E77: The Power of Relatable Stories in Influence with Danny Brassell

Discover how to transform work from drudgery into passion with Danny Brassell, known as "Jim Carrey with a PhD." In this episode, Danny shares his journey from a failed real estate scam to becoming a sought-after speaker and author. Learn how storytelling, mindset shifts, and practical frameworks like the "Five C's" of communication can turn perceived weaknesses into strengths. Explore the importance of consistency, curiosity, and intentional habits to elevate your life. 

Perfect for anyone feeling trapped or contemplating a bold pivot, this episode offers real tools and inspiring stories to redefine your work and life. Danny's insights make it clear: it’s never too late to turn work into your greatest passion.

Connect with Danny:

https://dannybrassell.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Most people want the result without respecting the repetition. Whether it's leadership, golf, speaking on camera, writing a book, or building a business, improvement comes from intentionally practicing the parts you're not good at. As Danny points out, nobody starts out polished. The first video is awkward, the first speech is rough, the first attempt usually sucks. The skill is showing up anyway. Let's roll right in. All right, welcome to the work sucks but I like it podcast. Today we have Danny Brussel. He's spoken to over 3,500 audiences worldwide. He's the author of over 21 books. He's the co-founder of the Well Crafted Story Workshop. And he's also known as Jim Carrey with a PhD.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Danny, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Tony. More importantly, thanks for spreading some joy around the world. We need a lot more of you, my friend. No, love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

I'm glad you're here to help spread that joy. So, Danny, define work for us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Work. Well, I don't know. The way I look at my work, my work is my passion. I love what I do. I don't understand people that do things that they don't like to do. So uh work should be something that you're passionate about, that you enjoy, that you uh are contributing to the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

So explore, can you kind of build upon that, Danny? What do you mean by passion in your day? How does that look for you now?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Well, I think it's just as important to know what you don't like to do as it is to know what you do like to do. I mean, I've had lots of different jobs in my life. Uh, you know, uh in college, I used to work on Capitol Hill for a congressman, and somebody asked me, what's it like working on Capitol Hill? And I always say, well, in high school, I used to clean toilets at a health club, and I would much rather clean toilets at a health club than ever work on Capitol Hill again. But that was important. It was important that I'm like, oh, I have no interest in doing that. What I do now is uh, you know, because uh I'm almost at retirement age, and people are like, Are you gonna retire? I'm like, well, but I enjoy what I do. I write, I speak, I I coach, and it's great. Um so my perfect day right now is I get up really early at four in the morning and I do a walk. I call it my thought walk. Uh start off my day after that, then I read for about an hour. And then after that, then I start uh writing. Um just uh I'm in the process of finishing book number 22. I thought it was done, but my editor just came back and I'm like, oh man, editing's not fun. I like I uh when it comes to writing, I think I enjoy having written. I don't know if I enjoy writing.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Yeah, I like and hear you not. That's so fun.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I mean, I I like writing. I just don't like editing, is what really stinks. And this is like, oh, I I I've already done nine edits to this book. It's driving me crazy. Um, and then after that, I usually coach people for a few hours, uh, maybe do some marketing calls. And then uh if it's a day where I'm speaking, obviously, I'm just at the event uh uh speaking, which is great. That's that's my favorite. I I love that. Um and then a nice evening with the family, drinking a bourbon, a gym beam, and uh um maybe watching a thoughtless movie and probably reading during the movie or watching a game. Uh more like it drives my co-founders crazy that uh I go through a couple of books during any kind of game, but I'm like, there's so many stoppages. It's not like a soccer game. Soccer is like constant. Like if you're watching a football game, there's about I think the the New York Times did an analysis, and there's actually in a in a 60-minute football game, which takes three and a half hours to broadcast on TV, there's actually only 11 and a half minutes of actual action. So that gives me plenty of time to read.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

