Hey, what's up, champions? This is your host, Neal, and I want to welcome you back to another dynamite podcast today. Today we're finishing up our three part miniseries on personal agency. We've taken you through the six pillars of personal agency. We've taken you through why agency changes everything. And today we're going to be talking about developing agency, specifically how to build your personal brand or personal power. Man. We're going to get deep in it today. I'm fired up and I pray you are also. Get ready. This is your captain speaking.

We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff. We have clear skies today with no winds, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight. However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline. As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success. Sit back, relax, get hyped or do whatever you do. As we too are pumped for today's flight, we understand you have options when you fly and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today. We recognize by choosing to fly, Neal Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before. Enjoy today's flight, be blessed and remember, the best is yet to come.

What's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to the Executive perspective. For years I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living? Why? Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing. I'm an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership and technology. I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm. My number one passion is people and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential. If you're a high performance individual like me or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strap in because I'm locked in and all in. This is the executive perspective.

Hey, what's up, champions? This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you back to the executive perspective. Man, I am fired up about today's teaching. Today we're going to be going into the third part of our miniseries we've been doing on personal agency. Our first episode we did on personal agency dealt with six pillars of personal agency. Our second episode we did talked about why agency can change everything. And today I'm going to be Talking with you about developing agency and specifically how to build your personal power. Man, this is a big one right here. You know, here in the executive perspective, I say this all the time in every episode, but we focus on three main areas. We focus on leadership, business strategy, and personal development. When we talk about agency or personal agency, that's at the epicenter of personal development. But I also believe that that's at the core of every area we speak on, whether if it's leadership, business strategy, personal development. I believe this is a topic that touches every area of your life. It has the ability to help to change the outcomes that you truly desire to see. And while you can't control outcomes at all times, you can control input. And I believe that today's topic is going to help you grow immensely. On this podcast, we have one direction we move, and that's forward and upward. My greatest desire of my heart is to get quality information to you so that I can help you. People are my passion in life and helping people to connect with their best life and their best performance and their highest form of their self. That means connecting with their happiness, their joy, their fulfillment and fulfilling their purpose and design divine assignments and callings in life. And those matter so much to me and I'm excited that you joined this with us for this podcast as we grow together. But I also want to say something else. If this is the first one you're listening to and you've missed our two previous topics or two previous episodes on personal agency, you can still listen to today's and then go back and catch up. You don't need to stop where you're at and go back. Now go ahead and finish today's episode, but then definitely go back and catch up on the other two because they'll help you tremendously. Now, specifically today, I'm actually going to give you what I refer to as five steps to developing your agency or building your personal power. Another way of saying that, though, is building your personal brand. The reason why I refer to as personal power, though, or personal brand is because when people think brand, their mind sometimes often goes to the marketing aspect of it. Building your brand. And yeah, this will help you with that. No doubt about that. But when I'm talking about your personal brand, I'm talking about you as a person, you as an individual. However, because you are your brand, many times the more you work on you, the more your brand will automatically improve and automatically increase. Let's go ahead and jump right into this day because I'm pretty fired up about this, the first step that we have is identifying your goals. Now, this is a big one right here. And sometimes you'll often hear me say that vague goals produce vague results. You got to be specific about what it is you're believing for. You know, if you're not believing for anything particular, then that's the exact results you're going to get. Nothing in particular. If there's something specific that you want, then you need to be specific about what it is you're believing for. You need to be specific about what are the goals you're wanting to see. So the first thing we want to do is identify your goals. Clarity always drives direction. I'm going to say that again, especially when we're talking about goals, clarity always drives direction. If you're unclear, you'll hesitate. In life, that's just as simple as that. If you're unclear, you'll hesitate. You'll hesitate with your decisions, you'll hesitate with your commitments. You'll hesitate with your execution and your action. You know, oftentimes I talk about on these podcasts, not just this series, but in this podcast, the executive perspective that with execution, clarity begins to shape. Sometimes people aren't real clear about all the steps that they need to fulfill their goals or their visions or the desires that they have. But oftentimes it starts with taking the first step. If you take that first