The reality of it is we're all going through something.

Someone listening to this show, just got diagnosed.

Someone listening to the show, their mom was just diagnosed with dementia.

Someone just foreclosed on a house, lost the job, just got laid off.

There's a lot of bad things.

There's a lot of happy things.

Someone listening to the show just bought their first home, just

got engaged, just got pregnant.

But we don't take the time to engage with the people around

us to know what's going on.

How does one translate a passion for culture and leadership into

tangible success within an organization?

Today on Seek, Go Create the Leadership Journey, we're joined by Eric Brooker.

A distinguished business leader and a subject matter expert with over

45, 000 hours dedicated to mastering the intricacies of leadership

and organizational structure topics that I love to discuss.

Eric's journey has taken him around the globe where he's honed

his skills in talent development.

Strategic forecasting and motivating teams to achieve exceptional results.

Eric, welcome to seek, go create.

man.

The pressure with that intro.

First off.

Thank you for the intro.

Thank you for having me on the show.

I'm excited about the conversation today.

Yeah, I'm glad you're here too, Eric.

We were just chitchatting.

I'm in the black Hills of South Dakota.

I think we're maybe paralleled each other over in Minnesota.

So we've

got a nice, day that for other parts of the country, people would think

it was spring, but it's summery.

That's right.

Breezy.

Anyway, great to have you here.

We're going to have a great conversation all around leadership and culture

and topics that I love to discuss.

But before we dive in, let's pretend, and this is correct.

we've connected on LinkedIn and some other places, but let's just pretend

maybe that we're sitting on an airplane and I were chit chatting and I say,

Hey, dude, man, what do you do?

What do you respond to people when they ask you that question?

it's funny.

I was at a conference giving a keynote speech about a week ago and I bumped into

The moderator MC or host of the week.

We both live here in Minneapolis while we had never met before.

We were at the airport together on the same flight from Austin to Minneapolis.

And I had someone right next to me as we were boarding the plane, say, your

conversation's really interesting.

What is it that you do?

And I said, I'm a keynote speaker and an author, that doesn't lay

the groundwork for anything that I do, because I could talk about

the world of finance in my keynote.

I could talk about leadership and culture.

I normally stick to keynote speaker and author.

I have a consulting practice as well.

And generally I stick to keynote and author because it lends

itself to a further conversation.

tell me about your book.

What's the book about?

what exactly do you speak on?

And that generally has people open the door to conversations that I think in

many cases they wouldn't normally have.

Interesting.

All right.

So I had a couple of directions I was going to go, but something

just jumped in my mind.

So I'm going to go with it.

Okay.

I.

I say things very similar and at times I do wonder, I'll ask you this way.

I wonder if I'm fooling myself that I'm really wider and have more

breadth and skill than I really do.

And so I'll just pose it as a question.

when people hear someone respond that way, sometimes they go, this guy,

Eric, man, he's got a lot going on.

He thinks quite a bit of himself.

Do you ever pause and go, huh?

I wonder if.

This is all me, or if there might be something narrower than that, does

that ever cross your mind at all?

I've not once thought The first part, just in terms of,

wow, that guy thinks a lot of himself.

This is what I do for work.

You asked what I do for work.

I do think there's an element of narrowing the scope.

I could certainly narrow the scope.

I'm a keynote speaker focused primarily on leadership, culture

and worthiness in the workplace.

Again, I think that lends itself to more conversations.

The thing that I worry about when I get really, Detailed on what it is that I do.

I don't want someone being like, I just wanted to know what the guy did.

so I try and stay broad because some people don't, I listen, my topics

are very personal and some people don't want to go down that path.

And I give them the opportunity to bow out early.

But if they keep asking me questions, I'll go deep.

Have you always, one of the things from just doing a

little bit of background check on you and looking around, the word

communicator just kept coming to

mind.

as a root skill.

and we're going to go into, you, you on your site mentioned

that you've got 45, 000 hours.

So I'm going to ask about that.

You put it there, but what I'd really love to know is what were some of the things

like early on, like playground as a kid

that you said, this is something I'm born with, not.

Not that you developed over time.

Does that make sense?

what are some of like your base level skills that you've got?

the communication piece is an interesting one.

Because there was a point, golly, I was probably 11 years old.

My dad was a volunteer for an organization called the PBAA perimeter.

Let's see if I can get this right.

Perimeter Bicycling Association of America.

This particular race was somewhere in the neighborhood of 110 miles, and

there were a couple thousand riders.

I'm there doing set up at five o'clock in the morning with my dad

and the rest of the volunteers.

And then the gentleman that was hosting the president, if

you will, of the company, the PBAA looked at me, he goes, Mr.

Brooker, I'm 11.

That's my dad.

And he goes, Eric.

And I said, Richard, what do you need?

He said, our DJ, our MC for the day didn't show.

And we need someone to grab the mic.

It's five to 8, 000 people there.

What are you asking a 12 year old to take the mic and moderate the day?

And I think that was probably the first time that I realized.

Hey, it was probably the first time I really encountered what we

all now call imposter syndrome.

But it was probably also the first time where I thought, huh?

this is fun and it's not that hard.

And everybody seems to really enjoy it.

And it wasn't a prideful moment as much as it was a moment where I

thought, I wonder where this goes.

I wonder what this turns into.

And I've enjoyed those opportunities over the years.

I had a really, a couple really great mentors early in my career as well

that shared with me the importance of painting a picture When you

tell a story early in my career, I was in sales or sales leadership

and you're not selling a widget.

You're selling a story.

So you've got to be able to tell that story, paint a picture and create a visual

for Tim, where he says, I need that.

I want that.