That's that's funny. That's really funny. So, Danny, I want you to go back and you spoke of passion, and we kind of talk about that a lot in the show, and you made something kind of like I want you to build upon this. So you said cleaning toilets, you know, was better than working on Capitol Hill. How do you define passion, right? Because sometimes people think of passion like, oh, it's the best job ever, nothing goes wrong or whatever. How do you see passion?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Uh well, for me, my passion is I would do it even if they didn't pay me. I hear, I hear people talk about that. Like it's usually professional athletes. They're like, man, I I can't believe they pay me to do this. Uh I I think that's what it is, is uh my motivation. Yes, I mean, yeah, I'm motivated because I get paychecks, but I'm motivated because I I really enjoy it. Uh, the books, especially, uh being able to look at the shelf and see my name on spines of books. I'm like, wow, okay. If I get hit by a bus, at least I did something to contribute to the planet.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

No, you're definitely contributing for sure. So walk, can you help someone that might be listening? They're stuck in their nine to five, right? They may not be passionate with what they're doing. What would you, what sort of advice would you give them?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Well, I would do, you know, I I once had a coach and she said, you don't go clothes shopping naked. Translation, if you don't like what you're doing, maybe start doing some side hustles and see if there's something else that uh better suits you. Uh I mean, if I was gonna write an autobiography, it would be called Pivots because I feel like I've already lived nine lives. Thirty years ago, I was a journalist covering uh President Bush Sr. in the 1992 presidential election. I loved my job. Uh I got to meet every editor of every major daily, and one editor offered me the City Beat for $16,500 a year. Meanwhile, a friend told me uh they were hiring teachers in South Central Los Angeles for $25,000 a year. So, Tony, I became an educator for the noblest of reasons, for the high pay. And I actually fell in love with teaching. I've taught all age levels from preschoolers all the way up to rocket scientists. I can make that claim because I used to teach English as a second language to engineering students at the University of Southern California. And in 2005, my wife and I attended a real estate seminar, which turned out to be a scam, and we lost everything financially. And I could give you the woe is me story, but I'm a positive person. I learned a lot from that experience. First of all, I learned that my wife is my soulmate. I put her through the ringer and she stood right by me. She's an incredible human being. Second of all, I and this is important for all of your listeners to understand, I learned that uh money's not everything because you can lose money just like that. Third, I try not to judge other people, Tony, because if I was somebody who saw what I had done, I would have said, well, you deserve that. But now I realize unless you know everything about a person, you really don't know anything about a person. Fourth, I became a Christian, which I'm always embarrassed to confess it took a catastrophe. But the more I read the Bible, I realize I'm not the first screw up to find Jesus. And fifth, and probably most applicably, I didn't want to declare bankruptcy. And my accountant said, Well, you have to earn this much more money. And so I started speaking on the side and I get that number right on the number. Well, the next year, Tony, he gave me a much higher number and I get that number right on the number. So in year three, I thought, well, maybe I should set a higher number. And basically during one of the worst economic downturns in world history, I was able to build up a highly lucrative speaking business, which eventually attracted the attention of some pretty famous people and companies who were asking me to coach them. And I have to admit, I really resisted coaching for a long time because you need to know this about me. I'm obsessive, compulsive. I won't let you fail. I will be on your back holding you accountable. Well, now that I work primarily with entrepreneurs and business owners and executives who pay me a lot of money, I find that they're highly motivated. They do the work, and it's actually been some of the most rewarding uh work I've ever done. But uh to really answer your question, when I was a little kid for Halloween, I didn't dress up as a coach for executives on how to be a better speaker. That's quite the cost. I love it. I absolutely love it. And I think that's what you kind of do. You do have to kind of try different things. But for the people that are stuck in that dreary nine to five, don't quit your job. I mean, keep your paycheck, but start exploring different options. I mean, that's what AI is great. I actually created an AI file on Claude. It's called the Danny Project. And Claude's basically telling me how to get my life together. I'm like, oh, this is great. I have my own uh AI coach now. And it's good. Uh Claude actually gives you lots of good suggestions how to better use your time.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

