The Importance of Valuing People with Eric Brooker

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

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Someone listening to this show, just got diagnosed.

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

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

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There's a lot of bad things.

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There's a lot of happy things.

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

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got engaged, just got pregnant.

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

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us to know what's going on.

Tim Winders: 00:00:41

How does one translate a passion for culture and leadership into

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tangible success within an organization?

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

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A distinguished business leader and a subject matter expert with over

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45, 000 hours dedicated to mastering the intricacies of leadership

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and organizational structure topics that I love to discuss.

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

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his skills in talent development.

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Strategic forecasting and motivating teams to achieve exceptional results.

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Eric, welcome to seek, go create.

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man.

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The pressure with that intro.

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First off.

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Thank you for the intro.

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Thank you for having me on the show.

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I'm excited about the conversation today.

Tim Winders: 00:01:29

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

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We were just chitchatting.

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I'm in the black Hills of South Dakota.

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

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So we've

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

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it was spring, but it's summery.

Eric Brooker: 00:01:44

That's right.

Tim Winders: 00:01:45

Breezy.

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Anyway, great to have you here.

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

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and topics that I love to discuss.

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

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

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

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Hey, dude, man, what do you do?

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

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it's funny.

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

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The moderator MC or host of the week.

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

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

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

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conversation's really interesting.

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What is it that you do?

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

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

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the world of finance in my keynote.

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I could talk about leadership and culture.

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I normally stick to keynote speaker and author.

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I have a consulting practice as well.

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And generally I stick to keynote and author because it lends

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itself to a further conversation.

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tell me about your book.

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What's the book about?

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what exactly do you speak on?

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

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many cases they wouldn't normally have.

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Interesting.

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All right.

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

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just jumped in my mind.

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So I'm going to go with it.

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Okay.

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I.

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

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

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breadth and skill than I really do.

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

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

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

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He thinks quite a bit of himself.

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Do you ever pause and go, huh?

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I wonder if.

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

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that ever cross your mind at all?

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

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wow, that guy thinks a lot of himself.

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This is what I do for work.

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You asked what I do for work.

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

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I could certainly narrow the scope.

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

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and worthiness in the workplace.

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Again, I think that lends itself to more conversations.

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

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

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

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

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And I give them the opportunity to bow out early.

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

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

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

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communicator just kept coming to

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mind.

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as a root skill.

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

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that you've got 45, 000 hours.

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So I'm going to ask about that.

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

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like early on, like playground as a kid

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

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Not that you developed over time.

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Does that make sense?

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

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the communication piece is an interesting one.

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

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

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Let's see if I can get this right.

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Perimeter Bicycling Association of America.

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

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there were a couple thousand riders.

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

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and the rest of the volunteers.

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And then the gentleman that was hosting the president, if

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

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Brooker, I'm 11.

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That's my dad.

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And he goes, Eric.

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And I said, Richard, what do you need?

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

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And we need someone to grab the mic.

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It's five to 8, 000 people there.

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

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

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

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all now call imposter syndrome.

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

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this is fun and it's not that hard.

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And everybody seems to really enjoy it.

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

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thought, I wonder where this goes.

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I wonder what this turns into.

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And I've enjoyed those opportunities over the years.

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

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

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

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and you're not selling a widget.

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You're selling a story.

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

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for Tim, where he says, I need that.

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I want that.

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

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

Tim Winders: 00:08:04

So one thing that's fascinating about that, this

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

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

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

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it and you can address it and all that.

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

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

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

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

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One of them is I noticed that taller people

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

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I don't know cultural.

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

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

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

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

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

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Have you seen that too?

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

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

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

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don't necessarily like to get up and

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speak much.

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They're quiet about it.

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But what are your thoughts on that?

Tim Winders: 00:09:32

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

Eric Brooker: 00:09:34

it's an interesting thesis.

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

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

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I'm not scared of a microphone.

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

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I was actually sitting in the audience.

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This is a funny story.

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I was sitting in the audience.

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It was a tech conference of sorts.

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:10:07

none of those guys know the answer.

Eric Brooker: 00:10:09

I know the people, none of them know it.

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

Eric Brooker: 00:10:17

And I just decided to do it.

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:10:25

That was great.

Eric Brooker: 00:10:25

Ladies and gentlemen, Eric Brooker.

Eric Brooker: 00:10:27

He's in the business.

Eric Brooker: 00:10:28

He knows the space.

Eric Brooker: 00:10:29

Maybe he should have been on the panel.

Eric Brooker: 00:10:31

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

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

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This is for the people.

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:10:49

guy who has the mic wins, right?

