Jolie Shapiro00:01.712
Hey everyone, welcome to the Revenue Mine Podcast, a podcast revenue leaders talk. thanks, Medial Health. I'm Delia, your host, and with us is Brandon. Welcome, Brandon.
Brandon Fluharty00:10.86
Hey, thanks for having me.
Jolie Shapiro00:12.73
Yeah, it's been a long time coming. We've been in touch for a bit.
Brandon Fluharty00:14.412
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad we could finally make this work.
Jolie Shapiro00:19.42
Yeah, ever since live person.
Brandon Fluharty00:21.388
Yeah, yeah, we were colleagues there. it was a, it seems like a decade ago, but also just like yesterday.
Jolie Shapiro00:30.896
yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Something I don't prep people for, it's the first question. What makes you you?
Brandon Fluharty00:31.704
on time. Hmm, what makes me me? I would say the thing that I really identify with, least that I'm trying to really lean into, is I guess my intentionality. I would say that if I had like one thing that could be eventually my world-class superpower, I would say it's being really intentional with decisions that I make. And that's been persistent throughout my life. And it's something that's paid off, you know, literally and figuratively throughout my life, just keeping me stable, both emotionally and mentally, but also putting me in a position where I feel like I take control over my life in ways that maybe once we're out of control.
Jolie Shapiro01:38.544
Thank you so much for sharing. Do you mind expanding on that? Going from out of control to in control?
Brandon Fluharty01:43.394
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, would say, you know, my personal belief is that we're all sort of on a spectrum of kinds of things, a spectrum of experiences, traumas, you name it. And we can plot ourselves on that. And what's beautiful about that is it can help us to feel together with other people who've maybe experience those same things, but also can feel little isolating when you're like, I don't understand myself. so trying to grapple with those things, not knowing where these feelings come from or the emotions come from, and especially in a world where we occupy generating revenue and being in a performance space. being validated in many ways for the revenue that you do generate and then tying up your self-worth to all that. That can really spin a lot of things mentally around. So maintaining a level of control is just meaning, like, what can I practice on a daily basis that kind of keeps things a bit more harmonized and keeps me stable, feeling good. Because generally, you know, when we feel good, we make better decisions. We make better decisions. We generally have better outcomes, both on a human level and a professional level. So that's what I mean by just trying to be intentional in everything that I do, not to control it in a robotic or overly engineered way, but to actually, it's funny, I'm actually reading. Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. And he talks about this resistance, resistance with a capital R. And, you know, he talks about his own journey of writing failed novel after failed novel and running away from it for many years. you know, this idea of turning pro to him is basically, it's a daily practice of inviting the muse, whatever that muse is for you. And some people may call that God. Some of those will call it the universe. Some will call it inspiration flow state, the muse, whatever. But the idea is you're setting up a rhythm for yourself where you're intentionally inviting the connection with that thing so that you can maintain a level of control, but also maintain a level of connection to you know, a higher source, let's just call it that, or your true authentic source. And for me, that is definitely a daily practice. Maybe it's something I have to work on more consciously and more actively than others. But it's something I don't want to forget about. And so I'm consciously going through this rhythm and daily practice so that I'm intentional about inviting the muse in and overcoming the capital R resistance so that I can really just do the best work as a human and a professional every day.
Jolie Shapiro05:10.052
I love that. That's amazing. I am definitely not as methodical. I can be incredibly... I'm very creative. I think that's my probably biggest talent, which I'm sure you are too, but I also can move very quickly, too quickly. I can move too quickly. So I probably need to read that book.