I love that. So you've mentioned a couple of things. You said the word pivot, and then you've kind of lived nine lives. When do you know when to pivot? When do you know, I guess that? When do you know when to pivot? Do you stay with something or do you change course?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Yeah. So Steve Jobs gave a commencement address at Stanford many years ago, and I would encourage all of your uh audience to watch that. It's only 15 minutes long, but in that commencement address, he said that uh whenever he started looking in the mirror in the morning and wasn't excited about work, he knew if he did that several days in a row, it was time to do something different. And that's kind of the way I am is when I get to where I'm dreading something, where I'm like, if I uh that that's no way to live. Life's too short, man. It's like, you know, I I and I tell that to my own three children. I say, when they're cause because they're experimenting with different jobs right now, and I'm like, hey, if you get a bad boss or a bad job or something you're just not into, do something else, man. Like life's too short. You don't want to be one of these people with golden handcuffs that you retired at uh age 25, but you worked there till you were 75. That's a horrible way to live. I can't, I I can't fathom that.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

But let's face it, Danny, sometimes people get sort of cuffed to, if you will, to their job because of the paycheck. What's your advice to someone that is scared of taking that leap, I guess, of faith, if you will, to change their career? That might be lower pay, might be higher pay. I don't know. What are your thoughts in terms of money?

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, no, so again, I I'm a big believer in uh in side hustles. I mean, I'm still a uh a professor at the university. And the reason I'm a professor at the university is I get my health care through them. And I'm like, why am I gonna give that up? Claude informed me on my Danny project that I should retire next year. It says, oh, you'll be able to make this much money and uh you'll save this much time. I'm like, good advice, Claude. I'm gonna do that. And so, but again, I'm kind of old-fashioned. I'm the I'm a man, and so I believe my responsibility as a husband and a father is to be the provider. And there's no way I would go, you know what? I'm gonna go Hollywood and try my hand at acting. I wouldn't do that. That's irresponsible. I have a responsibility to pay my mortgage and to make sure my kids have food to eat and stuff like that. And so I would never encourage a person to do that. But I don't see why uh, if I have that dream, I can't be writing on the side and submitting, you know, somebody buys a script. I'm like, hey, there you go. Or hey, somebody just George Clooney wants me in his latest movie. Great. So obviously take that one. I keep my eyes wide open. Uh you should always keep eyes open to opportunities. There's opp, I mean, you watch the end of the movie Dumb and Dumber, it's one of the greatest endings ever to a movie where uh the Tropicana girls, uh they're like, we need two guys to put uh to rub oil on us for the next three months. And Jim Carrey's like, you're so lucky. You are so there is a town like 10 miles back. I guarantee you can find two guys. And they as the bus leaves, they're like, you know, man, two lucky guys, you know, someday we'll see our opportunity. I'm like, how many people? The opportunity is there, and they're just not seeing them all the time. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

