Episode 150 – Unstoppable Trilingual Presentation Coach and International Speaker with Brian Drury
Actually, he is so much more as you will hear in our episode. Brian started life in New Jersey. Over his lifetime he has traveled quite a lot, worked successfully in the Supply Chain industry and, for the past seven years, he has been an incredibly sought-after business coach and entrepreneur now living in Orange County California.
Brian offers us so many life lessons in our 70 minutes together that it is hard to know where to begin. Let me just say that I believe if you listen to Brian and truly think about the suggestions, he gives us you will be better for it.
Brian also is a successful author and a podcaster. He is quite engaging, and I am sure you will love what he has to say. We already have begun plans for a second episode. At the end of August, he will be holding an event you can read more about in these notes.
About the Guest:
Brian Drury is a trilingual (English, Spanish, Portuguese) international speaker and presentation coach who helps his clients to master the skills of public speaking and effective communication to improve their: speeches, interviewing, networking, presentations, sales pitches, and more!
Working with executives, entrepreneurs, and organizations around the world, Brian provides proven frameworks and strategies that help his clients know they can confidently present in any scenario, even on short notice.
One of Brian’s speeches went viral with over 20 million views on Facebook alone.
Additionally, he is a best-selling author, podcaster, content creator, and former Fortune 300 internal consultant.
He offers 1-on-1 coaching, group coaching, workshops and keynote speeches for entrepreneurs, executives, and working professionals alike.
Ways to connect with Brian:
Craft Your Keynote event, https://thebriandrury.com/craft-your-keynote/
Website: https://thebriandrury.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briancdrury/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebriandrury/
Free Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/powerfulpublicspeaker
Book Link: Amazon link to The First Step by Brian Drury
About the Host:
Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.
Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.
https://michaelhingson.com
https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/
https://twitter.com/mhingson
https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/
accessiBe Links
https://accessibe.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/
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Transcription Notes
Michael Hingson ** 00:00
Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I’m Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that’s a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we’re happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
Michael Hingson ** 01:20
Well, Hi, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We’re recording this near the end of July and here in Victorville is only going to be 105 today. So what what do you do with all that lovely weather. And our guest Brian Drury lives in Orange County and he tells me that they’ve been getting temperatures in the 80s and maybe up to about 90 And that’s what I kind of remember as a student at UC Irvine. So we have all this wonderful weather and all that. But Brian’s got a great story to tell he’s a trilingual person. He’s got a few really interesting stories. I think that I’m really looking forward to hearing about especially one regarding a Facebook presentation that had over what 20,000 or 20 million people. I’m jealous, but anyway, Brian, welcome. Welcome to unstoppable mindset.
Brian Drury ** 02:11
Thanks for having me, Michael. I’m stoked to be here.
Michael Hingson ** 02:13
This will be a lot of fun, and we’re really looking forward to it. Well, why don’t we start like I usually like to do with people. Why don’t you tell me a little about the earlier Brian growing up and all that stuff? Where and anything else that you want to divulge secrets included?
Brian Drury ** 02:27
Yeah, we’ll start with my deepest, darkest secrets. Okay. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely can dive in. So I can give you just kind of a quick summary of how I got to Southern California. And we can dive in on whatever area you think is most interesting or would be best for your audience. So born and raised in New Jersey, so in northern New Jersey, and, and we have a shared experience where you’re like, one of the things that you’re most known for is escaping tower one on 911. My dad was actually supposed to be in one of the towers on 911. He worked in the city for decades. And so you know, living in North Jersey at that time, it had a huge impact. And so hearing your story, listening to your speeches, I was really, I was like, Oh my God, because my dad left late that day, and he never left late for work. So it was just one of those things where that day this crazy thing happens. So that being said, grew up in New Jersey, and went to school at Penn State. So I am a huge college football fan and a diehard Penn State fan. In our good years and bad years, I studied supply chain and I minored in Spanish. And during that time I studied abroad. And that was where I became fluent in Spanish. And so I graduated, got my first job moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, so a very small town in Wisconsin, yes, and was working in supply chain. And I was working in international export, spent a few years there. And in that time got into the world of personal development, and ultimately in 2015 is when I launched my first business. And that was when I then transitioned to North Carolina. I was working in an internal consulting job I traveled 50% Plus globally, went to 13 Different countries over three and a half years and felt like my home was more of a hotel with a lot of my stuff. And so during that time I launched a podcast, I published a book, started my first business called overcoming graduation, which was all about teaching young adults everything I wished I’d known about life. Yeah. Where I did the podcast, that’s where I you know, launched the book. And then that business evolved over the years into coaching and ultimately, habit change coaching, because I thought that was the end all be all where I said if we can help people set the habits that they need and set goals effectively, we can do that. And then over the years ultimately, so went to North Carolina, I lived down in Brazil for a while back to North Carolina came out to California. And since then, back in 2018, as you alluded to, I had a speech that went viral. It’s been seen 20 million times on Facebook. And you know, there’s several As another million plus on the other platforms. And when that happened, I had been studying under one of my greatest heroes and mentors, Sean Stephenson. And once that speech went viral, people said, How did you do that. And that ultimately was kind of the impetus for what I do today. And just last year, in 2020, to April of 22, I left my corporate job after seven and a half years building my own business. And I have been full time ever since. So now I’m a full time professional speaker, and then Speaker trainer. And so I work with individuals, groups, organizations, and I help them improve the way they communicate. So I’ll do trainings on everything from an elevator pitch, sales pitches, how to more effectively create rapport, and then how to present public speaking storytelling and the whole work. So that’s kind of the summary of how I went from, you know, a little red haired boy in New Jersey to the grown up red haired man I am today.
Michael Hingson ** 05:56
So you learned Portuguese along the way was that down in Brazil? So I
Brian Drury ** 06:00
actually taught myself while I was living in Wisconsin, when I saw when I studied abroad in Spain, I studied abroad in Granada, Spain, my junior year of college. And I had been studying Spanish all throughout school. And I think like so many people, the way it’s taught in school didn’t resonate with me, I was not just the rote memorization repetition guy, I’m very kinesthetic, I’m very practical, I like to be hands on. And much like you’ve talked about and in the content of yours that I listened to about where the education system doesn’t adjust or adapt to teach us essentially, like one way and it’s Take it or leave it. So when I got into the world of personal development, I was living in a very, very small town in Wisconsin, there was, as you can imagine, not much going on. And I took on this challenge, where I wanted to get a job at this very progressive company called Mind Valley, which you actually interviewed visions wife very recently, which I thought was very funny. And so mine valleys how I initially got introduced to Sean Stephenson, I have this huge affinity for them. I’ve watched so many Awesomeness Fest speeches. And I said, I want to apply there. And they required a video resume. So I said, Okay, what could I do to stand out because I’m a year and a half out of college. And this company is so cool and innovative, that they’re pulling people from Google and Apple and the biggest companies in the world. So I said, I can’t compete off what I’ve done. But I can compete by showing them what I’m capable of, or what I will do. So I recorded a video resume for them, where I said, I’m going to take on, I put up these whiteboards behind us, and I’m going to take on these next I think it was 30 challenges. Over the course of the next seven months. They’re all personal development in all different areas. And one of them was write and publish my book one was right with the group or UPS I run for events with my team triumph, it was tried 20 new recipes, and one of them was speak 100 hours of Portuguese. And essentially what I did is I said, Okay, I learned Spanish, I don’t like the way they taught it. And then also I realized you don’t need to learn everything about a language to be conversationally fluent, or business fluent. So let me start to study. And I didn’t really do this as directly, I started to study meta learning, because I wanted to learn more about how do I learn? How do people learn? And how can I retain more faster and you know, learn subjects faster, because if I build this skill of learning, I can apply it to anywhere of life, new jobs, new careers, new pursuits. And so ultimately, I did that for the course, over the course of seven months, I practiced, on average, I would say, like three times a week for 30 minutes. And ultimately, over the course seven months, got up over 100 hours of practice, and went from speaking no Portuguese at all, to having and to our conversations in Portuguese. And in the same way, you know, people said, Well, why did you do it? Was it business related? Was it this or that, and like so many things in life, it really wasn’t about the, like, it wasn’t business. It wasn’t this, it was something in my heart, like an intuitive feeling that just said, go for it. And so many of my mentors have said that feeling that intuition or God’s voice, like whatever word that a person puts to it, we ignore that to our detriment. And because my mentor, you say that your intuition can’t give you all the answers because it operates off faith. So just that feeling that trust, like, we’ve got to go for this, I don’t know why. So I study Portuguese, teach myself Portuguese, then I start integrating it because I worked in international export. And then about two years later, my manager calls me and new job down in North Carolina calls me into his office and says, Hey, Brian, we’ve got an extended project and it’s down in Brazil. Would you be interested? You’re the only guy in the team who speaks Portuguese and Spanish. And so there’s no way I could have known that opportunity was coming. And that’s why I think so often when because I’ll talk to students a lot. They’ll say what skills should I develop to get the job? I’m like, don’t just develop skills to get the job you think you want? Because if you’re cultivating a skill set that’s solely about being hireable and has nothing to do with what you’re We’re interested in what you really care about, you may get really good at doing things you don’t like and make a lot of money doing things you don’t like, and ultimately reach a point where you’re like, What am I doing with my life? So that’s how Portuguese came about.
