Did you know that 75% of C-suites say they’re seriously considering quitting for a job that would better support their well-being?
It’s quite shocking.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
What if we told you that managing stress could be simpler than you think?
In this week’s episode, I sat down with Larry Bradley, who unpacks the complexities of workplace stress with practical advice.
Here’s why this episode is a must-listen:
–Actionable Strategies: Larry breaks down stress management into three simple steps that anyone can implement, regardless of their role or industry.
–Health Implications: Did you know that stress is the leading cause of chronic illness in today’s workforce? Larry reveals how unchecked stress can impact not only individual health but also the future of businesses.
–Leadership and Productivity: Addressing mental wellness isn’t just about personal well-being—it’s about effective leadership and fostering a culture of productivity.
This episode couldn’t be more timely or urgent.
Larry and I met through an unassuming Facebook comment.
Followed up with him for 6 months via Facebook Messenger and then his very successful health insurance fund became a client.
Don’t let stress hinder your success. Take charge of your well-being and join us for this episode.
PS. Take the first step towards a healthier, happier workplace through our Corporate Wellness Course. Click HERE to learn how to double your work output in half the time while reducing stress.
Continued Learning: Resetting Your Mind
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TRANSCRIPT:
*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes ![smile](https://chetholmes.com/wp-content/themes/Divi/includes/builder/frontend-builder/assets/vendors/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)
Larry Bradley: People are so stressed out. They’re so anxious. And guess what? They’re not leaving for more money. They’re not leaving for more benefit. They’re not leaving for a richer life. They’re leaving for this. They want a calm life. By the way, it took me forever to learn this, but I’m still breathing so I can use it.
I finally learned that calm Is a superpower.
Amanda Holmes: Here is your daily dose of the ultimate sales machine coming to you from the new edition, visit ultimate sales machine. com to get your copy or multiple. I am your host, Amanda Holmes, CEO of Chet Holmes international. What you’re about to learn has assisted a quarter of a million businesses to generate billions of dollars working faster, better, smarter.
Welcome everybody to the CEO mastery show. Amanda Holmes here, your host I have with me, our executive strategy officer, Troy Aberle, and our guest for today is Larry Bradley. I have to tell you, it’s such a joy to have Larry on this week because our research team had just pulled this data, which is just the beginning.
I can’t even believe how shocking this data is. 75 percent of C suites say they’re seriously considering quitting their jobs and looking for something that will support their well being. So, I happen to have Larry at the same time of me looking at this data. Data and going, we need to find out some of the simple tips we can do to ease that burden.
And that’s what this episode is going to be about because Larry has such a wonderful, I mean, he speaks around the nation talking about leadership now, which he also was able to do because, well, maybe I should tell the backstory of how we met. What about that? Larry.
Larry Bradley: I love it. Please do.
Amanda Holmes: I love it. I tell this story from stage actually, so it’s so fun to have you on now.
So, I had intercepted a Facebook comment left on one of our ads. Larry had left a comment asking, and I Thought I just had this gut feeling of, I need to investigate further and find out what, who is this man? So I went into the messenger and started saying, Hey, I saw that you commented on this ad, tell me more about you.
And you had introduced yourself as, I think it was something along the lines of like, I love what you do. I’m trying to make this happen in my, the business that I’m running. And what were you running at the time? What, what was the business?
Larry Bradley: The business I reached out to you for was the national health care plan, and we wanted to, I hesitate to say rebrand, we want to brand it because it wasn’t branded.
And if you remember, I asked you to write me out of the script because I was the face, and I was too much the face and we needed a bit broader, bigger brand and identity and you guys.
Amanda Holmes: Oh, can you just for those that aren’t familiar with that particular company? Can you give a little bit of understanding to the magnitude of what you were running?
Can you share? Yes,
Larry Bradley: it was a very large national health care plan. It was for the electrical workers union. And their employer counterparts and they started many years ago, a idea that they would build a national plan so that all the local areas could aggregate into it and they would use size as leverage to better purchase health care.
Well, it became so much more than that because we really started to dive into innovation. Once I became a health care insider, I saw so much. Let me just say I saw a lot of problems in health care in our Western medicine, and I thought that more could be done. So I wanted to dive in, but I needed the help of Amanda Holmes and your organization because.
I was stuck. I didn’t know where to go from there. I knew what we needed to do, but I didn’t know how to get there. And it came to me, and maybe it was that Facebook ad, I don’t know, but I realized
Amanda Holmes: we
Larry Bradley: need to brand this operation. Why couldn’t we take Amanda’s company and work and apply it to a healthcare plan?
You know, we don’t sell widgets. We’re a massive non for profit healthcare plan, but we had to sell a story and we had to sell value and we had to sell change and innovation and all these things that we figured out, if we bring it all together, we can have the best healthcare plan in America. And I’m so happy that we engaged here because we were able to do exactly that and it’s still going on.
Amanda Holmes: It’s such an awesome story. Larry, I was so shocked to see how your business was set up, just the magnitude of how large it was, and that you were the marketing, Head and the only salesman.