It's been a while since I've seen that movie, but I love that reference. Of course. I mean, you're the Jim Kerr with a PhD, so you gotta obviously cite that. I love that. So, Danny, how so this this podcast, we talk about success being a matter of really good skills, not good luck. So, how does someone build a skill of building this awareness for opportunities to come in their life?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Yeah, so it's kind of like when I'm working with clients, I, you know, former teacher, you have to forgive me. Everything I do either rhymes or it's alliterative. So I take clients through what I call the five C's framework, which is before we put together your presentation, you need clarity. Who's your audience? What is the problem you solve? Once we can answer those questions, then we can get into the presentation itself. We have to connect with our audience, teach meaningful content that serves our audience, have one clear call to action, and finally have an emotional close that spurs people to jump out of their chairs and run to work with you. Uh, I always tell people there's only two ways you're gonna get better at as a speaker. First of all, you got to watch lots of speakers. So that's the first strategy I'd share there. Whatever you want to do, watch people who do that. What did they do? I mean, everybody says they want to be Michael Jordan. I'm like, do you? Do you really want to get up at three in the morning and do a workout till 7 a.m. and then have a quick little breakfast and then keep working out some more? And I mean, he worked his tail off. People, people, what was it? Kobe had a Kobe Bryant had a great quote. He's like, uh, you it's something like you work hard in the dark so you can shine in the light. Ah, lovely. People see the shining light, but they don't see the hard work in the dark. So the first way you get better at speaking is, you know, you watch lots of speakers. I watch 10 speakers a day. I watch them, I watch politicians, I watch comedians, I watch televangelists, I watch them in front of big groups, in front of small groups, in front of men, in front of women. That's the first way you get better. The second one, and this applies to your audience, is one of my mentors was a guy named Jim Rohn. And Jim used to say, you can't pay other people to do your push-ups. Translation, you got to do the work. You got to do the reps. Speaking is a skill. It's something that you need, I promise you, Tony, the first time you did this podcast, it sucked. And the second time you did the podcast, it sucked. But it didn't suck as bad as the first one. And now you've been doing it for a while, and it's this finely tuned machine. But people that see you now, they didn't see where you came from. That's anybody, anybody. If you want to get good at something, you got to put in the work, you got to watch people. How do I get? I mean, I guarantee you, you didn't just do this podcast without ever listening to anybody else's podcast. You're gonna say, wow, well, why is Joe Rogan so successful? What's he doing that I like? That's what I do all the time. I mean, even yesterday, I opened up an email. It's this woman that sends me a newsletter every week for the last 10 years, and I don't think I've ever even opened up one of her emails, but I opened up yesterday's. And so for five minutes, I started analyzing why did I open this email? What was it? And it was, she had a catchy title and she had a picture at the top, and I'm like, that's what it was. And so I'm always trying to learn, well, what did this person do that was so when I'm watching speakers, I'm like, well, what is it that they're doing that is helping, helping them connect with their audience? And so that's another long answer to your short question, Sony.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

No, I like that skill. So I guess how do you document what you observe? What are the things that how do you I guess I'm gonna get technical here? Like, what are you doing to I don't know, bring that in to your philosophy and to your life?

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of pathetic. Like when I'm reading books, I I write in books. I I own the book.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

I do too.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

I write in the books and I take photos of the pages that I dog ear. And uh then after I'm done with the book, I then speak into uh my little microphone and uh I record all the different things I learned from that book. I try to reteach it to other people so it sticks with me. Um and so I'm trying to constantly implement that. Uh I probably the most important skill that I've learned is uh I have uh two coaches, Rob and Steve Schallenberger, I think the world of them. Uh uh Steve wrote a best-selling book called Becoming Your Best, and uh they taught me how to pre-week plan. So they have a uh um a planner that I buy every single year. And so every Saturday morning at eight in the morning, Tony, I sit down in my basement and um with my coffee and my my pre-week planning, and I review the week before and I create the week coming up. And so uh not only is it a calendar, but it has seven categories, and there's five goals for each category. So former teacher, everything I do rhymes or it's alliterative. And so my categories are my focus goals, my fitness goals, my financial goals, my family goals, my faith goals, my fund goals, and my fulfillment goals. So that's 35 altogether. And I then put put those activities in my in my calendar for the week. And then I give myself a score. How many did I get? How many did I miss? How did I do last week? How am I doing this week? And I'm constantly evaluating, I'm giving myself time to think. Too many people, they they don't give themselves time any time to think. That's why I do my thought walks, and that's why um I don't really watch as much TV as I used to. I don't spend any time on social media hardly. Total waste of my time. I'd rather just sit there and think for about, even if it's just 10 minutes, I just need a time to think. Okay, what was good about today? What do I need to improve to be better tomorrow?

SPEAKER_01 16:44

So, Danny, I love how you have goals. I my calendar is very similar. It'd be fun to compare one day. Like I've got, you know, it's loaded with everything. Family, you know, fun. I like the five Fs here. So let's face it though, sometimes when people set goals, it's color coded because I'm such anything. I love that. All right, you're dad. I love that. All right, you got me, beat. No, that's awesome. So let's face it, like, people will set goals, right? But as you just showed, it's sort of a sustained sort of like endurance to this. What do you recommend to people to keep sort of this motivation going? You've got this goal, and it seems like you're never gonna get there, but you know if you keep working at it, you will. How do you how do you sustain this sort of accountability with your calendar?

