Episode 111 - Dr. Danny Brassell - Leaders On Leadership
The most important leaders are usually the people down in the trenches. On today’s podcast, Dr. Tracey Jones sits down with educator, speaker, and author Dr. Danny Brassell to talk about our century's greatest leaders. Having served as an educational advisor to students ranging from preschoolers to rocket scientists, Dr. Brassell says some of his best mentors have taught and influenced him through the wisdom of their books – these range from the Bible to Think and Grow Rich and The Success Principles. This is a great conversation about leadership. You don't want to miss this episode as Dr. Brassell dishes out on what it takes to pay the price of leadership.
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Dr. Danny Brassell - Leaders On Leadership
Our guest is Dr. Danny Brassell. Danny is a sought-after speaker, an author, a former school teacher, and he runs one of the world's leading reading engagement programs. You're going to love learning what Danny has to say about what it takes to pay the price of leadership.
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I am tremendously excited to have my guest, Dr. Danny Brassell. Danny is a highly sought-after speaker, trainer, and coach known as Jim Carrey with a PhD. Dr. Danny Brassell has spoken to over 3,000 audiences worldwide and authored sixteen books, including Leadership Begins with Motivation. He is the Cofounder of www.TheReadingHabit.com. This is the world's top reading engagement program. In case you haven't figured out why Danny is on the show, this is why. Danny, thanks for being here.
Thanks for all that you do, Tracey. I love your positive energy. I wish I had met your father, but it doesn't matter because I've met you. You have that same energy.
Thank you. For our readers, Danny reached out to me on our website. He had seen the Throwback Thursday. It was a five-part series and he wanted 1, 2, 3, 4. I sent him the whole thing. Here we are. It goes to show, leaders, they find each other because they're always looking at tremendous things, reading tremendous books, listening to tremendous podcasts, and then meeting tremendous people. Danny, it’s a pleasure to be here.
It's great, Tracey. There's this great book, a lot of people think it's good. I think it's great. It says, “Ask and you shall receive.” Making contact with you. You've gone above and beyond. It's wonderful and modeling what a leader should do. I was having this conversation with some students and they were asking me about this individual. I didn't care for the individual. To put it nicely, I said, “The way I judge a leader is not by the way they treat other leaders, but by how they treat the janitor.” This person has his head in the clouds and likes to only associate with the people that he considers important. I've always found that the most important leaders are usually the people down in the trenches.
Danny's passion, he's going to talk more about this. I can't keep quiet about this. Danny teaches people a love of reading. I wish you could have met my dad because you would have been his third son, I have no doubt, along with many others. Danny is good friends with Ruben Gonzalez. Ruben has been on our program. It's a great world of tremendous people. Danny, my dad wrote a speech called The Price of Leadership. It was one of the top speeches that he gave.
In it, he goes into the pragmatic side of leadership. Leadership is a joyful and triumphant thing, but you're also going to get your nose and your knuckles blooded because it's brutal but worth it. He outlines four of the prices that you're going to have to pay to truly be considered a leader. The first one he says is loneliness. We've all heard that saying, “It's lonely at the top.” Can you unpack for me what loneliness has meant to you throughout your career and what you're doing? Any words of advice you'd have for our leaders that are reading, that may be in a season of loneliness?
I was feeling down and I watched your father's speech to cheer me up and I was like, “I met my alter ego.” We both had the same type of energy. He felt everybody in that audience. I'm like, “I've never touched that many people in my life.” I love his energy. I love what he was talking about with loneliness. The way I teach leadership is everybody is a leader. At a minimum, you have to lead yourself. It gets lonely, especially for those of us that have lots of people that we're responsible for.
I know you're a part of masterminds. I'm a big advocate for masterminds. For those in your audience that might not know what a mastermind is, I have a feeling they all do, but the concept of the mastermind was first introduced by Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich. It's taken off people like Tony Robbins and John Maxwell. These are all people that lead masterminds. I've always enjoyed being a part of a mastermind where I’m in with people that are completely different from me.
The first mastermind I was in, I was blessed. I was in this mastermind where I've been a teacher and professor most of my life. All of a sudden, I started noticing that the people in my group, there were a lot of successful business people that were interested in what I had to say. I said, “I've been a teacher and a professor. Why do you consult with me?” They said, “Danny, you always give ten ideas and nine of them are completely crazy, but the other one is worth millions of dollars. The thing is, you think in a different way.” I loved it when they said that. I've always loved surrounding myself with people that think differently.
I'm going to charm you. This is something your dad does. I love it when he refers people to books. What I'm constantly doing is recommending books to people. Anybody in your audience who has not read Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin has to go out and rush and get it because this is a true story of President Lincoln. When he became president, he took all of his political rivals and he made them his cabinet. I'm not overstating the fact. This would be the equivalent of Donald Trump naming Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State. This is exactly what Lincoln did. All of these guys hated Lincoln's guts at the beginning.
By the time he was assassinated, they were all inconsolable. They said, “We've lost a tremendous leader.” People like Edwin Stanton, his Secretary of War, was devastated when he passed away. Lincoln had one of my favorite leadership quotes of all time, he said, “I know the best way to defeat my enemies. I shall make them my friends.” If you're feeling lonely, you're never lonely if you're in a library surrounded by books. A lot of my best mentors I've never met in my life, I never will meet in my life, but they have lots of wisdom. Reading your dad's book for the first time, I felt like a baptist in the front row, “Amen.” He made many great points. Somebody asked me, “If I could only have one book.” I said, “Besides the Bible.” The Bible is always good.
That’s a given.
Even for people that aren't religious in the audience, you still have to read the Bible. It's amazing. It’s like the Founding Fathers of the Constitution. I’m like, “How did they think of all these things?” Anytime I find something, everything is covered in the Bible. It's a great leadership guide. A book that had a real impact on me was The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Jack is probably the most famous. He's the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which is an amazing story in and of itself. He was rejected by 144 publishers. Number 145 was smart because the series is sold over 500 million books worldwide.