I mean, can we share a little bit of numbers? Like, can you give a little bit of insight into
Larry Bradley: what went on there?
Amanda Holmes: Either just like, I used to just be baffled by how much business you would bring in just from like referrals a year on average. Can you give like figures?
Larry Bradley: The leadership of the union and the management organization asked me back in 2011, the plan started in 2006 and 2011, it had just over 10, 000 members and she’s fine now.
Thank, thank God. She’s doing great. And it just adopted her baby girl. So she’s got her whole family of two boys and a girl and her husband. But between Kate’s situation and my exposure as an insider now in healthcare, I saw so much. And I said, a lot of this has to be addressed. And the way we can address it is to seek out the most innovative people on the planet that we can find and bring their value to our membership, not just the classic health care, what I actually refer to as sick care.
Someone’s going along about their life, they suddenly feel nauseous or ill, they go to a doctor, they get a prescription, they take it to the pharmacy, they get the script, they take that, they feel better, and life goes on. And that’s people’s general exposure to healthcare. It’s so much more than that. It’s so much bigger than that.
So we were able to retell the story. Thanks to you and your organization and the help you gave us to really, I want to say branded really for the first time we were, we were flying by the seat of our, you know, us, but, and even then we managed to do well, so I’m looking forward to the explosion now.
Amanda Holmes: I’m amazed at how many hats you held, right?
The marketing hat, this only salesman, the entire thing, and then also managing all of your staff and then also innovating to make sure that the leading edge of modern discoveries in science and health were available to your, all the people that were on your plan. So, and now Larry travels around the world speaking and I love his fervor For knowledge, you always have, have you seen this?
Have you heard of this man? You were, you were voracious in your wanting to learn. So with all of that knowledge with having such a successful career managing health, I think you’re the perfect person to come here and share with our audience. Can we just come up with. Three simple tips to ease the burden of leadership.
So what would you say, Larry, what is the first, the simplest tip to ease the burden of leadership?
Larry Bradley: A lot of people that end up in a leadership position get there because they’ve done something good at some other position, somebody recognizes them. It says, Hey, Let’s promote Larry or Amanda because they’re really good at what they’re doing.
Now, that does not always translate. In fact, often, it doesn’t. You find somebody in a chair. They don’t belong. And so you lost a good employee over here doing what they were great at. And now you got a lousy leader. So, and this is going to maybe surprise you, but so I’ve been doing a ton of speaking and I’ve been doing a lot of consulting to C suite and then throughout organizations.
And I’m finding at the highest levels of organizations, and then throughout the organization, people are So stressed out. They’re so anxious. And I think it’s obviously not COVID per se now, but it is post COVID world we’re living in, I think has lent itself to this. And then also COVID opened a lot of eyes to people because we talked there earlier about someone, the C suite people leaving, and guess what?
They’re not leaving for more money. They’re not leaving for more benefit. They’re not leaving for a richer life. They’re leaving for this. They want a calm life. By the way, it took me forever to learn this, but I’m still breathing so I can use it. I finally learned that calm Is a superpower and not everything needs a response, but as I navigate and speak and teach and learn in organizations and see what I’m seeing and hear what I’m hearing about the people being so stressed, it’s obvious to me number one tip has to be learned to learn strategies and techniques to manage and mitigate stress.
Our Centers for Disease Control tells us the number one delivery system for disease in America right now, and has been for a little while, is stress. Why? Very simple. Stress inflames the body, and an inflamed body is a perfect host for a diseased state to begin and to grow if you don’t change things.
Beginning with just a simple negative thought can interrupt the flow of a human body and open a venue for disease in different parts of the body. Just start thinking alone. Think about that. Right?
Amanda Holmes: Hmm.
Larry Bradley: It’s incredible. So I would say learn and that’s one of the things I teach is teach people how to learn to manage and mitigate stress.
Most people are winging it and you can’t wing it when you’re dealing with it from the moment you wake up to the moment you close your eyes. If you can even get to sleep, right? Most people I know don’t spring out of bed and say, gee, I get to go to work today. I’m so excited. Most people, their minds are grinding away before they even lift their head with all that they got to deal with that day.
Whether it’s family, friends, money, health, delayed flights, all this stuff is on us in addition to our day job. And I think that’s why you’re seeing the C suites say, you know what? Hey, 68 percent of corporate employees are self reporting as being checked out. That equals, well, not only the human suffering among these people, the people I just described, but also these people are trying to manage a whole world around them that’s getting tougher.
And more stressful, and they don’t have the tools per se most to figure out. What do I do about this? I’m really anxious. I’m really stressed out. What do I do? So I teach a lot of that strategy with people. And you know what, Amanda, it’s a lot simpler than people think. We humans tend to complicate everything and it’s not really that complicated.
It really isn’t.
Amanda Holmes: I love that. I know some of the data too. I know. I love when you give me data. So I have data back. So what we’re seeing from the data is that we’re so incredibly stressed that now we’re seeing chronic illness has increased, as you were saying, because of the inflammation of stress. So for the ages, 35 to 44.