SPEAKER_00 17:26

I I got my accountability from from the noted doctor Leo Marvin from the movie uh What About Bob? Uh baby steps. Like you can have a big goal, but you got to figure out, well, what are the things I have to do to get closer to that goal every single day? I mean, uh, for me, you know, um, so I was overweight. I battled weight my entire life. I always tell people I'm I'm a weight loss expert. I've lost over a thousand pounds. The problem is I had gained over 1,250 pounds for a net gain of 250 pounds, and I couldn't keep on doing what I had always done. You know, I mean, I got a wife and three kids. It's one thing if I get hit by a bus, but if I die of obesity, something I had control over, shame on me. I can't do that. And so December 15th, 2022, I hired Dr. Lazarus. He's a nutrition expert. I said, I said, man, you're gonna bring me back from the dead, Dr. Lazarus. He's great. And what he did is he got me thinking in a different way. He said, Danny, this isn't about losing weight. It's about gaining years. Well, that stuck with me. And he didn't ask me to do anything too tough, Tony. He said, I want you to walk more, I want you to drink more water, and you can still have your bourbon, Danny, but instead of four glasses, how about three? I can do all that. And every two weeks, he makes me come in to visit him uh to uh get weight in and talk about my progress. I call it a fat tax. He calls it an investment in my health. And since seeing him in 2022, in four years, I've lost over 25% of my body weight. Uh more importantly, he said, no, you've made a 25% return on your investment and you've reduced your risk of dementia and cancer by over 50%. I mean, I'm happier, I'm healthier, and it's all because I decided to embrace change and I took the steps needed. So all those people that are struggling, you know, uh one of my mentors was a guy named Zig Ziggler, and he said he had a line I always loved. He's like, the greatest labor-saving device ever invented is tomorrow. Oh, I'll do it. Yeah. Tomorrow. No, do it now. Like, you gotta do it. Yeah, I create. I'm I'm I'm a big believer in uh the book The Power of Habit by Charles Dohig, which uh James Clear basically plagiarized the entire book and came up with atomic habits, which drives me nuts. If you ever read Atomic Habits, every study he's citing is from The Power of Habit by uh Charles Dohig. Um no no offense to James Clear, but I'm like, if you're gonna just totally steal somebody's stuff, come on then. Right, right. At least cite it. I do believe in the power of habit. I believe that uh, you know, uh routines beat resolutions every single day of the of the of the week. You need to make it so even if you're only spending a if you want to be a writer, write 10 minutes a day. If 10 minutes is too much, write five minutes a day. Get started. Uh that's the old the wise saying is it's the start that stops most people. You gotta get started. You can't say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just do it. That's what I mean. How many of your friends, Tony, want to create a podcast and they've been talking about it forever and they haven't done anything. That's why I'm on your podcast. You did something. I like being around doers, not talkers. Talkers just quack, quack, quack, don't get anything done.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

I love that you, you know, you're one of your gurus is Zig Ziggler. Same with me, right? I love Zig. And I think it was him that he talked about um giving you a round to it, right? It's like this round little coin that says, round to it. And here you go. You got a round to it, now go off and do it.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

It's like those old commercials. There is no easy button. I wish there was an easy button. There's no easy button. And that's what people don't realize. They they it's what's the nursery rhyme, it's uh the the little red hen, you know. Everybody, everybody's lazy and then they want to eat the bread, but they didn't do a dang thing to make the bread. They don't see the work involved. If you want to get results, you got to put in the work. And I I I guarantee I I work with people all the time that they you when I was a teacher, I was very blessed, Tony. I was I had two great parents that were very supportive. I've had wonderful teachers and coaches throughout my life who've told me what I'm capable of doing, I am capable of doing. And um I used to always tell my students, I'm like, you know, sometimes you need somebody else to believe in you before you believe in yourself. I believe in all of you. They only give me the best and the brightest. Now let's go out, make this world a better place. I believe you tell a person that enough, they start believing in themselves. And uh I also believe you tell a person they're worthless enough, they start believing that too. And I don't want to be around those people. But I think