Brandon Fluharty05:16.408
You Yeah, it's a good one. then, know, funny enough, literally just today's entry, the chapters are like literally like one pages. So it kind of reads like a, almost like a daily, if you're familiar with like the daily stoic, it's a book that you could read on a daily basis. It's like one short chapter. So you kind of feel inspired each day. And today talked about a little bit around this idea, well, you know, especially for a writer talking really to other creatives in his field, other writers, authors, filmmakers, even startup entrepreneurs. Well, I'm creative. I want to go with the energy that I feel and I want to be spontaneous and I want to capture the magic. What about that? I don't want to stifle myself with a systematic approach. And so it kind of goes back to what I saying earlier. It's not about being robotic. to just do things to check them off of a list, but it's more about, how do you make it easier for the source to connect to source or for the muse to show up so you can do your best work and get into that flow state, get into the zone, which, you know, psychologically, know, mentally, emotionally, you know, from a... performance enhancement standpoint, that is a zone, an optimal zone that we wanna occupy, right? Being fully present in the moment, to be able to either best connect with others or conduct our best work or simply just chill out and relax and not worry about anything occupying our mind. So I say all that, that what he's talked about today was ironically, well, it's the systems and funny enough, the routine and the rhythm, And we don't have to look very far. can look at world-class athletes, for instance, who prep themselves. And yes, they do boring work, but when it's time to show up on the field or the track or the gym floor, they can do their best work by really connecting with their true source and being fully present in the moment and in that flow state. So ironically, it's kind of the... the systems and the routines help us to control that a little bit more and harness that and leverage it to our benefit and the benefits of other around us.
Jolie Shapiro08:11.59
That's awesome. Did you always have that mentality or did you learn that like throughout your time as a seller and then kind of are you teaching it to others now or how does that look?
Brandon Fluharty08:13.78
Thank It's definitely been an evolutionary progression for sure. Like I said, I feel like the one thing, and I want to have this stage of my life a little more time to be reflective and be philosophical and read more and sleep more and connect more and just that opens up so much more time for thinking, not overthinking, but thinking in a good way. Just thinking about contemplating the bigger questions in life. I would say that looking back, was being purposeful and intentional. I can think about when I would make very purposeful decisions as a child and being thoughtful about, okay, I wouldn't do this thing because I really believe in it for myself. And sometimes those were like contrary decisions. It was going against the grain. A very simple example of, remember, My mom was a vegetarian growing up. And so that probably had some influence on me. So it wasn't just like I was pulling this out of left field. But I remember like, in like fifth grade, I started taking like carrot sticks and baba ganoush and pita bread to lunch when my everybody else was like bringing Twinkies and ham sandwiches on white bread and stuff like that. And I was like purposely not going trigger treating because I didn't want to eat candy for whatever reason. It felt like the right thing to do in fifth grade for me. you know, wasn't like I had friends who were like, don't do that. You know, we're not going to be friends with you if you don't eat Twinkies. it was also very different. And so That's just like one prime example that sticks in my head, something that I've kind of done throughout my career. I've always been purposeful with the decisions I make, even if it went against the grain and wasn't atypical.
Jolie Shapiro10:33.242
Makes a lot of sense and I know. sorry, go ahead.
Brandon Fluharty10:33.91
Yeah, we'll tip it. I was just saying, was typically, was atypical versus typical.
Jolie Shapiro10:41.36
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Did you use that kind of thinking? Like kind of, because I know you talk a lot about burnout. So we'd just love to hear if there's a connection, but if there's not, just your opinion on burnout today in sales.
Brandon Fluharty10:58.574
Yeah, definitely many times when I veered away from that connection to source and feeling like, I'm making these purposeful decisions for myself. When I let, you know, other people's voices, managers' voices, leadership voices, society's voices, overtake my own internal voice. That's always when I veered towards moving towards burnout because what I was allowing was those voices usually stemming from rules I had no power in creating. I let those rules define my reality at the time. And it was always in those moments where I can pinpoint, okay, yeah, I was making decisions off of somebody else's, off of a set of rules. that really had no bearing for me going back to how we opened this up. Like we're all like on this spectrum of so many things, experiences, personality types, geography, sex, know, gender, all that, right? And we're unique as a species, we're, excuse me, you know, connected as a species, not to get too philosophical here, but we're unique as individuals, right? And so, when I veered away from my own unique qualities and adopted either society's rules or rules of my leaders and my managers who were trying to impress upon me like something that was very selfish for them, I was out of line, out of alignment with kind of what were my true capabilities. And that always led me down a path towards burnout. So by, you know, eliminating through practice, a daily practice of staying further connected, inviting the muse to sort of interact and play with me in a way that I can be my best, do my best work on behalf of my clients, on behalf of like how I need to operate through my own unique set of qualities, personality type and so forth, that allowed me to my best work and not only produce my best