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:10:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:11:04

of time and energy into my craft.

Eric Brooker: 00:11:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:11:13

answer in many cases at the right time.

Tim Winders: 00:11:19

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

Tim Winders: 00:11:22

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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to where I go next with the questions.

Eric Brooker: 00:12:21

a really great question.

Eric Brooker: 00:12:23

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

Eric Brooker: 00:12:29

until about four years ago, I didn't.

Eric Brooker: 00:12:33

I didn't read books.

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

Eric Brooker: 00:12:37

selling about 12 years ago.

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

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

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we all needed to read the content.

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So I read that book, trudged through it.

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

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the only book that I've read post.

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High school post college.

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

Eric Brooker: 00:13:08

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:13:16

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

Eric Brooker: 00:13:19

in my career is fire someone.

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:13:30

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

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this path with them down the road.

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

Eric Brooker: 00:13:39

It impacts them.

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

Eric Brooker: 00:13:43

So a lot of it.

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And that one immediately comes to mind.

Eric Brooker: 00:13:48

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

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I've had roughly 150 episodes.

Eric Brooker: 00:13:58

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

Eric Brooker: 00:14:02

any better when I started my podcast.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:14:09

a book called chasing failure.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:12

I should probably read the book.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:14

Brilliant book, by the way, absolutely brilliant book.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:18

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:14:28

world of podcast deep secret.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:30

Everybody cheats and figures out the four or five questions that

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we should ask that individual.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:36

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

Eric Brooker: 00:14:40

point where I've now written a book.

Eric Brooker: 00:14:42

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

Eric Brooker: 00:14:46

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:14:52

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

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

Eric Brooker: 00:15:02

He wrote a book aptly named love is free.

Eric Brooker: 00:15:06

Guac is extra, but man alive.

Eric Brooker: 00:15:10

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

Eric Brooker: 00:15:15

nature from that book.

Eric Brooker: 00:15:17

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

Eric Brooker: 00:15:20

I really understood a lot.

Eric Brooker: 00:15:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:15:27

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

Eric Brooker: 00:15:30

So a lot of it was just curiosity.

Eric Brooker: 00:15:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:15:37

about other people along the way.

Eric Brooker: 00:15:38

Just the same.

Tim Winders: 00:15:41

this is an interesting confession that you brought that up.

Tim Winders: 00:15:44

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

Tim Winders: 00:15:50

Like you said, most people have books and 99.

Tim Winders: 00:15:53

9 percent of every guest I read their

Tim Winders: 00:15:57

book.

Tim Winders: 00:15:57

Sometimes it's a pretty quick scan.

Tim Winders: 00:15:59

I will admit

Eric Brooker: 00:16:00

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:16:01

I haven't read yours yet.

Tim Winders: 00:16:04

your book, you are enough.

Tim Winders: 00:16:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:07

I sort of read a synopsis.

Tim Winders: 00:16:10

this is sounds like an excuse.

Tim Winders: 00:16:11

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:15

related to dementia and thinking and

Tim Winders: 00:16:16

all that.

Tim Winders: 00:16:17

And it really bogged me down.

Tim Winders: 00:16:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:25

always been a fairly voracious reader.

Tim Winders: 00:16:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:34

I became a reader, back up with me.

Tim Winders: 00:16:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:16:42

why were you not a reader?

Tim Winders: 00:16:45

Was there something going on there?

Tim Winders: 00:16:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:16:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:16:52

My parents got divorced when I was five.

Eric Brooker: 00:16:54

They both had to work.

Eric Brooker: 00:16:56

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:02

the evolution of the young adult.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:04

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:10

Weird data, but it's there.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:18

I, my parents may have read to me.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:19

I don't know.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:24

work and providing for the family.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:27

So I think I probably missed out on that.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:30

And it's funny.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:32

My brother is the general counsel.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:35

So he is the lead attorney for the FBI.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:38

My brother has always been a voracious reader.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:42

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:46

I was quite the opposite.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:54

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

Eric Brooker: 00:17:57

And he was a great student.

Eric Brooker: 00:17:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:02

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:14

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:18

Ms.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:19

Davis, Mrs.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:20

Davis.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:20

I think Mrs.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:21

Davis called me senior year in high school.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:24

She called me into her classroom after class.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:26

I thought I was busted.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:28

She goes, Mr.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:28

Brooker said, yes, Mrs.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:30

Davis.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:31

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:37

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:39

No.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:40

And she says, can you tell me why?

Eric Brooker: 00:18:44

I said, Mrs.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:45

Davis, that's a great question.