So I think additionally, early in my career, trying to learn

how to tell a story in a way that created imagery for the client.

So one thing that's fascinating about that, this

is, this kind of ties in with what we'll call leadership.

I was talking to my son in law, sometime back and he's six foot five.

And I observe and I'm going to, I'll mention something that I'll just pose

it and you can address it and all that.

I observe that there are two things I'm doing air quotes for those listening.

If you're watching, you'll see me do the air quotes.

There are two things that people Can be elevated into a leadership role

that are I don't know, to me, there are skills like you just mentioned.

One of them is I noticed that taller people

many times can be looked upon as some type of a leader.

I don't know cultural.

I don't know exactly what it is about that.

And I also notice that the person that's not afraid of a microphone

can oftentimes be elevated into a air quotes again, leader.

Leadership role now with your experience that you just mentioned and also all your

experience with leaders Is that a is that just like a micro observation of mine?

Have you seen that too?

I mean it's and then that's that leads to sometimes imposter because

You know, some of us, we don't mind getting in front of a microphone.

Some people are a little more fearful and I've observed great leaders that really

don't necessarily like to get up and

speak much.

They're quiet about it.

But what are your thoughts on that?

When I bring that up, it just came to me as you were talking.

it's an interesting thesis.

I'm five, seven, five, eight on a really good day.

So I'd like to think if your thesis is accurate, it's because

I'm not scared of a microphone.

The first time I, was really on stage as a professional.

I was actually sitting in the audience.

This is a funny story.

I was sitting in the audience.

It was a tech conference of sorts.

There were a half dozen people on stage and it was a Q and a for those on stage.

And the moderator asked a question and I looked on stage and I thought, ah,

none of those guys know the answer.

I know the people, none of them know it.

And poor Patrick sitting up there's trying to get the answer.

And I just decided to do it.

I just said it loud enough that Patrick could hear me.

And he pointed me out and said, Eric, thank you so much.

That was great.

Ladies and gentlemen, Eric Brooker.

He's in the business.

He knows the space.

Maybe he should have been on the panel.

And then he asked another question and then looked right at me.

And I just cowered okay, this isn't for me.

This is for the people.

Eventually, he asked me to come on stage because I knew some of the answers

and I think ultimately, certainly in the sales world, oftentimes the

guy who has the mic wins, right?

it's the guy on a panel discussion or the girl for that matter,

the woman who's willing to grab the mic and answer the question.

And I think to your point about the 45, 000 hours, I've put a lot

of time and energy into my craft.

And I think ultimately that's given me some level of confidence to have the

answer in many cases at the right time.

So let's jump into that 45, 000 hours because something it's,

as I read it, I've turned 60 years old recently, and I was actually in

my mind trying to think, I wonder how many hours I've put into.

Whatever blah blah blah, um And the question that I have related to that

is how many of those hours, obviously there's got to be some tracking involved

if you want to share that, you're welcome to, and it could just be going back

and looking at training and experience, how many of those hours would you say

was like extremely intentional that you were focused on learning long?

X, or it was experience that was just part of you going through life and

experiencing, job a, b, c, or d loaded in because I thought through that

myself, but fire away with that answer if you can, because that might lead

to where I go next with the questions.

a really great question.

I listen, if my wife were on this podcast with us, she would laugh because up

until about four years ago, I didn't.

I didn't read books.

There was one book that I read, great book that I read about

selling about 12 years ago.

And I read it because I was told I needed to read it for a sales kickoff

that was coming up where the author would be giving the keynote and

we all needed to read the content.

So I read that book, trudged through it.

And up until about four years ago, it was probably the only, again,

the only book that I've read post.

High school post college.

So I think a lot of it was just the school of hard knocks.

I learned along the way I'd hire someone and then nine months

later, 12 months later, six months later, I'd have to part ways.

And that's one of the worst things I've ever had to do

in my career is fire someone.

So in all the times I've had to do it, I reflect on, what could

I have done better to position that person to find more success.

or maybe to not have hired the person to begin with and not have to go down

this path with them down the road.

Cause listen, when you terminate someone, it impacts you.

It impacts them.

It impacts their ability to pay the bills, the whole nine yards.

So a lot of it.

And that one immediately comes to mind.

I just learned along the way, but in the last four years, I host a podcast.

I've had roughly 150 episodes.

And nearly everybody that I've had on has written a book and I didn't know

any better when I started my podcast.

I just assumed if I'm going to have Ryan leak on my podcast, he's written

a book called chasing failure.

I should probably read the book.

Brilliant book, by the way, absolutely brilliant book.

And so I would give myself a week to read the book in advance of the podcast.

And what I learned is nobody actually reads the book in the

world of podcast deep secret.

Everybody cheats and figures out the four or five questions that

we should ask that individual.

And I just read the book and then I got fascinated with books to the

point where I've now written a book.

But more to the point is I just wanted to devour content.

There's certain ways in which I've chosen to do things over the years.

And as I've read books, Monty Moran, Monty was the.

CEO of Chipotle from the time they were roughly 750 employees to

the time that they were about 75, 000 employees, 12 years in total.

He wrote a book aptly named love is free.

Guac is extra, but man alive.

I learned so much about myself and my ability, my inquisitive

nature from that book.

It validated a lot of what I do and it gave me the why behind it.

I really understood a lot.

Of what Monty's story was from childhood to retirement because

I operate the same way and I'd never thought of it the same way.

So a lot of it was just curiosity.

I'm not one that dissects people the way some do, but I learned a lot

about other people along the way.

Just the same.

this is an interesting confession that you brought that up.

We're 260 episodes in and probably 200 of those have been interviews with people.

Like you said, most people have books and 99.

9 percent of every guest I read their

book.