Okay. Chronic illness from pre COVID to post COVID has increased by 20%, a freaking whopping 20%. I wanted to say another curse word just then, and then another 12 percent from 44 to 64. So we’re already seeing the disease enter in the body. And then, Who’s really experiencing the most amount of stress are those 18 to 34, right?
The incoming workplace is just, I mean, they’re so stressed. They can’t operate. They can’t function. They are overwhelmed. And as businesses, we need to start taking that responsibility to solve this. Give them the tools. Troy, you want to speak to this too? I know that you do so much with this as well.
Troy Aberle: I love what you just said, because you look at the way that we’re.
It feels like everybody’s in such a reaction mode right now, and they’re trying to just look for the easiest way out. But that easy way out is not only taking the dis ease of the executive, it’s being pushed out and through all levels of the people that report to them. And then that, That is now translating out into the market and the economy, and it’s starting to change the buying criteria where people don’t feel as confident in the people they used to do business with, because it’s not as great of a community or emotional feeling, which is now starting to change the way people are buying.
And some of the online spaces are becoming more attractive to that. However, online can’t replace that human interaction that we need, or we need those humans to be at a place of dis ease. So I appreciate that.
Larry Bradley: It’s interesting that you say that, Troy, because The suicide rates among school aged children post COVID have doubled.
School aged children. And one of the reasons they’re saying that, to your point you just made, is the thing called social isolation. Meaning, I don’t want to have the face to face. And you take these, Amanda, you just talked 18 to 34. These are people that are largely on unsure footing about who they are.
You know, they’re real talent, so they lack some comfort. They lack some level of esteem. Now you put all this other junk on top of them and no wonder they’re saying, Hey, I’m checked out. I just want things to be easier. So one of the things I do, I say to people now when I’m going to speak or work with someone, especially one on one, I’ll say, how are you doing?
And they’ll say, fine. How are you? Well, okay, let’s get that lie out of the way. Then I say, no, how are you really doing, Amanda, Troy, how are you really doing? And I just listened and I am blown away at how many times that that person will begin to open up because when you said, how are you really doing?
You exhibited care. You said, you know, I really do care. I don’t want the peripheral. Yeah, I’m fine. How about you? Because we all say that and most of us don’t mean it because we’re all dealing, as they say, everybody you see is dealing with something you have no idea what they’re dealing with. So please be kind and kind is a learned behavior, by the way, and it has a lot of benefits to personal benefits.
It’s actually, it could be selfish, like, forgiveness is selfish. You don’t forgive for them. You forgive for you, but it makes you a better person. It makes you feel better. And kindness doesn’t cost anything. But let me scare you a little bit. Okay. Back on the stats. I know Amanda, you liked the statistics and we talked about various age groups.
You know, our children, our babies. Right. Our Children in 1965, which really wasn’t that long ago in the great grand scheme in 1965, less than 2 percent of American Children had a chronic illness, less than 2 percent today, over 54 percent of our Children. Now, these are tomorrow’s employees. These are tomorrow’s parents.
These are tomorrow’s leaders. And look at all. First of all, I always look at the personal suffering of these people, which is the most horrific price we pay. But look at the price society is going to pay. They’re saying now, right now, in corporate America, absenteeism, presenteeism, which is skyrocketing, but right now it’s costing American employers over a half a trillion dollars a year, over a half a trillion dollars a year.
Absenteeism and presenteeism. Think about the implications of that in the less safe occupations. Like, I come out of the electrical workers world, where we deal with something, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it, but it will kill you, and you don’t want to go in there absent minded, just like we don’t want our pilot in the cockpit absent minded or practicing presenteeism, right?
We can’t avoid that. So this is you see the broad implications across all layers of society. It all matters so much is why we have to. It’s not something we should do. It’s something we have to do. I say all the time. America needs a wellness revolution, mind and body, and they need it now. And it starts with you and me.
Amanda Holmes: That is so good. So let me just summarize. So the first Tip you’re saying to ease the burden of not even just leadership, but just the workplace life. The biggest takeaway I got from that is identifying that we are in a serious struggle of mental wellness and then doing something about it. Just asking somebody how they’re really doing and showing that you care is the first simple tip.
And I think that that’s something that everyone can ask. How are you doing? How are you really doing? That’s such a great takeaway. So, if we were to go to the second simple tip to ease the burden of stress in the workplace, what would you give
Larry Bradley: us, Larry? I would say this, number two is, it starts with awareness.
I tell people when I, anymore when I speak, I, before I say what I want to say, the first thing I say to them is, I said, take out a pen, pencil, and write this word down, awareness. Everything in life begins with an awareness, whether we have it or we don’t, and life doesn’t care. So I consider my mission is creating awareness.
Create an awareness in you that you didn’t previously have so that hopefully I trigger some self direction in you to do something about what you now know. I eat an unexpressed emotion cannot die. And if there are negative emotions, fear, guilt, anger, upset, disgust, those emotions are killing us from the inside out with the literal chemical cocktail because our mind creates real chemical reactions inside our body based on how we think and what we think.