step, after you take the first step, you get more clarity, and then you take the second one and more clarity, and the third one and more clarity. But while you execute and clarity shows up, you then also measure. You have to measure frequently. What does step one produce? What did step two produce? And as you take your execution and you measure, what's the third thing you do? The third thing is you have to make for frequent adjustments, because you either are going to make some steps that didn't give you the outcome you wanted, or it did, but you want to make it even better. And that's where frequent adjustments come in. The next thing you want to understand is when we're identifying our goals, is that to define success in your terms. Man, that's a big one right there. I could probably dedicate a podcast just to that around goals. But define success in your terms. You know, I'm going to peel the layers back on this for a second. I'm going to break it down to a very personal thing for me within marriage. I'm married to my beautiful wife, Katie, and my beautiful wife. Katie and I have been married for 26 years now. We got married super young if you can't tell. But we got married very young. We really did, actually. But when we got married, you know, one of the things that we both understood is that we had influence on both of our relationships coming from each side. You know, we had her parents who were trying to influence how our marriage is supposed to be, and we had my parents influencing how our marriage is supposed to be. And these are people who we love. We're extremely close with all of these people. In fact, my parents and Katie's parents get along amazing. Oftentimes they talk without us even knowing about it because they call each other and check in with each other and stuff. They get along fantastic. They didn't always get along, but they do now. Praise God. But at the same time, you know what? Katie's parents, they're like a second set of parents to me, and my parents are like a second set of parents to Katie. These people have good intentions and they love us, but when we first got married, they kind of would look examine us and kind of feel like maybe we weren't doing things right and maybe we weren't, but really what it came down to is we just weren't doing things the way they did it in their marriage. But here's the news flash for you. Our marriage was not their marriage, and they know that. And if they're listening to this podcast, which I know they do, they're going to understand and probably even remember this. You know, there is a conversation where at a time, Katie and I had to recognize that, man, we were having some friction in our lives. And one of the things we had to understand is that it was okay for us to have the advice of both of our parents, but then we had to choose what we were going to do with that for our marriage and for our relationship. Because while Katie had a certain set of customs and maybe rituals or something, she came into our mess. Our relationship with and I had a certain set of customs or tradition I came into with our marriage as well. At the end of the day, we were forming our own relationship and our own marriage, and one day we were going to have our own family. And now we're blessed with four beautiful children, but we knew that we were going to have to live life our way. And so that started off with clarity here in my heart and my mind. And same thing with Katie before we were able to get it out to the in laws on both sides, but our in laws loved us. May not have been easy for them to hear when we had to have those conversations, but they recognized it and they respected it. And it didn't mean we didn't seek advice from them at times. It didn't mean that they didn't offer it at times. But just because they chose to offer advice didn't mean that we necessarily had to feel that we had to do that thing. And at the same time, I never wanted them feeling like they didn't have a voice into our life, because they did. And they still do, praise God. That's what's led to successful, successful marriage for Katie and I, part of that, but a successful relationship with our in laws on both sides. That's why I see them as parents and they say me as a son and my parents see Katie as a daughter and she sees them as parents as well. Now, I broke down something very simple for you in the form of marriage. And that probably spoke to a whole lot of you out there. It's never too late to reform that. If you're like, well, Neil, that's your marriage, not mine, and I've been married a long time, it's really bad. You can change that at any time with your choices. And while you can't necessarily change how others feel, you can change how you respond and you can change how you react. That's how I had to do it. But all that being said, I want to say that in reflection of, you need to define success on your own terms. You know, so many times in life people think that what success means is what someone else is achieving or what success for their life has to look like is what it's already looked like in someone else's life. You know, if you're starting off with the business today, let's say your business is you're writing your very first book. You know, if your very first book, you release it and what you sell is 500 copies and you think that's not successful because you follow a real popular author and their first book, they sold, they sold, you know, 17,000 copies or 50,000 copies or something way up there. And you're like, man, I'm not a success at all. You need to redefine success on your own terms. You know, the fact is, celebrate yourself. 