Michael Hingson ** 10:11
So how different is Portuguese from Spanish?
Brian Drury ** 10:14
The so same roots. And this was very, it was curious. Yeah. So learning Spanish gave me a foundation where I was able to understand more about like, what? So for example, in Spanish, there’s 14 Different conjugations for every verb, but I would be in class in high school, and they would say, we’re going to learn the pollute perfect subjunctive tense. You’re never going to use this, but we’re going to learn it. And I was like, Well, why are we learning this, like, we’re not trying to be translators, we’re not trying to be at full experts, we want to speak and be able to use it in business and dating in life. So I realized, okay, the three tenses I use the most are past, present and imperfect. And then I started to go to high volume, high usage words hot, like common expression. So I had the experience of learning language in a way that didn’t really resonate. But the study abroad showed me that the quicker you can get to speaking and applying for day to day, the better, because you’re gonna make mistakes. So often people avoid speaking because they don’t want to sound stupid, they don’t want to say something wrong. And they don’t realize that most people are going to make an effort to understand they’re going to try and communicate, and you learn far better by doing. And I always use the example of like shooting a basketball, if I was to read every book, and, you know, watch every video on it, versus just go out and try and shoot it, I’m gonna have two very different experiences. So they come from the same route. And I didn’t even know until I started studying language, I thought English was a Latin based language. They’re like, Oh, no, it’s Germanic, I was really. So Spanish and Portuguese come from the same route. And what you’ll find is written, it appears very similar. So a lot of words will have like two s’s in Portuguese, where they have one, or it’ll be slightly different. But the pronunciation is extremely different. And so that’s where you can hear the two languages. And some people have got like, oh, I can kind of pick stuff up and other people be like, I didn’t get it at all. But like any language, there’s the false positives, where you like, Oh, I know what that means. And it’s a totally different context. And there’s some very hilarious mistakes I’ve made over the years in trying to say one thing and saying something completely different.
Michael Hingson ** 12:21
But you try, which is the point. It’s all about trying. And if it if it doesn’t work, then you figure out or you ask, Well, what should I have said, Right? Right. You know, and the whole idea of going for it is is so important. And but we’re, we’re so discouraged from that in school and everything. And you talked earlier about the whole issue of people in college, and what do I really need to learn? And what skills should I learn? We don’t, as much as people say, Well College prepares you for later in life only in some ways, does it do that in a lot of ways it doesn’t. And it should do a better job than it does. But we’ve allowed ourselves to dumb down the whole process a lot. And we don’t get into the intellectual or emotional things that we need to truly buy into in order to be more successful.
Brian Drury ** 13:14
Right. And I was literally just reading about that last night. I love Pixar. So I’m a huge Disney and Pixar fan. And I’m reading a book by one of the like, Lee, I think dead cat, cat, cat, something. I’m blanking on his last name. But essentially he talked about how in school, we’re taught to look for the right answer. There’s there is a right and a wrong answer. And we’ve tested things that do that. And we get this whole thing in our head that trying and failing is bad, because you get the bad grade and you’re doing wrong, you want to have opportunities, whereas he talks about trying and experimenting is essential to any growth process. And the people that I work to emulate as much as possible and that I really admire the ones that have a constant like beginner there, they embrace the beginner’s mindset. Like whether it was when I learned how to do Latin dance like salsa and Bachata or speak another language or write computer code or launch my first web site, whatever the thing was, you have to get comfortable with that uncomfortable feeling of I don’t know I’m messing up because what I find is my dad says a great thing about this. He says one of the greatest compliments you can give is that a person is eternally curious. And the people who are eternally curious and they embrace that beginner’s mindset, or the people who cultivate the ability of quickly acquiring new skills, which will be essential in any path or field. And when I’ve gone back, like last time I spoke at Penn State, the teachers were telling me one of the big challenges they face is getting students to actually do and apply to work. And in fact, in my high school, I gave a speech there. They said, a lot of teachers now aren’t even giving homework because they know students would just go home and at that time, just Google it and copy paste. Now with Introduction of AI, that’s going to happen even more. So it takes in less. It’s like built into the curriculum where the teacher has to craft a way to help students learn to think critically and embrace challenge, then people will default to usually what’s easiest and what’s most accessible. So now more than ever, with the introduction of AI, I think what you’re describing is so critical. Because the people I know that are most successful are lino fail fast fail forward, and then people go, Oh, my God, you were an overnight success. Oh, my God, you had like, you sold $100,000 worth of blank in one day, but they don’t see that 10 years of experimentation and iteration it took to get there.
Michael Hingson ** 15:39
Well, they don’t. And the the other part of it is that we’re, again, we’re so discouraged from really being curious and exploring in so many ways. And so the result of that is that we don’t look at end in the future with the whole advent of AI, it becomes worse. And so the real question is, How are teachers going to teach students? Or how are they going to evaluate students, and I still say, although it takes time, what I think teachers are going to have to do is to start to demand that students make oral presentations about whatever it is that they’re supposed to be discussing, or the homework they’re supposed to have, they have to defend it themselves. And the only way to do that is to know you can’t go back and look at things and just read from some printout that came from Ai, you have to know it.
Brian Drury ** 16:31
All right. And that’s where I’m very fortunate because this thing, that’s the skill set that I’ve worked to craft and build of public speaking, presenting storytelling, I’m very fortunate because there’s a lot of people, let’s say, in copywriting, for example, that have feel very threatened. You know, in the screenwriters guild, you hear these strikes, where writers feel extremely threatened, because there are people that go well, I can just type it into AI and have it in five seconds. But you take out the human element, the creativity, you absolutely experience. Yeah. And so for me, being in public speaking, I can still go, Hey, guys, you can have the best website, the best presentation, the best content ever, and have it all automated on AI. But if you’re selling a product, or an idea or a program, you need to be able to present it and be the face of it. So when you stand up in front of a room, if you’re the world expert, and you can’t clearly and concisely articulate what you do your ad a disservice. So, you know, in the long term with deep fake technology, and all that stuff, I know there’s things that will become more challenging, but the idea of genuinely being able to connect with human beings in a public forum, and you know this because you’ve spoken all over the world, creating that not just information exchange, but as my mentor Sean, Steven said, Sean Stephenson said, the emotional exchange, lighting people up and getting them to see things different and behave different. It’s huge. And like you’ve talked about, I heard in one of your podcasts talking about accessibility, it’s not just modifying learning for different learners, it’s making it also accessible to people with all different types of needs. And with technology, we have more ability than ever to do it. But we need teachers schools, we need people to be willing to take that extra step. And I loved how you said in one of your you were like you when people go, Oh, are you visually impaired, and you’re like, well, you’re light dependent. And it’s kind of the funny thing where there’s situations where everyone has strengths, and everyone has different abilities, but we need to cultivate and create opportunities, not just teach or share it one way, to me that’s real expertise is when a teacher can modify the way that they deliver a message like that’s a real expert, they can reach the person, no matter their learning style, or you know, their needs.