After I read The Success Principles, my coach at the time, I was at Denver International Airport and on the phone with him, and I said, “I read The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. He's put a $25,000 coaching program in a $20 book if people pay attention to it.” His stories are terrific. I would have paid $20 for his bibliography.” I told my coach, I'm like, “This book has had such an impact on me. I'm going to make sure I'm going to meet Jack Canfield in person.” My coach is like, “He's speaking at my event in April.” I was scheduled to speak in New York in April at the time. I called up that conference and I said, “Could you please move me to May?” They did. I rescheduled a speaking engagement so I could meet Jack Canfield. He meets millions of people. I've met him a couple of times. I guarantee you, he doesn't know who I am. It didn't matter though because when I was with him, he made me feel special. That's all it takes.
The Price of Leadership
I'm a huge USC football fan and I always tell people the story. I was at Heritage Hall in LA, on the campus of USC. The football coach, Pete Carroll, walked by and I'm like, “Hey, coach.” He looked at me and he didn't say hi and walked his way. That was one of the best lessons I've ever learned, Tracey. To him, I meant nothing. That one encounter taught me every encounter matters because he didn't know I was going to tell that story to over 100,000 executives around the world. It was funny. I was speaking at an event once and this woman came up to me afterward, she's like, “Let me introduce you. He's a nice guy. He's my brother.” It taught me every encounter matters.
Every encounter we have, Tracey, we have a decision. We can be the light or the darkness. We can be Obi-Wan Kenobi or Darth Vader. It takes as much energy to say something nice as it does to say something rude. That's something I'm reminding all of our leaders. I'm like, “This is the problem I see. We need to learn how to be able to disagree with one another without being disagreeable with one another.” Name-calling is not acceptable. In the Bible I read, I don't hear Jesus putting silly nicknames on people.
You and I should write this book, Tracey. I've had this idea for years. I want to write a book called Focus On The Red. In my Bible, every time Jesus talks, it's in red. I've never heard Jesus say, “Blessed are those except for this.” He's always with the people nobody else thinks that they should associate with. He spends little time in the church if you ever notice. He's out there doing things. He's always about love, kindness, and acceptance. There's another mentor. I never met him, but I can learn from his words, which, fortunately, were captured. I apologize, Tracey, this is probably going to be a pattern and a long answer to a short question.
No. I love that. Back in the beginning, you talked about one good idea out of ten. I love that because as leaders, we are going to see things that other people don't see. We have to see the future before anybody else. People are going to be like, “What?” You're going to be lonely as a leader. You're going to see it before everybody else. There's going to be that type of cognitive loneliness. Don't let it get to you because like you said, “For all the crazy ideas I come up with, it's that constant creative bursts of crazy ideas that something does land.” As leaders, don't get discouraged when everybody else is like, “What?” It's a part of the course. I used to listen to my dad and he would say stuff that was counterintuitive and I'm like, “What?” You get your head wrapped around it and you're like, “Okay.” I like that you hit on that too, Danny. That's an interesting perspective on loneliness.
I love that story about when Disney World opened. A reporter reflected one of the executives, he said, “It's a shame that Walt Disney couldn't be alive to see this.” The executive turned to the reporter and said, “What do you mean? He saw this ten years before it ever happened.”
I heard that was his wife. I don't know. I read that.
Maybe it was his wife.
I did read that in a biography. That is true, but I thought it was his wife where she's like, “He did see it.”
I've seen it in different versions. Pat Williams has a great book about Disney. I may be taking my version from Pat one. Shame on me because I used to be a journalist and you're supposed to always verify your stories.
Getting the source slightly different is wrong, but we're still quoting the same thing. There's no disagreement with that. The fact is, he did see it before. You've got the notion right. That's true. The next thing he talked about is weariness. You talked a little bit about before when you were weary on how you didn't wallow in your weariness, but you pulled it up. Can you talk to me about the different types of weariness you've dealt with as a leader? We know there are many different types. Like pain, there's good pain and bad pain. Talk to me about weariness and how you combat that or maybe something leaders need to be aware of when it comes to the price of leadership, which entails weariness.
That's important. I began my career in teaching. It's funny how I became a teacher. I used to be a journalist. I had the greatest job in the world. I got to cover one of the presidential campaigns. I was at a press conference with the President. The President said something and I looked at the lead six of my colleagues had written and I'm like, “He didn't say anything negative. Why are you taking that slang?” I wanted to become a journalist because I wanted to be the next Charles Kuralt. I can go around America doing all these great little profiles on interesting places and people. I saw so much nastiness and I'm like, “I don't want to be a part of this.”
I was getting offered all kinds of great different journalism jobs for different major newspapers. I got offered a job doing the City Beat for the Chicago Tribune for $16,500 a year. Meanwhile, a friend of mine, who convinced me to apply for a teaching position in Compton, California, an inner-city in South Central Los Angeles, where I would get paid $25,000 a year. I always tell people, “I became a teacher for the noblest of reasons, for the high pay.” It was tough teaching in the inner city. Ironically, I run the world's leading reading engagement program online. As a kid, I hated reading.
My father was a librarian. I always hated the public library. I always thought the furniture was uncomfortable. It always smelled funny. There's always some elderly woman telling me to be quiet. There's always some freak by the shelf that thought he was a vampire. I hated the public library. Once I started teaching in the inner city, I always tell people, “My first three years of teaching, I never met a father.” In my first year of teaching, every single one of my students had a different last name than their mother. A lot of my students’ parents were working three jobs to make ends meet. There weren't any reading resources in the home. There were limited reading resources in the school. I pointed the finger at myself and I said, “Shame on me. I've taken a lot for granted.”
I had both parents in my household. They used to read in front of us and to us, my brother, my sister, and me. We always had plenty of access to books, even though I never wanted to read anything. It made me disgusted at how I don't believe in equality. That's one of these things people strive for, which is unattainable. I'm like, “People don't need to be treated equally. They need to be treated fairly.” Some kids don't need much attention. Some kids need a lot of extra attention.