Eric Brooker: 00:18:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:54

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

Eric Brooker: 00:18:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:19:04

That is an additional 5%.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:06

And I've already read the book.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:07

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

Eric Brooker: 00:19:10

any homework I choose not to do.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:13

lesson learned, Mrs.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:14

Davis now requires you to do your homework and the percentage

Eric Brooker: 00:19:18

allocation is much, much higher.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:19:26

It, I took the easy road.

Tim Winders: 00:19:30

and what were some of the repercussions of that?

Tim Winders: 00:19:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:19:40

That's a loaded

Tim Winders: 00:19:40

question right there,

Tim Winders: 00:19:41

isn't it?

Eric Brooker: 00:19:42

Yeah.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:42

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

Eric Brooker: 00:19:48

know there were no repercussions.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:50

I just got by.

Eric Brooker: 00:19:53

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:01

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:06

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:14

I had to learn how to study.

Eric Brooker: 00:20:16

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:27

I had to learn.

Eric Brooker: 00:20:29

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:32

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

Eric Brooker: 00:20:36

Cause school was pretty easy.

Eric Brooker: 00:20:38

I didn't do a lot of homework.

Eric Brooker: 00:20:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:20:46

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

Tim Winders: 00:20:50

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

Tim Winders: 00:20:55

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:00

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:10

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:13

to that point.

Tim Winders: 00:21:13

I'm guessing.

Eric Brooker: 00:21:14

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:21:15

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:17

You said, sure.

Tim Winders: 00:21:19

You carried yourself in a certain way.

Tim Winders: 00:21:22

Something told, I think Richard, you said it

Tim Winders: 00:21:25

was something told Richard this guy can handle this.

Tim Winders: 00:21:29

We could turn this event over to him.

Tim Winders: 00:21:31

Very important thing there.

Tim Winders: 00:21:32

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:41

a little bit of this in me too.

Tim Winders: 00:21:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:46

this and that and kind of stuff.

Tim Winders: 00:21:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:50

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:54

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

Tim Winders: 00:21:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:22:02

Davis, I could talk my way out of stuff.

Tim Winders: 00:22:04

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:12

sixth grade got an award.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:14

He was the first.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:15

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:22

studies book from cover to cover.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:30

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:35

Look at my brother.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:36

My brother's another great example, right?

Eric Brooker: 00:22:38

He was an academic and he worked his way.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:43

through success from an academic perspective, right?

Eric Brooker: 00:22:47

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:51

resume will speak for itself.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:53

Lee's a great example of that.

Eric Brooker: 00:22:55

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

Eric Brooker: 00:22:58

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:03

My dad would say I never lacked confidence.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:06

My mom would probably tell you the same thing.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:13

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:17

And he was like, what do you mean?

Eric Brooker: 00:23:18

I could be whatever I want to be.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:20

I don't know.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:21

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:28

just figuring out a path to go do that.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:31

You like me.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:32

I won't speak for you.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:34

Nobody gave me the how to start a podcast.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:37

Nobody gave me the how to keynote.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:40

Nobody gave me the how to write a book.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:43

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:48

them because many of them were keynotes.

Eric Brooker: 00:23:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:23:55

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:02

They're going to find wild success.

Eric Brooker: 00:24:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:11

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:14

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:18

I'm going to write a book.

Eric Brooker: 00:24:19

What, how do you write a book?

Eric Brooker: 00:24:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:23

ask that have done it before.

Eric Brooker: 00:24:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:31

So yeah, I think there are differences.

Eric Brooker: 00:24:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:24:39

maybe had an easier life in some respects.

Eric Brooker: 00:24:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:24:48

I think the bottom line is one of our taglines is

Tim Winders: 00:24:51

there's a journey that we all go on

Tim Winders: 00:24:53

and it is what it is.

Tim Winders: 00:24:54

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:00

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:07

Enough is the name of your book.

Tim Winders: 00:25:09

And I want to read the subtitle Overcoming Lifelong Doubts of

Tim Winders: 00:25:15

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:20

about, but I think it feeds into it.

Tim Winders: 00:25:22

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:28

Thanks a lot.

Tim Winders: 00:25:29

tell me about it.

Tim Winders: 00:25:30

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

Tim Winders: 00:25:34

just the blurb that I read.

Tim Winders: 00:25:36

give me some more info on that.

Eric Brooker: 00:25:38

I appreciate the honesty.

Eric Brooker: 00:25:39

Thank you for not reading my book.

Eric Brooker: 00:25:43

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

Eric Brooker: 00:25:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:25:55

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

Eric Brooker: 00:25:58

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:02

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:06

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:09

We've had some absolutely epic interviews.