Michael Hingson ** 18:39
And also the whole idea. And I’ve said a podcast before, the whole idea where people talk about visually impaired is a horrible thing. And it continues to promote the worst. In people about blindness. I don’t mind blind and low vision, it makes a lot more sense. Like if you talk to a person who has hearing issues, and you call them hearing impaired, they’re liable to deck you because they understand why hearing impaired is bad because this whole idea of being impaired and equating it to how much a person hears is really so wrong. And it’s the same with visually impaired but the experts. And so many people when it comes to blindness, haven’t made the leap to understand its blind or low vision and forget the visually impaired. But it’s also wrong because visually, we’re not different just because we’re blind, but so many different things. And we don’t really work to change. And it is something that we need to really address a whole lot more than we do. And in it and it starts in schools. It starts with professionals who haven’t learned better and who don’t want to nowadays because they’re really stuck. But whether it’s dealing with blindness and low vision or dealing with so many other things as we both talked about here. It’s a matter that we really need to change and find out what it is that we really need to do to most benefit students and that is that we need to teach them to think to really think
Brian Drury ** 20:01
The aspect of critical thinking it’s one of the biggest gaps I would say, is, when you come out of school, there’s this idea that there will always be a right answer. Because throughout school with classes with exams, you’re like, Oh, well, it’s A or B, or C or D, it’s always gonna be a four choice option. But then you get into the business world, or you know, the working world. And there is never this just one crystal clear, perfect answer. And what people are trying to do so often is they’re trying to find the perfect answer before they act. And this is why so many people get caught in analysis paralysis, they’re just sitting. So I and literally, just last night, I read one of my new favorite kind of metaphors for this. And it’s comes from Andrew Stanton, same book, I was like, I was reading this, I was like, this might come up in our podcast tomorrow, but same book, understand who is a real hero of mine, if he ever hears this, I’d love to talk to him. But he’s, you know, lead writing to writer director from Pixar. He’s incredible. And just the way he perceives the world. He’s one of my favorite TED talks of all time. But essentially, what he said is, when someone goes to learn guitar, we don’t tell them, hey, just look at the stare at the guitar. And make sure everything’s perfect before you strum one chord. And you better not struggle until you’re sure it’s gonna be right. And you only get one shot at this. So buckle up. The idea of doing that with the guitar is absurd. And yet, when it comes to, again, taking a dance class, trying a new lesson, changing the way that we teach, people go, Oh, what if I fail? What if I mess up? And there’s this thing, I call it creative procrastination. And it’s the idea that we are really good at tricking ourselves into thinking that we’re doing the hard work when we’re really just avoiding it. And so it’s like, let me just plan, let me strategize a little more. And where that does have its place. Typically, as we talked about earlier, the best thing, it was like when, like you talked about in one of your speeches, your parents just said, they might go play, right? Like when you were a kid, they sent you out, you did what every other kid did, you rode your bike, they didn’t hold you back, they said, Hey, you’re gonna figure out your way to operate in the world. And it may not be using your eyes, like your mom or dad did. But you’re there, like, you’re gonna find your way. And you were able to navigate and do all the things and more, you know, and it’s like, because we’ve all got things that we have unique capacities to do. But it took your parents allowing you to go out and try and experiment and figure things out. It’s the same thing. If we try to, like cuddle or control or prevent failure, if we’ve tried to prevent failure, we robbed people of the opportunity to learn and grow. So I think changing the perception and easier said than done, because none of us want to be we all want it to be a home run. And, you know, have everyone share, of course, but how can we lower the perceived risk and the perceived detriment, you know, work against that kind of monkey mind of ours, and get people to be excited about taking action. It’s one of my favorite things like I, I’ve gotten really good over the years and helping people get from where they are to where they want to be right now and start moving to see it’s not nearly as scary. And you’re going to learn as my first coach Peter Scott said, clarity isn’t a requirement for taking action, but a result of taking action. Yeah. So I learned far more by doing and experiencing than I do by theorizing. And I think that’s it’s critical to help people learn and grow.
Michael Hingson ** 23:20
I think I was very blessed by having a number of good teachers throughout school, but especially I’m thinking of right now in high school, I had a general science teacher, Mr. Bill and Mr. dills, who came into class one day, and he said, I’ve got a pop quiz for everybody. And he handed out this paper. And so everybody had to start taking the tests. And he came back to me after a couple minutes. He said, I know you’re just sitting here, he says, I can’t really give you this test. And he had to speak really quietly. He said, at the top of the test, it says please read all the questions and then answer them. I don’t think it was worded quite that way. It’s like pre please read all the questions and then fill up and complete the test. He said, the first question is, what’s your name? And he says, if you go down and look at all the questions, and you get to the bottom, it says, Only answer Question one, he says to you, and no one did that. Everyone answered all the questions because they didn’t take the time to read the questions. And I thought it was so clever. And I remember, I’ve had a number of those kinds of situations that I remember that it’s all about paying attention to details. It’s all about thinking. And we we are so far even away from doing that. I don’t know what teaching is like I’m sure there are a lot of really bright teachers who are working as best they can. But we’ve got so many different things going on in the world where we discourage creative thinking. We discourage conversation, you know, even kids with disabilities. When I went to school going into college, I had to find my own readers to read material because at that time, there was a whole lot less material available than there is today in electronic form. So I had to hire people. And I had to hire people to read tests that I couldn’t read and all that sort of stuff. But along the way, states started putting money into college and this and saying you guys have to pay for all this, and the colleges took on all those responsibilities, sort of talk about what you’re not letting students learn. So students go through college who happen to have disabilities, relying on these offices for students with disabilities, to provide the services, of course, they claim over time, we’re teaching students how to get away from that, but they’re not. And the reality is, they’re doing all the stuff and Students don’t learn how to go out into the world, and be able to hire, fire, evaluate, and do all the all the other things that they need to do in order to keep up with the rest of the world that may not even have to do that.
Brian Drury ** 25:44
Yeah, so much of what I teach, like, my dad distilled it down the other day really nicely. And he said, he’s really, it seems like what you’re telling people or what you’re guiding people in is getting back to honest and genuine human connection. Because so much of what I do is I’m like, listen, until AI, you know, takes over and just running things on its own, which I know some people talk about, but we’re, we’re pretty far from it’s, you know, any type of sci fi movie type of stuff is, is you’re gonna be dealing with people. And I often tell people, it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do if you can’t articulate it, and you can’t connect. And so when it comes to the problem solving and the group projects, it’s they’re meant to teach students how to interact and engage with other people with different working and learning styles and collaborate to create something great. But if people just go, alright, let’s just copy an AI, they missed that if they’re not challenged to think critically, if they’re told there’s always a clear answer. My best teachers and the ones I love the most, were the ones that challenged me the most and held me to a higher standard, and forced me to think because other times I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to write better, I didn’t want to I was like isn’t good enough. But how often are we celebrating the people who have immersed and done this incredible work. And then we’re not seeing the same correlation that if we really want to do something exceptional, if we want to stand out, we need to find the things we’re most passionate about. And then I think, yes, the schools have a responsibility and universities. But then also for the individuals, I’m like, Listen, if the school isn’t doing it, or the teacher isn’t cutting it, there are more resources than ever, on how to do that, and how to figure this out YouTube videos. And so a highly motivated person today has, in my opinion, more resources available than ever before, with things like AI and technology. So a highly motivated person can do more, by on their own, you know, their kids learning to build robots and stuff, just from YouTube videos. And it’s incredible things that weren’t accessible in the past. So where a lot of people get pessimistic, and they talk about the negatives of both social media and technology, which they exist, of course, but the idea of use technology, don’t be used by it, I have to remind myself all the time, you know, we’re all like, I’m certainly addicted to my phone, I’m working to break it down. But it also opens doors like this, where you and I are connected through LinkedIn, you reached out to me, and through technology, we can connect, we can grow. And at the core of it, I think it’s essential for every person to learn how to connect with other human beings create real genuine rapport, and then find and cultivate relationships, both business and personal, that are a mutual value exchange, you’re not just giving or taking, because that to me is you know, that’s one side, you should I think in business, you know, I give a lot without the expectation in return. But my closest relationships, we both nurture and support each other. So I work to do that in business, as well as to have business relationships that have a similar type of foundation, because I find those are the best. And that creates the best like full circle effect.