When you talk about weariness as a leader, it was tough. I've taught every grade level, but my passion is with the little ones. I started off teaching high school and they put me in middle school. I love the little ones because they don't know what they can't do yet and they say amazing things all the time. My first-semester teaching at an elementary school level, every day was a disaster in some way. I decided at Christmas, I have 33 students. I bought them all a box of dominoes. I'd gift wrapped every box and I put a candy cane on every box. I brought it to school and I thought, “This is going to be great. Dominoes is like a math objective. The kids will learn some math concepts.”
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
This was my best day, my first semester teaching elementary. I bring all the dominoes to school and I'm all excited. The kids open them up and they're throwing them at one another. They're eating them. They're doing everything that I never intended for them to do. I look at this little boy, Gonzalo. Gonzalo refused to open up his present. I said, “Gonzalo, why aren't you opening up your present?” He said, “I want something under the tree this year.” That was my best day. It was those kinds of stories. I was blessed.
I taught I was the only man at my school. I was the only white person at my school. I taught with predominantly elderly African-American women from the south who all had been teaching at least twenty years. My mentor was Mrs. Turner who was from Alabama. Mrs. Turner had been teaching for forty years. She believed in two things, discipline and the Bible. When her little ones got out of line, she started reading revelations to them. It was Mrs. Turner, this guardian angel, this saint, who took me under her wing. She said, “You can't let this get to you, Mr. Brassell. It's getting to you.” She noticed it. She was like, “You're never going to last. You’ve got to start smiling and laughing a lot more because the stories are going to break your heart.” That's where I see the weariness in leadership.
I'm pretty apolitical. At this point, the way we should vote for office is whoever the eighth caller is to the radio station that should be the governor, the senator, or the president. There's precedent for that. That's how the Greeks did the senate. It was like jury duty. If you did that, you would take money out of the equation. People would be forced to serve their country. Putting that aside, I think about whoever the President of the United States is. On their best day, as they're about to go to bed, the National Security Adviser says, “Good night, Mr. President. By the way, we're missing a plane off the Gulf of Tonkin. There are 100,000 airline pilots on strike in St. Louis. There's a little girl trapped in a well in West Virginia. This country decided they're going to invade this country with nuclear weapons. Have a good night's sleep.”
That's a great perspective.
Who wants that job? I want to be the ex-president. I don't want to be President of the United States. I want to be the ex-president. I could golf anywhere. I could give speeches.
They pay a lot of money for speeches.
Lots of money on books about my memoirs. President Trump is older but before him, we had President Obama, Bush, and Clinton who were all fairly young. They were in their 40s when they became president. Each of them served two terms. By the end of those two terms, you look at how much they've aged. I think about that. The example I always give people was Tony Blair. I remember Tony Blair when London was awarded the Olympics. He looks happy. The next day, they bombed the underground and killed twenty people. I'm like, “This is what it's like to be the leader.” His high was quick. He has to talk to the families of the victims. That's the weariness. It takes somebody special to be able to deal with those types of circumstances. I might not agree with people, but I still pray for them because of a lot of the decisions these people have to make. You don't see me raising my hand anxious to make those decisions.
That's a great point, Danny. I even look back in my little microcosm about how I love sitting at the watercooler bashing management because I could do it so much better than them. You then get to sit and see and you realize, “You have no idea what they're juggling.” The hubris, the ignorance of people that sit there and judge people talk about their policies, but to rip somebody that you don't know to shreds. You haven't even run a company of two people. I was one of those. It was my ignorance, my insecurity, and my ego.
Lord willing, we all grow up and realize when we get to be mid-level and senior-level leaders that there's a lot more that goes into it. We can come alongside the emerging leaders and say, “You'll get there, and then you'll see.” It’s like telling little kids, “Someday you'll have your own and then you can be the perfect mother that I never was.” It is weary. You talked about the beginning of it. When you get down, don't stay down. Get great books. Get with great people. Let it go. Pray, meditate, do something, because this too shall pass. You talked about the Bible. The Bible talks about valleys. What valleys mean is that, eventually, you're going to be on the bottom floor of the valley and then you start coming out of it.
Perspective is a valuable thing. When you feel down, why don’t you volunteer at the Children's Cancer Center or at the homeless shelter? Les Brown, the wonderful speaker, has a great anecdote about a guy that committed suicide. He says, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” He's right about that. He said, “This too shall pass.” Every time there's a catastrophe, there's an opportunity that follows. It's a matter of a lot of success. It’s a matter of hanging on.
Even in church and I read it in a book too. Two points, two confirmations on the same day said, “We're children of God. We have God in us. God wants nothing more than to have you home with Him. If you were here on this earth, at this moment, He wants you home so bad but He knows there are things He wants you to do here.” That realization, “I know it's bad. God who loves me unconditionally, if He still has me here, there's something I'm supposed to be doing. It isn’t sitting there sucking my thumb or taking drugs to kill the pain.”
Watching Keeping Up with The Kardashians.
Get out and serve. When I am not serving, when I start thumb sucking and drawing in on myself, that's when I get incredibly tired in a bad way. There are times where I'm tired, I call it going to war tired. After a day of the war, I lay down and I go, “I kicked everybody's butt I could.” I sleep well. That's a good tired. I'm talking the tired that you’re, “You know you wasted today. You know you'll never get it back. You know that this negative talk is killing you and you're allowing terrible things to come into your head.” That’s ceased and desist.
I was making this point to a coaching client. She's trying to do 58 things and she's not doing any of them. I'm going to recommend another book. You all don't have to read this book, I already read it for you. The book is called Essentialism by Greg McKeown. It's a wonderful book and that book changed my life based on one line. He said, “In Greek, the word priority can only be used in the singular.” I'll tell you why that changed my life. Every day I give myself one priority. I get other stuff done. That's great, but I have to get my priority done and if you give yourself one priority a day, you'll be amazed how much more productive you are. There are too many people trying to do 28 things poorly rather than try to do one thing well.
My book, Spark.
I love Spark. I devoured that on the first day on the Kindle. It said it took me 93 minutes to get through it so it was a quick read. Thank you, Tracey.