Sometimes it's a pretty quick scan.

I will admit

Yeah.

I haven't read yours yet.

your book, you are enough.

I'm going, okay, I'm going to have him walk through it.

I sort of read a synopsis.

this is sounds like an excuse.

I had an interview yesterday with someone who had a book that was very scientific

related to dementia and thinking and

all that.

And it really bogged me down.

And, so I have it, but I do want to go deeper into this because I've

always been a fairly voracious reader.

And so, Eric, when someone brings that up, and I've had that a few times,

people that are in roles like we're in, that have said, I wasn't a reader,

I became a reader, back up with me.

did, were there issues in school or were there any learning situation?

why were you not a reader?

Was there something going on there?

It's hard for me to understand that, maybe.

Yeah, I just don't think it was a part of my childhood.

My parents got divorced when I was five.

They both had to work.

If you look, there's a ton of data around, intelligence, maturation,

the evolution of the young adult.

And so much of it is based on, did your parents read to you when you were a kid?

Weird data, but it's there.

Google it, AskChat, GPT, whatever it is, wherever you get your content.

I, my parents may have read to me.

I don't know.

I don't remember, but I know they were both really diligent about

work and providing for the family.

So I think I probably missed out on that.

And it's funny.

My brother is the general counsel.

So he is the lead attorney for the FBI.

My brother has always been a voracious reader.

And I think it's been paid dividends over the years.

I was quite the opposite.

Now, if you look at us in middle school and high school, he studied man alive.

Did he study hours a day to get A's and B's?

And he was a great student.

look, obviously he's the general counsel for the FBI.

I, on the other hand, I didn't have to study.

I was pretty book smart in the sense that I heard it in class.

I'd retain the information and I'd pass the test.

And I got A's and B's and the occasional C, but I was the student in high school.

Ms.

Davis, Mrs.

Davis.

I think Mrs.

Davis called me senior year in high school.

She called me into her classroom after class.

I thought I was busted.

She goes, Mr.

Brooker said, yes, Mrs.

Davis.

She goes, do you intend to do any of the homework your senior year?

I said, not in this class, ma'am.

No.

And she says, can you tell me why?

I said, Mrs.

Davis, that's a great question.

The syllabus says that the homework is worth 5 percent of the grade.

So I'm still going to get an A by not doing any of the homework.

And oh, by the way, there is a extra credit project.

That is an additional 5%.

And I've already read the book.

So I'm just planning to do that project, which will make up for

any homework I choose not to do.

lesson learned, Mrs.

Davis now requires you to do your homework and the percentage

allocation is much, much higher.

But I was always that kid up and through, probably 20, right?

It, I took the easy road.

and what were some of the repercussions of that?

Did you have to adjust that over time or are you still doing that to some extent?

That's a loaded

question right there,

isn't it?

Yeah.

what's interesting is I, up until I was 20, maybe 22, 23, I didn't

know there were no repercussions.

I just got by.

There was a point again, 20 to maybe 23, where I realized one of the most

important skills in life is the ability To learn and the ability to study.

And I didn't really know how to do either.

And so I had to really focus on, I had to learn how to learn.

I had to learn how to study.

If I had a big presentation for me now, I've got a big keynote coming up.

I had to learn how to prepare for that presentation, for that keynote.

I had to learn.

really had a right so I could put a book together.

Those were things I didn't learn when most people learn them.

Cause school was pretty easy.

I didn't do a lot of homework.

I didn't learn how to learn when the rest of us did.

And do you think this is going back to a little bit of

the theory I had earlier about that people have the gift of communication.

Do you think that at times we do have an easier path?

Because of that, I hate to say gift because there are things we can develop,

but listen at 11 years old, when someone says, Hey, could you emcee an event?

You hadn't done a lot of public speaking training up

to that point.

I'm guessing.

Yeah.

so there was something you weren't fearful of it.

You said, sure.

You carried yourself in a certain way.

Something told, I think Richard, you said it

was something told Richard this guy can handle this.

We could turn this event over to him.

Very important thing there.

So I have wondered at times because, and if you can tell, I'm, I've got

a little bit of this in me too.

I was on the playground organizing things, I was, class president,

this and that and kind of stuff.

And I've wondered, I was like, yeah, I wonder if.

I wonder if it was just easier because I could communicate.

And then I'm also wondering if that was fair for some other people that

nose down busted it, that I knew I could, like you did with Mrs.

Davis, I could talk my way out of stuff.

So I guess what I'm digging is what are the pros and cons to having that ability?

So I think of, I think of Lee Wilson in the

sixth grade got an award.

He was the first.

student in the history of my elementary school to have read the entire social

studies book from cover to cover.

He, if memory serves, went to Harvard to get his law degree at about the

same time Mark Zuckerberg was there and he works for a prestigious firm.

Look at my brother.

My brother's another great example, right?

He was an academic and he worked his way.

through success from an academic perspective, right?

He became, you start at the bottom and work your way up and your

resume will speak for itself.

Lee's a great example of that.

I, on the other hand, I didn't finish college.

I started a family very young and I've always been one.

My dad would say I never lacked confidence.

My mom would probably tell you the same thing.

And despite suffering, like we all do from imposter syndrome, I listen, I told

someone at coffee this morning, I said, Sergio, be whatever you want to be.

And he was like, what do you mean?

I could be whatever I want to be.

I don't know.

What's get what's getting in your way.

What's getting in my way from deciding I want to be an a list celebrity and then

just figuring out a path to go do that.

You like me.

I won't speak for you.

Nobody gave me the how to start a podcast.

Nobody gave me the how to keynote.

Nobody gave me the how to write a book.

