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How Many of You Have Been Susceptible To The Negative Influences of Other People
Hey guys, Ken Courtright here from Today’s Growth Growing Business Today. I am completely adjusting the next 4 part series in this podcast. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking coming off our digital footprint in Philadelphia. We had some incredible speakers and I had a 3 part episode lined up on selling . How to sell how to ask for the order, how to overcome objections, things like that. And I just can’t help that I have to adjust and adapt because I’ve got to do something different. So I’m gonna do a 4 part series. It’s gonna be partially motivational partially structural and partially instructional. But I’m gonna do it in 2 parts. Its a 4 part series. The first part is gonna be why a purpose a dream and a why has to be in place. That is the first one of the four. The fourth one is gonna be identical. The purpose the dream the why. I’m gonna sandwich them with 2 short podcasts on struggles. Why do struggles have to be a key ingredient to a successful business. I’m not gonna just beat around the bush or touch on the edge of this. I’ve got some of the greatest stories that were told from our digital footprint stage that I cannot wait to relate some of the aftereffects of people that took these stories and put them into play with 24 to 48 hours and had dramatic results in their business.
I wanna kind of jump right in so this is the first of the four part series and the reason I’ve even adjusted the podcast series to put this in is because of my wife, Kerry. Kerry Courtright is an incredible person. I mean not only is she a go getter blue vaser, absolute stud you know an elected official, ex-Bulls cheerleader. Her list of accomplishments is a mile long. She is a very powerful speaker nobody ever knows what Kerry is going to talk about when she jumps on her digital footprint stage. But everybody knows you don’t want to leave the room. And so Kerry did about a 25 minute talk and she starts going and I didn’t really see where she was going with this. But I’m just gonna describe it and I think everybody on this podcast is gonna receive this message in a very very deep way. So, here is how it goes.
It starts where Kerry has a couple big men carry up a very large easel up the stairs. She sets the easel in the back corner of the stage and they start loading with like foam board. And then another person comes up the other steps and hands Kerry 12 brand new darts with the steel tips. She sets those aside and walks up to the easel and she turns it 45 degrees to face the audience and she puts an overlay of like white construction paper on the foam board and she tapes it at the top and she turns to the audience and says this is audience participation. I need people in this audience to shout out “what are some of the dreams that you have in your life that you have given up on? And everyone in the room has given up on some dreams so let’s not be bashful”. All of sudden, it took a couple seconds and somebody goes: I wanted to buy my mom a house when I retired and when she retired. I am still working and have never been able to do it. Kerry wrote: Get Mom a Home. She drew a big circle first. First, she drew a big circle, then inside of it she wrote: get mom a home. And then somebody shouted out “Buy a newer safer, car. So she wrote: Safe Car. Then somebody shouted out send my kids to better colleges. She wrote: Better schools. And then somebody said some type of a vehicle and then Kerry made the joke and wrote Volkswagen Jetta. And then somebody said Go on a cruise with my family. So she wrote: Cruise. And when it was all done, a few minutes go by, she had about 20 dreams that never materialized. Didn’t happen for whatever reason. She didn’t ask anybody why they didn’t happen. Then she said: Can somebody hand me those darts? So Kerry grabs these brand new darts, rips them out of the package and she starts whipping the darts at the board and most of the darts stuck. Some of the darts didn’t. The point being, Kerry just annihilated that board with these darts. Then she basically pulled them out one by one and she was very silent with this program. She took the white construction paper off of the foam board in the back and she held it up. There was a light behind her. When the light shined behind Kerry to the audience, you could clearly see the holes in the white piece of paper at the right angle. Does anybody see what’s in this paper? People started slowly to get it and say, yeah, a bunch of holes. And she said let me explained what happens here. People go through life especially when they are younger. They have dreams. They have wishes, desires, aspirations. We really do, especially as a younger person. She goes on to explain the psychology of when you are younger you dream. And as we get older, we get SNIOPed. Susceptible to the negative influences of other people. We might have a dream, we might say we want to go on a cruise with our family. A coworker throws a dart at us and says get real. Those cruises, by the time you’re done, by the time you pay for the alcohol and all the extra stuff, yeah, it might only cost you $600 to go but by the time you leave there its gonna be $4000. They steal your dream and throw a dart at it. Poke a hole it and all of a sudden you justify 5, 10, 30, 40 years later, why you never took a cruise with your family. And she went on and on and on and talked about the psychological reasons of why we get susceptible to the negative influences of other people. But then what she does is she does something just awesome.