Eric Brooker: 00:26:13

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:17

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:23

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:27

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:32

of some of the past podcast guests.

Eric Brooker: 00:26:35

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:39

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:44

It was the behind the scenes conversation.

Eric Brooker: 00:26:46

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:49

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

Eric Brooker: 00:26:54

that's really where the magic happens.

Eric Brooker: 00:26:57

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:03

But it's often confidential.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:14

Many of them have experienced either as children or young

Eric Brooker: 00:27:18

adults or with their kids.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:21

So a little backstory.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:22

My wife and I have seven kids.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:28

Our oldest daughter is from my first marriage.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:32

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:40

And it was on that moment.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:41

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:45

the story I needed to tell.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:47

And I didn't have a book title.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:48

I didn't have a subtitle.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:27:55

And I just started writing 15 minutes a day.

Eric Brooker: 00:27:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:28:05

woundedness from again, it's my wife.

Eric Brooker: 00:28:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:28:14

cousins, the whole nine yards.

Eric Brooker: 00:28:15

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

Eric Brooker: 00:28:23

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

Eric Brooker: 00:28:28

I don't even know her name.

Eric Brooker: 00:28:30

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

Eric Brooker: 00:28:38

Many of your listeners have estranged relationships that

Eric Brooker: 00:28:42

they choose not to talk about.

Eric Brooker: 00:28:45

I was at a breakfast this morning with Sergio and I

Eric Brooker: 00:28:49

mentioned having a miscarriage.

Eric Brooker: 00:28:51

My wife had a miscarriage in November.

Eric Brooker: 00:28:54

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

Eric Brooker: 00:28:58

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:03

You're going to interact.

Eric Brooker: 00:29:04

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:16

I don't want to overdramatize it.

Eric Brooker: 00:29:17

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:28

this estrangement, the way that I am.

Eric Brooker: 00:29:32

And again, we.

Eric Brooker: 00:29:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:37

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:47

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:52

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

Eric Brooker: 00:29:59

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:06

What's fascinating, you brought up LinkedIn,

Tim Winders: 00:30:08

so let's talk social media.

Tim Winders: 00:30:11

There's this,

Tim Winders: 00:30:14

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:17

most people put their best up.

Tim Winders: 00:30:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:23

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:32

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:50

I realized.

Tim Winders: 00:30:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:30:56

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:31:06

But what are your thoughts?

Tim Winders: 00:31:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:31:10

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

Eric Brooker: 00:31:16

I write to my daughter in that letter.

Eric Brooker: 00:31:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:31:26

our reconciliation into existence.

Eric Brooker: 00:31:31

I felt very called to write the book.

Eric Brooker: 00:31:35

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

Eric Brooker: 00:31:38

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

Eric Brooker: 00:31:44

would take me eight to 12 months.

Eric Brooker: 00:31:46

It took me two years because it was very therapeutic.

Eric Brooker: 00:31:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:31:58

And I needed to put the book down.

Eric Brooker: 00:31:59

I needed to not write.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:01

Cause I needed some healing.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:03

Listen, I wasn't abused.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:04

I didn't have a bad childhood.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:16

I was given a book actually by the gentleman that wrote

Eric Brooker: 00:32:19

the cover quote for my book.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:21

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:27

I read the book.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:28

He sent it to our oldest daughter.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:32

And it was a very healing book for me.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:34

I, then again, I talked about chasing failure.

Eric Brooker: 00:32:37

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:42

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:49

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

Eric Brooker: 00:32:55

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:04

the messages that I get from others.

Eric Brooker: 00:33:07

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:11

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:17

reconciliation that they've experienced.

Eric Brooker: 00:33:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:26

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:29

to you a note I got yesterday.

Eric Brooker: 00:33:31

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:36

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:41

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:46

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:52

Thank you for this gift, Eric.

Eric Brooker: 00:33:54

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

Eric Brooker: 00:33:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:34:02

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

Eric Brooker: 00:34:08

of the books we write are for ourselves.

Eric Brooker: 00:34:10

So I think there was a lot of healing.

Eric Brooker: 00:34:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:34:15

the pages that were given to me.

Eric Brooker: 00:34:18

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

Eric Brooker: 00:34:22

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:28

I think the power.

Tim Winders: 00:34:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:43

great tagline by the way.

Tim Winders: 00:34:44

I'm monkeying around with it.

Tim Winders: 00:34:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:34:57

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:01

by 13, we were homeless and bankrupt.