But when I decided to keynote, I'd had 150 guests on my podcast and I started asking

them because many of them were keynotes.

I called my buddy, Mike, who had a podcast and said, Hey, what do I need to know?

And so I think there's a select group of us, my brother and Lee and some others.

They're going to find wild success.

What I'll call the old fashioned way through, through just doing it.

I, on the other hand, maybe like you, maybe not.

I, on the other hand, I just get these crazy harebrained ideas.

I'm going to write a book.

What, how do you write a book?

I don't know, but I know there's people out there that I can

ask that have done it before.

And I got brilliant advice and I've made countless friends through the process.

So yeah, I think there are differences.

I think in many ways I think of my brother and I think of Lee and others that have

maybe had an easier life in some respects.

And then I think I've had an easier life in other respects.

I think the bottom line is one of our taglines is

there's a journey that we all go on

and it is what it is.

So, One of the things, and this is, I confessed earlier that I had not

read this book, but the title fits in really well with where we're at here.

So this is where I'm going to ask you more about the, You Are

Enough is the name of your book.

And I want to read the subtitle Overcoming Lifelong Doubts of

Worthiness, which is a slight Overcoming Counter to what we were just talking

about, but I think it feeds into it.

So tell me, just tell me, say, Tim, I appreciate you didn't read my book.

Thanks a lot.

tell me about it.

it seemed like there was a lot of rich stories within it from

just the blurb that I read.

give me some more info on that.

I appreciate the honesty.

Thank you for not reading my book.

I'd have to look back at LinkedIn posts and some of the early podcasts.

I don't actually know that when I said publicly, I'm going to write a book.

I'm not even sure I knew what the book was about.

I had a sort of a general sense and you'll read in the book.

Initially, I thought the book was going to be about leadership and culture because.

I've got a podcast and it's all about leadership and culture.

We've had some absolutely epic interviews.

That seemed easy until I was on an airplane one day and had a moment of

clarity watching a TV show that my now 18 year old son had me watching.

And I realized in that moment that the book wasn't about leadership and culture.

The book was a little bit about my journey, a little bit about the journey

of some of the past podcast guests.

But it wasn't their journey to corporate America to become the

CEO of Tom's Shoes or Starbucks or Chick fil A or any of that.

It was the behind the scenes conversation.

And Tim, you know this, but your listeners might not.

The 15 to 30 minutes that you get with a guest before or after the show,

that's really where the magic happens.

And I would love, I would absolutely love to give that away to my listeners.

But it's often confidential.

It's often them opening up and you opening up.

And I found the woundedness that I had experienced as a young adult.

Many of them have experienced either as children or young

adults or with their kids.

So a little backstory.

My wife and I have seven kids.

We've been married for 19, almost 20 years.

Our oldest daughter is from my first marriage.

She is 23 we've not spoken or seen one another for seven years.

And it was on that moment.

On the airplane flying back from Dallas that I realized that's

the story I needed to tell.

And I didn't have a book title.

I didn't have a subtitle.

I just took the advice of many of the people that have been on the podcast.

And I just started writing 15 minutes a day.

And as I started to write the book, I realized, man, there's a lot of

woundedness from again, it's my wife.

Myself, our other six kids, grandparents, aunts, uncles,

cousins, the whole nine yards.

In fact, my oldest doesn't know she has a younger brother that's four.

My kids all know this, but I've got a granddaughter that I don't know.

I don't even know her name.

But as I started writing about this stuff, I started realizing, A, I wasn't alone.

Many of your listeners have estranged relationships that

they choose not to talk about.

I was at a breakfast this morning with Sergio and I

mentioned having a miscarriage.

My wife had a miscarriage in November.

He goes, man, we don't talk about that enough.

25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage and we don't talk.

You're going to interact.

Tim and Eric and whomever's listening is going to interact with someone.

That's recently had a miscarriage and we don't talk about it.

So as I started writing the book, I realized there was childhood.

I don't want to overdramatize it.

There was childhood stuff that I had to trudge through to get to

some of the why, in terms of why I'm experience, why I'm experiencing

this estrangement, the way that I am.

And again, we.

We write a lot about me and my childhood and our oldest daughter.

And again, there's beautiful and yet sad stories of similar experiences, alcohol

addiction, suicide, the near loss of children, the whole nine yards from other

people that, on paper, on LinkedIn, on Facebook seemingly have it all together.

But when push comes to shove, they've got the same muck that the rest of us do.

What's fascinating, you brought up LinkedIn,

so let's talk social media.

There's this,

I don't, there's like this odd thing that goes on where

most people put their best up.

I mean, I look at my feeds and I wonder, you know, putting things up and we'll

talk about vulnerability and some things like that here in just a moment.

But I think the first thing I want to ask is, were you writing this book to

your daughter or was it more therapy for you to, that was, is fascinating to me.

I've written a, I sat down to write a book and it ended up

being a novel of all things, but leadership inspiration kind of thing.

And I'll just mention this Eric, and you can respond.

I realized.

As I was finishing up the process, the writing process was as much for

me to work through some stuff as it was for Joe or Sally Reeder to get it.

I didn't realize it when I started, but it was for me.

But what are your thoughts?

Was it to your daughter for you or what's up?

spoiler alert, the last chapter of the book is a letter that

I write to my daughter in that letter.

In one of the first paragraphs, I say the purpose of this book was to write

our reconciliation into existence.

I felt very called to write the book.

So I don't want to diminish the fact that I'm not sure I knew at the

time, other than I was asked to write this book, I will say, I thought it

would take me eight to 12 months.

It took me two years because it was very therapeutic.

And there were times where I started to write about things.

And I needed to put the book down.

I needed to not write.

Cause I needed some healing.