She takes that white piece of paper, really big piece of construction paper and she reaches down on the ground her and somebody hands her my 8 year old son’s Captain America shield. She puts the shield on her left forearm. Then she wraps the dreams with the dreams still facing the audience on the outside. She wraps it around the shield. So now it looks like those dreams are being protected. She takes a 12 ” x 18″ photograph of her family. We had a professional photograph taken many years ago. She holds it up to the audience and says, Anybody know what this is? This is my family. This is my dream. This is why Ken and I do what we do….blah blah blah. And so she puts the photograph on the inside of the shield facing her. And then she puts it back on her forearm and then she says you know how Ken and I go through life? We go through life like this. We put our dreams on the outside and we don’t care who throws darts at us because we have a shield. The shield is simply a layer of protection that says we are immuned. Nobody is going to steal our dream. If we say we are going to do something, we are going to do it. We do not care what other people think. What keeps us focused, what keeps us focused with a laser is that we are constantly talking about looking at and focusing on our family.
Get Your Dreams Back
Then she shows the audience the back of the shield and says: Ken and I are always focused on why do we do this? We do we live on jet airplanes? Why are we always traveling? Why do we leave our kids a lot. Why do we do this? Because we are doing it for them. Now our kids are at the age that they travel with us. All of the kids were in the room at that conference. They work with us. They go with us. They are partially home schooled. We basically delayed gratification long enough and strong enough and told our kids why we are doing this. Then eventually they understood. Now they are coming with us. They are literally living our dream with us. By the time Kerry was done, she says everybody you go home, you get home on a Monday, and you find it. Number 1: a piece of paper. You get your dreams back out. You draw your own circle. You write everything you said you wanted to do. You write it back down on a piece of paper. Then you find your own shield. I don’t care what it is. It can piece of tin foil. It doesn’t matter it is a figure of speech. You put it on your forearm and then you get your biggest why your biggest reason of why you exist and why you want those dreams. You put that on the inside facing you so now you have got dreams. A protective shield. The biggest burden you have of why you stay up late, get up early, go to things that are uncomfortable. You delay gratification until you have it. I’m telling you when she was done, every single person in that room was standing up, applauding at the top of their lungs, yelling and screaming and half the room was crying. I was one of them.
So this podcast is dedicated to the concept of being SNIOPed. My wife finished her talk by guilting people into getting their dreams out. She started literally yelling at the audience, to the men and women. We’ve become soft. We have lost our dreams. We lost our Why.
We’ve Gotten Lazy
Honestly, as a country, I’m totally with Kerry on this. We have gotten lazy. When they say that World War 2 generation was the greatest generation of all time….I believe it. That generation worked their brains out. I never saw my grandfather. I never saw my father. They were working all of the time. I am not saying that its right. They had a work habit that this generation cannot comprehend. My wife pointed that out. This podcast is dedicated to the finish of my wife’s talk. I would like everybody on this podcast. If you are driving in the car, just pause it and do this exercise when you get home. I triple dog dare you. I beg you to get out of piece of paper. Dream big! It’s a white canvas. This is your life. We go around one time. You get out a piece of paper. I don’t care if it is an excel spreadsheet. I don’t care if it is a piece of written paper. You write down: If time and money were no object, I really want to accomplish do become and see whatever this….this…this….and this… And honest to God, please understand. You have got to
write it down. If its not written down it can’t be real. Write it down the mind does funny things. Put it down….state it out loud….I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna have this. I’m gonna do this by then. And just put it down and protect it. Don’t show it to anybody the first few days. Then slowly start telling people what you are going to accomplish and what you are going to do. Build the thick skin because you are going to build up your armor and have something that is staring you back. When I look around my office right now, everywhere I turn, I could literally count dozens and dozens of pictures of my wife and kids staring back at me. All of desk screensavers, I am staring at. All are hundreds of pictures that rotate of my kids and my family My mom and dad….it just doesn’t stop. So Kerry and I….our burn, our why, our protection is staying laser focused on our big why which is our kids. And quite frankly our parents even so. WE are leaving Saturday to take our parents to Italy. We are doing the right thing.
This podcast is dedicated to those that are currently being SNIOPPED, susceptible to the negative influences of other people. Do what my wife said from stage. If your sister is negative move her to the outside. If your best friend is negative, move them to the outside. Give your dreams 3 years. Hit them as hard as you can. You make a living 9 to 5. You make a life to 5 to 9. Do what others are unwilling to do. Do the work , pay the price and win. I am Ken Courtright from Today’s Growth Growing Businesses Today. You need motivation. You can’t live without it. Jump on the bandwagon and get dream circle. Lets rock! See ya.
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