Right. If I tell people this, here’s a quick exercise. I tell people, all of us, given that unexpressed emotion cannot die, all of us, I do this in rooms, no matter what size. I said, don’t raise your hand because I’m not going to call you out, but in your own mind, I want you to think of there’s a conversation that you need to have.
There’s a problem you need to work on or resolve, and you’re not doing it because you’re afraid. You’re afraid of how it’s going to turn out. You’re afraid it might get go south. It may not go well, but I challenge people before the sun sets that day that we’re talking. Make the phone call, send the email, set up the meeting, do something to begin to express that emotion with that person.
And by the way, I tell them if you go trying to add value to whatever it is, let’s say it’s a relationship, you’re going trying to add value and you’re going to speak as sincerely as you possibly can to make things better. You can’t lose because even if it goes south and it’s the same relationship ends, was it ever really there?
But you’ve carried it around for how many years now? Right? So. And back to number two. Let me say this about that. And this is another thing that I’d love to teach people because I was such a victim of what I’m about to talk about myself. Not a victim. I was self inflicted. A lot of people think that their behaviors are random.
And there’s nothing they can do about it. There’s another group of people think that we’re pre programmed locked in. And there’s, you know, by the time we’re eight, we’re that’s it. Old dogs can’t learn new tricks, but there’s a neuroscience of the science of neuroplasty now tells us the brain and mind is very malleable well into old age.
And you can, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks. So I teach something called a self management sequence. It is the basis or origin. It’s the sequence we go through in our mind. With every single behavior that we exhibit or fail to exhibit. So, and everything you do and everything you fail to do gives us our reality.
Behavior equals reality. What we do gives us our world. Good, bad, or indifferent. So wouldn’t it be wonderful to learn exactly how you arrive at your behavior? And I’ll give you a tip. It’s not about logic, because I know that also in this call, and everybody that’s listening has done this before. Jeez, why did I do that?
I know better than that. Well, that was logic talking. We’re not logical beings, we’re emotional beings. Everything we do ultimately or fail to do is based on how we feel, and that’s part of the self management sequence that I teach your feeling at any given time will create your behavior or lack of behavior, which will give you your results.
So doesn’t it make sense? Imagine mitigate your stress, but learn how this person ticks and are no exceptions to this. This is a process, and it begins with programming, and it ends with feelings and behavior, right? And I love to tie in, have those conversations, step up because I tell people when you’re done having a difficult conversation or handling that difficult problem, I said, I don’t care how it ends.
You’re going to feel 10 feet tall when you’re on the other side of it. And you’re going to start the process of creating a new habit to say, you know what? Yeah, maybe that was a little difficult, but look at how I feel right now. I’ve got this 60 pound backpack off of me now that I’ve carried for 30 years or 20 years or 10 years.
In a relation, and you’re going to find out the truth about, let’s say it’s a relationship. There are typically the issues, you know, my relationship with my mom, my sister, my significant other. You might as well bear it out because it’s going to bear itself out at some point anyway. Just maybe a lot more years and a lot more disease that you’ve created or allowed to be created in you because you didn’t deal with it.
And I know it’s not easy. I’m not saying what I’m telling you is easy. But my God, is it rewarding. And talk about mitigate stress. The stress of that thing disappears. The feeling that emotion can now die a natural death because you’ve expressed it.
Amanda Holmes: I am working so hard on what you’re saying. I recognize that it’s a place where I fall short.
It’s a daily battle for me to continue to stretch myself, to feel uncomfortable, to share what I I’m feeling in the workplace and in my personal life, and I have to say, working with Troy is just such a joy for me because he’s so great. This is one of his skills is he’s just so great at having difficult conversations and bringing things to light and.
Anything you want to add to that, Troy?
Troy Aberle: I love what Larry’s saying and I appreciate the kind words, Amanda. If I could take it to the next step, I have a circle drawn on my wall here where it’s got my thoughts plus the feelings I give it plus the actions equals my results. And so I know if I don’t get the results, I can work it backwards to see which part of the equation I’m missing.
And it’s pretty hard to get mad at something if you haven’t made the cake the way that you’re supposed to make it to get to the result, right? So I love the way you place that because I think too that you have programming, yes, And it’s not that you’re, something’s wrong with you if the programming is wrong, but you got to impress upon it something else and keep practicing that so that you can start to create some new paradigms or some new results that are going to be different rather than just get frustrated over it.
And I appreciate that Larry.
Larry Bradley: You’re welcome. You know, the average child is told no. Or what they cannot do over 150, 000 times by the time they turn 18 years old. And then we wonder, what’s the matter with this child? Why is this child doing this? I was asked the question by Dr. Shad Helmstetter one time. He said, if you were stepping on a plane in Philadelphia, heading to Maui, Hawaii, and you overheard him in the cockpit saying, Hey, 77 percent of our programming here on the plane is wrong.
It’s bad info. He said, what would you do? Will you turn around and get off that plane? Yeah, you would. Well, 77 percent of what we tell ourselves and what we hear is negative, wrong and works against us. So we’re by default program negatively. And I don’t blame parents. I was one. We did what we call generational pairing.