The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
You’re welcome. It’s the singularity. That's the whole thing. That one thing. I love that. One of the pastors again was talking and he said that his spiritual gift is the gift of complication. I started laughing and I'm like, “That's me too,” because I'm like, “I’ve got to do this.” Somebody sends me an email. Can you be on this? Can you write about this? Can you be a sponsor of this? Can you help us find a speaker for this? All of a sudden it’s bad. I love that. Priority. One thing. It’s worth the price of the show, Danny.
Continue to read, though.
We're only halfway through, abandonment. My dad often said that we need to stop thinking about what we like and want to think about in favor of what we ought and need to think about. Danny, how do you gain clarity and focus? You talked about the singularity, but it's tough because we convince ourselves of a lot of crazy things that aren't necessarily true trying to not deal with what's in front of us or we mistake busyness for productivity. How do you stay focused?
Focus is everything. I talk about it in the book I wrote, Leadership Begins with Motivation. I grew up listening to Paul Harvey on the radio. He was on every day at 12:15. He passed away years ago at the age of 325 years old, but I love Paul Harvey growing up. He’d be like, “I'm Paul Harvey with the rest of the story.” He always gives you some zingers. There's a great podcast called, The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe. It's a wonderful podcast. When people interview me about what education has to do, I've been getting a lot of interview questions about COVID and remote learning and I say, “This is part of the process. This is one of the solutions. Homeschooling is the right option for some kids. Public school is the right option for some kids. Magnet schools, private schools, charter schools, some kids need self-directed learning.”
Mike Rowe and I believe that we should invest more heavily in vocational training, because even though a lot of politicians think that the purpose of our education system is to produce college graduates, I’m like, “First of all, it's not listed anywhere in the Constitution that it's a right. Second of all, the purpose of our education system is to produce tax-paying citizens.” If you want to become a plumber, or a mechanic or somebody with a trade, believe me, you're contributing to society.
As a matter of fact, a lot of those people are making a lot more money than unemployed PhD students that you and I have as friends. That's important. One of the stories I talked about in the book is at the end of the 1968 Olympics. The last race of the Olympics is always the marathon. The marathon winner had already been declared, but about a couple of hours after the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place runners came in there was this runner from Tanzania. Around mile twelve, he had fallen and hurt his shoulder and his knee. He wasn't even running. He was doing this pathetic scamper and as he entered the stadium with a few thousand fans that remained gave him a standing ovation.
I remember the first time I saw it. It was on one of those Olympic videos and it has this great narrator whose voice has no inflection whatsoever. I decided that I like it better than any narrator ever. He said, “Why did you decide to finish the marathon?” It's John Stephen Akhwari from Tanzania. When asked this question he said, “My country did not send me 26,000 miles to start the race. My country sent me 26,000 miles to finish the race.” I’m in tears every time I hear that story. It's fantastic. People have to hear those stories about the focus. Keep your focus.
Every overnight success story took them years to become that overnight success story. I train people how to be better speakers and people come up to me and they say, “I can't be as good as you, Danny. You were sharp on that question.” I'm like, “That question you asked, I've been asked that question 499 times before you asked. I had 499 opportunities before you asked me to craft the perfect response to sound so smart to you,” but they don't see all that work. I was watching Sunday Night Football, the game between the Patriots and the Seahawks.
People have no idea how a quarterback like Cam Newton for the Patriots or Russell Wilson for the Seattle Seahawks, how much time it took them to learn all those plays to know what the receivers are going to do and what to do when you have five men on the line of scrimmage versus three. We don't look at all of the work that goes into it. Focus stinks. Leadership stinks. It's work. There's nobody that's gifted with this. It takes work. You’ve got to get dirty and you're going to make a lot of mistakes. When I do corporate training, I always ask the executives, “What's the opposite of success?” They always say failure. No, it's not. To succeed, you’ve got to fail a lot. The opposite of success is quitting or not trying.
It’s the status quo.
People remember that Babe Ruth at 60 home runs in a single season. That's an amazing feat. A record that stood for over 30 years in Major League Baseball. Most people conveniently forget that he also led the league in strikeouts the same year with 89. I want the people I'm working with swinging for the fences every day. That's where you see the best leaders. One of my favorite leadership gurus is John Maxwell. Everybody should read every single one of his books, attend every one of his training and buy everything he sells. He's my Jim Jones. I'll drink whatever he’s selling. He's fantastic. He's got a great voice. I've never met him in person, but he seems like a real sincere human being. He's fantastic.
When he's talking about leadership, he always says, “Leadership is influence.” It’s pure and simple. It's all how you influence people. We talked about this. You have a decision every day. You can smile or you can frown. The decision is yours. When I was feeling down a couple of weeks ago, when I listened to your father's speech, I loved it because he was talking about listening to your mother pray next to him in bed and pray how fortunate she felt to have such a loving husband. He realized he wasn't a good husband. He felt a scumbag and he committed then on, “I'm going to make her feel like the princess she deserves.” It's exactly right.
You have that power every single day. If you're having a crummy day, put a smile on. If I was ever president, the first thing I would do is give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Dolly Parton. Who isn't cooler than Dolly Parton? On her worst day, she's like, “I'm having the worst day ever.” I hope you know this. Dolly Parton, her Foundation has donated over 25 million books to poor children in the Appalachian region. Those are the people I love. It's the people that don't wear it on their sleeve that you never realize all the good that they're doing for people. They don't do it for those reasons. That's an unfocused answer to a simple question on focus.
For our readers out there, what you're reading, and I get told to sometimes do, “How do you pull the quotes, the verses, and the points altogether? Your brain is this rolling Rolodex.” The more you ingest, you're going to start this whirling thing and we stay focused. We can land on the answer but we tend to be more like, “Here's another quote.” I love it. There are some people that it's hard to process or if you're a new leader and you read all these books, and you're like, “How do you keep all this stuff straight?”