Tim Winders: 00:35:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:06

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:10

the more I share that story,

Tim Winders: 00:35:12

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:19

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:24

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:33

But yet there are daily, weekly, monthly things.

Tim Winders: 00:35:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:44

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:54

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

Tim Winders: 00:35:57

Now I had real estate companies.

Tim Winders: 00:35:59

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:36:08

People are throwing around a lot

Eric Brooker: 00:36:09

So the keynote I gave in Austin last week was all

Eric Brooker: 00:36:12

about relationship capital and I talk very specifically that

Eric Brooker: 00:36:15

everyone is going through something.

Eric Brooker: 00:36:19

And often we miss the opportunity to acknowledge it.

Eric Brooker: 00:36:23

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:30

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:38

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:42

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:46

Someone listening to this show, just got diagnosed.

Eric Brooker: 00:36:49

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:53

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

Eric Brooker: 00:36:58

There's a lot of bad things.

Eric Brooker: 00:36:59

There's a lot of happy things.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:01

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:03

got engaged, just got pregnant.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:06

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:10

us to know what's going on.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:19

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:26

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:31

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:35

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:37

Note to self, Tim likes.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:40

And iced caramel macchiato.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:42

I'm going to put that in my phone.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:43

Cause Tim, you work for me in this story.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:46

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:50

And it's not because I have an agenda.

Eric Brooker: 00:37:52

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:55

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

Eric Brooker: 00:37:57

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:01

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:08

assuming positive intent.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:10

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:15

up and that's a gluten filled bun.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:19

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:22

How hard is Tim?

Eric Brooker: 00:38:23

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:26

I asked for a gluten free bun.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:30

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:37

to sprinkle some gluten powder on it.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:40

They don't mean anything by it.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:41

It just happened.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:43

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:38:55

They want to go home.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:56

They want to be with their family.

Eric Brooker: 00:38:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:03

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:07

We don't think about any of this stuff.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:09

The guy that just cut us off.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:11

He didn't probably see us.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:14

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:17

our six year old in the back.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:18

We've all done this stuff.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:21

Relationship capital is critical.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:26

To build relationship capital with the guy at target.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:30

I don't have time for that.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:32

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:36

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:39

It's a woman.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:39

Her name's Roberta.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:40

We built a beautiful relationship.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:42

She had a dog named Elmer.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:44

She had to put Elmer down, but.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:46

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:50

on what's going on in her life.

Eric Brooker: 00:39:52

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

Eric Brooker: 00:39:58

experience at a furniture store.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:00

He's the manager at a furniture store.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:03

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:06

You know what?

Eric Brooker: 00:40:06

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:11

Everybody on this planet.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:14

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:26

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:31

Starbucks, they may have more insight.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:34

Into the suffering you're about to experience.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:36

They may have insight into the celebration.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:39

Hey, I just closed on my first house.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:42

Let me tell you.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:42

Okay.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:43

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:47

Holy crap.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:48

I had no idea that was coming.

Eric Brooker: 00:40:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:40:53

commonality with that person

Tim Winders: 00:40:57

Eric, do you think.

Tim Winders: 00:40:59

Yeah.

Tim Winders: 00:41:00

does your faith feed that?

Tim Winders: 00:41:03

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:07

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:13

get caught up in things and we forget.

Tim Winders: 00:41:16

But I, I'm similar.

Tim Winders: 00:41:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:25

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:30

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:35

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:37

You don't see me.

Tim Winders: 00:41:38

You probably see some clips and stuff,

Tim Winders: 00:41:40

but we've got an hour.

Tim Winders: 00:41:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:45

I've used my iPhone as my camera.

Tim Winders: 00:41:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:50

to scroll, I can't do that.

Tim Winders: 00:41:52

I get Eric.

Tim Winders: 00:41:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:41:56

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:03

He is created.

Tim Winders: 00:42:04

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:10

So I'm just curious.

Tim Winders: 00:42:12

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

Tim Winders: 00:42:15

said about the value of people.

Eric Brooker: 00:42:20

Oh, probably.

Eric Brooker: 00:42:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:24

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:28

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:34

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:38

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:41

just thought of it a couple of weeks ago.

Eric Brooker: 00:42:43

Thanksgiving Day.

Eric Brooker: 00:42:44

I don't know.

Eric Brooker: 00:42:44

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:42:56

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:00

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:02

the malls.

Eric Brooker: 00:43:03

Closed it's Thanksgiving.

Eric Brooker: 00:43:06

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:11

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:17

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:22

And he's pushing all the furniture back.

Eric Brooker: 00:43:24

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:30

Is this the career that he chose?

