Do you ever wonder why Jimmy is the way he is? In this episode, host Lori Few takes over the podcast and gets deep inside Jimmy’s mind.
Episode Keys
- How Jimmy keeps his sense of positivity in a negative world?
- Why does Jimmy choose to remain focused and committed to a positive mindset?
- When did Jimmy experience challenges, triumphs, and/or defining moments, and what helped him stay positive?
- Who has influenced, mentored, and been helpful in defining Jimmy who he is today?
- How can others benefit from positivity and implementing the daily strategies Jimmy lives by?
Podcast Transcript
LF: Good Monday morning everybody! Yes, that’s right – you’re not hearing the voice of Jimmy Williams. You’re hearing the voice of Lori Few. I have staged a semi-hostile takeover of the Live a Live By Design Podcast this morning, and in the hot seat, we have flipped the script. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to introduce the one, the only, Mr. Jimmy Williams.
JW: Oh, I don’t know how this worked out. I don’t know how you, Ashley, and everyone took over the mics and all the studio, but shall I say I’m a little nervous?
LF: Yes, you should be a little nervous. This morning, we are going to delve deep into the mind that is Jimmy. Our listeners are going to find out all the ins and outs of what makes you tick, and we’re calling this episode A Day in the Life of Jimmy.
JW: It’s the only day you’ll have that’ll have more than 24 hours, or at least it’ll feel like it, Lori.
LF: Well, it’s the start of a brand new week and we’re really excited to get to ask some of those questions that our listeners really, really want to know about Jimmy. They hear everything that you think, say every week, every ounce of positivity. And the first thing that we’re going to start off with, is that real?
JW: Great question. Yes, it is. I will tell you, I literally get up in a great mood every day, and I know people are going to say, “Well you can’t be bipolar. You’re not in a great mood every day.” But I will say to be very honest with you, I so. Because I choose to take control of my mindset. I cannot control things outside my own environment, and I basically always choose to be smiling. I choose to live a life that’s got happiness in it and positivity and encouragement, and I choose to give that away all day, Lori.
LF: Well I knew the answer to that question, but inquiring minds just had to hear it from the horse’s mouth. I have never doubted that sense of positivity. But along those lines, let’s give our listeners a little insight as to how that mindset started for you. Is that something that started in your childhood, maybe when you were a young adult?
JW: Yeah, that’s another great question. I will say this, looking back in my childhood, I had a very happy childhood. That doesn’t mean I had a lot of excess toys, money, and all that stuff. We really didn’t. I’m the youngest of six people, but I had two parents that were very, very encouraging in everything I ever did.
JW: I just want to say it this way, they never allowed me to say, look at the situation we’re in financially and let that determine my outward feelings to everyone and everybody that’s in my midst. So they really were encouraging to me, and they always taught me this one rule: you treat people as you wish to be treated. So I have always taken that to heart and I have simply expanded that through my adulthood.
JW: I will tell you there are days, Lori, that I don’t feel totally 100% happy, but those days are few and far between. There are some times in my personal life we’ll get to in a moment, that I had some very tough days, and to be honest with you, those were tough days I wasn’t probably feeling my most optimistic, but I can tell you that the good has outweighed the bad a hundredfold.
LF: Well, and I think that’s important. We talk a lot about perspective on this podcast, and I think it’s really important to remember that your perspective can change what you think about when you’re young versus when you become a little more, what’s the Monday morning word, seasoned. I don’t really like to say older adults. I like to say seasoned. I am 40 now, and so I think perspective does tend to change as we get older.
LF: Let’s move on to my next idea, my next hot topic of a question. I know that you like to journal, and I know that you probably have thousands of pages that you’ve written. At some point do you ever go back to those journals to find some of that perspective that you might have forgotten about or just need to revisit or review? Is there a certain timeframe?
JW: Oh, you probably already know the answer to this as well. Most of you listening, if you’ve been listening to 101 episodes, Lori and I, and some other team members have put on for you, you know the answer to this. But I’m going to expand a little bit on that, Lori, if I may.
JW: I don’t just simply write down in a journal and put the book away forever to collect dust until my kids at my passing go in and read these things that I wrote down and hopefully they go, “Oh, look how wise dad is.” I actually use journaling as a means and a tool to help me retain my positivity in life and my good attitude about life.