Our parents parented us, so we just tried to do a little bit better for our Children. But There was no book on it. There was no knowledge shared to say, this is what’s really going on. I wasn’t told in school or anywhere in my life, the power of my own thoughts and the power of my own words. And listen, Amanda, to your point a moment ago, I teach this stuff.
I’m passionate about it. I’m in love with it. I struggle every day of my life with it still. But you know what I am, which is the gift of beyond all gifts. As I said, when I speak now, I tell him, write this word down. The first thing I do awareness. I’m now aware, and now I have a fighting chance to say, Hey, Larry, no, no, no, no, no, we’re not going to, we’re going to, we’re not going to go down that road.
I did it this morning. I was lying in bed and I was thinking about a couple of problems that I’m experiencing right now. And the thought came to me. I said, all right, what’s good about this. Thinking I wouldn’t have any answers and believe it or not, I wound up with a short list of answers on both of them that what’s good about this and it totally transforms your mindset to say, I focus on, because now that puts me on the path of positivity, not this just Oh God, Oh, what am I going to do?
I don’t know what to do with this and take action, you know, I’ll give you this tip too. If you want to change your emotion, if you’re feeling a little groggy, a little, you know, negative, a little whatever, whatever, Get up and move your body. Take a brisk walk. Just walk around the room if you want to. Just move your body because motion equals emotion, and that’ll work faster than the other way around.
Right? It’s our emotion that changes our emotion. Right?
Amanda Holmes: Third tip for easing stress in the workplace. Motion!
Larry Bradley: Well, I had another third tip.
Amanda Holmes: Oh, I’m sorry. Okay. Well, that one was so good, we’ll give them four. Why not?
Larry Bradley: Motion equals emotion. Trust me on that. Every time I speak, and Amanda, you do this a lot, and I learned this from Les Brown.
When I studied with him, he said when he get to a venue, he first immediately asked for the bathroom, and he would go in the bathroom, and he’d start pacing the floor in the bathroom, and then he would start his breathing exercise, deep breathing, to take the pressure off the physiological body, right? And then he would start his self talk pattern of saying, man, today, I am going to land with some incredible value.
These people are going to love what I presented them. I’m just going Burn this place down. So he said, by the time they say, ladies and gentlemen, Les Brown, he’s like, I’m here, right? That’s the warmup, right? But it’s all based on what? Motion. He starts walking, starts pacing, gets the blood flowing, gets the breathing going, right?
So that’s key to, especially people are like, I call some people, they’re like, Eeyore. Remember Eeyore? The, I forget what kind of, he was the, the unhappy animal, whatever. I forget the name. What kind of animal? Winnie
Troy Aberle: the Pooh.
Larry Bradley: Yeah, Eeyore was the real sad donkey or whatever. Oh my, that person needs to get up and move.
All right. So third tip or three and a half or whatever you want to call it.
Amanda Holmes: Fourth tip for reducing the burden of stress in the workplace.
Larry Bradley: So I talked about mitigating stress strategies and techniques, learn them and apply them and teach them to everyone you love and care about. Secondly, I talked about self management sequence, understanding what creates our behavior, which gives us our world, gives us our reality.
The third one is to affect behavior. And I think A lot of things so much that by the way, all these things I’m telling you, we brought into our health care plan. Doesn’t sound like health care, does it? Well, stress may be self management sequence. The 3rd one is habits because I have found that you’ve got to meet people where they are.
Because if you take any population of people, like in my health care plan, I had people like morbidly overweight or obese that couldn’t get out of bed. I had the premier athletes, right? And everything in between. Right. So if I take a class, a group of people and say, all right, listen, we’re going to get in shape.
Let’s use physical fitness. And I say, all right, everybody, we’re going to run a marathon next month. Well, 98, 99 percent of that room, maybe a hundred percent. We’ll check out. They said, I’m not running a marathon a month. You out of your mind? Look at me. Right. So the point is meet people where they are. And I want to embed this in the fourth tip is.
Learn how to develop a habit and learn how to eliminate a habit. It starts with being met where you are. Like if I say to that obese person, we’re going to run a marathon in a month, they’re gone, they’re checked out, and they’re going to still have the problem. If I said, Joe, listen to me, Walk to your mailbox tomorrow morning and back and then the next day walk to your neighbor’s mailbox and the next day walk to the, that neighbor BJ fog wrote the book tiny habits.
And it’s very similar to atomic habits in that what their premises is to say, you got to start small, and you got to start where you’re at. Right. So BJ himself bit overweight and whatnot he said you know I’m going to use the trigger of every morning when I wake Look in the mirror and brush my teeth. I might put that toothbrush down on the floor and do a push up.
And I’m going to celebrate a push up. One push up. Like, are you kidding me? Well, guess what? When I met BJ Fogg and talked and studied his work, and certified in his work to teach people tiny habits, He was on like 78 pushups in the morning every morning after he put his toothbrush down. So he created a habit, but he started with just one.
I think people are way too hard on themselves. They think people forget it’s easy to forget how long it took to get out of shape or to become ill. And I think it should be fixed overnight. We all want the instant fix. But it blows our minds if you tell them the price they’re going to pay all up front, most people will say, I’d rather just be suffering.