500 copies of a book. I mean, 500 people bought your book. That's amazing. Champion. And as you continue to do that and you create more books, you'll have even more people want to buy them. And you know, one of the biggest challenges that impacts people in business, especially people who write books, authors, as they release the book once and then they think that's it they can never touch that again and they have to go on to the next one. But sometimes your most successful authors, they will tell you your most successful authors didn't hit it big on the first book and on the first release, but where they hit it big was re releasing the same book later on in life, sometimes even 10 years later. And for whatever reason, it just caught on bigger at that point. And that's what impacted and overnight they look like they were an overnight success, but they weren't an overnight success. They just keep doing the same thing and reapplying it at different times. You have to learn how to find success on your own terms. In other words, don't be measuring yourself to others. Comparison is the thief of joy. If you compare yourself to others, or you compare yourself to others, or if you compare yourself that well, I thought this would feel different when I reached this many subscribers, or I thought it feel different when I sold this many courses, or I thought it'd feel different when I owned this many franchises, or I thought it'd be different. I'd feel different when I owned this many Airbnb's or this many homes, or this many rental properties or this many businesses, or I thought it'd feel different when I finally earned the seven figure mark and I became a millionaire. I mean, it can just go on and on and on. You have to learn how to define success in your own terms. And as you define success on your own terms, you have to measure that. You execute it with clarity, you measure it and then you make frequent adjustments. But you also have to celebrate the wins in the middle. In other words, you have to celebrate the little things, not just the big things. That brings us to our first leadership truth bomb for today. If you don't choose your destination, you'll keep ending up wherever life drops you. Oh, that's powerful right there. If you don't choose your destination, you'll keep ending up wherever life drops you. You know, if you were out of town, for example, and you were visiting a new town, let's say you flew out to Las Vegas or somewhere like that. Just want to go check out a cool town or Miami or somewhere. And maybe to you, those aren't cool towns. But maybe you go somewhere and you fly to somewhere else and you order an Uber. If when the Uber shows up, first of all, when you call an Uber or Lyft or whoever, you use whatever rideshare you use, maybe even call a limo service or something, the first thing they want to know is where are they picking you up and where are they dropping you off? And if you just say, well, pick me up here and where do you want to go? Well, you know, if they go and drop you off at, you know, at a. Out in the middle of the desert, and you're like, wait a minute, this isn't the hotel. This isn't my hotel. This is not where I'm staying. Well, how are they supposed to know? You didn't tell them where you wanted to go. In other words, you have to be selective. You have to choose where you want to go. You have to have input. And so when we talk about if you don't choose your destination, you'll keep ending up wherever life drops you off. That's a real simple and maybe even silly analogy. But you have to choose your destinations in life. Now, the next thing we have here is. This is the second one is break down the big stuff. Now, this is our second step into developing agency or how to connect with your personal power or build your brand. Break down the big stuff. So, first of all, and this is significant, when I was writing this out before I did this podcast, man, this was a point of self reflection even for me. Overwhelm is the enemy of action. Whoo. I'm going to say that again. Overwhelm is the enemy of action. I was thinking even personally about myself when there were times in the past that I knew I needed to do things, whether if it was getting in the studio and recording, whether if it was creating lead magnets or whatever it is I was working on. And, man, sometimes it's so easy in life to seems to feel so overwhelmed with all the stuff that you have to do that it'll prevent you from taking action on the things you need to do. I'm going to say it again so many times. You can feel overwhelmed with the things that you have to do that it'll prevent you from taking the steps on the things you need to do. You know, I have a podcast we released here recently where I was talking about the mindset shift, and I'll share it with this one as well. But when you can make the mindset shift, and I help this with my clients as well, when you shift from thinking in a capacity of you have to do something and change that to you get to do something, you become a whole lot more productive. And that thing that when you say you have to do it, you know, I can think of a time where I was behind on my recordings of what I wanted to do, and it wasn't things that I had to do. It was just my schedule that I had set for myself. But when I was breaking those commitments to myself and not doing them, and then I started to feel overwhelmed, every time I thought about getting the studio, I would get excited and then I'd get overwhelmed. I'd get excited and then I'd get overwhelmed. And why was that? Because every time I thought of getting in the studio, it excited me because I love doing this. But then when I would get into the studio and this was on a different show, not this one, but when I would get in the studio, before I even get there, all I could think of was all the ones that I had already missed, all the recordings that I had already missed. And it felt like, man, I had to do this thing. And like I have this mountain of debt of past due recordings I had to go and get done. And it stole all the joy from me on that thing. But when I finally made that mind shift from thinking about it in terms of having to do to get to do, the whole thing opened back up. And, man, I was so excited to get back in the studio because I no longer was looking at all the things I'd missed. I was looking at the things that I now got to do. And as I did that, all the joy came back. And I got to tell you, speaking on stage and speaking on camera are my favorite, favorite things to do, especially on stage. Speaking on stage is one of my callings in life. And speaking on camera, oh, it's right there with it. It is such a blessing to my life. So the next thing I have for you is when we're talking about breaking down the big stuff and we talked about overwhelm, the next thing we have for you is break big goals into clear and winnable steps. I'm going to say that again. Learn to break