Your brain eventually starts ingraining certain threads and synapses. All of the sudden, people start saying, “How do all that?” Everything that you read, and you apply becomes a part of you and it pops out when you need it. It’s like you and me talking about the Disney quote. I can't remember exactly where, but I know that gist. I don’t have a photographic memory. When I was ten that went away. I like that you kept saying that's a long answer. It's cool because for the leaders reading out there, the more experiences we get, the greater things we read, the more our worldview. That's a cool thing because we can talk a lot about different things with a lot of different people and offer a lot of different points of advisement when asked.
Leadership: We need to learn how to be able to disagree with one another without being disagreeable with one another.
That's why you and I are storytellers. That’s what a good leader does. Howard Schultz, the reason he was able to make Starbucks, this huge economic powerhouse around the globe is he told a better story than other people. That's what we're trying to do. What's the story that you're trying to tell? I was working with a couple of CEOs on how they were telling their story. A lot of people collect stamps. Some people collect cars. I've always collected stories so I hear stories, and I'm like, “That's going in the file. I'm going to remember that because that's great.” I heard a story, which I loved about, Cliff Young. Have you ever heard of Cliff Young?
Who's that?
This is the greatest story ever.
It sounds familiar.
I heard the story and I was so excited. I wrote it for the new book I'm writing and I found a book that had the story in it. I talked to the author and he’s like, “Put it in your book too. It’s a great story.” There's this ultramarathon between Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. It's about 550 miles and the first running of the ultramarathon was in 1983. This marathon is supposed to take about a week for these guys to finish. All of the world's greatest ultramarathon runners got to the starting point. One of the people that showed up was this 61-year-old Australian potato farmer named Cliff Young. He's wearing his overalls, his work boots, and galoshes over his work boots. The rest of the runners are looking at him like he's crazy.
They fire the gun and they all take off. As predicted, Cliff Young is in the last place and everybody else is scorching Cliff. The interesting thing was they were beating Cliff so badly when the rest of them decided that night to go to sleep and rest on the side of the road. Cliff’s like, “I'm far behind. I better keep running.” He runs the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd night. On day five, not only did 61-year-old potato farmer Cliff Young win the ultramarathon, his second-place challenger finished ten hours behind him, simply because Cliff never quit. That's a great lesson to never quit. What I love even more was the $10,000 prize he won. He could have bought a lot of potatoes with it but he felt bad for winning when all the other competitors had this as their job so he split all of his winnings. He gave it to all of the competitors, which they all loved him for.
What I like about that part of the story, the lesson for us as leaders is a good job that doesn't always have to be rewarded. Knowing that you did your best is enough reward in itself. I used to have a nonprofit where I created school libraries in Compton. I don't know if I've ever been happier in my life. If I had gone through the public school system trying to get approval for that, they would have still never been built. I built them all on my own. I put together the shelves. I got students from more affluent school districts to do book drives to donate the books for the shelves.
I felt like Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field when he made that church for the little nuns. It was one of those experiences where after I open up a library for the kids, I always felt like, “If I get hit by a car, at least I have something to go with.” God would be like, “You did something.” It's one of those things that I'm always amazed by. There are people in the world so my pastor at least once a week is able to convert 2 or 3 people to Christianity. I'm like, “That's amazing. What am I doing with my life?”
It's good to have those people in your life. I was reading about this twelve-year-old girl. She wrote an eBook, she sold it for $0.99. She sold two million of them and I'm not a math major, but she made a pretty good profit on that. I read that she signed a three-picture deal with Warner Brothers. She's twelve years old. What am I doing with my life? It's good. It pushes me. How can I get better? I'm like, “Until I'm 6 feet under, I’ve still got a purpose here.” This has nothing to do with anything but I have to tell you the story because it's one of my favorites. Do you know the story of Tony Campolo?
Yes, I do.
I put this in the book and as I wrote it, I couldn't write it without crying because it's one of the most uplifting things. Tony Campolo couldn't sleep one night. He looks all around for one of those all-night diners. He finds a diner at 3:30 AM, gets his coffee and his donut. All of a sudden, these two prostitutes walk in. They're loud, obnoxious, and causing all kinds of noise. He's about to get up and leave but he sits there and listens to them. One of the prostitutes mentioned to the other that, “Tomorrow is your birthday,” and the other prostitute is like, “What do you expect? Do you expect me to throw you a birthday party?” The other one is like, “No, I wouldn't expect that. I've never had a birthday party in my life.” They giggle and walk out of the diner.
Tony Campolo thought about that statement. He’s like, “She's never had a birthday party in her life?” It bothered him so he asked the waiter and said, “Do those two ladies come in here every single night?” The waiter said, “Yes.” He said, “Would you mind if tomorrow night I come in around 2:30 to decorate the diner and have a birthday party for her? What's her name?” He's like, “Agnes.” The waiter is like, “That would be a great idea.” The next night he comes at 2:30 AM and decorates the diner. The word got out so Agnes' friends on the streets all came to this diner and on cue at 3:30, Agnes and the other prostitutes came in. They're loud and everybody’s like, “Surprise. Happy birthday.”
I'm still getting choked up saying the story. This woman tears up. They sing Happy Birthday. Tony says a prayer for everybody. I've heard many sermons from people and I see so much hypocrisy in society. People saying one thing and practicing something else. I'm like, “There's a guy.” It didn't take money to do anything. All it took was to get up the next night and have a birthday party for a human being. I thought, “What a lovely thought.” That's why I read stories. I'm on a media fast now, especially with the Presidential Election Year.
That’s good. Stay on it forever.
It doesn't serve me. The headline is going to be the same thing every day, “This person is a scumbag.” I don't want to so I'm always looking for those inspirational stories and that's why I love this. How do I surround myself with positive stories? That's why I wrote the book. After writing the book, I figured out the biggest mistake I made was when I went through it. I’m like, “Most of these stories take place in America and a lot of these stories are about white men.” The book I'm writing is more geared towards international stories with minorities and women because I’m like, “There's some little kid in Nigeria that needs to hear about a Nigerian kid that became famous and succeeded wherever in the world.” I'm thinking about that.