work, but like in an asymmetric way, meaning I could produce really large deals that were atypical from, you know, what we were asked of a live person, for instance, just to give you a specific example. When I was hired as a strategic account director on a new logo Hunter team, we were asked, we were given the directive, hey, go sell 250, $1,000 starter packages. We were bundled with these packages and the idea was like, go sell this to a net new logo, get an MSA, a small use case, it's easy for them to say yes to, pass it off to the client partner, they'll expand the deal. And that didn't really sit with me on a logical level. For one, I would like, looked at my number and I was like, well, I would have to sell 10 of these packages in a year. And this is with net new fortune 500 logos who don't know us, right? And we're expected to get not only an MSA in place, but also to close this small little deal. so logically, like I was going to be a lot of grinding and hustling to, to, do that. And that didn't feel right, but also intuitively it didn't feel right because Well, if I lead with a $250,000 starter package and they think of us in only solving $250,000 problems, well, that might make it even more harder to actually expand the deal. So I kind of bumped what I was told from a directive and went out with a more transformative type of positioning. And I wanted to solve $25 million. And so I try to think to myself, how can I bridge that gap between what live person is capable of doing for these Fortune 500 companies that know nothing about us? How do I come to the table in a relatively short period of time, say within a year, we invite a collaboration where we talk about $25 million problems or a big problem that could be solved, not just with a small use case. And that ended up proving to be a really worthwhile endeavor because it took my best qualities and it took what was the best qualities of what live person was capable of. And we matched those things and it produced these asymmetric results, like really large seven, eight figure deals that then, you know, set me up for a great run at the end of my corporate sales career that then I was able to learn from and now share with others. And I use, you know, the performance of that to invite others in to say, Hey, this is, this is a great role for us to better connect with ourselves and then turn that performance into a life of autonomy. And so to answer your question, yes, like that's kind of what I'm teaching others to do today is don't discard what maybe you're feeling internally, actually lean into it. Zoom in a little bit more and what you might feel is a weakness or what you might feel is something scaring you, actually leaning into it a little bit further could actually be your superpower that sets you free, but at the heart of it is a daily practice to stay connected to it. You don't wanna sever that connection because that's when, especially if you... have a history of mental health issues, when we sever that connection, that's when we can set ourselves unfortunately down a dark and downward spiral that we don't wanna go in.
Jolie Shapiro17:29.754
Yeah, they call it doom spiraling in therapy. Doom spiraling catastrophizing or like the two words that people throw around like they're... I don't know what the saying is, but that people throw around. Were there any weaknesses that you consider of yours that you ended up leveraging as strengths?
Brandon Fluharty17:32.002
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for so long, I battled like this idea that being an introvert, like I couldn't succeed in sales. Like that was one that for a long time, especially when I first got into sales, almost 20 years ago, it just seemed like there was no fit for introverts. It was all about relationship building and you need to be extroverted. need to have high energy. You need to command the room. You need to, you know, take. your clients out to dinners and you needed to whole conversation. was charisma, all those things and all those things that felt, you know, like just unnatural to me. And the further along I went in sales and had time on my side to, actually live through it. And then kind of have the freedom in the space with good leadership and environment, psychological safety. throughout my career that did allow me to tap into, well, wait a minute, there is a different way. And it kind of goes back to like this ethos of being really intentional and purposeful with making decisions about what I felt was right. That stem back to childhood, being able to do that helped me to learn that actually introversion was not, you know, holding me back in sales. That was just some sort of like, myth that gets created in some other space, it was actually what truly helped me to be a more strategic thinker, helped me to actually listen to clients versus just waiting to speak and be able to fall in love with what I had to say. so all those things actually turned out to be really powerful assets that when I got into the highest level at LivePerson, highest level meaning strategic accounts, really targeted, focused accounts that had the potential of spending millions of dollars every year on technology and services to transform the business, it was actually being an introvert that helped me. And what I found is as a human, I actually kind of moved up the spectrum, right? From totally introverted, had I not been in this field of sales, of interacting, being forced to interact with other people to generate, to create value and generate revenue, I wouldn't have moved myself to more of the ambivert level of somebody who just got comfortable in their own skin and being able to communicate with others. But not needing to go so far on the spectrum that like I had to force myself to be somebody I was naturally not. So I'm still introverted in nature. personality meaning I get energy by being in isolation and needing to step away and be energized after human interaction. But whereas maybe in younger years I would have shied away from actually even talking to people, I used it as a way to develop as a human but also the introverted side of being actually ended up being a really powerful professional strategic asset to be the best strategic seller possible.