Michael Hingson ** 28:49
I have no problem with the concept of AI. I’ve been involved with artificial intelligence, and so on ever since working with Ray Kurzweil, who developed the first Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind, back in the 1970s. And it learned as it read so that it became more competent and read more accurately. But I’ve written articles using chat GPT. But what I’ve done is I’ve said, here’s what I want to write about, here are the things I wanted it and I’ve gotten seven or eight different renditions. And then I take those and go through them decide exactly what I want to use, and then add what I want to to do to make a greater impact because as you would put it the human element before I will publish something, but I think that AI has an extremely valuable place. Although I think a lot of people of course, are going to misuse it. And that’s, that’s what’s so unfortunate, but I think it offers like the internet. I mean, now we’ve got the dark web and other things like that. But the internet itself is such an incredible treasure trove of information that’s available to us if we just put use it right,
Brian Drury ** 29:56
right. Exactly. Yeah. Ai like you know Google, like any of these things is a tool. And we have multiple choices in how we apply it. And I’ve talked to people, I was like, I’m really glad I grew up when I did, because when I was born, it was pre internet, it was cell phones. And so I got to grow up in that area. And then when I was hitting kind of middle schools, when I got my first cell phones just block thing which blue screen and throw it against the wall, and it was the Nokia that you could never break. And it’s right for 10 hours, or just like 10 days. And, and I got to see how things have evolved. And then the introduction of social media. So where Google was a way for us to generate searches, and it aggregated information, it validated and vetted sources. And I know there’s various ways it does it. And then we were able to search, it’s like the next iteration of that is instead of searching and then finding the thing where we go and read and discover or watch. AI is now taking that next step further, where it’s saying I’m aggregating all of that I’ve already done the searches. So now I’m just going to compile this into an answer or a response or an image. And so it’s just a faster way or a faster, deeper, new tool. And just like you, I’m using AI already, like I use chat GPT for ideation, like what topics do people struggle with most, and then I look at the topics and then I pick from them and write something off of it. I use AI for captioning my videos so that I can have captions on all the videos that are nice and aesthetically pleasing. So tons of opportunities there. And it’s to me, I I know a lot of people get pessimistic, but I like to I’m kind of an eternal optimist. But I also have to work to cultivate that. Because I think unless you consciously seek out examples of how human beings are enhancing, growing and building together, you will default to you know, news or social media, which often focuses on the most extreme and worst things, right. And as human beings, we have recency bias, we have confirmation bias. And if we all day, every day or on social media and just see bad things that are happening in the world, it can feel like the whole world’s falling apart, versus specifically focusing on and targeting the positive examples and the people that are doing exceptional, wonderful things, and then working to connect more with those people. So you can ultimately do more, I think that’s the power where technology can connect us and bring us so much closer together, we just have to make sure we don’t get lost in it.
Michael Hingson ** 32:21
And we need to think about the fact that what we really need to do is to help the world pull closer together and not fall apart. And that’s right. That’s a process and we can choose which way we go. And you know, it’s like anything else. As I tell people on a regular basis, things may happen to us, we may encounter things that we have absolutely no control over. And that’s fine, because we don’t have control over them. We shouldn’t worry about them. But what we always have control over is how we deal with whatever we face and whatever we encounter, and that we do have control over the World Trade Center is a perfect example. Right? We had no way to really deal with the World Trade Center, it happened, whether it could have been predicted or not. It still is a subject open to conjecture. And I’m not convinced that we could have figured it out. But the bottom line is we didn’t. So what happened? Alright, the question really is how are each of us going to deal with it moving forward? And how are each of us going to deal with all of the things that we have like AI? Like just interacting with people? And how are we going to get back to having better conversations and interactions so that we grow by learning from other people, and that’s something that we just haven’t really faced. And we’ve got too many people who are supposed to be our leaders who discourage it. Which is another whole story.
Brian Drury ** 33:40
Another topic, how many hours do we have for that? Yeah, really?
Michael Hingson ** 33:44
Yeah. So So tell me Well, go ahead.
Brian Drury ** 33:47
Oh, just on the note, you said I loved in your speech, how you talked about the reason you were able to maintain calm when you know, a plane stuck the tower. And like you said in the speech, no one knew what was going on. It was on the other side of the building. It was There was panic, there was smoke, and it was like, what do we do? One of the most valuable things that I never realized how valuable it will be it was being a lifeguard when I was a kid. Because it trained me to have like, Navy Seals have a saying, I believe it’s the navy seals that say, you don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you rise to the level of your training. Right? So you in that situation, you talk about the speech that you had mapped out the exit routes, you were prepared, you knew where to go, you had familiarity with the area with how to get around the office, because you were like, Hey, I don’t know what could happen. But I want to be prepared when it does. And that was one of the main reasons you were able to keep calm in a frantic situation. And very often what I found is it doesn’t take at Navy SEAL level of training. Like all it is, is we need a default of okay instead of panic and freak out and all This, it’s alright, in an emergency situation, what do I do first, you know, find the exit. And so being a lifeguard It was when there is a moment of panic for most people were meant to react, right. And that’s literally my speech that went viral was about my grandfather collapsing and having a heart attack in the shower. And me using the skills to give him rescue breathing and tried to save him. And so I think something that’s so important about that message you share in your speech is so well. And what we’re talking about is preparation. You know, a lot of people like, I don’t feel prepared for the future, it’s like, well, you can do training and you can have things ready. That doesn’t mean you have to try to anticipate every possible bad thing that could come. And so it’s like, prepare within your means and within what’s reasonable and what you can control. And you know, that’s like, oh, I don’t feel ready for a physical altercation. It’s like, oh, well trained jujitsu trained Muay Thai. And that’s, that’s why I do that. And I love it. And fortunately, I’ll be able to get back to it soon. I, you know, had a back injury over the past year. But yeah, it’s it’s that level of prepare for what you can let go of the rest, and then focus and connect with the people and your purpose and your mission daily. And to me, I think that’s where you really start to cultivate a great life, because at that point, you go, Well, what is a great day and a purposeful day look like, right? And how do I maximize my ability to connect with the right people? For me, because I often say I think one of life’s greatest missions is finding people who share your particular type of weird. So it’s finding your fellow weirdos and the people that share the wild, crazy news with you so that you can go on this ride of life together, because it passes quick. And it’s it’s crazy, where we can spend so much time we all do this worrying about or stressing about silly nonsense. When if we just focus in I think we can not only enjoy life more, but do a lot more good for the in a broad sense felt our fellow people in the world.
Michael Hingson ** 36:52
Sure. Well, tell me a little bit about your business. So you started the business? Why did you start it? What got you to decide that you, you wanted to start it and I would sort of think just having listened to you for a while now. You would probably hoped about the day that would come when you could just put your other job and go into it full time? Maybe not. But what got you going down the road of starting your own business?