Listen, I wasn't abused.

I didn't have a bad childhood.

I had, I went through a lot of the crap that everybody else went

through, but now I'm addressing it and I'm writing about it.

And so I had to put it down for a period of time.

I was given a book actually by the gentleman that wrote

the cover quote for my book.

Andy Andrews sent me a book by the name of the heart Mender.

I read the book.

He sent it to our oldest daughter.

And it was a very healing book for me.

I, then again, I talked about chasing failure.

Ryan leak, Andy Andrews, the heart mender is again, an absolutely

brilliant read by an incredible man and a really good author to boot.

I think in the grand scheme of things, what I've settled in on is this idea

that I feel like I experienced a lot of healing and writing the book, but I love

the messages that I get from others.

I love the phone calls, the tech met, text messages, the emails, the

notes on LinkedIn about the impact that it's had on them or that the

reconciliation that they've experienced.

And if in the grand scheme of things, that's where it ends.

Listen, I want to reconcile with my daughter, but let me read

to you a note I got yesterday.

Eric has a gift of capturing the soul through storytelling and highlighting

unlikely, common experiences that resonate and make us uniquely human.

I didn't say a word, but watching him talk, I felt heard.

Family, loved ones, employees, everyone deserves to feel like that.

Thank you for this gift, Eric.

And thank you for the reminder that investing in people is more than monetary.

So I think I wrote the book to go through some healing.

Every author, nearly every author I've spoken to about writing books says most

of the books we write are for ourselves.

So I think there was a lot of healing.

I think I've offered a lot of healing in the words that were on

the pages that were given to me.

And again, yeah, definitely wrote it in hopes of reconciling and I don't know

if she's read it and I don't know if she will, but it'll always be there.

I think the power.

In telling the story, what we've tried to do here sounds like you're doing similar.

we've got this weird tagline that we've got called redefining success.

And the reason I incorporated that, I don't think it's a

great tagline by the way.

I'm monkeying around with it.

is because there is this view of success in our current culture and

society and all of, look good, smell good, drive this, live here, etc.

And I went through all that when we had our companies heading into 08, and

by 13, we were homeless and bankrupt.

mean, all our companies were real estate, just so you know.

And, and it, Took me through a lot, but what's interesting is

the more I share that story,

the more I realize everybody is going through some degree of a journey.

And I think there's times that it is, man, you look at Eric and go, man,

look, everything, man, he is flying to Austin, doing a keynote and this and that

Tim's in his RV here, there, whatever.

But yet there are daily, weekly, monthly things.

I mean, you got a daughter, you got a granddaughter out there

that we're going through and other people are going through.

To me, that's where the word vulnerability comes in, is the

ability to share those type things without it coming across as a victim.

You know, it was like, Oh, poor, pitiful me.

Now I had real estate companies.

That's, that was the business we were in.

But, anyway, I just brought up that word vulnerability.

Any thoughts, comments, because I think it's a powerful word.

People are throwing around a lot

So the keynote I gave in Austin last week was all

about relationship capital and I talk very specifically that

everyone is going through something.

And often we miss the opportunity to acknowledge it.

In large part, cause we're too busy scrolling.

I don't have the time to ask the Starbucks barista how they're doing today.

Cause I got to listen, Tim, I got to check Instagram.

I don't have the capacity to look the target employee in the eyes as

they're checking my groceries out because I got to send that email.

The reality of it is we're all going through something.

Someone listening to this show, just got diagnosed.

Someone listening to the show, their mom was just diagnosed with dementia.

Someone just foreclosed on a house, lost the job, just got laid off.

There's a lot of bad things.

There's a lot of happy things.

Someone listening to the show just bought their first home, just

got engaged, just got pregnant.

But we don't take the time to engage with the people around

us to know what's going on.

And to your point earlier, Social media says Tim's living the life right now.

But when we put our phones down, when we assume positive intent, when we engage

in people, particularly at work in a personal manner, like we're going to

put the TPS report aside, we're going to put our one on one aside this week,

we're going to go grab a cup of coffee.

Note to self, Tim likes.

And iced caramel macchiato.

I'm going to put that in my phone.

Cause Tim, you work for me in this story.

And once a month, when I go to Starbucks, I'm going to bring Tim that same drink.

And it's not because I have an agenda.

It's because now I know that's what Tim drinks and I'm at Starbucks.

I haven't gotten Tim a drink in a month.

And Tim, you feel like you've won the lottery because once a month, I'm not

only bringing you a drink, I'm bringing you the drink that I know you like.

And so it's a matter of investing in people and again,

assuming positive intent.

For those of you that are gluten free, this will resonate.

You order a gluten free bun with your burger and the burger shows

up and that's a gluten filled bun.

And we get mad and it's what the hell were they thinking?

How hard is Tim?

How hard is it to bring me a gluten free bun?

I asked for a gluten free bun.

they weren't like sitting at the register, punching in your order,

thinking, Tim, we're going to order you a double gluten bun and we're going

to sprinkle some gluten powder on it.

They don't mean anything by it.

It just happened.

And for all you know, from the time that they took your order to the time they

placed your order, that text message may have come in and destroyed their day.

They want to go home.

They want to be with their family.

But they can't because the 16 an hour they make is what's going to

pay for the gas to get home or pay for the funeral or pay for surgery.

We don't think about any of this stuff.

The guy that just cut us off.

He didn't probably see us.

And yet here we are flipping them off saying nasty things with

our six year old in the back.

We've all done this stuff.

Relationship capital is critical.

And I had someone the other day tell me, We don't need this.

To build relationship capital with the guy at target.

I don't have time for that.

And I actually, Tim, I didn't know how to respond.