big goals into clear and winnable steps. You know, there's a simple term out there or phrase out there, but how do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time. If you look at the whole elephant and thinking you got to eat that whole thing, well, the way you just eat it is one bite at a time. Now, I don't eat elephant. Hopefully you don't either. But if you do, it's the concept of when you have something big in front of you, just take it one bite at a time. Now here's our next leadership truth bomb for you today. Small wins stack fast and create unstoppable momentum. I'm going to say that again. Small wins stack fast and they create unstoppable momentum. You know, in our previous episode, I talked about one of my personal mentors, who's Brendan Burchard. I'm blessed to be able to go to some of his masterminds and things of that nature. And he's someone I listen to a lot. But Brendan has a real important phrase that he uses out there, and one of the things he talks about is the power plant. And he talks about that when you have a power plant. Power plants don't have energy. Power plants produce energy. And he talks about and equates people to being a power plant. You don't have energy, you produce energy. When we talk about that small win stack fast and that they create unstoppable momentum, you don't have momentum, you generate momentum. Keep that in mind, champion. You don't have momentum. You. You generate momentum, but part of the way is that you generate it. And this isn't the only way. But when you start to stack small wins, you start to generate momentum very quickly. Now, the third step we have for you today is to practice self compassion. Man, this is huge right here. This might be one of the biggest topics, and maybe we need to break down a podcast just for this, but oftentimes people are more forgiving towards others than they are towards themselves. Oftentimes people show more compassion and empathy towards others than they will for themselves. Practice self compassion. Agency isn't about being perfect. I want to share that. Personal agency isn't about being perfect. It's about staying in the game. In other words, we've talked previously about that. When you get knocked down or you get discouraged, you got to make the quality choice to get back up and keep on doing that. If you executed and it didn't go well, well, what you did is you got clarity off of that measure that thing. Why didn't it work? And then make your little adjustments and get back up and do it again. Sometimes you'll find that you did all the right things. You just need to keep on keeping on. Agency isn't about being perfect. In addition, when you're practicing self compassion, you need to learn from your missteps instead of pushing yourself. I'm going to say that again. Learn from your missteps instead of pushing yourself. Here's what I mean by that. You do need to push yourself. I'm not going to say you don't, but oftentimes as high performers, sometimes people think that if they make a mistake, just keep pushing, pushing, pushing. But if you're pushing, pushing, pushing, and you're pushing in the wrong direction, then you're just going to end up frustrated or even burn out. You have to sometimes learn from those missteps. You know, I talk about failing forward oftentimes on this podcast. And as we talk about failing forward on the executive perspective, it means that you're going to make mistakes in life and those around you are going to make mistakes in life. But when you do, you want to fail forward, not fall backwards. Treat it like you're walking down a sidewalk or something. And if you're walking down a sidewalk and you trip for some reason, if you fall forward, when you get up, you may have failed. But when you get up, you're most likely several feet away from the trip point that you had. In other words, even though you fell, you fell forward and you still gained ground. Well, in life and personal development and personal agency, when you fell forward, you may have stumbled, but you still should have learned something through that misstep. But if you fall backwards, when you get up now, you lost some ground. You don't want to fall backwards, you want to fall forward. In other words, missteps are inevitable. They're going to happen. I'm not speaking them into your life, but they're inevitable. Missteps will happen. But what you do with the misstep and how you treat the misstep matters significantly. Remember, everyone makes mistakes. Learn how to have self compassion on yourself if you make a mistake or a misstep. But also learn how to grow from that so you can move forward and continue to smash it. And whatever you do, don't stay down. Get back up, champion. Get back up and get back in the game. Now that brings us to our next Leadership Truth Bomb for today. The way you treat yourself after a setback determines how quickly you'll bounce back. Oh, I'm going to say that again because that's a big one. The way you treat yourself after a setback determines how fast you'll bounce back. Man, that's significant right there. If you're hard on yourself and you just berate yourself for having the setback, it'll take you longer to do that again because just like other people, if you berate other people, well, they're not likely to want to try again either because they don't want to get berated again. Well, you don't want to berate yourself. There's nothing healthy about that. People sometimes will often be harder with themselves than they are with others, especially if they're high achievers. But I want you to know to have self compassion on yourself and to understand it's okay to give yourself a break. Now the fourth step that we have for you today is to seek support that builds you up. What I mean by support, well, when we talk about support, that's the support of others. You got to have a strong core around you. You got to have a strong structure around you. But you want people around you who can help to build you up or lift you up in life. Agency doesn't mean going it alone. I just want to share that with you. Agency doesn't mean going it alone. It means choosing who builds you up. In other words, you get to actively choose who is in your circle. Now, there are going to naturally be those who are more edifying to you