Brian Drury ** 37:16
It’s funny how, like I said earlier that that quote about the intuition that your intuition can’t give you all the answers because it operates all faith, I often would get these kind of feelings like it was a feeling in my chest for me. And I know some people it’s their gut or their heart. And my mentor Sean used to say, when it comes to the big decisions in life, or the big things drop from your head down into your heart, because your head is trying to logic everything and it’s trying to create a way where this is foolproof, it’ll, it won’t fail, and you’ll be perfect before you even start like, Oh, I’m nervous about going dancing and trying dance lessons. It’s like, well, how can I be perfect before I get out there. So everyone is just dazzled and applauded. And it’s like, so the brain is trying to do that the heart goes, Hey, man, just go take your first class. Like just try. Why not? You will, you’ll know a lot better if you like it or not once you’ve tried it. So with me, I remember even I have this vague memory in high school of saying to my dad, I want to be an entrepreneur. I don’t even know what it is. But I it sounds cool. Like, because I kept hearing entrepreneurs doing these things and creating life on their terms. And so when I got introduced the world of personal growth and personal development back in 2012 is when I first saw Sean’s well I saw Sean’s dance party video, which is famous viral video of his and then got into his speeches and everything. I said, Okay. I realized, like, I had a choice on how I was going to live my life. And unfortunately, being in a small town, I noticed a lot of people saying, I guess this is it, you know, people that were 22 years old going, well, you know, I you know, I’d love to live in California like, Well, why don’t you go for them? Well, it’s hard. It’s scary, or like, well, I just got to default to what’s around me because it’s the most accessible or I don’t have examples of people who’ve done something different. So the idea of mentorship I think, is really interesting, because many people go Well, Brian, I don’t have 10s of 1000s of dollars to invest in a high level mentor, I can’t spend a million bucks to have Tony Robbins be my coach. And I’m like, right. But in the world we live in, you can have a mentors of all kinds through books and podcasts and all the free content people put out and you connect with some of the most incredible people in the world through that. So when it came to starting a business, I said, All right, I know supply chain, isn’t it, you know, sitting here and doing different work, right, the first company I worked at, and I worked in major, you know, fortune 500 fortune 300 companies. So I got to see what global business really looked like. And my first job is I won’t specify I’m not saying anything critical, but they made Toilet Paper Paper towels, diapers, tampons, and all kinds of other sexy, wonderful products. And so I’m like, you know, I’m sitting there and I’m organizing shipments and right take orders for paper products around the world. And as you can imagine, I wasn’t exactly lit up and dancing. And so one of the first big lessons though, through personal development was, I thought, when I graduated school, the job was meant to give my life meaning. And then I get there and very quickly, you just getting to the monotony. And you’re like, is this all there is. So the first big shift was realizing the job doesn’t give your life meaning in the same way, your company or your business? Well, it’s how you choose to approach it, and what you do with that. So then I started to infuse meaning in my day job where I said, Okay, I’m not thrilled about the product or daily work. But if I can do process improvement and save time, then I can help that person, go home and be with her kids, I can help that person spend more time with their boyfriend, I can help that person, you know, get out to the concert early. And that was the way I created meaning. And even then I go, this is the step I graduated with $80,000 in student loan debt. And I was like, I need something to pay the bills and do this. But how can I start crafting that next step? And then next stage, so I started studying entrepreneurs and studying people seeing how did they figure out what they wanted, and what was the next step. And ultimately, as we’ve been talking about, it got to point where just try something like just get going. And so I launched overcoming graduation, I got my URL, I launched a podcast of the same name. And my whole idea was, I can start to share the lessons I’m learning as I go, and hopefully save people the headache of learning it the hard way like I had to. And then I can also interview people who have overcome graduation, quote, unquote, in unique and profound and different ways. And I can learn from them and share it at the same time. So it was this beautiful thing. And that then led me to seeing that the people that are willing to put in the extra effort to get really good at a skill to bring additional value to do something above and beyond what most people will do, can create disproportionate amounts of value back as well, because they’re bringing that much and more to the market and to people. And so for me, my mentors, and my dad taught me this growing up, the people that I really want to emulate are the people who are not selling to get money for them, they are creating a solution and working as hard as them they can to get in front of people. And the financial value that they get in return is, you know, they’re delivering multiples of that to their clients. And that’s what I’ve always worked to do. So that’s how I got started was just this realization of, I didn’t want to be dependent on someone else for paycheck, in order to survive, I didn’t want to have like, only have one option, because one of the main things I did in my corporate career, and in my own business career outside of it is I always tell people create options for yourself. Because when you’ve only got one job, you’ve only got one offer, you’ve only got one product or one offering, you’re limited. And your if you say I can only serve these people, I can only, you know, they have to be in the finance industry, I only do this, like niching is important. But when you limit yourself too far, you reduce your ability to have options. So I think when it comes to business, yes, you need to niche down and be specific in your marketing needs to be specific. But don’t put on the blinders so much that you lose the ability to see other opportunities that don’t fall right in line with your expectation, but might be better than what you were even hoping for. So that’s kind of the early days. And you know, like I said it built from the podcast and my first coaching client. And this is funny because a lot of people again, think they need a business plan and all this stuff and the logo and the website and all that I’m like, listen, get a basic web page of how can people contact you to get started? Like, yes, you need a web presence and maybe a social platform, but get started helping and serving people start creating testimonials and delivering results. One of the best ways but my first client was a guy who one of my best friends. I was making all these changes in my life with the personal development stuff I was learning. And he saw the results I was getting and he said, Listen, I want you to coach me. And it was literally Okay, well, alright, what should I charge? I don’t know, I
Michael Hingson ** 44:08
was gonna ask you what your thoughts were about charging.
Brian Drury ** 44:11
And that was the thing. I was like, wait, I have a business because I you know, I made an LLC. I did all of that. And I was like, Okay, I’ve got my LLC, I’ve got a business. I’ve got a business bank account, like I have a business, but like so many people, I had a logo and business cards and all this, but I wasn’t selling anything. I wasn’t offering anything. So he said I want to be your client. And I said, Okay, how about I think it was 300 bucks a month, right? We’ll do one call a week. And that’ll be like 75 bucks an hour essentially. And he was like, great, you know, like, that’s fantastic. And so he got great results. I helped him get a dream job. And that’s where I started I said okay, I’m gonna help people with dream jobs first and then it was more of like a life coaching thing. And then you know, over the years is now I’m getting paid many multiples of what that hourly rate was. And then because I found and clarify the value and really honing the skill sets. But the start wasn’t this. I always tell people wasn’t this clearly thought out really well developed plan. I didn’t have all the answers. I didn’t even have a plan. I just said, I want to help people. And I think so many people start from that point. And I said, What skills do I have right now that I could do that. And one thing that I’ll tell anybody who’s thinking about getting started, or might be on the fence or scared about getting started, when I tell people I used to help teach Cuban salsa, I often get confused looks because they see, you know, a white guy with red hair from New Jersey. And they’re like, that doesn’t what’s not what I expect for a salsa teacher, but and I go listen to they go, Oh, so you must be like a pro? And I say no, no, no. Because now, I mean, now I’ve been dancing for over eight years, and I’m a good dancer, I’m like, and I would some people would say a very good dancer. And I’m proud of the progress I’ve made. But the gap between me and a pro is tremendous. Like, you know, there are people in between 2030 years and you see the levels. So, but what I tell them is this, I was a teacher, not because I was a pro, but I was further down the road than that particular person or that individual. Because I trained for a year with my teacher who was exceptionally still training. Steve Messina in North Carolina is wonderful, and amazing teacher, and not just really good at the art of dance, really good at gently correcting people. And he’s an incredible guide, and he was great at celebrating your wins. And then you go try this instead, instead of that’s wrong, you’re doing it wrong, yes, exceptional way of delivering feedback. And so after a year, I was good. I was one of you know, we had this very small group is back when he left his job to go full time. So there’s like five or six of us were the original group. And he said, Hey, Brian, could you start helping with the beginner classes, you know, show him the 123567. That’s a sure sure I can do that. Then I started helping at events, and then the intermediate classes. So the people that are afraid to get started in offering a product or service. I know those feelings and those doubts and those fears or even public speaking, if you’re interested in that you like what if I don’t deliver what if I don’t this in the early days, just say hey, if I don’t deliver, I’ll give you a full refund, like take the pressure off you and then go out and pour your heart into it, and learn and grow as you go. Because it was just that I needed to be further down the road than the person was, and give them the opportunity and present a solution to a problem they had. And then the value exchange, they gave a financial piece and I gave information, education motivation. And I started to see where that exchange can be so positive. And the unfortunate thing is, in this space, you got a lot of people that genuinely want to help and they’re such great people. But they go, Oh, I don’t want to charge. And then they can pay their bills, and they have exceptional skills. And I’m like, Listen, I love the idea of, you know, a good person, money is just an amplifier. So it will just amplify the person you are so good, with more money can do more good. So the idea is, it’s really hard. And you know this like where it’s like being creative, when there’s other stressors in life, it gets really hard. And like we said chap GPT can be a resource. But when you’re struggling to pay the bills, and I have certainly had the ups