Jolie Shapiro21:22.928
That's awesome. I was just thinking about when you were talking about energy being drained, I have a Garmin and yeah, so whatever. Yeah, I have one too. Yeah, it's charging right now. But whenever I see people, I look at my body battery. I'll go from like 60 to 20.
Brandon Fluharty21:42.094
Yeah, Yeah. My move tells me like, it's like, are you working out? And no, I was just in, you running a webinar or I was on stage speaking and the stress level was, was really high at that particular time. So yeah, totally get it.
Jolie Shapiro22:02.554
Yeah, cortisol spike to the levels of no man's land oblivion. That's really cool. I'm trying to think. So many things came to mind. It's funny when you talked about waiting to speak. I think I was a lot like that in my 20s. Part of it's ADHD features, but it's very much like I have to get out what I want to say.
Brandon Fluharty22:08.686
That's right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro22:32.396
now. But I went through through the 12 steps for AA and I think that really taught me how to listen and all about that higher power stuff you know. Mine was connection actually. Yeah.
Brandon Fluharty22:43.512
Mm-hmm. Yeah. nice. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so again, the more I interact with other sellers, there is definitely, there's a bond that bonds us. And there are a lot who go through addiction issues and it's the bond of, Hey, you know, I had traumatic experiences. And again, it's a spectrum. Some have really traumatic experiences that stem from childhood to like, you know, minor trauma as most children experience in their lives. And we bring that into a professional career. And then, you know, here we are as, you know, maybe taught as children to be a high achiever, to, to, you know, appease our parents through a performative type of interaction versus being just authentic selves. And we take that into the work field. You know, it's a whole thing. It's called being an insecure overachiever. And those are actually very gifted children typically. But when they get into, whether it's sales or consulting or other, some sort of performance field where it's just like, hey, you, have to achieve quarter over quarter, you know, or you're not successful. That can have a big bearing on our emotional wellbeing and health. And some strive on that, right? Competition, they need that fuel quarter over quarter, otherwise they're not motivated, right? But they will probably be a different DNA, right? With like, If you were to easily have AI analyze, right? What, how people perform really at really high levels and what motivates them. not everybody's the same. and since you kind of focus your, your podcast focuses on like the emotional wellbeing and still correlating that to high performance. a lot of us, right. You know, who either gone through the 12 steps or. I almost became a Buddhist monk, right, to figure in my early 20s because I was trying to figure something out in my early childhood that I couldn't quite fathom. And part of that was also I had failed becoming a professional soccer player, something I had tied up my whole self-worth and identity to. And so when that didn't happen, I needed to find answers around Why didn't I? I working really hard and I wanted this thing really, really bad. Why couldn't it just happen? That's way it's supposed to work, right? But once I've gotten into sales, I kind of learned, huh, we're a special breed and a lot of us are insecure over achievers because we are in this fields, right? And we're trying to cope with our past. We're trying to perform at a high level as consistently as possible. And we're trying to battle all these things coming at us, not just the modern life things that come at us, news cycles, social media, and all the things that affect everyone, right, who's connected to the internet, but also the things that are hard in the role, where it's just like, I want to... perform and create value in a really authentic way without feeling like I'm gonna lose my job tomorrow if I'm having a bad day or a bad quarter. So juggling all that is hard, right? And we need something, whether it's the 12 steps, we need Buddhism, we need stoicism, we need a daily practice, a personal operating system, books, therapy, coaches. all the above, right? We need those things in order to navigate these choppy waters that are just inevitable in this career and for people like us coming from a space where we're still just trying to figure ourselves out.
Jolie Shapiro27:25.188
Yeah, yeah, that's really, really, it's brilliant. You said it. I couldn't have said it better. it's not funny. But my husband and I always talk about being human is hard.
Brandon Fluharty27:40.11
It's only getting harder I feel like.
Jolie Shapiro27:43.458
I know. I was just on a podcast with another guest talking about AI. And we had this whole conversation about how AI is changing the world and how we don't know where it's going. And that's scary. But back to you. I don't want to. Speaking of ADHD, no, but I loved what you said. Would you consider that insecure overachiever like a common thread in sales?