Eric Brooker: 00:43:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:38

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:41

to keep yourself occupied.

Eric Brooker: 00:43:43

Does he enjoy doing this?

Eric Brooker: 00:43:45

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

Eric Brooker: 00:43:52

this, but why not have the conversation?

Eric Brooker: 00:43:55

Everybody.

Eric Brooker: 00:43:56

Adds value.

Eric Brooker: 00:43:58

Everybody adds insight.

Eric Brooker: 00:44:00

You know what I learned?

Eric Brooker: 00:44:01

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:07

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:12

Starbucks has experienced a miscarriage.

Eric Brooker: 00:44:14

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:19

a year has had that experience.

Eric Brooker: 00:44:22

And that brings us together in a common thread.

Eric Brooker: 00:44:26

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:30

that they can garner from me.

Eric Brooker: 00:44:32

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:39

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:44

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:51

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

Eric Brooker: 00:44:56

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

Eric Brooker: 00:45:02

want and now I need to give it away.

Tim Winders: 00:45:06

And just sharing those things, I think are powerful.

Tim Winders: 00:45:10

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:15

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:21

organizations, things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:45:25

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:30

What are some trends you're seeing?

Tim Winders: 00:45:32

What are some things you're observing?

Tim Winders: 00:45:33

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:44

there's a lot of stuff going on.

Tim Winders: 00:45:46

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:48

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:52

But what are you observing?

Tim Winders: 00:45:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:45:56

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:00

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

Tim Winders: 00:46:04

Just, what can you share?

Eric Brooker: 00:46:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:15

than they are their product hands down.

Eric Brooker: 00:46:18

I'm going to give you a link.

Eric Brooker: 00:46:19

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:22

It is a, an Instagram link of all things.

Eric Brooker: 00:46:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:28

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:33

focus on the people in front of us.

Eric Brooker: 00:46:35

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:40

founder of the Savannah bananas.

Eric Brooker: 00:46:42

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:48

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

Eric Brooker: 00:46:55

It's visible.

Eric Brooker: 00:46:58

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

Eric Brooker: 00:47:05

of their people over their profits.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:47:13

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

Eric Brooker: 00:47:20

make decisions up to 1000 an incident.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:24

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

Eric Brooker: 00:47:28

asks how your stay is, and you go,

Eric Brooker: 00:47:34

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

Eric Brooker: 00:47:39

air conditioning wasn't, whatever.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:41

He can comp your night.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:42

The janitor can comp your night at the hotel.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:46

Up to a thousand dollars.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:47

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

Eric Brooker: 00:47:52

For their employees first are finding a lot of success leaders

Eric Brooker: 00:47:57

that give their people the autonomy.

Eric Brooker: 00:47:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:03

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:07

people that invest in their people.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:13

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:16

It's the example I gave earlier.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:19

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:22

caramel macchiato that I know you like.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:24

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:27

we just go out to lunch?

Eric Brooker: 00:48:29

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:32

First of all, Tim, congratulations.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:35

I think you said you closed Friday morning.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:37

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:43

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:46

your son into the room right away.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:48

Here's a 250 Home Depot gift card.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:51

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

Eric Brooker: 00:48:56

The little things don't mean a lot.

Eric Brooker: 00:48:57

The little things mean everything.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:00

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:05

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:13

Number one.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:14

Number two.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:16

It means the world to Tim.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:17

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:21

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:27

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:33

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:37

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:40

law and it was the strangest thing.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:42

My buddy, Tim.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:43

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:49

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

Eric Brooker: 00:49:54

to figure out who sent all these flowers.

Eric Brooker: 00:49:57

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

Eric Brooker: 00:50:01

Those little things from an employer mean everything.

Eric Brooker: 00:50:07

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

Eric Brooker: 00:50:11

are focused very heavily on caring well for their people.

Tim Winders: 00:50:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:20

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:34

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:39

I think it's just filling in dead time.

Tim Winders: 00:50:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:46

time for what you just mentioned.

Tim Winders: 00:50:48

I don't agree with that.

Tim Winders: 00:50:49

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

Tim Winders: 00:50:52

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:00

There's so

Tim Winders: 00:51:00

much ROI with that.

Tim Winders: 00:51:02

It's not what do you think?

Tim Winders: 00:51:03

It's 10%.

Tim Winders: 00:51:04

Are you going to get something back for doing that?

Tim Winders: 00:51:06

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:08

You're just investing in.

Tim Winders: 00:51:10

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:16

of that keep people from doing this?

Tim Winders: 00:51:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:22

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:25

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:39

type coffee Tim is interested in.