and downs and even in my first year, I remember last year and the first couple months out, when I left my corporate job, it wasn’t this big grand plan. And trust me, I had a plan, I was like, oh, once I get it to x $1,000 a month, I’ll just gently tiptoe over the you know, I’m gonna jump over this, versus what life typically does is and again, my mentor said, when life has something greater for you, it’ll start with a whisper, then it’ll be a tap on the shoulder, then it’ll be a nudge, then it’ll be a kind of a shake, and then ultimately, the universe or God, whatever you believe in is going to just push you. And so for me being in supply chain through the pandemic, my job got so bad. Towards the end, I was so miserable. And I was spending less time on my work, that it finally had to get to the point where I was like, It’s time and things had to get so bad that I said, Alright, I’ve got three months of money in the bank, and I’m just gonna go for it. Because so often the fear is not whether or not we know what we’re doing. It’s betting on ourselves like, do I believe I can overcome this? Do I? Like it’s not the market? It’s not all these other things. It’s not saturation, it’s not clients and avatars. It’s Do we believe we can overcome the challenges that we’re going to face? So yeah, that initial step was critical. And, you know, now years later, I’m working with major corporations, like the last two speaking events, were trainings I did with Northwestern Mutual. I’m working with huge super high level speakers and helping them craft their messages. I’m helping people with elevator pitches, and I have my biggest event coming up at the end of August and a big virtual event coming up. So it’s one of those things where I often don’t do a great job of celebrating or really seeing the progress and I think we all do this. We get focused on the day to day and we’re so self critical. So the moments where I do pause though and go hey, I literally had had this I think either just this morning or last night, where I said, if you went back and talk to that younger Brian, who was like, I want to be an entrepreneur, so one day and you say, Hey, man, listen, not only are you going to do that, but Sean, you know that guy, Sean Stephenson, he’s going to become one of your best friends. And I just want to teachers that he’s going to be introducing you to speak on his stage one day that all these things that have happened, that couldn’t have happened without a willingness to just try when I didn’t know. It all started with, hey, I want to start a business. And well, let me make an LLC and get started. And that’s been that was the impetus and a desire to help people. And then I’ve just gotten clear on what I can help people with most. And then I continue to get better at how I share that and market and promote it,
Michael Hingson ** 50:44
which is what it’s really all about. And I know I’ve gone through a lot of the same things I worked for Kurzweil actually until July or late June 1984. And then they were well purchased by Xerox and phased out at all the salespeople. And I went looking for a job couldn’t find one. And eventually I started my own company just to have a job. And I have learned a great deal about businesses, not only from observing Kurzweil for six years serving and working in small computer products, but also just from a variety of other things. And so I started a company and I did it for four years, it was sort of working, but not nearly as well as it needed to be. So eventually I went back into the workforce. And you talk about God nudging you so suddenly, September 11 comes along, and suddenly, I’m getting calls from people saying, Would you come and tell us what we need to learn about September 11? And would you tell us your story, and so on. And clearly, that was a whole lot more fun to do than selling in a computer systems and managing a computer Salesforce, so I did it, and had been speaking ever since it’s very rewarding, rewarding. The pandemic had some effect on stuff, but it’s so much fun. And it is so rewarding. And but I also think that, you know, we are nudged and we are encouraged. And we feel things in our heart. And I know you said, oftentimes, it’s a lot of faith. But the other part about it is I think that even more than that, we learn a lot whether we recognize it, and we absorb more information than we think we do. And so when we’re hearing things from our heart, it’s also coming from all the information, all the data, all the stuff that we have collected over the years. The problem is we have not been encouraged or nor taught how really to listen to it. And my favorite example is trivial pursuit, you know, how often do you play Trivial Pursuit? And there’s a question that comes up and you suddenly think you know the answer. But then your brain says, No, that’s not right. And it turns out, it was the right answer every single time. If we would only learn to listen, I think there’s a lot to be said for that.
Brian Drury ** 52:55
Yeah, and I think one of the biggest challenges we face is, and it’s, you know, I never I really work to avoid speaking in absolutes. It’s one of the things I tell my speaking clients, like my speaker training clients, I say, one of the quickest ways to break rapport with your audience is to say something in a total absolute. That being said, there are things that I find to be true of high performers more often than not, or it’s, that’s what I’ll say is like, in my experience, it seems to be a common characteristic or trait, that the high performers, even if they’re like, go getters crushing it, you know, grinding, like those types of people where it’s just nonstop. At some point, they create quiet and space to connect with themselves. Because with social media, and I’m just as guilty of this, and I’ve had I’m working to break a lot of these bad habits is, you know, wake up, put on a podcast, and I have a waterproof speaker so I can bring it into the shower. So I constantly have noise, then I’m doing that while I’m listening to while I’m prepping breakfast, then I watch TV with breakfast, then I come to work and I’ve got music on and then after, you know, it’s like then I’m constantly looking at the phone. So we have constant visual and auditory stimulation, we have all these different ways of like kind of maxing our brain out and redlining it. So we’re constantly looking for like the next notification the next thing, but often it takes a moment of peace and it doesn’t have you know, a seven day silent meditation retreat, like a moment of peace to really check in and say, Do I want this job or not? Like, is this the right path? What’s the next step and just removing so much of that distraction? What I found is some of the most peaceful and fun and engaging times in my life are where I disassociate from the technology as much as possible. And I focus on connecting with my passions and with people versus what we perceive like even something like us. Yeah, I’m a single guy. So years ago, I was on the dating apps, and that was one of the biggest distractions because I would find myself feeling more insecure like, Oh, no one loves me because I’m not having dates or Oh, I didn’t get them. hatch today, and it was just what it was like, Brian, do you really think you’d get like one of those check ins with the heart moments? I was like, Brian, do you really think you’re gonna meet the love of your life on a dating app? I said, I don’t think so I said, Why are you and I was like, okay, so I just got off them. And my dating life has improved significant significantly, I, I have far better connections, but also, like any of those other phone addictions, it’s just the dopamine we’re craving or to feel connected. But it’s like the most artificial and smallest form of it, it’s just enough dopamine to keep us coming back like a drug, versus having a moment of pause, creating space, you know, creating some distance from all of this chaos to really check in with yourself. And sometimes we also, we do need that external source of assistance where you know, asking our most trusted friends or family members like, what do you like? What are the best qualities in me? What is it that you see me as really good at that I don’t really notice, because sometimes we’re so self critical need an external voice to help. But that’s still removing all that extra noise and all the nonsense and then getting down to what is a life well lived really look like Friday, what do I really want, because so many people think they want millions of dollars, and they don’t, they don’t need anywhere near that to have an Exceptional Life By their standards. But it takes us pausing to say, what is the life I really want. And it’s often that where we go, and we map some things out my brother’s a financial advisor, and, you know, I mapped out my finances, I don’t need nearly as much as I thought, to live the life I want. And having, like, the push from the universe, and the moment of like, just kind of checking in with me, and it wasn’t, like, last thing I’ll say about it, it’s often not peaceful, like these moments of clarity, don’t always come off the back of a six hour meditation. Oftentimes, like I, I really had to question myself, because at the end of the career, I had always been work to be a top performer and deliver above and beyond. I said, Listen, I know, it’s just my day job, but I’m gonna give it, they’re paying me to give them a result. So I’m gonna give like, I’m not going to change my standard, just because it’s not my company. And things were great. Everything was great. And then towards the very end, some things happened, where small things were amplified, and like one big mistake, and then they were like, you have 30 days to improve, otherwise, we’re going to let you go, I got on put on a performance improvement plan. And for me, that was shocking, because it contradicted my identity. I was like, No, I’m a top performer. I always find a way like this is, am I not as good as I thought I was? Am I not? Who I thought like, what if, what if I leave and I fail twice as bad? Like, why? And he just had to face his moan. But then I said, Okay, Brian, like if you really check in with your heart, and the people who believe in you, and the people who see, see you when you can’t see yourself clearly, what’s the real truth here? And I said, Okay, this is, you know, again, for me, it’s God for other people to the universe, it’s, you know, what is God, this is God’s saying, Brian, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And I need your full attention on this. So let’s get you out of that day job that’s sucking out your soul and get you connecting with the work you love every day. Because imagine what you could do with that. And so often we get connected with the we obsess about the potential negative outcomes. And literally this morning, there’s a friend of mine who I helped prep for a job interview. And she got to the final rounds, and she gets the decision at 130 today, and it’s a dream job and these amazing things. She was stressing so much this morning. And I shared with her something that a friend of mine shared, I think years ago that I was like anxiety, and stress is just energy applied to the wrong area. So I said rather than be stressing about how badly it could go, or what does it mean? Or what is this stuff, imagine yourself on day one, shaking hands with your new boss, you know, given the hug to the recruiter that brought you in, like, imagine those things because I was like an even if it doesn’t go, well know that you have the like you’ve gotten through everything up to this point. And you have the resourcefulness. And right now, you’re better prepared than ever to do another interview. So either way, it’s going to be good, and you’ll learn and grow. And if it turns out the way you want, fantastic, awesome, congratulations. Otherwise, hey, time to pivot again and try something new and evaluate
Michael Hingson ** 59:15
maybe what needed to happen to make it better next time. So you wrote a book. Tell us about your book.