Brandon Fluharty28:23.566
would say it's probably more common than uncommon. And I stumbled upon something in HBR of like 2019 when I first joined LivePerson and I'm blanking on the author of the term insecure over achiever, but she's a professor at London University. And there was an article talking about this and how insecure overachievers are really common in consulting or high performance fields where not that employers are necessarily consciously manipulating them, but it's very similar to tech sales where the stick or the carrot can be used to manipulate the behaviors of people who will feel insecure about themselves if they don't hit. a recurring target, like on a quarterly basis. And you go down to SMB sales, that's like on a monthly basis, into the contact centers, like on a daily basis, right? And maybe in strategic sales, you get a little bit of a breathing room, it's like on an annual basis. And I've kind of been everywhere in between all that throughout my career. So it's definitely where... you know, the firms can take advantage of that. And we just happened to what I've also found is like a common theme. At least, you know, my generation, like most of us didn't consciously get into sales because, you know, sales and it's changing, still has a lot of room to grow. But for the most part, sales was an icky industry. It was an icky role, right? We have that stereotypical thought. and poor used car salesmen, but that's always the tagline is just like the stigma is like, he's a used car salesman or she's a used car salesman. And you think of this person who's just like trying to push something that they don't believe in to make a buck. And that was the stigma of like, if you're in sales, like that's what sales is. And so it wasn't something that a lot of people were jumping at to get into. And so what I have found that most people didn't consciously choose to get into sales, but it can be a really beautiful roles as you've discovered because it forces you to face failure on a recurring basis. And through that, right, you have to overcome a lot of that insecure overachieving where it's just like, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to tie. Got to stay grounded to not connect my self worth to numbers on a leaderboard. However, I also don't want to not produce, right? I want to do good work. So how do I find that intersection between high performance and not connecting and overinflating my self-worth to that high performance that that's the fuel for me being the best version of myself and at my craft. And I think that's just a really challenging thing to do. And that's where I think a lot of sellers get burned out. It's where a lot of insecure overachievers get caught in a vicious cycle. Stay on the hedonic treadmill too long because, you know, one thing leads to another and then it's like, okay, well, I can't leave this role because my whole self identity and worth has been tied up in this role and all the tangible benefits that come along. with the success, so I'm gonna over inflate my lifestyle and I'm gonna stay on this treadmill in perpetuity, even though I might be miserable inside or feel disconnected from my true authentic self. And luckily, right, I could have gone down that path, was close to doing that, but I didn't because I've made purposeful decisions. And so my mission today is to help others navigate that through a medium that I prefer, which is writing. And I write every day on LinkedIn and post every day on LinkedIn and share other long form content through the Purposeful Performer, writing a book. And I hope that it helps folks to reconnect better with a deeper sense and use that as I call it, like a personal operating system to practice every day of staying connected so that you can do both, which I believe in. You can have high performance and be the best at your craft and perform at high standards while also, you know, being a fulfilled human that, you know, gets appropriate sleep and rests and recovers and doesn't overinflate their lifestyle and tie up all their self-worth to their performance, they can almost disassociate from that and lead a really noble and good life.
Jolie Shapiro33:54.96
That's awesome. mean, from what I can see, it looks like you're really making a difference in people's lives. that's, you definitely don't just talk the talk, which is very cool.
Brandon Fluharty34:06.7
Yeah, I think so. I appreciate it. And it seems like that's the case. It seems like everybody who kind of makes it through to be able to connect, you know, one-on-one, you know, they've been grappling with those things. And, but they also see that there's, there's a different way. And it's not about the way, there's no one the way, because I'll keep coming back to how we open this. We're all... We're all the same species, at least for now, right? Artificial intelligence may change that and, you know, we're moving really fast. There are a lot of really wealthy people who are trying to become immortal in this lifetime and trying to change like what the human race could actually be. But, you know, for us mere mortals who are battling every day, I think there's a sense that I don't need to feel like crap every day, either it being forced from all these loud voices coming at me in a million different ways at the speed of light. Also internally, I don't need to feel that way because of some unresolved experiences or traumas in my life. I can tap into a more authentic version and use where I am right now and if it happens to be in a sales role, I can use that as a vehicle to stay connected and come out of this feeling much better about myself. And if that improves a little bit day by day, right, we'll then keep going because there is light at the end of the tunnel and if I can be a beacon or example of that, that's what I feel like. you know, it my own personal mission to be of service to others to do that. And at this point, I don't have to do it for building the biggest business in the world or making millions of dollars. I've luckily found enough financial abundance that I don't need to chase that anymore. Now it's kind of giving back to the right set of people who kind of feel like they're ready now to embrace this. And those are the... the types of folks that I work really well with.