Tim Winders: 00:51:42

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:45

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

Tim Winders: 00:51:47

keeps people from doing what.

Tim Winders: 00:51:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:51:53

I had it on my desk.

Eric Brooker: 00:51:54

One of the kids pro.

Eric Brooker: 00:51:55

Oh, it's right here.

Eric Brooker: 00:51:56

Hold on.

Eric Brooker: 00:51:58

Instagram.

Eric Brooker: 00:51:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:02

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:07

And then I'll do something different.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:08

I'll move on to something.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:10

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:12

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:16

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:22

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:29

We don't make the time.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:30

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:35

You can schedule time with me on my Calendly link.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:38

I know a lot of people are doing that.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:39

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:44

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:47

I send a 15 to 20 second video.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:49

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

Eric Brooker: 00:52:53

Those videos seem to mean the world to people.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:56

A 15 second video takes me 30 seconds.

Eric Brooker: 00:52:59

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:04

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:13

If you don't have time.

Eric Brooker: 00:53:15

to get someone a cup of coffee.

Eric Brooker: 00:53:16

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:20

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:25

You've got staff that's remote.

Eric Brooker: 00:53:27

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:29

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:36

how much screen time you need.

Eric Brooker: 00:53:39

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:43

You feel really guilty.

Eric Brooker: 00:53:44

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:47

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:53

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

Eric Brooker: 00:53:57

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:03

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:08

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:18

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:24

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:29

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:35

sudden it's here's a brilliant idea.

Eric Brooker: 00:54:37

And I may or may not do something with it.

Eric Brooker: 00:54:39

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:44

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:46

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:50

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:54

going to call someone on my team.

Eric Brooker: 00:54:56

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

Eric Brooker: 00:54:59

I got a meeting.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:00

I can meet at 1130.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:02

It's a non negotiable.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:03

You don't adjust.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:06

Because every Monday at 11, I am busy.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:09

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

Eric Brooker: 00:55:12

Someone is screaming at their iPhone right now.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:15

Eric, come on.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:16

What if it's your biggest client?

Eric Brooker: 00:55:17

It's a non negotiable.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:19

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

Eric Brooker: 00:55:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:55:30

and I'm not able to meet with them.

Eric Brooker: 00:55:31

Yes, I

Tim Winders: 00:55:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:55:38

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

Tim Winders: 00:55:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:55:53

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

Tim Winders: 00:55:57

I was about to turn 60 in November.

Tim Winders: 00:56:00

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:03

wasn't addicted to alcohol.

Tim Winders: 00:56:04

I can turn that on or off.

Tim Winders: 00:56:06

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:08

whiskey, a little wine, whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:56:10

But I was addicted.

Tim Winders: 00:56:11

To information and I felt as if I needed it.

Tim Winders: 00:56:14

I needed to consume it.

Tim Winders: 00:56:16

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:22

and it's made me much more creative.

Tim Winders: 00:56:24

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:27

There's another thing I just did recently.

Tim Winders: 00:56:29

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:34

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:44

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

Tim Winders: 00:56:47

how the Atlanta Braves were doing.

Tim Winders: 00:56:50

I don't care what your team is.

Tim Winders: 00:56:51

It doesn't matter.

Tim Winders: 00:56:52

They play 162 dang games.

Tim Winders: 00:56:56

And if you're doing that.

Tim Winders: 00:56:58

Five, 10 minutes a day.

Tim Winders: 00:56:59

How much time is that?

Tim Winders: 00:57:02

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:10

So I've eliminated all of that and

Eric Brooker: 00:57:13

love it and you're not missing anything.

Tim Winders: 00:57:16

I haven't missed anything.

Tim Winders: 00:57:17

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:21

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:23

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:25

but time, our most valuable resource.

Tim Winders: 00:57:27

Another thing that I do is I don't.

Tim Winders: 00:57:28

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:31

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:33

more creative and stuff like that.

Tim Winders: 00:57:36

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:39

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:45

share when you do your keynotes.

Tim Winders: 00:57:47

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:51

on your podcast, could be, but.

Tim Winders: 00:57:54

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

Tim Winders: 00:57:59

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

Tim Winders: 00:58:05

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

Tim Winders: 00:58:11

what would be like the main deal?

Eric Brooker: 00:58:14

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

Eric Brooker: 00:58:20

We suffer from imposter syndrome.

Eric Brooker: 00:58:22

We don't think we are enough.

Eric Brooker: 00:58:24

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

Eric Brooker: 00:58:28

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

Eric Brooker: 00:58:32

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

Eric Brooker: 00:58:38

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

Eric Brooker: 00:58:43

That you are enough.