Brian Drury ** 59:24
Yes, so my book, that was a passion project ever since like the idea of it was I always wanted to write a book. And then I graduated from school. And I had the kind of I think, societal thing. It’s like people write books when they’re in their 40s or 50s. You’re 22 Who are you to write a book, right? I had the imposter syndrome. I had the negative voices. And I would get that flicker from my heart that intuition again, going, Hey, you should write a book and the brain would get involved and go you don’t know how to write. You’re not a writer. You’re not professional. You’re not trained in it. You don’t have an editor you don’t know the publishing process. says, You don’t know what you’re doing. And I was like, Oh, your right brain, thank you for keeping me in my place. You know, it’s like so I get the flicker, and then the shutdown and the flicker and the shutdown. But then as I started to do more personal development, I started to have that like, deeper knowing voice that like is what I’ll refer to it as knowing it started to push back, it started to ask other questions where normally the brain would say, No, I would shut down. And you know, it’s the same thing in dating where I would see a pretty girl and I’d be like, I want to go off to the brain goes, Why does she rejected you and broke your heart and you never found love? Don’t do it. It’s like your right brain. Thanks for saving me from that. And it’s like, but we don’t know. And imagine what amazing posit what if that was the love of your life? So with the book one day, I said, I should write a book. And then again, that voice said, Well, you don’t know this. You don’t know that. And then that deeper knowing voice just said, no, no, I didn’t say, you know, publish, and edit and all this stuff. What’s stopping you from writing? And I literally, I was in my apartment in Wisconsin, and I went, Ah, yeah, suddenly, the neg is, yeah, they didn’t have any ammo. They were like, I was like, What’s stopping you from sitting down at your computer and just typing this thing up? And I said, Well, nothing. And then the negative voices were like, dammit, like, yeah, he found a way around. So then, now, I love telling this story. Because it’s like I had the revelation, you would imagine, then I grabbed my computer and wrote, it still took me like three weeks to get over it, where I had the real, I was like, that’s perfect. I’m going to start tomorrow. And then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and I kept pushing it off. But every day, I was writing the first paragraph in my head. And I was thinking about it. And for all the people listening right now, you know, they’ve got something like that, whether it be again, launching the program, writing a speech, publishing something, building a product, a new project, like pitching a new proposal to their boss, like something some growth are trying to, like they’re in it every day, but they don’t take it from this imagination. So I kept imagining it. And finally, I learned later in life, why? Because I’ve done a lot of study of human psychology, human behavior, NLP of writing things to get, you know, better understand me so I can help others. And I found out this very interesting thing from NLP that, psychologically, the unconscious mind doesn’t know the difference from like, fact or fiction. So essentially, whatever you tell it, it just takes his data. And the problem is, if I say, I’m going to do this tomorrow, the unconscious goes great. It’s locked for tomorrow. So when the next day on the calendar appears, your unconscious still has it as tomorrow. So there’s no urgency because he pumping out. That’s why scheduling so important. So finally, I said, You know what, I’m gonna do it tonight, when I get home, just going to open my computer, and I’m gonna write, then I got home and I’m tired. And I was this close to tapping out again. And I said, and I lay down in bed, turn off the lights, and I said, Brian, just write the first line. That’s all you need is write the first line. So I opened up the computer, I wrote the first line, I clicked save, and I shut it down. And the rush I got from that was exceptional. And then over the next two, two and a half years, I wrote the book, I found it editor. And I started to write about a group that I mentioned in our correspondents, that’s called my team triumph. So while living in Wisconsin, I ran with a group called my team triumph who helps individuals with disabilities participate in endurance events. So they use both assistance in running and then running strollers to assist people with any form of disability, which I know some people have qualms about that word. But that was the word they used in order to describe and it was civilities.
Michael Hingson ** 1:03:31
Not a problem. Right? And it doesn’t mean lack of ability is I tried to tell people, so Anyway, go ahead.