First of all, it's not a guy at target.

It's a woman.

Her name's Roberta.

We built a beautiful relationship.

She had a dog named Elmer.

She had to put Elmer down, but.

So I hugged the lady at target once a month and I get an update

on what's going on in her life.

Sergio, mind you, I met two weeks ago after having an absolutely incredible

experience at a furniture store.

He's the manager at a furniture store.

I don't need to take time to get to know the manager at a furniture store.

You know what?

He's aspiring to write a book and he's a keynote speaker.

Everybody on this planet.

Is of value and they all deserve our attention because when you least expect

it, someone is going to have experienced the same thing that you're going through

and that woman at Target or Sergio, for that matter, or the barista at

Starbucks, they may have more insight.

Into the suffering you're about to experience.

They may have insight into the celebration.

Hey, I just closed on my first house.

Let me tell you.

Okay.

So the one thing I least expected about getting a new house was X.

Holy crap.

I had no idea that was coming.

No, this is where you get all of a sudden you now have some

commonality with that person

Eric, do you think.

Yeah.

does your faith feed that?

I was about to say mindset, but it's really a heart issue to me if you ask me.

To me, it's, and we see it very, it's very common in our culture that we

get caught up in things and we forget.

But I, I'm similar.

Listen, one of the reasons I do this is so I could get Eric.

Uninterrupted for an hour and we, you and I can have a conversation.

we've interacted some on LinkedIn, but that doesn't count in my book.

I learned a little bit about you, but I don't see it.

You don't see me.

You probably see some clips and stuff,

but we've got an hour.

My, I can't get on my phone because it's my camera right here.

I've used my iPhone as my camera.

So it's not like I could sit here when Eric's, talking to somebody

to scroll, I can't do that.

I get Eric.

And I think we've got so much coming at us.

and I attempt as a somewhat of faith to say, okay, Eric is created.

He is created.

He is, and I need to treat him as if he is my brother, my sister, whatever.

So I'm just curious.

and he, Thing related to faith that feeds into what you just

said about the value of people.

Oh, probably.

I don't know that I've ever thought of it.

I think, again, when I read that book, Love is Free, Guac is Extra,

I had this epiphany of oh, that, Monty, you and I are so similar.

I think I've always had a curiosity about people.

I, I had, my wife and I, it's funny, I haven't thought of this in a while, and I

just thought of it a couple of weeks ago.

Thanksgiving Day.

I don't know.

Five years ago, my wife and I go to the Mall of America with the kids to go to

the movies and the movies over and we must have been the last people in the theater.

We walk out and we're like, we're going to cut through the mall

and we're going to get to our car on the other side of the mall.

the malls.

Closed it's Thanksgiving.

It's 11 o'clock at night and we're walking through one of the largest malls

in the country and it's empty and who's there, but like a 70 year old guy pushing

furniture back in, they probably clean the floors once a month or whatever.

And he's pushing all the furniture back.

And I thought, I wonder what this guy's life has been.

Is this the career that he chose?

Has he always been the janitorial guy or was he a businessman?

Like my dad, where in retirement you go get an hourly job

to keep yourself occupied.

Does he enjoy doing this?

And then I realized, why don't I just ask Hey man, how long have you been doing

this, but why not have the conversation?

Everybody.

Adds value.

Everybody adds insight.

You know what I learned?

If 25 percent of people that get pregnant have miscarriages, if

25 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage, that means someone at

Starbucks has experienced a miscarriage.

Someone in a C level role that makes tens of millions of dollars

a year has had that experience.

And that brings us together in a common thread.

And there's an experience that I can garner from them or

that they can garner from me.

And it's really important, particularly in those moments of weakness,

the estranged relationships, the miscarriages, the suicides, the, alcohol.

We lost my sister in law to alcohol addiction three and a half years ago.

the amount of people that have reached out to me to share that they've lost a

loved one or that they are an alcoholic and don't know where to start there.

I was as my business partner would say, I was given a gift I didn't

want and now I need to give it away.

And just sharing those things, I think are powerful.

One of the things that I know you get to do, and I want to tap in on some

of this wisdom is you get to interact with a number of leaders, different

organizations, things like that.

And one of the things that I like to glean from that type wisdom is

What are some trends you're seeing?

What are some things you're observing?

You've got a couple years under your belt, not as many as I do, but a few.

And we're here recording this in the summer of 2024 to put a timestamp on it.

there's a lot of stuff going on.

We don't necessarily have to go into all the political and blah,

blah, blah, all that kind of stuff, a lot of stuff happening.

But what are you observing?

What are some things you're seeing, both positive or negative, that

you're just seeing out there as you step in front of groups and do your

keynotes, or you're working one on one, or working with groups and leaders?

Just, what can you share?

I would say the first and maybe the most prominent observation is

the businesses that are thriving right now are more focused on their people

than they are their product hands down.

I'm going to give you a link.

I'm going to ask that you put that link in the show notes.

It is a, an Instagram link of all things.

let me see if I can find it real quick while we're talking.

But again, it's that idea that it's, People first, we need to

focus on the people in front of us.

I found this quote yesterday by watching, the CEO or the

founder of the Savannah bananas.

And it was that just this idea, here you go, love your customers more than you

love your product and love your employees more than you love your customers.

It's visible.

It's visible from all aspects of the business when a company cares

of their people over their profits.

I have a keynote friend of mine who has told this story before, but the

Ritz Carlton gives their people from the GM to the janitor the autonomy to

make decisions up to 1000 an incident.

So if you're walking the hallways of the Ritz Carlton and the janitor

asks how your stay is, and you go,

angry, horrible, the stay's awful, the heat wasn't warm enough, the

air conditioning wasn't, whatever.