I've been blessed. I've had a lot of people share their stories with me. Working with speakers, I worked with 30 people and listened to their personal stories. It's fascinating what people don't even consider important. I know you come across this too. I always say you can't see the forest through the trees. People are so close. Things come naturally to them. My wife is a perfect example. She's so good at certain things, but she doesn't see it. She said, “I don't have this talent.” I’m like, “There's no way I can do any of these things and you do them effortlessly.” Your dad talks about his speech. He talks about, “My little baby Tracey if she has a bum rash, my wife knows everything about a bum rash. I don't know anything about bum rashes and it's not to belittle it.” That's a skill.
Leadership: The purpose of our education system is to produce tax-paying citizens. If you want to become a plumber, a mechanic, or somebody with a trade, you're contributing to society.
I was listening to an interview about this woman. She's a bridesmaid all the time and a couple of women asked her to be a bridesmaid. She's like, “I don't even know them well.” Her friends are like, “You do this so well. You help make decisions.” She started a company where she's a professional bridesmaid. I'm like, “That's the greatest thing ever.” Everybody has something like that. People always say and we were talking about this, how did this story stick?
This is pathetic for me. I've read the 26 words of John 3:16 at least 3,000 times and for the life of me, I cannot remember them in order but I can watch the movie Tommy Boy once and remember the dialogue verbatim. That's ridiculous. The point here is all of us have something like that. I worked with a little boy and the teacher is telling me, “He doesn't know anything.” This three-year-old proceeds to tell me every single fact about the Stegosaurus that a human could ever know. He's not stupid. He likes Stegosauruses. Let's talk about Stegosauruses. I have plenty of friends that can't write a paper or give a speech but they can fix a car. I can't fix a car. They can do things. Everybody has something. There's something in everybody.
When StrengthFinders came out, I was like, “Whoa,” because typically we're like, “Continually improve yourself,” but not stuff you're intrinsically not good at. I love that because all the stuff that I thought like writing or meeting people, I'm like, “Do you mean you can make a living doing that? That's natural to me.” People are like, “No, that's what you want to focus on.” I love abandonment for a lot of time. Abandoned what you think you're supposed to do for what you're innately gifted at because that's your gift and that's what's going to be a lot of fun in that and because it's fun, it's what you're going to like to do versus trying to fit into what you think, everybody else wants you to be. Abandonment to your own core set of intrinsic gifts or spiritual gifts.
Last one, vision. My dad, for those of you that didn't know this, flunked out of school in the eighth grade but he went on to become one of the top legends of personal development. How do you get from here to there? You have a vision, but his whole thing was, “Vision is nothing more than just seeing what needs to be done and doing it.” He didn't get such a good draw on upbringing or education but he knew where he wanted to go.
He's such a pragmatist and I love that because I remember as a young leader, I was always scared about, “I'm not Oprah or Mark Zuckerberg or Nostradamus.” His whole aspect was priority. See the one thing and then just do it. How do you hone your vision? You were a school teacher and now you have this world-renowned reading program. How do you keep clarifying your vision, Danny, and knowing where to go next?
Thank you for that, Tracey. One of the best things I've done is I've started to listen to others. As a former teacher of English as a second language to students, I say, “There are four aspects of communication. They're listening, speaking, reading and writing.” I've always focused on all of them but I haven't focused enough on listening. A wise professor once said, “We listen to a book a day, speak a book a week, read a book a month, and write a book a year.”
What she meant by that is the amount of language that we typically encounter over the course of a day is the equivalent of an adult novel. The amount that we speak over the course of a week is the equivalent of that novel. The amount that we read over the course of a month, whether it's emails or street signs is the equivalent of a novel. The amount that we write, grocery, list emails, and that kind of thing over the course of a year is the equivalent of a novel.
While there are four aspects of language communication, listening is important. I've always told teachers, “Just because a kid sits in the front row, answers every question, and decides to run for Congress someday, doesn't mean that kid is any brighter than the unibummer sitting in the back of the room with their mouth shut.” They're like, “I'm listening to everything you're saying.” Those people are absorbing. I listen to people now.
I always wanted to be like the next Tony Robbins, and then a friend of mine is like, “I want you to be the first Danny Brassell.” It was a nice statement. He said, “Danny, you get people excited about reading. Not many people do that.” It made me stop focusing on where I thought I had to go to succeed. He said, “No, carve your own path. You have this niche that you could serve a lot more people that way.” I've been having a lot of fun doing that.
That was important for me to abandon all those beliefs of what I thought I was supposed to do. There's a great story I wrote for the book I'm writing about Agnes de Mille and Martha Graham. Martha Graham is known as the mother of modern dance. She's a Kennedy Center honoree and she won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her friend, Agnes, had produced a couple of plays that were successful but her third play had been panned by the critics. She's like, “I'm going to take it off. We're going to close it down.”
Martha looked at her and she said, “No, you can't do that because if you shut this playdown, the world will never have this play. There's only one you. There's never been another you and there's never going to be another one of you. You have to give the world what you have.” She encouraged her friend Agnes who was also a choreographer. Agnes de Mille eventually won Kennedy Center Honors and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She decided to keep the play on Broadway and she changed the name to Oklahoma!, which became one of the most successful musicals of all time. That's the thing. I have this quote by this guy that's great and I wish I had the quote for you. Everybody can tell I'm good at paraphrasing quotes but I'm not good at remembering them exactly. That quote goes like, “My first company was a disaster. The second one wasn't much better. For the third one, I got it right but there was still something missing. The fourth, we almost had it. The fifth one was PayPal.” Maybe it takes four mistakes before you find the billion-dollar idea.
Going back to the football game, Bill Belichick was not a successful coach in his first run as a head coach. They might as well rename the Lombardi Trophy after him and I'm like, “I don't care if you like the Patriots or not. I hate the Patriots but it's not even a debate anymore. He's the best coach of all time.” I'll listen to anything the guy says. He's phenomenal. I’m like, “The quarterback you have now Cam Newton is nothing like the quarterback you had before Tom Brady.” Both are great quarterbacks, but both have totally different skillsets.