Jolie Shapiro36:38.214
That's amazing. You described a fork in the road where you had to make a choice. What was that like?
Brandon Fluharty36:47.406
Yeah, I mean, there have been many forks throughout my life. I almost became a Buddhist monk, but then went back to school and played soccer and did other things. There was a health scare I had at one point where I landed in the hospital after having a mini stroke. And unfortunately, that wasn't the wake up call that I needed to sort of slow down a bit. wasn't until 10 years later that I truly started to slow down more. intentionally and methodically. But the four in the row where it was like, had the chance to inflate my lifestyle, it was at LivePerson. So 2018 earned really nice income. was like 208,000 in my first year as a strategic account director, but the following year earned 1.5 million, of which 1.2 million of that came from just commissions alone. And so one, was like, awesome, right? Is like validation, but like to seven and a half X my income, like in one single year, that's like winning a little mini lottery. it, you know, without the right people around you, without the right like principles in place, the right values, it would be really, would have, it was tempting at that time. I was, it was like, talk to my wife, let's get the Porsche 911. Like let's. we were looking at luxury homes and upgrading our lifestyle to meet the income that I had at that moment. Glad, right? Partly it was like COVID hitting in 2020 and some other factors that made us not inflate our lifestyle and I'm really happy that that didn't part conscious and unconscious. And that... to me was like a really valuable thing because now I can look back on that and say, well, it didn't stay on that treadmill. It didn't stay in the corporate world when I knew like over my lifetime, I wanted to get out, escape out of corporate world so that I could own my calendar and fill up my calendar with projects that I deeply care about. And as long as somebody provided my calendar, an employer is much autonomy that I thought I had for myself working for somebody else, it's not 100%. And it wouldn't be 100 % until I fully owned it and I paid Google for my Google calendar or Microsoft for my Outlook calendar or if I didn't want to keep a calendar at all, that was my decision. So I'm glad I didn't inflate our lifestyle. So that could have been a completely different fork that we probably wouldn't even be having this conversation. I could still be a live person or, you know, had been let go and gone somewhere else and, you know, but still struggling, not struggling, but in it, right? In the chaos that I wanted to deliberately leave at one point. And I'm so glad that I did. And part of that was, like I said, purposeful decisions and having some, you know, the fortune of things forcing me to make those decisions, whether it be at the macro level like COVID or just good people around me like my wife and in-laws and family who didn't value those things so much. yeah, I think I'm much happier down this path and feel like I'm making an impact on others that would have been neglected had I not made that decision. And it's good that this path emerged.
Jolie Shapiro40:45.968
Feels damn good, doesn't it?
Brandon Fluharty40:47.479
It does. It does.
Jolie Shapiro40:50.544
What if, sorry, let me start that over. What advice would you give to people that might not have that luxury?
Brandon Fluharty40:59.11
I would say again, like we are all in a different spectrum of experiences, the same thing with timelines that, you know, just because I found corporate freedom at 42 with, you know, enough financial abundance that I didn't have to move into creating something that didn't feel right for me just to make money and pay the bills. doesn't mean that has to be the gold standard for everybody to benchmark against. Because 42 might be late for some people, it might be early for other people. And so I would say that spending time with your own thoughts, I'm a big fan of writing and journaling, connecting with yourself, zooming out before you zoom in and take action. That's just a healthy practice. And it doesn't have to be extensive. It could be a simple prompt, right? At the end of the day, what are you grateful for? What went well? What didn't go well? That takes 30 seconds. If you're digitally native, do it on your phone. If you like to write it out, you know, buy a really expensive notebook, buy just... grab scrap paper, it doesn't even have to be something that you spend on, just you allocate some time to it. And that practice consistently will help open insights and you can start connecting those insights to, okay, well I understand myself better and once I start understanding myself better, I can start to understand the patterns that happen and how do I start? moving the patterns better in my or under or reframe the patterns as what I once thought were negative and weaknesses to it is just who I am. So how do I embrace that and be comfortable with that and actually use them so that I can be me and not some performative version of me that is a shadow of my real self, but it may be feels like something I have to do to appease others. Whether again, that stems from child parent relationship to school relationship to work relationship or society's view of what you should be. Try to overcome those external voices and quiet those voices with your own inner voice. And the best way to... interact and fuel that voice is just connecting with yourself, asking yourself questions, writing down. And it doesn't have to be an introverted type of activity. That's, think, beneficial for anyone.
