleachers and you popped out into the arena.
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For six weeks Dennis Johnson, hall of Famer, all defensive team, carried the water for an 11-year-old kid through the fans, so they saw him doing this.
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A lot of players would be like never would I humble myself this way Six weeks.
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He did that so I could keep my job and I was a lifelong fan even after I was out and he was still the Celtics.
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He'd leave me tickets for the games when he'd come back to Seattle and all that kind of thing.
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But here's the funny story that ties it into leadership, servant leadership.
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So the funny thing is is after the game, one of my jobs was to give beer to the players to drink afterwards and we had this.
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Excuse me, we had this big refrigerator like you'd had this, you know, big refrigerator like you'd find in a grocery store, one of the machines that just kind of stands there, not a vending machine, but you know, you open it up.
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Well, most of the beer was Budweiser or Rainier, which was a big Seattle beer.
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Okay, sure, then we had a six pack of saint paulie's girl beer and a six pack of heineken.
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And you can imagine when you're comparing saint paulie's and heineken to rainier or budweiser all the players wanted heineken or the saint paulie job to distribute the beer.
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Guess who never drank budweiser or or rainier beer?
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I'm gonna guess dj, dj never drank.
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Budweiser or Rainier beer, I'm going to guess DJ, dj never drank the bad beer and I'll tell you.
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It's a great leadership lesson when you humble yourself and you serve your followers, they become fiercely loyal.
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In fact, one of my points in the speech on my book the Art of Influence is about how you gain loyalty through servanthood.
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And if you want your employees, your clients, your customers, you want them to be loyal to you, make sure they understand that you are serving them sacrificially.
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And it all came from his willingness to help me keep my job and I was devoted to him until the time he passed away.
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He passed away a heart attack when he was coaching in the developmental league for the NBA, but it had profound impact on me.
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He didn't care that he was rich and famous.
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He didn't care that he was black and I was white.
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He didn't care about, he was helping a little kid keep his job.
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Chris, I love that story, first of all because I connect.
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I'm a DJ, I'm a Celtics fan, larry Bird fan Love to hear that.
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In terms of how Bird talked about him, I do remember him with the Supersonics and playing.
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I think he played with Sigma, right yeah in fact, I have an NBA championship ring and one of the reasons I have it, or one of the things I like it, is because, number one, it's just a beautiful time in my life.
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Number two, it's a great conversation speech, a conversation starter in my life.
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Number two, it's a great conversation speech, a conversation starter.
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But number three is even a lot of diehard fans can't name a single starter from that NBA team and I always say it's the most unsung team that ever won an NBA championship.
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If I say name some players from the Lakers Magic, Kareem, James Worthy name from theics you know larry bird name some from the 76ers, dr j.
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you know anybody can name most of these teams, but even a lot of nba players can't name or nba fans can't name the starting five.
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So the starting five was gus williams, who passed away a few weeks ago, dj.
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Our small, small forward was John Johnson, jj, and then our power forward is Lonnie Shelton, who also passed away, and then Jack Sigma was our starting center.
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And then we had a guy on the bench, fred Brown.
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Most people name actually most people say downtown Freddie Brown and he was our sixth man.
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So I like the ring for that because it represents what you can do even if you're unsung, even if nobody knows you, you can still win championships.
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Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you.
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Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations.
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If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me.
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It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team.
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Okay, let's get back to the show.
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Amen.
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So sports and leadership tie really close together.
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But the leadership story of servant leadership is really powerful as well.
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You think about that as a leader of an organization and often people will say, well, that's not fair, that he does something like that gives the good beer to DJ and not to the others.
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But what you're really looking for as a leader, when someone will serve you, it's like saying, hey, if you will basically show me that you're capable of going that extra step, then I will treat you differently, absolutely.
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I didn't give him all the good beer, because he wouldn't have been able to drive home if I gave him all the good beer.
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That's right, there was a six-pack of St Paul he's a six-pack of Heineken.
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That was it, but he got first choice.
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There's no doubt about it.
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I got first choice every time.
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Hey, the art of influence.
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Let's stay there.
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Write on that book too.
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So you talked about in this book.
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Okay, one of 25, I couldn't get ready for all of your books, but you write your books.