The reason Belichick is a good leader is he figures out the skillsets of what he's handed and he turns them into the champion. Anybody can trade in their cards and get a winning hand. The people that take the hand that they're dealt and turn it into a winning hand, those are the people that you want to be around. It doesn't take much. I've seen that with a lot of successful leaders. I'm a big fan of presidential history. That was my dad’s hobby.
The movie, The Butler, where Forest Whitaker played the head usher at the White House might be based on this. The guy that was the head usher at the White House for 40 years, in his memoirs, they asked him when he was writing about what his favorite day was at the White House. It was when former President Teddy Roosevelt returned to the White House and he knew every single person's name. He talked to everybody.
Teddy Roosevelt was amazing like that. Teddy Roosevelt would call up his servants. It's the president on the line and he says, “You told me you like birds. I'm looking out your window right now. There's this type of bird.” He’s able to remember that. I've never confirmed this either. I once heard that both President Clinton and OJ Simpson's lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, if you met them, they would remember your name and something about you twenty years later. I'm like, “That's how you become powerful.” You don't have to be that bright.
That's always been one of my favorite stories. Winston Churchill's mother, Jennie, was a contemporary of Queen Victoria. She knew every famous person so a reporter asked her once about the difference between Prime Minister Gladstone and Prime Minister Disraeli. Her response was phenomenal. She said, “Whenever I left a meeting with Prime Minister Gladstone, I left feeling like, ‘He is the most interesting person I have ever met.’ Whenever I left a meeting with Prime Minister Disraeli, I left feeling like, ‘I am the most interesting person he has ever met.’” What are we doing to make the people around us feel worthy? To me, that’s the best leadership lessons of all time.
Leadership: To succeed, you’ve got to fail a lot. The opposite of success is quitting or not trying.
You have covered it all and I love that. That’s what my dad did, thinking that you are the most important person. There's a lot to that. I love the Belichick stuff about seeing what you can see in the follower and what you can inspire in the follower. As somebody who studies followership, the follower has to also be willing to be molded. You wouldn't be a quarterback if you didn't get to that level and be willing to be honed by someone.
Leaders are good followers at first. I believe in that. A lot of us don't even know that we're sitting on a pot of gold. I read a story and it's this letter from this Italian guy to his buddy. He's like, “My back is killing me. The fumes have made me crazy. I am the most miserable person on the planet.” I don't remember his friend's name. I'll say, Giuseppe. He's like, “Giuseppe, I am a failure. I am not a painter.” The guy that wrote the letter was Michelangelo right after he had painted the Sistine Chapel. It's not for us to decide. It's for others to do. I remember that. It was Arthur Miller for 30 years after he wrote Death Of A Salesman. People always told him, “You've written the great American tragedy,” and he's like, “No, I haven't.” Thirty years later, he’s like, “I guess I have.” Sometimes, you have to listen. Maybe that's what I did.
Danny, we covered each of the four prices of leadership. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our leaders that we have not touched on?
I used to run a nonprofit called Real Dads Read. To the male leaders out there, I always used to tell, “Dad, do you want to know why your kids like football so much? It’s because that's the only time you spend with them.” If you spent your time reading with your kids, they'd all be readers. I've always thought that there are plenty of readers that aren't leaders but I have never read about an effective leader who is not an avid reader. That’s what I preach. Not as much as the moms. The moms get this. The dads have to realize that those little eyes are watching you. It's important to read in front of your kids, with your kids, and to your kids. You'd be amazed at what sticks 50 years down the road.
We are products of that. Danny, how can people get in touch with you? What's the best way? How would you like to connect?
I was thinking about that because I had about a zillion different websites. It might be an inappropriate website to send everybody to but I'm going to send it anyway because I'm giving you some free stuff. Go to FreeReadingTraining.com. I'm going to give you four things. First of all, you'll probably get an annoying email from me once a month for the rest of your life about something positive in the world. I'm going to give you a complimentary copy of my book, Read, Lead & Succeed, which is a book I wrote for a school principal who didn't know how to engage his faculty.
I said, “I'll write your book.” Once a week, I’ll give you a concept, an inspirational quote, an inspirational story, a recommendation on a book you should read, but since you're an adult, you're probably too lazy and you won't read it. I’ll also give you a children's picture book recommendation that demonstrates the same concept. You can read that in five minutes. I'll also give you a couple of digital training of what I do around the world. We're on five continents. It's the world's leading reading engagement program.
I teach parents and teachers how to get kids to love reading. Schools do a decent job of teaching kids how to read but the question I always have for people is, what good is teaching a kid how to read if they never want to read? I teach kids why to read because I've never had to tell a kid, “Go watch TV. Go play a video game.” I never want to have to tell a kid, “Go read.” I want them to think reading is cool. They'll do it on their own. In my program, in just over two months, most of the kids that go through our program boost their reading ability by a couple of grade levels, which is great but that's not why I do it.
What gets me excited and what's important to me is that I'm developing avid readers that are curious. Even as a teacher, I used to tell my students, “I'm not here to teach you what to think. I'm teaching you how to think. You need to constantly be curious and you need to always ask that question why.” In just a couple of months, I teach people how to read more, read better, and most importantly, love reading. Hopefully, that can serve everybody out there. If nothing else, there are some fun stories in there that’ll bring a smile to your face.
The most important thing on this planet is knowledge and education. I'm re-reading Booker T. Washington's Character Building, and it's all about the only two things in life that matter is getting a great education and being industrious. If we all did that, the world would be a different place. These are universals. It's not like, “Reading has gone out the way.” No, the publishing industry has changed but I love that leading engagement program.
For our readers, the more you do reading, it's like everything else but it is tough because it's like Monty Python, “My brain hurts!” It exposes you to ignorance. It is hard work and you’ve got to focus. Whereas if you're playing games, you just sit back and it's hitting that dopamine and all that other chemical triggers. Whereas reading, it's difficult, but it's such great work. It's like eating candy versus eating meat and potatoes. It sticks with you and it makes you stronger. I love what you're doing, Danny.