But if you tell people there’s a simple, easy process, learn how to develop new habits and make it simple. Remember I said we tend to complicate everything? Yeah, because we all want to run a marathon next month. No, I may just walk to the mailbox tomorrow morning, right? Whatever it is, whatever habit you want to create, learn these simple processes.
And I have no equity in BJ Fogg or the gentleman that wrote what the other habits book, but they’re great work. And I think they’re spot on with how one develops it. So if you mix the self management sequence, the understanding of that, where your behavior is emanating from, and now you can modify that behavior, I mean, I could do a whole course on changing your life with a three by five index card.
High tech. That
Amanda Holmes: also sounds interesting. I know Troy too. I’m sure you’re like me. I just keep thinking, Oh, I want to talk about this. What he just said. That was so good. That was so good. Anything that’s coming up for you?
Troy Aberle: You know, as Larry talks about that, I think of what does the current medical system look like now I’m in Canada and I also experienced a lot of challenges.
It’s interesting to think about how many tests we do, Larry and Amanda. That are focused only on our physical, right? We do a blood test or an MRI, things like that to find out what’s wrong. And that’s actually the result of the energetic thing that came from disease or inflammation and whatnot. And how often do we ever actually look at what’s causing the mental problem?
We understand that mental health is a big problem. And the number one Guinness Book World Records pill really is antidepressants, right? And anti anxieties. And isn’t it funny how we’d never figure out or look at what’s causing it with things that Larry’s talking about today. And if you did that part of it, walk through that piece to look at what your conditions are and how that matches your blueprint.
Figure out those pieces, how that would have so much effect than on the physical, that would have a total change on your own physiology, but then it would impact other people’s mental and physiological bodies in all of the layers of people that are in reaction, because when you show up to the workplace, unhappy or under duress, you know, affect someone else, they go home and take that out on their family and those family members take that out on someone else and it starts to become an evolution of what we’re seeing today, Of a mental condition that we seem to be really good at practicing.
And so I really resonate with this today. Thank you.
Larry Bradley: That is such a critical point right there, because, and Amanda, you’ll give me an amen. I know, but the mind and body are inseparable. When the body suffers, the mind suffers. When the mind suffers, the body suffers, right? We’re holistically warm and to not treat it all.
And at your point, they say the learned gardener, when she sees a rash on the leaves. Of the plan. She knows that the problems at the root, not the leaf. Well, Western medicine largely looks at the leaf and treats the leaf. They don’t think about the root to your point. And that’s what I think we need to do more of.
I think there’s a marriage that could be had between Eastern and Western medicine, if you will. You know, and the protocols, because there’s some good in both. Right, there’s a lot of good in both, but I just think you’re right. We don’t treat the whole human being and we need to. Because a lot of what tells us starts up here.
Troy Aberle: So when we look at our business or we look at things in our personal life or what have you, rather than just looking at the result, look at the rest of the pieces, whether it be belief or your actions or attitude awareness, to your point, what are the things that are causing this result to get to where they
Larry Bradley: are?
When you talk about the C suite, I’ll use my own language, the C suite checking out. There, I teach people all the time. You’re never going to be perfect, right? None of us are, none of us will be, but it’s a worthy goal to strive for. And you don’t need to hyperpressure yourself, but just become a better version of you, learn more, do more, because to me, I would be a wretched mess if I didn’t force myself in the learning this stuff.
And I think. I was driven to this stuff because they say you teach what you need to know and that my God, that’s the absolute truth with me. So I teach people become the best version of you because if you’re not full and overflowing yourself, you can’t pour into other people. Well, if I’m a C sweeter and I’m in charge of all these people and this whole operation and I’m a mess.
Myself, I’m not falling over the floor or even close to fall. How am I going to lead other people? That’s a recipe for disaster in corporate America for the wheels to come off. And I think it’s people, I think the single biggest problem on earth, I know it’s a bold statement, but this is based on now, next year will be 50 years in the corporate world and a crazy childhood.
I believe this. And to my point about telling people, have that conversation, have that email that person. I think the biggest problem relationships and business and God is just costly across the board, mentally, emotionally, physically health and business dollars is people generally do not want to confront.
And I know it’s a strong word. I’ll change it to address. People don’t want to address what they see. They’d rather let it torture them the rest of their lives. I spent 30 years thinking I hated a brother in law until I learned some strategies here about how to deal with that. Anger that I thought I had and what I ultimately concluded.
Was I, I didn’t hate him. I had apathy toward him. I didn’t care what I, when I went through this process with myself, I said, you know, let me validate my anger and hatred of this man. And I realized if I never see him again, it won’t matter. And it’s probably the reverse is true with him. So I said, I’m not angry.
The opposite of love is in hate. It’s apathy. I was apathetic. But guess what? Despite my apathy and I finally resolved to let it go, 30 years later, I carried 30 years of chemical cocktail, killing myself from the inside out with one man who, by the way, when he was at the beach or wherever he was in the mountains or doing his daily work, he had no clue I was angry with him.