SPEAKER_01 22:00

You mentioned something really great from you starting with your doctor, right? The thing about positive language, right? Not that you're you're tax fat or whatever you said, and it's more about gaining years. Walk us through, Danny, since you're an author as well. I find that self-help, I love self-help, right? As you've alluded to, you love self-help too. But walk us through your thoughts on do you find it to be too cliche, flowery? How do we sort of navigate the sort of like find your passion, everything's gonna be great with rose-colored glasses? You know, like how do you how do you navigate that?

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Well, I think you and I have been talking about this, Tony. And like people talk about the law of attraction. I'm like, there's no such thing as a law of attraction, there's a law of gravity. If I do this, all right. Like I can sit there and say, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer, it doesn't mean Jennifer Garner's interest. There's no law of attraction. It's disgusting to me. You know, what it takes is hard work. You know, if I want to meet Jennifer Garner, which I don't because I'm a happily married man, but if I if I do, I'm gonna have to go out and I first of all, I gotta go out to Hollywood because she doesn't live here where I'm at. Uh, I gotta do the work. You gotta do the work. So many people don't do a thing and uh it drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Now good. So, Danny, this is the work sucks but I like it podcast. And you mentioned that people need to do the work. Walk us through the work that you're doing that sucks right now, but how do you make it not suck?

SPEAKER_00 23:24

Because of you, Tony, I actually have a post-it on my desk. It says embrace the it says embrace the suck.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Oh man, all right.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Because there's things that you don't want to do. I mean, I'm sorry. There's like there's all kinds of things. I don't like, I don't, I don't get excited balancing my checkbook. I don't get excited uh uh marketing constantly. It's like ugly instead of instead of pre-programming all my social media posts, I could be using this time to actually write a book or whatever. But you do it. I mean, some things life isn't all ice cream and lollipops. I mean, sometimes you you gotta deal with with some things. Um, but that's fine. I'm a hard worker and uh my my life doesn't suck. I I see people that they have sucky lies and they love to gripe about how sucky their life is.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

You know, Jim Rohn, he used to always say, you know, if you want to change, change. You're not a tree. He's right. Like we have the power to do that. And that's why I I'm intentional. One of my mentors was Charlie Tremendous Jones, and Charlie used to say, You're the same today as you will be in five years, except for two things, the books you read and the people you meet. So make sure you read things that are positive and make sure you surround yourself with people that lift you up. If you're around people that just gripe all these Debbie Downers all the time, that's not going to serve you. You don't want to be around. I mean, I was watching a horrible show on TV last week called um The News. It totally brought me down. I'm like, man, this is just uh uh President Ford, when he was president, uh, a journalist asked him what was the first part of the newspaper he checked out every day. And he said, the sports page. Yeah. And the whole press corps freaked out. They're like, You're the leader of the free world. How can you read the sports page first? And he's like, Well, the sports page celebrates man's accomplishments. The front page just shows all of his failures. I'm like, a lot of wisdom in that. Like, this is where you and I, we actually read the self-help personal. I want to be around people that are thinking about, I want to think bigger. I mean, you don't get who's it, uh, President Eisenhower when he was a general, he said, pessimism never won any battle. I can't give you a single example in the history of a pessimist that changed the world in a positive way.