Brian Drury ** 1:03:37
Yeah. And that’s what I tell people, like some people like, oh, that’s, and I say, Listen, my friends with disabilities, they use that word. And it’s, it’s not about lack of ability, or inability, it’s, Hey, this is just a certain thing that I work with. And so you know, there were people that were battling cancer, and they needed someone to run with them with a stroller. And in case they needed to, they could get assistance, there were people of all shapes and sizes and forms, and part of the group that running with them was one of the best things in my life. Because I, you get to see that no matter what our condition, we’re all humans, and we want the same things. We want to connect. We want to have good relationships, we want to find love. And that’s something I found in traveling to and speaking to people in different cultures in different languages. Like, we all really want the same things. It was just with my team tribes, you know, some people couldn’t verbalize it. Some people use sign language, some people use the computer. And other times there were people that were unable to communicate, but you could feel them. And so you find all these different ways to communicate and you find that we all want the same things. And we’re so many people go, I can’t help or make a difference because I don’t have all the money in the world when rarely was time and attention is what we crave more than just about anything, because even we see the people that you know, focus just on wealth. They get exceptionally financially wealthy, but they’re poor in relationships, and they feel lonely. So ultimately, that’s still what we’re trying to get to. So I ran with Mighty triumph changed my life. I did two half marathons, a variety of five K’s, a one mile fun runs, did tons of stuff with them. And it was just such a great combination that was like a combined helping people and physical activity, two of my favorite things. And when I was trying to decide what to write, my mom gave me one of the best pieces of advice. She said, I said, I don’t know, I could write about anything. And she goes, write what you know, and write what you love. And I said, Why not write a fictional story about my team triumph. But I’ll promote the like this real organization through this fictional story. And part of the reason I made a fiction, I was like, Well, my main character will, can learn the lessons faster than I did when you’re like, I don’t have to stick to the actual arc where some of these things came up for me. So I started writing the book, I got into it. It was so exciting. And I was working on it all the time. I launched my first blog. I’m getting going. Like life has a tendency to do when you think you’ve got life figured out, throws you curveballs. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. And you know, I tell people I wasn’t am to this day, and mama’s boy, and my mom being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when I was 23 years old, 24 years old, was I didn’t even like I had always said, I, you know, I’m very close with my family loved my family, my parents, my brother, my brothers, my best friend. So I was like, as long as I got my mom and dad, my brother, I could do anything. And then life has a way of testing that. So now one of the legs of the tripod gets kicked out. My life basically came to a halt, I was more just kind of existing versus growing, thriving, working, etc. And I And the crazy thing was my editor who I’d found, you know, like I said, I’d figure out each step I’d found an editor, her her husband passed away from cancer during the same time. So during the process of writing the book, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, nine and a half months later, she passed away. And I remember very vividly and very distinctly, I’d gotten a new dream job. During that time, I was about to get paid to travel around the world. And that was my biggest goal and dream, I’m going to travel internationally get paid to do it, I got a signing bonus, my salary went up by like 30, or 40%. It was exceptional. I was moving to North Carolina to like a bigger, like, all these things. And I remember saying when I was younger, if I got paid to travel, nothing could get me down. Nothing. You know, if I was traveling around the world, man, everything you know, would just be sunshine and rainbows. And I have this very vivid memory of my first big work trip, sitting in a four star hotel in Kowloon Bay in Hong Kong. Looking out on the bay, I mean, it was exceptional is just like traveling in style. It’s all this more money in the bank than I’ve ever had. And I was sobbing because I felt like none of it mattered without her. And so it was one of those big and some of the biggest lessons we have come to the hardest times was money is not the end all be all. And yes, it is a facilitator. It is an enabler of things and AI does, it absolutely serves a purpose. But if you just pursue that, that’s not a full life. So that was one of the biggest lessons. And after several months of not being able to write or do anything, I contacted Sherry, my editor, and we both were like we got to finish it for them, like the people that we lost and finished the book and published it. And it became a number one Amazon bestseller and one of its categories. And I said, as I was writing, I was like Dad, I don’t want the book to be all about money. Because I noticed at times I was starting to write like, oh, would this help it sell more? And he goes, take money out of it. I go What do you mean? He goes well, not the whole time. But just for a period. He goes, When do you expect to make the most this is probably the first three months he goes just donate all that. And I was like, well, perfect, I’ll donate to my team triumph. So I donated everything I made for the first three months and then 10% of every book sold in perpetuity. And that was a way for me to I said anything I do I want it to have an element of giving back and serving. And so I was able to do that through the book, I was able to share this message to get a story out. And one of the last things I’ll share about it that I think is so important was you know is this long process of over two years writing and and going from you know, my mind being healthy to ultimately getting sick and passing away. And now I’ve got all these new lessons I want to incorporate into the book, these new things I want to share. And I was like Dad, I feel like I got to start fresh like and again, just pushing that out more and more the idea of publishing. And he said save it for the next book. Because as much as I thought it was going to be easy. I thought it was gonna be easier. The closer I got to publishing, I was like, Oh yeah, once you’re there, you’re just checking commas and periods and that’ll be easy, but it got so much harder because it oh, excuse me. Sorry, we just got a Silver Alert on the phone. That was I was very confused. Okay, that was just an emergency letter on the phone. We’re good. So I thought it was the fire alarm. I was like what’s going on but so I thought once we got closer to publishing that it was gonna be get easy You’re but now it was closer to judgment and to being rejected, and to not be good and to not deliver. And that’s one of the most freeing things is facing that and then putting it out there and saying, you know, I’ve told people, you want to be a best selling author and make that your career, well, you gotta get the first book out, you want to sell internet products, you got to get the first one out, you got to go to the first class start somewhere, it was just that idea of exactly that you got to start somewhere. And instead of trying to be perfect, I often ask people because my mentors asked me this, do you think the book has value and can help people right now it’s like, yeah, they’re like, well, then you’re doing them a disservice by not sharing. And although that message can be taken to some extremes, I think in general, it’s like to get you past that inertia. And that fear, like get the movement started, is just to put it out there. And so the book, you know, I have a bunch of stacks, I have a stack of them right behind me. But writing that book was an incredible process. It taught me about writing and editing. And you know, it’s something I’m extremely proud of that I honestly, as I’m saying this don’t think about enough, because very often I go, you know, this is a life dream. It’s an accomplishment, then check. And then I’m like, Okay, now what next, but I literally published that book while living in Brazil, living out to life dreams. And I never could have predicted that from the years earlier learning the language, writing a book, but things come together. And there is a magic that can happen. And I love the idea of luck is when preparation meets opportunity. So you know, we get prepared, and then all of a sudden, people go, Wow, you got so lucky. But they don’t see the 510 years it took to get that luck or create.
Michael Hingson ** 1:11:31
And that’s really the issue. Well tell me if people want to get in contact with you learn about your business a little bit more and maybe engage you as a coach, how do they do that?
Brian Drury ** 1:11:41
So best place is my website. It’s theBrianDrury.com. And that’s not because I have an overinflated ego. It’s because someone took BrianDrury.com. So it was just the one I could get social media. Yeah, so Good move. And for anybody listening, that’s looking to start a business, all my mentors, nowadays, they say go for personal branding, because yeah, I had to rebrand my business. And when I left corporate, I was like, Oh, I’ll do guide to speaking I got the URL, I did all this stuff. I really, it took me like months to get through all this stuff. And then I realized I was in the wrong place, I should have gone personal. So ultimately find one you can get, you know, the Brian Drury or you know, Brian drita, or like, whatever. So it’s Brian with an eye. My last name is D isn’t David R U R Y. So the Brian drew.com. That’s on most social media. And then if you just search me on LinkedIn, that’s where I’m most active from a social media perspective is LinkedIn. And you just search Brian Drury and you’ll look for the red haired guy who’s the speaker, coach. So those are the best places to connect, because my website is where they’ll get the updates. And I frequently have events and things where you can get added to my email list. And that’s the best way. So if you go to the Brian Drury.com, or search the Brian jury on social media, and I’m going to be building the YouTube platform as well, but right now, LinkedIn is Brian C Drury is my like, tag. So
Michael Hingson ** 1:13:00
those are the best bots. And it’s the Brian Drury like th e Brian Drury, correct? Yes.
Brian Drury ** 1:13:05
b ri a n d r u r y.com.
Michael Hingson ** 1:13:09
Well, Brian, this has been fun. And we need to do some more of it. So we need to plan another one. But I really appreciate your time. And I hope that all of you out there really enjoyed this. And that you will engage Brian in discussion or conversation or whatever. And so reach out to Brian and if you Brian know of anyone else we ought to have as a guest as well as all of you out there. If you know anyone that we ought to have as a guest, I’d love to hear from you. We always encourage people to suggest guests and just contact us You can reach me Michael Hingson at Michaelhi M I C H A E L H I at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com, or go to our podcast page www dot Michael hingson h i n g s o n.com/podcast. And wherever you’re listening, please give us a five star rating. We value that we appreciate it very much. And we really look forward to hearing what all you have to say about today. But once more, Brian, I want to thank you for being here with us and for giving us so many great insights.
Brian Drury ** 1:14:15
Thank you for having me, Michael, it’s been a ton of fun. And as you always say, like as as we’ve talked about, so it’s letting people know I’m available for bookings for speeches and trainings, and for coaching. So if you’re looking for that, my email is currently Brian at guide to speaking and that’s with a number two. So Brian at Guide to speaking.com. So you can reach me there for speeches, bookings, or just go to my website, and then there’s a Contact page as well. So, Michael, thanks for having me is a ton of fun. I’d love to do another one. And I’ve got several people that would be a great fit for this show that I’m going to refer you.
Michael Hingson ** 1:14:53
You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you’ll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you’re on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you’re there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.
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