He can comp your night.

The janitor can comp your night at the hotel.

Up to a thousand dollars.

So I think the people at the top that care most.

For their employees first are finding a lot of success leaders

that give their people the autonomy.

there's a Gallup poll out there that basically would attribute a

longer tenure as an employee, harder workers, but I'm going to say the

people that invest in their people.

And I'm not talking about, Hey, Tim, here's a new Mac book pro,

or here are the tools you need to be successful in the workplace.

It's the example I gave earlier.

Hey, Tim, Here's that caramel Frappuccino or whatever it was,

caramel macchiato that I know you like.

And hey, in lieu of our one on one tomorrow, why don't

we just go out to lunch?

Or hey, I know you're moving into a new home.

First of all, Tim, congratulations.

I think you said you closed Friday morning.

I was just thinking, why don't you take the afternoon off and go move in?

Or you mentioned wanting to paint that new bedroom so you could move

your son into the room right away.

Here's a 250 Home Depot gift card.

I write in my book, the little thing, the saying is the little things mean a lot.

The little things don't mean a lot.

The little things mean everything.

250 or a 50 gift card or whatever it is that you choose to give

someone, or a 7 drink at Starbucks that I bring to him once a month.

First of all, it's not a lot of money to most of us.

Number one.

Number two.

It means the world to Tim.

Tim, if you work for me and I bring you coffee, 7 a month, every

month, I can almost assure you that you're going to stay longer.

Then I give you a 50 gift card to go celebrate the purchase of a new home.

Or I send you a condolence card when you have a miscarriage or, I

got Uber Eats gift cards coming out of my ear when we lost my sister in

law and it was the strangest thing.

My buddy, Tim.

Tim had no reason to look into where the funeral was or any of that.

And I realized that as the brother in law, I had the obligation at the funeral

to figure out who sent all these flowers.

My buddy, Tim figured out when and where the funeral was and sent flowers.

Those little things from an employer mean everything.

And again, to answer your question, the companies that are thriving.

are focused very heavily on caring well for their people.

So one of the things that I observe, I'll just mention this, you can

respond, is that what people do is they pile in They pile too much stuff in.

We got too much stuff in, and one of the things you mentioned earlier,

I think, is one of the things that creeps in, and that's just scrolling.

Scrolling is actually not a productive activity, but I think people think it is.

I think it's just filling in dead time.

And in their minds, a lot of people will think that they don't have

time for what you just mentioned.

I don't agree with that.

I believe what you talked about, you mentioned relationship capital.

That is a great investment with an ROI that is to me almost untrackable.

There's so

much ROI with that.

It's not what do you think?

It's 10%.

Are you going to get something back for doing that?

No, it's not even, you're thinking about it.

You're just investing in.

Other people, but what are some other things that you could think

of that keep people from doing this?

Because it's one thing to say it, but yet we know that a lot of people

in culture, when I'm working with a leader and owner of a corporation,

one of the things I try to tell them to do is to create some white space.

Because when you're scheduled 110 percent or what you perceive as 110%,

you, but you convince yourself, you don't have time to think about what

type coffee Tim is interested in.

So any other barriers that you see that we might get addressed here?

We've got a couple of minutes left, but, something that

keeps people from doing what.

I think they would all say, yeah, that'd be great.

I had it on my desk.

One of the kids pro.

Oh, it's right here.

Hold on.

Instagram.

So yes, I was scrolling when I found it, but Instagram found this great

little timer for me and I set it in 10, 15, 20 minute increments.

And then I'll do something different.

I'll move on to something.

I think we tell ourselves, we don't have the time.

For those that are telling themselves, myself included at times, I don't

have the time to throw the ball with my son, to, push my daughter on

the slide or the swing or whatever, or invest in the people around me.

We don't make the time.

The reality of it is, first of all, I'm a Calendly link guy.

You can schedule time with me on my Calendly link.

I know a lot of people are doing that.

I've got time blocked off to do things that are what I call critical.

if I connect with you, Tim, I hope I did this for you.

I send a 15 to 20 second video.

On LinkedIn, just saying, Hey, Tim, thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn.

Those videos seem to mean the world to people.

A 15 second video takes me 30 seconds.

I go to the website, I hit record, and then I hit send.

if we don't have 30 seconds in our day, we're doing a lot wrong.

I write thank you cards, but again, I carve out time to do that.

If you don't have time.

to get someone a cup of coffee.

Uber eats a cup of coffee once a month to someone.

You can do that from someone that doesn't work in your office anyway, right?

You've got staff that's remote.

The other thing that I would challenge, and I'm going to go back to the

phone, set up screen time, set up screen time and start recording

how much screen time you need.

You're using each week, Sunday mornings, you wake up, you get that alarm.

You feel really guilty.

How did I spend eight hours a day on my phone?

But each and every week, my challenge to myself, I've not shared this before.

My challenge to myself, I don't care if it's a second or a minute or 20

minutes, I want to lower my weekly screen time each and every week, because

to your point, yeah, scrolling is fun and it's mindless, but it takes away.

My ability and your ability and my kids ability to wonder and to imagine

because we don't have to think when we're scrolling, but this idea, the

most brilliant ideas come to me in moments of silence when I'm at church

and prayer, or when I'm in bed and just quietly praying by myself, all of a

sudden it's here's a brilliant idea.

And I may or may not do something with it.

I may share that idea with somebody else, but I don't get those moments.

We don't get those moments when we're scrolling.

So I think setting time aside to do those things, put it on your calendar,

make it a non negotiable when you put an 11 o'clock every week, I'm

going to call someone on my team.

And Tim says, Hey, what are you doing at 11 o'clock on Mondays?