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Let's start with how you write them, and most of them in the form of fables.
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Tell me how you got kind of started in writing that in fables and I don't know if it goes back to your time as a pastor as well or not and Jesus spoke in parables.
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And now you're speaking.
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What was there?
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I wish it was something altruistic like that.
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I had written a bunch of books.
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I was starting my career, got involved with John Maxwell.
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I ghost wrote for John, I wrote his nationally syndicated column and then I decided I didn't want to ghost write anymore and I wanted.
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I set out, I want to write a best selling book.
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And I was looking at it very formulaic, very practical.
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So at the time when I wrote my book called the Angel Inside, which is my best selling book of all time, number two on the Wall Street Journal, number seven on the New York Times, number three on Amazon overall, not in a category.
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Overall, in fact, the only two books that beat that on Amazon were the pre-release of Harry Potter and the lost book of JRR Tolkien that his grandson found in his attic after his grandpa died, that his grandson found in his attic after his grandpa died.
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And so I'm like, if I'm going to be number three okay, the best-selling fictions of all time and one of the greatest Christian writers of all time I'll take number three.
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It makes me feel like I'm number one.
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So I was looking like what could I write?
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That's very creative.
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Well, another book that was a best seller at the time was the Da Vinci Code and everybody was into Da Vinci.
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There was a self-help book called how to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and I thought I don't want to write another one on da Vinci.
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But Michelangelo lived there and so I started looking at Florence Italy in the early 1500s Now Florence, italy was only 50,000 people and so I started looking in there where there was four major people that lived there.
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One of them was sort of part time, raphael, kind of lived there part time.
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So the three that were Florence residents lived there, born there, raised there, died.
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There were Leonardo da Vinci, michelangelo, and those two did not like each other at all.
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And then the third one was Machiavelli, and I'm like I immediately got rid of Machiavelli and I'm not writing a book on self-help from Machiavelli's perspective.
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So that left me with Michelangelo and I didn't know a lot about him.
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So I ended up looking through his history and I thought I could write a self-help book based on his life, the principles of Michelangelo, and so I had two people who said random things to me that completely changed the book I was going to write.
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One was I don't know if you remember the old motivational speaker he's contemporary of Ziggs and Jim's.
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He wasn't ever as famous as them, but his name was Charlie Tremendous Jones.
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Charlie was amazing.
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The biggest personality I've ever met in my life was Charlie Tremendous Jones and in fact the first time I ever met him I walked up to him and said Mr Jones, we have a mutual friend in Kyle.
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And he goes and he's six foot five.
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He weighed like 300 pounds.
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He leans over to me, he goes.
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You know, kyle's a brother of mine.
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Are you a brother of mine?
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He was asking me if I was a Christian and I said I am a brother of yours, at which point I've known him less than 15 seconds.
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At this point he puts his hands under my armpits, lifts me six inches off of the ground and plants a big kiss on my cheek.
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That's Charlie Tremendous Jones.
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You've never met a guy like Charlie.
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He was something else.
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Charlie says to me Chris, make it short.
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Nobody reads thick books anymore.
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Make it short.
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So I thought, okay, interesting.
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Then another friend of mine, mark Sanborn, who's Hall of Fame speaker, wrote a book called the Fred Factor, 5 million copies in print.
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President of the National Speaker Association, mark says to me you know what you should do, chris.
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You should write it like a parable.
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And I went huh, okay, I will.
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So again, I'm just looking at a formula to write a bestselling book because I was tired of ghostwriting for other people, I was tired of writing medium selling books, whatever.
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So I went into a Barnes Noble in Bellevue, washington, where I was living in Seattle at the time.
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I walk in there, I walk to the business section.
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I find a 10-blanchard book, one Minute Manager.
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I open it up.
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I counted how many words were on one page.
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I went to how many pages there were.
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Multiplied it 20,000.
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So all of my books are well, almost all of my books the fiction ones are all between 20 and 25,000 words.
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I released this book became a big international bestseller 14 languages, the whole thing.
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And so Art of Influence was just another one of those books I ended up.
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We self-published it sold 120,000 copies.
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Then I sold it to Random House on a two book deal and the second book became the Art of Influence.