Jolie Shapiro44:06.79
for sure, self reflection is really where it's at. You brought up a memory for me. So I'm driven to a fault where I can get beat, well to put it bluntly, I could be quite a pain in the ass. Sometimes I fit a square peg in a round hole kind of pain in the ass. But it's funny.
Brandon Fluharty44:16.61
Mm-hmm.
Jolie Shapiro44:34.543
When I was 11, I tried out for the talent show and I didn't get in. I didn't care. I wrote them a letter anyway. Like the talent committee for elementary school to get, I was like, the other, I said, the other act they taught, they did a haiku and it was terrible or something like that. And I said, our dance was actually really well coordinated or something ridiculous.
Brandon Fluharty45:03.917
Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro45:04.1
And we got in. So I was. Yeah, that's how I've always been. There is a double edged sword, though. It is definitely double edged sword. But I love your zoom in, zoom out. I have trouble with that.
Brandon Fluharty45:09.23
It just pays off. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love frameworks and I guess, I don't know where it comes from. naturally a systems thinker and think a little bit like a designer. So I have a, I don't know, I was never an architect, but I wanted to be an architect as a kid. wanted to be, or maybe I have an engineering mind a little bit, but. I have this framework, I call it play. And it's the, I consider it the antidote to work, right? So if you define work, the way I do it in this framework, you wrestle with the small stuff, that's W. You're overwhelmed by everything that's coming at you. R, you react as a victim. And then K, you eventually get knocked out by burnout. So that's not an ideal state to work. But play is a much better way because P, you ponder the bigger picture. So that's the zooming out. And I that's a good place to start. Start by really zooming out and spending time, like quiet quality time. And I know that's hard for everyone, right? Against circumstances. If you have like three young children, gonna be harder, right, let's say in the morning, to find that quiet time. So maybe it's in the evening after the children are in bed. Or if you're single and alone, right, you have a lot of quiet time. But again, back to this idea of spectrum, right, we're all like on a different spectrum. Both people are human beings, so that's their connecting force, but two completely unique situations. And that's what makes them individuals. So how do we like, but zooming out for both of them could be a really good thing, right? And thinking deeply and asking the hard questions. And sometimes the hard questions start with like, you know, very tangible questions of like, what am I grateful for? Right? Like that's just a good practice as well. There's like tons of studies that show like happiness actually is, you know, follows gratitude. And so if we can kind of at least instill in ourselves something to look at and say, I can be grateful for that, You know, that's something to be worthy of zooming out and capturing a thought on and reminding yourself on a daily basis. What went well, right? And you can kind of zoom in now from zooming out there on Okay, well what did go well? Imagine just ending your day with that ritual, that practice, or starting your day with that practice. So anyways, P is all about pondering the bigger picture. So that's the zooming out. And then you kind of zoom in with L, which is leverage the right resources. And the right resources that I think about, that we all deal with. on a collective level, our time, energy, attention, and money, right? As revenue generators, right, we're scored on, on money, in, in many ways, and we obviously need money. There's none of us in that. think listening are still using a barter system, right? You're not bartering to pay your rent or your mortgage, right? You're not bartering to put food on the table, to pay your bills. So we use money as an exchange of something to get something else. So it's important, right? It's a resource we have to be cognizant of. But where people get caught up on just the part is inflating that with status, right? Using money as status versus money as a tool. So that's a whole other episode that we could go down in. But those are the kind of the resources that we have to think about. Time, right? It's not like you're operating on a 32 hour day clock, right? And I'm working on a 24 hour clock. We all kind of work on a 24 hour clock that follows, you know, the sun, right? Setting and rising. And so we have to be thoughtful about that. There are 1,440 minutes in a day. that will go by, that clock will not stop ticking. Energy, right? We can't just work as robots and unless you have a weird mutation where you can get by on four hours of sleep, right? Most of us need to reenergize, but also we need to follow and create energy, right? So that's a resource that we have to manage. And then our attention, right? Again, a million things coming at us, right? From social media, news, distractions. things from leaders and managers, needs from family, all those things can vie for our attention. the last research I read is like, we're distracted like every 11 minutes, meaning