I got a meeting.

I can meet at 1130.

It's a non negotiable.

You don't adjust.

Because every Monday at 11, I am busy.

I can't meet at 11, but Eric, it's my biggest client.

Someone is screaming at their iPhone right now.

Eric, come on.

What if it's your biggest client?

It's a non negotiable.

Listen, as a sales guy for 25 years, I somehow become oddly more

valuable when my biggest client knows they're one of my biggest clients

and I'm not able to meet with them.

Yes, I

uh, you know, it's fascinating as you mentioned that I

was thinking back to a year last year in October, I cut out my consumption of, I

call it news, but I don't even know if we know what news is in today's world.

And, And I also was going to cut out alcohol for the month of October.

I was about to turn 60 in November.

And I've shared this a few times here, but Eric, I realized I

wasn't addicted to alcohol.

I can turn that on or off.

I just like a sip of something every once in a while, a little

whiskey, a little wine, whatever.

But I was addicted.

To information and I felt as if I needed it.

I needed to consume it.

And so I've eliminated that and it frees up massive amounts of time

and it's made me much more creative.

There's just so many things that have gone on there.

There's another thing I just did recently.

We're in the midst of baseball season and I'm not the sports junkie that I once was.

There's some people that are going to get ticked when I say this.

So I'll just go ahead and mention it just to go ahead and do that.

I realized that at least once a day, sometimes twice, I was jumping

on the ESPN app just to check to see, I'm originally from Atlanta,

how the Atlanta Braves were doing.

I don't care what your team is.

It doesn't matter.

They play 162 dang games.

And if you're doing that.

Five, 10 minutes a day.

How much time is that?

So I told myself that I could only check ESPN on the first of every month.

So I've eliminated all of that and

love it and you're not missing anything.

I haven't missed anything.

I'm not going to watch the games because who's got four hours or three hours to

watch, some people may, they're going, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that.

And I'm going, nah, I don't have that time.

but time, our most valuable resource.

Another thing that I do is I don't.

I don't really schedule things on Monday and Friday,

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays when I can press everything that's

more creative and stuff like that.

I got, I'm watching our time here and we're pressed, but.

You have so many messages, your, I read through and I saw all that you

share when you do your keynotes.

Obviously you've got a powerful message in your book, every episode

on your podcast, could be, but.

If there's one thing that's welling up inside of you right now, or that you want

to be known for something like that, more than others, a topic, what would that be?

if I said, Eric, man, you got one topic to speak on, what would that be?

what would be like the main deal?

I think in many cases, a lot of us walk around like zombies.

We suffer from imposter syndrome.

We don't think we are enough.

We're going through all this stuff and many of us feel like we're doing it alone.

So the ultimate message is the title of the book that you are enough.

This idea that regardless of your suffering, regardless of your financial

situation, regardless of your marital status, regardless of the job, whatever.

That you are enough.

You were uniquely and wonderfully made.

And that in and of itself makes you enough.

it's easy to, it's very easy for us to covet what others have, but we're

right where we're supposed to be.

And I will tell you as someone that has now been estranged for seven years,

for my oldest found out not that long ago that I've got a granddaughter.

There was a lot of suffering.

There was a lot of times where I didn't feel like I was enough.

And I will not say that I am healed.

I won't say that, I'm in a good spot, but I will say I'm in a better spot.

And I know that God gave us all free will.

This is a decision that she's chose to make.

I can't impact that decision.

Neither can you.

And just as you are enough.

I love that.

And to me, the word that came to mind is, it sounds as if coping,

you're not celebrating or anything like that, but you

are coping and dealing with it.

And I think that's the healing when we have soul damages that,

that we need to go through.

Eric, where can people Find you find your book, go ahead

and give all your info here.

All of that will be included down in the notes.

And if you ever, if you get that other link, I think, shoot it over to us.

We'll make sure we include stuff down in the, in the notes.

But, I got one more question for you, but where can we get all your stuff?

I do a lot on LinkedIn.

I don't spend a ton of time on social media, but I do.

Put stuff out there and LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, just at

Eric Brooker, ericbrooker.

com is probably the easiest place to find everything that I do.

You can schedule time with me.

I'm happy to take your call via zoom.

And in terms of buying the book, Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

com, anywhere you buy books.

In fact, you can get my book on your, on my website for that matter.

Very good, Eric.

I appreciate that.

We are seek.

Go create three words that we kind of use to title what we're doing.

I'm going to allow you to pick one of those that just

means more to you right now.

And why?

And that's my final question.

Seek, go or create.

Go strikes me as such an action word.

And I think the thing that holds many of us back, myself included is the, we talked

about it before the show, the willingness to do and the willingness to do with

the understanding That we might fail the barrier to entry to whatever you're

trying to do is much lower than you think.

I can assure you that it's much lower.

The barrier is effort.

So just go do it.

And listen, it might not be perfect, but there's an opportunity to do it again.

Just go, just get

Excellent.

you.

And I.

I just want to give honor to that.

You are enough message.

I am in agreement with that.

And if you have not gotten that book, get the book.

You are enough.

If you're listening in, we'll include links down below and check

everything that Eric has going on.

you could check out his podcast and everything.

In fact, I recommend you jumping over it because I I think it's a great compliment

to what we talk about here based on what I've listened to and seen over there.

So go check all of that out.

We're SeekGoCreate here.

We've got new episodes every Monday.

If you love what we're doing, why don't you support us?

You can do that financially.

Go to SeekGoCreate.

com forward slash support.

You could give a buck, you could give a lot more than that.

We would welcome it.

It just helps us continue getting the word out.

With what we are doing.

Thanks for listening in.

We are Seek, Go, Create.

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.