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So it's a fictional story about a young man, first guy to ever go to college in his family, certainly the first guy to ever get his MBA.
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And the book opens with him at a backyard barbecue back in Kansas where they were throwing him a party and his grandmother, who he barely knew from South Dakota, comes down to the party and she hands him an envelope for his gift.
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Now in the book, a lot of things, a lot of fun things about writing fictional books is you can incorporate stories from your life and just change them.
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In fact, I'll tell you a couple of little Easter eggs in the book that are kind of fun.
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Um so um.
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She hands him an envelope and the the idea is is I don't know when you were growing up, what your grandmother gave you every year for for your birthday was usually an envelope with a $5 bill in it.
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I got you Absolutely.
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Those of you who are younger and you're used to getting playstations and stuff like that.
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You know, john and I we got $5 in our in an envelope.
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You know that's what we got it was.
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It was standard.
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I don't even think I lived long enough to get my grandmother to give me 10 bucks for my birthday.
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It was always a $5 bill it had a little window too.
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You could see Lincoln in the window Right.
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But then the other funny thing is for the young people is you know, that was great for us because you could get a Snickers bar for 15 cents Maybe 10 cents actually, but you could go buy 30 candy bars for 15 cents, so anyway.
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So I ended up writing the and so.
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But inside the envelope she says you get to spend a week with Bobby Gold.
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Well, Bobby Gold's a fictional character, but he's like the 10th or 15th richest guy in America and he thinks his grandmother's gone crazy.
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He's like how, what are you talking about?
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Like, how do I get to spend a week with Bobby Gold?
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And she goes oh, I probably never told you, but I was his nanny when he was a little boy.
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And so he gets to spend a week.
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And so the story of the art of influence is is Bobby Gold teaching Marcus the lessons of the art of influence?
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And he basically says look.
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When they first meet, he says look, I know you graduated from Keller Kellogg school of business.
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I know you know Kellogg School of Business.
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I know you know the science of business.
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I'm going to teach you the art of business.
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And the art of business is the art of influence.
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So that's the premise of the book and four lessons, lessons on integrity, optimism, service and excellence.
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But before we dive into it, I'll tell you a couple of the little Easter eggs.
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The jet in that book is Jeff Bezoszos jet, his first jet not anymore, he sold that it was a Falcon 900 EX extended range and one of the guys that went to my church was Jeff's personal pilot.
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So I was going to write this thing and so he was always down at Boeing field.
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So I called him up and I said I need to write about a jet.
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Can I come down and look at Jeff's jet?
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And he goes yeah, sure, come on down, I'm just hanging out.
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So the jet in that is is actually Jeff Bezos.
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That's awesome.
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The second little Easter egg is there is that Bobby Gold owns a baseball team and one of the things he does in the service chapter you know, serving others is they're at a baseball game.
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He owns a fictional Chicago baseball team and about two or three innings into it he says come on, let's go.
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And they start walking around the stadium and he starts talking like he knows every usher's name, he knows every vendor's name and he walks up to him Bob, how are you doing?
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Bob has seven kids and 14 grandkids and blah, blah, blah.
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Well, that's based on a friend of mine who was also a member of my church when I was a pastor, who was.
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The first thing was 17 years as a CFO of the Mariners and the last seven years president.
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Ceo of the Mariners and I would go to a lot of Mariners games.
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We always sat in the owner's box and then when he became president he had his own box so we'd sit there, but every time by about the third inning he, my friend Kevin, would say get up, let's go.
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And we walked to that stadium and we would go to the third deck in the outfield and he knew the ushers.
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Wow, all those people loved him because he cared more about them than he cared about the fact that he was the president and could be sitting in his own little box.
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So, um, great leadership.
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Those are a couple of little Easter eggs in the in.
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Those are Easter eggs, those are really cool.
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And as I read through those golden rules, as you said, integrity, attitude, um, the, the importance of others' interests, uh, which is in that story, right there.
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And then, don't settle for anything less than excellence, and that one, you know, for me, uh, you know, I I believe the first book that I write is going to be titled Excellence Only Happens on Purpose.
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You have to be very intentional to build that space and there was a quote in there.