than others. In other words, they build you up more than others. You're also going to have others that exhort you more than others. What do I mean by that? These are biblical terms. Edification is the act of building up. Exhortation is the act of lifting up. We all need friends or people within our circles who can build us up, edify us, or who can lift us up, exhort us. It's real important. And if you haven't connected with your tribe yet, I'm going to encourage you to keep on looking. However, if you haven't connected with your tribe yet, it could be it's because you're stepping into the wrong rooms. If you're a person who's built around personal development and if you're listening to this podcast, then you're definitely someone that leadership, business strategy and personal development matters to. It could be you just need to start getting into some of the right events or more specifically, some of the right groups, memberships, or specifically masterminds so that you can get around like minded people who you can form those networks with, but oftentimes lifetime friendships with. I will tell you that some of the closest friends I have in this world and they know who they are because they listen to this podcast. Some of my closest and dearest friends I've met in life are people that I met at masterminds or networking events, but specifically masterminds. These are people who had similar interests as I did and we've grown together. And even though we don't always get to see each other, we speak. And when we speak, it's like no time has passed. These are some of my greatest cheerleaders in life and I'm one of their greatest cheerleaders in life because we help to build each other up and we help to lift each other up. Now, the next thing we have here is learn to surround yourself with voices that fuel growth. Oh, that's important right there. You know, words are containers of power in life. And these words, these containers of power can either be used to build up or to tear down. In other words, they can build you up, they can restore you, or they can tear you down and break you down. Learn how to be around people who know how to speak voices, or I should say, words into your life that can grow you. In other words, surround yourself with voices that fuel growth. And sometimes those voices come from personal relationships, but sometimes they come from people you listen to. For example, you may not know me personally, and if you don't, that's okay, but when you hear me say something like that, champion, I believe in you, and I believe you have greatness on the inside of you. You just need to continue to develop it and cultivate it and bring it on the outside so others can see it as well and then go out and see smash it. Those are some of the voices that you need within your life, people who can talk to you like that. And you might say, well, Neil, you don't even know me. I don't. But I know the type of demographic or the type of people who search out a podcast like this that's built around leadership, personal development, and business strategy. I didn't say this in the order I always do, but leadership, business strategy, and personal development. In other words, you're someone that performance matters to. You're a high performer, you're a high achiever, and you're big on personal development and growth. You want to continue to do more, be more, and just help others. And as you do that, that's why this show resonates with you. Now, that brings us to another leadership truth bomb we have for today. You need people who remind you of your power when you forget you have it. Oh, I'm going to say that again. You need to surround yourself with people who can remind you of your power when you forget that you have it. Now, that brings us to our fifth and final step for today. Remember, we've been focusing on personal agency, but also how to build your personal power or personal brand. And our fifth step for today is embrace challenges as fuel for growth. I'm going to say that again. Embrace challenges as fuel for growth. This is so significant. You know, when I'm talking with competitors, specifically athletes and athletes that perform at a very high level, at a professional or even Olympic level, these athletes, or even at the collegiate level, but athletes who are just there out there trying to achieve their best, whether it's team sport or whether if it's a solo sport. These people understand this because they recognize that when they have challenges, they'll turn around and use that for growth to come back even better the next season. You know, if they fell short in the championship or getting to the championship, they'll oftentimes study that film over and over and over again. And it's not a way of beating themselves up. It's about recognizing where they missed it so that they can use it as fuel to get even better. You can do that in a life as well though, and also in business and leadership to help you get better. Even better. Reframe failure as feedback I'm going to say that again. Learn to reframe failure as feedback. The hard stuff has the potential to build the strongest you. I'm going to say that again. The hardest stuff can build the strongest you. You know, when you go through things that are hard, not everything in life is going to be easy. But when you use it to your advantage, it can build you up in the strongest ways. That brings us to our final Leadership Truth Bomb of the day. Every obstacle is a mirror. It reflects your growth and exposes your next lesson. Man, that's powerful. Guys, before I let you go, I want to remind you that I believe in you and I believe you have greatness on the inside of you. You just need to cultivate it and continue to build it up and bring it on the outside so others can see it. And then whatever you're called to do in life, go out and smash it and go all in. Guys, if this podcast is meaning something to you, please consider leaving us a review and a rating so it helps us on podcast land and helps share this so we can get it to others. And don't forget to go by our website@neal Reyes.com where you can connect with all of our teaching resources to help you continue to grow and connect with your best version of you in life. Until next time, thank you and have a blessed day.