Who’s crazy here? And my wife used to say, Nancy, say, why are you telling me? Tell him. I said, no, if I tell him, that’ll end it. You know, and that’s a game for me. I’m Irish. No, that was the, that was the storyline. I was feeding myself, which was crap, but learning to manage and mitigate that anger. I was able to take that 60 pound or more backpack that I held for 30 years.
Think about that, because what did that do to me over a 30 year period, right?
Amanda Holmes: I normally say that my taking over my father’s business, stepping in, it was a combination of two things. One was becoming a rabid student of reading the book over and over and over again, right? Watching his videos over and over and over again.
But then on the other side, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of that if I wasn’t working on my mental and emotional Experience, which for me, I went to divine bliss, right? The nonprofit that I talk about in chapter 13 of the book. And I’ve talked with you, Larry, about, and we need those places. We need those exercises that awareness and that take action.
Cause it’s something we have to work on. It is. We are a nation recovering from collective trauma and we need to acknowledge and then take those steps. So I want to send people to be able to find you, Larry. First off the book that you came out with recently with your daughter, what was the title of that again?
Larry Bradley: Oh, that’s the parents report card.
Amanda Holmes: Parents report card. And can they find that on Amazon?
Larry Bradley: Yes, that’s on amazon. com. If you want to be a better parent, have some fun, learn some things about your parenting skill and what your children perceive of you without being failed, because there’s no failure grade.
Okay. It’s a fun exercise. And the coolest thing is it gets family back to the kitchen table without their cell phones or their computers talking about real life subjects that matter. That really matter and that to me is important because again, go back to the individual as a consultant in corporate America, I thought I was going to go in and teach leadership strategy technique.
Right? And I do some of that, but I’m being overwhelmed with teaching the softer skill of how do I manage me? What makes me tick? How do I lay down the stress, anxiety and depression? Which, by the way, I love teaching this because you can’t unknow it once you learn it. And it really is powerful stuff. I didn’t create it, but it’s powerful stuff.
And I know that because I do it and it works.
Amanda Holmes: And we consistently continue to work on it. There’s never a mastery quite of it. Every time you learn a little more, you realize, oh, there’s more to learn. Which then gives me also a segue to when you came in and you decided, okay, I need some help. You ended up purchasing a core story.
Can you just give a little bit more? I know you gave it at the beginning and I’m so grateful. What was your experience? What was the shifts that happened that assisted you? What did the core story do for you?
Larry Bradley: At its core, the core story caused Us to think much bigger than we were thinking bigger and broader because we were living in this little self imposed, like microcosm of who we should have been, of where we should have been going the core story, because it was so broad, so full of such dynamic information and technique.
I said, my God, we’re thinking small, my God, we’re thinking tiny. And this is what really launched us into. I’m going crazy down the path of innovation, right? Because I said, that’s where we can solve America’s problem. I went to you thinking, help me to run a health care plan better. You, through the core story process, got us changed in our objective to say, not how can we run a health care plan better and grow it bigger.
How do we make our people healthier, happier, more productive. And what a distinction. That became, I’m telling you, we’re leading a parade now, even though I’m no longer running the healthcare plan, I’m consulting to it. And I’m on the phone daily. In fact, Nancy said to me last week, I thought you retired. I said, well, listen, I’m on a mission, a passion project now, because I’m working with people that are going to change the face of healthcare in this country.
And Amanda, you’re going to be part of that because you already are, but. Yes,
Amanda Holmes: we’re working on it. We just teamed up.
Larry Bradley: Absolutely. And there are some people, let me tell you, they’re doing some things that no one else is doing because kind of the system is the system and man, are we entrenched in our thought processes.
So I would say to you, the core story, you kind of pride our brains open and said, wait, look at it this way, this way, this way, this way, this way. I’m like, Oh my God, my head’s exploding. But we’re on the wrong path altogether. We said, I said, Oh, all I wanted to do is learn how to better manage and grow a healthcare plan.
Now I want to fix the world. And guess what? We’re going to be able to do it in this country.
Amanda Holmes: I love that. That means a lot to me, Larry, because we find that there’s a small percentage of people that are more strategic than tactical, right? You are, you have such a gift for strategy. You see it. Speak to the people things that are important to them.
And yet, even within this core story process, you expanded to even more. What I’m hearing from you saying is I was just talking about what I was doing. And then I realized I needed to talk about what they cared about and what they were experiencing, which is that shift from the me, we syndrome into let’s talk to the people that aren’t thinking about it.
Think that they’re not interested or definitely not right? That buyer’s pyramid. So I love that even with The brilliance of, you know, I think our first call we hopped on and you said, I want to build the number one healthcare plan in America. And since then, I tell people all the time, I was just telling a gentleman last week that runs a real estate brokerage, he was like, someday I want to have a billion dollars in real estate.
And I went, you should claim that with every conversation that I’m on the path to be a billion dollar real estate portfolio, and I would love your help. Because I can’t do it alone. And that was the mentality that you brought to the table. And when I heard that, I went, Oh, I am on board. Let’s make this happen.