Thank you, Tracey. One thing that will make a lot of your leaders feel a lot better. The research is clear that if you listen to books, it's as effective as if you're reading them on your own. While you're on the subway to work or driving to work or you're on the treadmill at the gym, listen to those books. I prefer nonfiction, but I have the world's top reading book clubs online, LazyReaders.com. On that one, I say, “Even though I like nonfiction, a lot of the best ideas leaders get come from fiction.”
That's one of the reasons a lot of us should be diving into both of those types of things. When people tell me they have no time to read them, I’m like, “Who has time to read after you watch the game on TV, have a couple of beers, and go out shopping?” There is a friend of mine who used to run time management seminars and I’m like, “There's no such thing as time management. There's only priority management.”
I laugh at people and they're like, “I don't have time.” I’m like, “You have enough time to do everything else. To not read? Don't make me shame you.” It's good to let people know but you can make it a priority and you can fall in love with reading as you can fall in love with everything else. I remember when I read Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book, I'm like, “What?” The whole way through it. At 54 years old, I was speechless about how you read a book. You digest it and you use your critical thinking. I'm like, “How can you write a whole big book on how to read a book?” It was fascinating to me.
What's your favorite book, Tracey?
Leadership: The reason Howard Schultz was able to make Starbucks a huge economic powerhouse around the globe is he told a better story than other people.
That's one of them from a cognitive perspective of igniting my love of books after the Bible. I would say the one that has impacted me the most, and I've had a lot of them, was Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz as a little girl, and that changed me. I would say as a middle-aged, Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. It blew my head off. Also, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. I read that if you're going to stay true to your convictions, this is what it's going to cost you. I like the tough stuff.
You've never met a great leader with an easy path so I was always into the people that carved the way, the Joan of Arc’s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, and Victor Frankl's that put it all out there because that's the courageous, convicted life where you're down into your strengths. You're dialed into your singular purpose and you see it. If anybody else does, it doesn't matter because you're infused with it. What about your favorite books?
That's a horrible question. I’ve got way too many. On LazyReaders.com, every month, I give ten book recommendations, 3 or 4 adult level, 3 or 4 young adult level, and 3 or 4 children's level books, all under 250 pages. People have something they can read when they're stuck in a boring meeting. Let me give you one of each. One of my favorite children's books probably was Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It was about a mischievous boy and it's a cool story.
When Maurice Sendak was a little boy, his relatives would come over to his house every weekend and they drank lots of beer. They made lots of noise and they totally trashed his house. When he was drawing the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are, those are his aunts and uncles. I always would tell that story to my students because if you want kids to be able to tell you stories, you have to tell them stories.
One of the stupidest things I've ever told my little ones one day is I said, “Kids, write about your lives.” They looked at me like I was from outer space. They're like, “We’re only six. Nothing's happened to us.” I'm like, “No. Things happen to you every day.” I'm like, “When I was in first grade, my teacher called me stupid, smacked me on the hand, and got me crying for the whole class. The next day when I was walking to school, I had an apple and I peed on the apple. I gave her the apple and she ate it that day and said it was the best apple she'd ever had.”
My little ones are like, “That is awesome.” This is also the reason I never accepted food from a child. I always tell people, “If you want kids to tell you stories, you’ve got to tell them stories.” As a kid, that's my favorite children's book. My favorite young adult book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I don't know why I love that book so much, but maybe Atticus Finch is one of those characters who is good and has so much integrity.
It's like President Lincoln. When I read Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, I’m like, “How did this human being walk on this planet? He thinks in a different way than other people.” You read about Joan of Arc and I’m like, “Who is this? It’s unbelievable.” An adult book, I'll throw a fun one up. The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. There are books where I have to put them down because I'm laughing out loud. Have you read the other Douglas Adams book, Life, the Universe and Everything?
Yes.
You'll love this as a management person. He goes into the largest intergalactic bureaucratic agency ever and he asked this bureaucrat for help on this problem. The guy is like, “It sounds like a SEP.” He's like, “What's a SEP?” He’s like, “Somebody Else's Problem.” I use that all the time. All the leaders out there reading you have to use SEP. The two things I always tell people, if somebody comes up to you and gripes, tell them, “That sounds like a SEP, Somebody Else's Problem.” The other thing I used to always train all of my faculty is I always tell them, “The next time you want to give me an excuse, here's the excuse to give me. Peru has a new dictator.” Somebody is like, “What does that mean?” I'm like, “One excuse is as good as another, isn't it? That didn't get done. Why are you wasting my time? SEP in Peru has a new dictator. They will serve you well.”
Before I got sucked into personal development and leadership stuff, it was all science fiction.
Have you read Robert Heinlein?
Yes.
This is especially true for today's civilization. It’s one of my favorite quotes of all time and I will quote him correctly. Robert Heinlein said, “The two most predominant elements in the universe are nitrogen and stupidity.”
Danny, thank you for sharing your knowledge. It’s fun. I hope we can get together in person sometime and do some awesome, tremendous reading thing. To our readers out there, check out Danny and get on his list. He's got all these free giveaways. If you liked what you read, please hit the subscribe button. Share with us and leave us a comment. We answer all our comments. Give us a five-star rating. We'd be thankful for that. Everybody out there, keep on reading and have a tremendous day.
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About Dr. Danny Brassell
Danny inspires audiences around the world to achieve greater performance, engagement and happiness by discovering their personal motivation. Infusing humor, inspiration and simple techniques to initiate positive change – both at home and in the workplace – Danny has been dubbed “Jim Carrey with a Ph.D.” for his high-energy, world-class keynotes, seminars and customized retreats.
Speaking to audiences worldwide ranging from corporate associations to school districts, Danny has equipped tens of thousands of people to overcome challenges, achieve more and give back with his unifying message of “liberation through motivation.” Danny works tirelessly to ensure that his clients receive raves from their audiences, real results and lasting change. Find out why audiences adore him, peers praise him and conference planners re-book him…