Eric Brooker: 00:58:44

You were uniquely and wonderfully made.

Eric Brooker: 00:58:48

And that in and of itself makes you enough.

Eric Brooker: 00:58:52

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

Eric Brooker: 00:58:57

right where we're supposed to be.

Eric Brooker: 00:59:00

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

Eric Brooker: 00:59:04

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

Eric Brooker: 00:59:09

There was a lot of suffering.

Eric Brooker: 00:59:10

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

Eric Brooker: 00:59:14

And I will not say that I am healed.

Eric Brooker: 00:59:17

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

Eric Brooker: 00:59:22

And I know that God gave us all free will.

Eric Brooker: 00:59:25

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

Eric Brooker: 00:59:28

I can't impact that decision.

Eric Brooker: 00:59:32

Neither can you.

Eric Brooker: 00:59:33

And just as you are enough.

Tim Winders: 00:59:36

I love that.

Tim Winders: 00:59:37

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

Tim Winders: 00:59:41

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

Tim Winders: 00:59:43

are coping and dealing with it.

Tim Winders: 00:59:45

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

Tim Winders: 00:59:49

that we need to go through.

Tim Winders: 00:59:51

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

Tim Winders: 00:59:56

and give all your info here.

Tim Winders: 00:59:57

All of that will be included down in the notes.

Tim Winders: 00:59:58

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

Tim Winders: 01:00:02

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

Tim Winders: 01:00:04

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

Eric Brooker: 01:00:07

I do a lot on LinkedIn.

Eric Brooker: 01:00:09

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

Eric Brooker: 01:00:13

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

Eric Brooker: 01:00:18

Eric Brooker, ericbrooker.

Eric Brooker: 01:00:20

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

Eric Brooker: 01:00:24

You can schedule time with me.

Eric Brooker: 01:00:27

I'm happy to take your call via zoom.

Eric Brooker: 01:00:30

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

Eric Brooker: 01:00:33

com, anywhere you buy books.

Eric Brooker: 01:00:36

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

Tim Winders: 01:00:40

Very good, Eric.

Tim Winders: 01:00:41

I appreciate that.

Tim Winders: 01:00:42

We are seek.

Tim Winders: 01:00:44

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

Tim Winders: 01:00:49

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

Tim Winders: 01:00:51

means more to you right now.

Tim Winders: 01:00:53

And why?

Tim Winders: 01:00:54

And that's my final question.

Tim Winders: 01:00:56

Seek, go or create.

Eric Brooker: 01:00:58

Go strikes me as such an action word.

Eric Brooker: 01:01:01

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

Eric Brooker: 01:01:06

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

Eric Brooker: 01:01:11

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

Eric Brooker: 01:01:17

trying to do is much lower than you think.

Eric Brooker: 01:01:20

I can assure you that it's much lower.

Eric Brooker: 01:01:23

The barrier is effort.

Eric Brooker: 01:01:26

So just go do it.

Eric Brooker: 01:01:28

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

Eric Brooker: 01:01:34

Just go, just get

Tim Winders: 01:01:37

Excellent.

Tim Winders: 01:01:38

you.

Tim Winders: 01:01:38

And I.

Tim Winders: 01:01:40

I just want to give honor to that.

Tim Winders: 01:01:42

You are enough message.

Tim Winders: 01:01:43

I am in agreement with that.

Tim Winders: 01:01:45

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

Tim Winders: 01:01:49

You are enough.

Tim Winders: 01:01:50

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

Tim Winders: 01:01:54

everything that Eric has going on.

Tim Winders: 01:01:57

you could check out his podcast and everything.

Tim Winders: 01:01:59

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

Tim Winders: 01:02:02

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

Tim Winders: 01:02:06

So go check all of that out.

Tim Winders: 01:02:09

We're SeekGoCreate here.

Tim Winders: 01:02:10

We've got new episodes every Monday.

Tim Winders: 01:02:12

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

Tim Winders: 01:02:14

You can do that financially.

Tim Winders: 01:02:15

Go to SeekGoCreate.

Tim Winders: 01:02:17

com forward slash support.

Tim Winders: 01:02:20

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

Tim Winders: 01:02:22

We would welcome it.

Tim Winders: 01:02:23

It just helps us continue getting the word out.

Tim Winders: 01:02:26

With what we are doing.

Tim Winders: 01:02:28

Thanks for listening in.

Tim Winders: 01:02:30

We are Seek, Go, Create.

Tim Winders: 01:02:31

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