SPEAKER_01 25:39

Yeah. Now I love your thing with sports, right? I mean, um, picture the uh the interview of the athlete that just lost, right? The championship game. What do they say? They don't always blame the refs or whatever. Sometimes they might have, you know, comments here and there, but they're like, no, I'm gonna work harder for next year. I'm gonna train harder. So I agree with you, Danny, like and get inspired by these athletes. So I'm very curious, you mentioned fulfillment as one of your goals. What is fulfillment? What is that? Like, what, what, what is that? I was just thinking about what do you mean by fulfillment goals?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Yeah, fulfillment right now as a father is watching my kids or uh, you know, it's funny because when they were born, I want, oh, I want them to be doctors and lawyers and statespeople. Once they were born, I'm like, you know what? I want them to be kind. I want I want them to be good people. Uh and I I can say it's nice. My children, actually, uh, I'll use somebody else as an example. President Bush Sr., when he turned 90, he'd been president of the United States, he'd been vice president, he'd been uh uh ambassador to the United Nations, uh, uh he'd been the Chinese ambassador, he'd been director of the CIA, he'd been a successful businessman, and a reporter asked him, What's your greatest accomplishment? And he's like, I'm 90 years old, and my kids call me every single every single week. Ah, I love that. That was, you know, I just thought that was the nicest thing because I'm like, yeah, what's this all about? I I just don't understand people that uh the the book Fight Club has a great line, and I'll paraphrase it. It says, you know, people spend money they they don't have on things they don't need trying to impress people they don't like. Yeah, like to me that's what social media is. It's a waste of your time. Unless I mean I I'm not completely against social media because I I I look for the inspirational posts, and uh, but now with AI, I've got to check and see if it's actually accurate because I half the things that are posted aren't even I'm like, why did somebody spend the time writing a fake story? This is not I was just reading a story the other day about uh Peyton Manning. The reason he tips so well to waitresses was because his mom was a struggling waitress that supported him as a child. And I thought, I'm like, that doesn't sound I'm like, what do you say? Peyton Manning, his dad was Archie Manning and he was an NFL. His mom wasn't a waitress. And I'm like, why did somebody write that? It's just a waste of my time because that's annoying. Uh, you know, to me, social media is like when you go to Disneyland, if you go on the haunted mansion ride, it starts off you're in this room and you're surrounded by these paintings of happy people. There's like this this woman with a parasol and a guy with a big grin. And then the ride starts and the the uh floor starts dropping down, and you see the paintings get elongated. And the woman with the parasol, she's on a tight wire above an alligator that's about to eat her, and the guy that's smiling, he's on a barrel of dynamite. I'm like, that's social media. Everybody shows their six-pack abs and their Ferrari, they don't show all the struggle. Like, and oh this is wife number four.

SPEAKER_01 28:36

Um Why do you think we don't why do you think that is the way it is, Danny?

SPEAKER_00 28:40

You know, which is human psychology. People want to it's the same reason that uh when the uh Seattle Seahawks win the Super Bowl, all of a sudden you see a whole bunch of Seattle Seahawks fans. People want to be associated with a winner.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Jump on the bandwagon, right, right, right. But as you said, the the work, it's it's in doing the work. That's the success, right? It's not just about crossing the finish line.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Well, that's what if you ever look at, I mean, you and I are both into sports, and I'm like, gosh, that's what I always love is when these guys retire, they don't miss the stuff you think they miss. They miss being with their teammates. Yeah. They missed, they miss how they had to struggle, how they had to work hard to get there. And I'm like, wow, there's a lot to be said about that. And too many people, this is something everybody needs to pay attention to. You need to pause and celebrate when you have those little victories. It it drives me nuts that people, you know, if you got a raise or something, you know, take a walk, open up a bottle of wine, you know, watch a funny movie or something. Like, pause. Life doesn't have enough of those moments. And when you have those moments, you just celebrate them.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Love that reminder, Danny. I feel like we've gotten desensitized with the like button, right? We hit the like, it's the dopamine going off, and then all of a sudden we're wiring ourselves to get these sort of cheap pleasure things, you know. And like you said, we should be celebrating these bigger milestones. That's right. I love that. So, Danny, as we close out, you've been talking about your new book. Well, you mentioned the beginning, excuse me. Walk us through what this book is about and the kind of the timeline for for listeners here.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Ooh, I don't know if I all right. This isn't exclusive for you because it's not published. Nobody steal this idea. So uh uh a book that had a huge impact on me was Augman Dino's uh the greatest salesman of the world, uh, which he gave these 10 principles. And uh uh I decided I wanted to update that with uh what it takes to become a better speaker. And so mine's called The Greatest Leader in the World, and it's the same type of formats written like Augman Dino. It kind of gave me this new passion. I'm kind of rewriting some of my favorite books, but oriented towards what I do with teaching people with speaking. Um and I I will admit that it was fun writing the first draft, and I hate frickin' editing. Um, I've done already nine edits, and then right before this podcast today, I got uh 14 pages of notes from my editor, and I'm like, now I know how I'm spending my weekend, it's driving me crazy. My editor says good writing is in the editing, but I hear you, Danny.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