And even from our initial conversation, you were interested in doing something with us, but it took six months. I don’t know if you realize, I went back and I looked at it. It took me six months of following up with you via email. I got your text. I got your assistance information, but you only interacted with me on Facebook Messenger, which I found to be hilarious.
And I tell people all the time, like, if you think your buyers are not on the internet, they are, you just have to find where they are and you happen to be on Facebook Messenger. And I kept following up because I loved the mission that you were on and you claimed it with such confidence and determination and whoever we need, let’s get on board.
Cause we need to move that forward. It’s continue to have me stay in contact with you, regardless of what your position is, because I know that we’re on the same, I say, I would love to heal healthcare in America. Cause I know that that will trickle out to the rest of the world. Let’s deal with it here.
Cause it’s a huge problem. So I appreciate that from you.
Larry Bradley: Yeah. As a business leader and you and Troy will relate to this. When you have, when you approach a problem or an issue or a subject that you have to deal with, I always say that you have to. Go through, first and foremost, a proper discovery, identify the problem, identify the options, identify the strategies and goals.
And that was my process with you when we first started. I would say, I’m not apologizing, but I think the reason it took six months to do this. It’s because every time I sat with you, my head would explode into another rabbit hole to say, wait, I’m not thinking broad enough. I’m not thinking big enough. I’m not thinking about this.
I’m thinking about that. And it was like, swirling and swirling in my head. And finally, the bell went off. I said, I got it. We got to do this, right? We got to do this. And thank God we did.
Amanda Holmes: That means so much to me because you’re such a big thinker. I mean, to hear you say that means a lot to me. I think I remember, I mean, at the time that we started, you had grown from 10 to 100, 000 in your plan.
And I, at one point, showed you that that was only 3 percent of the potential marketplace. And you just looked at me like, what? Because it was a Do you remember that moment? It was like this paradigm shift of like, we thought we were, we had it all together and we’re like one of the biggest and I’m like, actually, you’re disserving 97 percent of the potential electrical engineers in this United States that could be using your services and you are hindering them because you are not providing them this superior healthcare plan that you’ve created.
So I love that. I mean, so anything you want to add to this?
Troy Aberle: No, I think like from what I got from this is definitely awareness is changing, looking at what it is you want as a result and becoming aware of what that feels like it looks like and you really start to dive into the people and conversations that are going to lean you forward into that place of opportunity rather than stay in a place of disease and attitude and perception that is keeping you where you’re locked in right now.
Larry Bradley: Amanda, this is your fault. I was on an interview the other day with a business consulting guy that pushes out a lot of video. He wants me to do video for him. And he said, I just want the number one piece of advice you’d give a brand new entrepreneur just starting their business. Cut through it all, give me one.
And Amanda, because of you and our experience together, my answer was readily available instantly. And I said, I would challenge anyone in business, especially starting a business to say this, and I say it to my own children who are all in business for themselves. I said, you can’t think big enough. You can’t, I challenge you to think bigger and bigger and bigger because and I’m not talking about greed.
I’m just talking about what impact you want to have on what business or what industry you’re going to be in. And a lot of people think small. I mean, look at the book. 10x is easier than 2x. I thought that’s bullcrap till I read it. I said, Oh, my God. That’s phenomenal. By the way, Amanda, my children are all reading your book.
Amanda Holmes: Oh, good. I’m so glad. I still have to meet your daughter. We still have to make that happen. Yeah. Yes. Uh, so yet again, a wonderful episode of The CEO mastery show, we’ve covered the three simple tips to ease the burden of, we started with leadership, but then I realized it’s really just workplace and life for anybody.
Really? They were such great, actionable takeaways. I’m so grateful to have you on, Larry. I could have 10 more episodes with you. I just thoroughly enjoy them.
Larry Bradley: There’s a lot coming. Let me tell you, there’s a lot coming. It’s so, it’s just, I’m so fired up and excited about the future. It’s. It’s, well, I never thought I’d feel this way about where this can take us.
And honestly, you and your organization were the trigger. You taught me how to think beyond myself. And I didn’t know that for almost. 45 years. So think about that. That’s why I’m so passionate now. Say I’m telling my kids dig into this material because it’s gonna change the trajectory. It’s gonna be generationally changing your family, right?
This is amazing work, and I have no equity in this. As you know, I just fell in love with your father and the work he did and the teachings he did. I said, I just got to know more and then coming to know you and having our experience, literally applying your work and your advice and strategies. You just said, changed my world, changed my world.
And because of that, it’s going to change my children, their children, and then everybody I know, because people ask me, give me some sales advice. I said, you need to talk to a man. That’s the advice I give.
Amanda Holmes: Well, there you go. That’s Larry Bradley for you again. You’re on LinkedIn as well, right? Can people find you on LinkedIn?
Larry Bradley, go find him, find him, say hello. He is, this is just a piece of so much more wisdom. Thank you, Larry. Make sure to get your copy or copies at the ultimate sales machine. com. There’s a lot of special bonuses that you can’t get going to Amazon. So make sure you check it out at ultimate sales machine.
com.
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