we're pulled away from doing something that we were working on. And then there's cognitive residue where we actually have to stop what we're doing and get back into what we were doing. after we've managed that distraction and then that further causes delays in producing high quality work. So all those things we have to, we're constantly juggling, right? Time, energy, attention and money. And then act in the right way, right? In the right moments. That's sort of the third pillar of play. And what I mean by that is, you know, over the course of a year, maybe that's the number that you're trying to generate a certain revenue target on, right? That's a really big number, right? So how do you break up the year, for instance, in really specific blocks? And going into a new year, maybe you wanna spend, you know, a lot of time, you know, thoughtfully thinking about... What do I want to accomplish in the upcoming year? What's the theme that's going to guide me and help me to make decisions? And then you narrow down from there, okay, how do you recalibrate every quarter or even month? Maybe you need a specific routine or ritual for that. And then on a weekly basis, how do you organize yourself? How do you look back and score your past week and how do you organize your week ahead? And then back to like what I think is the single unit of success. over a course of certainly a year is a day. How do you execute a thoughtful day of, you even know what your perfect day looks like? So understanding kind of what works for you. So that's acting in the right way at the right time. And then yield, why is yielding the type of results that you wanna create for yourself and others. And so anyways, by thinking about zooming out, pondering the bigger picture, leveraging the right resources and acting in the right way with those resources the right time, we can yield the right type of results that again find that happy intersection between me being the best version of myself as a human as well as being the highest level of my craft as a professional. To me that's a much better way than work. That's the way I think about it, giving you a long-winded way of how you interact with zoom in, zoom out.
Jolie Shapiro53:35.814
That's amazing. I love that. I feel like, I know you work with with sellers, but I feel like that just kind of permeates throughout humanity. I mean, all of it. I mean, the framework is amazing. I feel like the common thread that that I've noticed is, at least for me, I think a lot of us are so driven.
Brandon Fluharty53:46.434
Yeah.
Jolie Shapiro54:02.34
At least while speak from my experience as I learned in AA, for me, when I mentioned I was driven before, I am very driven because I always felt like I wasn't enough.
Brandon Fluharty54:04.43
Mm-hmm. Mm.
Jolie Shapiro54:21.968
When we're not enough, when we don't feel like we're enough, it's really hard to zoom in, zoom out and think about that perfect day. So I love like what would be my perfect day? Because you're so caught up in having to prove something to someone. You don't even know who that someone is. So that framework is great. Is that where can I get that? I'm like, can I sign up with you?
Brandon Fluharty54:47.598
Alright.
Jolie Shapiro54:50.3
Even though I'm not a seller.
Brandon Fluharty54:54.274
It's kind of like being built behind the scenes as we speak. Yeah, I'll send you, I broke it down a little bit in a master class that I presented at last year. So I'll send you that video and you can link it if it would be helpful to listeners in the audience. yeah, TBD, it's coming.
Jolie Shapiro54:58.638
okay. We won't, we won't. I won't go with the secret sauce. Nice. okay. thought it was already live. was like, damn, that's amazing. Well, very, very cool. Well, I know you're over LinkedIn, but if people have questions, how can they reach you?
Brandon Fluharty55:23.406
I Yeah, so I show up every day on LinkedIn, so it's a great place to follow me. I share, as you know, very openly my experience. It's the good, bad, and ugly. And then where I spend the majority of my time, energy, and attention is building out the purposeful performers. So that's the best place to capture all of my frameworks and... long form thoughts and writing or write about the future or write about what, you know, very specifically how I might help you on this journey of, you know, being the best version of your human self and capable and the high standard of your professional craft. It's called the purposeful performer.com. So that's probably the the next best place. So follow me on LinkedIn and go to purposefulperformer.com. You can subscribe every Wednesday, I share a new lesson every week and for paid members, they'll get full access to that mission as well as other content that I share like those, the play framework and other things.
Jolie Shapiro56:45.722
Awesome, well thank you so much, Brynne, and this was quite the inspiring podcast.
Brandon Fluharty56:47.853
Yeah. Well, I appreciate you having me and glad, you know, sorry to keep you waiting for so long, but glad we could finally make it work. So appreciate you being patient with me.
Jolie Shapiro56:59.613
of course. mean, you know me, I'm very persistent.
Brandon Fluharty57:02.146
Yes, yes.