It's it's always like deflating when you get that back.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

It's very deflating. But it's not like when you can look back on the shelf and you see you see a book. It's kind of like uh I'm gonna give movie references all day, but uh the movie Bugsy. Um the thing I liked about Bugsy was he basically spends his entire fun Bugsy Seagull, it's based on a true story, spends his entire fortune to build the flamingo hotel in Las Vegas, where he basically created Las Vegas, what it would become. Uh, and his his girlfriend's like, Why are you doing this? You're gonna lose everything. And he just looks at it, he's like, But the flamingo will be there. Like, oh, you did something. And then maybe maybe it's not a building, maybe it's you were a good, you were a good parent, or um, you know, you were a good coworker or whatever. What is it that you know, all of us have to find meaning somehow? And to me, that's what I love about coaching is there's not I always thought it was cool when I got applause on stage as a speaker. It's so much more fun watching the people I coached. Like um I have one one woman I worked with the other day, and we just changed one thing in her presentation, and she increased her sales conversion by 34% just with that one thing. And just seeing her light up and talk about how much more money she made or whatever, I was like, wow, this is really fun. I love this. It was very fulfilling.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

So it sounds like you're not retiring and AI is misleading you.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Well, I'll retire from the university because I'll still be able to keep there, but I'm not retired. Like I love speaking, I love writing, I love coaching, I'll do that until I die.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Love it. Well, Danny, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. If listeners want to reach out, ask questions, improve their storytelling, where's a good place for them to land?

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Well, as a thank you to you, Tony, and your your audience for having to bear with me, I wanted to give everybody a freebie. So if you go to freestoremap.com, freestorymap.com, it's uh going to give you a chance to book a 30-minute complimentary phone call with me where for 30 minutes I'm gonna go through what your story is and figure out what we can do to make it stronger. What this does for you is it helps you figure out what story should I use and where should I put it in my presentation. And what this means is you'll have a system that can actually convert your audiences into actual clients. You can get that at freestorymap.com. And again, Tony, I just really appreciate you having me on today. I love everything that you're about. Uh, I feel like you're my long lost brother. And uh, you just holler whenever you need anything, my friend. You're really serving a lot of people out there.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Well, thank you, Danny. Definite inspiration having you on the other side as a guest. So thank you so much. Take care. What stood out to me most from this conversation was Danny's reminder that growth isn't glamorous. Social media often shows us the highlight real, but rarely the repetitions, mistakes, and frustrations that happen behind the scenes. As Danny said, the first time you do something, it's not gonna be good. The difference isn't talent, though. It was continuing to show up. It reminded me of Tiger Woods rebuilding his golf swing even after becoming the best in the world. It reminded me of John Wooden's commitment to fundamentals and how he won so many games at UCLA for years and years. Great performers understand something that the rest of us often forget. Mastery is never finished. So this week's skill to work on is deliberate practice. Pick one thing that matters to you and spend time improving it without worrying about immediate results. Don't focus on being impressive, focus on getting better. Work hard in the dark so you can shine in the light. Thanks for listening to Work Sucks, but I like it. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with someone who needs the reminder that success isn't magic, it's practice. Until next time, say what you do, do what you say, and keep moving forward.