JW: So don’t laugh, I write in my journal literally every day. If it goes more than a day, I’m out of town and I left it at home, which happened once and I was just devastated. I always pack it now in my bag right along with everything else I need, toothbrush, journal. Got it right there.
JW: But what I do is I write down not just what happened for the day, it gives me my brainstorming time. So within those pages, the four corners of that page, it’s not that intimidating to me to even draw things out. Hey, how would this look if I did this, or what if we did that?
JW: I look at my journals after a week. I review them for the whole week. Now, don’t laugh, I’m a little bit anal retentive on this. But I create an index at the back of each journal with key words and what page numbers you can find those topics.
JW: I get this from Jim Rohn. I’ve mentioned him many times on our podcast, and I will tell you that man has been so inspirational, so influential on my life, that if you don’t write it down it is merely lost to history.
JW: So I’ve got, oh gosh, probably 20 or 30 journals over my life now that are stuck in my library. And they’re some of the best books, I feel, in my library, Lori.
LF: I love that you set that up, because the next segue into that, when you mentioned a mentor, obviously I know I have to be very high on that list. I know I’m probably a very influential person in your life, Jimmy. Let’s just be honest.
JW: You are more influential than you know, I’ll tell you. You’re going to laugh, many people though, on a serious note, think that to be an influencer or to be a mentor requires someone that is older than you. You picture that sage grandfather type person or grandmother, and you want to spend time with them with just a journal in hand with fresh ink pen going, “I got to write all this great stuff down that I’m capturing today from this knowledge.”
JW: But that’s not really what mentoring is about. Mentoring is about those that have different experiences that you wish to gain knowledge from. Make sense?
LF: Yes. Yes. I love that, and I think it’s so true. You can be mentored from anybody from anywhere at any different point in your life. I think that’s great. You mentioned Mr. Rohn, but can you give us a little bit of insight as to maybe your favorite mentor?
JW: Oh, I’d say yes. I’ll tell you my favorite mentor probably of all times is a gentleman named Randy Thurman. Now when he hears this, he’s like a brother to me but he’s older. He’s more seasoned in his career in the area of which we both now work. But he has a way about him. But he will tell you, his story’s not all glamor. It’s not all glamorous at all. But he has been ultra successful. He understands the ability to meet people’s needs and exceed their wants. He just knows how to do it with teamwork and class. So he’s always been the kind of person to me that’s taken me under his wing when I first needed it and set me on the right path of how to be the best wealth advisor I could be and how to really help our clients reach their goals, dreams, and objectives. He is still today one of the most influential people in my life. I hope he listens to this podcast, because I try to tell him all the time. I’ll send him… I’m a card writer. All right Lori, I know what you people are thinking, this guy goes through ink pens. But that’s why we have Amazon and you can buy them by the box.
LF: Yes, thankful for Amazon, for sure.
JW: Now I will reveal one secret though, Lori, you’re one of my influencers. I wanted you to know I am a big fan of German-engineered writing instruments.
LF: Oh.
JW: You know what I’m referring to? These are the Montblanc Pens. These are the crème de la crème of writing instruments. I’ve got, oh, about 34 or 35 of them now. I have some that I use day to day. The others are collector series and things that I do use, but not very frequently. I tell you, there is nothing that does my heart better than a clean white page in that journal and a nice Montblanc writing instrument in that right hand, and just start flowing with the words. The one thing about having these mentors is recording their thoughts that they give you, their sayings that they’ve said, and I can go back and look, and I can point back to Randy Thurman and say, “Do you remember eight years ago when you told me this?” He’ll go, “No, no I don’t.” But what I do in my journal is unique. For those of you listening, if you really want something that’s going to help you help yourself, the journaling method to me does that. It’s a self, it’s an introspection, if you will, a self renewal. I actually write the date that I’m writing the entry, the time, the location of where I’ve written it. So you’ll probably notice in some of my writings a different tone perhaps, or different information if I’m on an airplane versus if I’m just sitting in my favorite, comfortable chair in my home recording my thoughts. That’s something that might help people to go back and look at the date, the time, where were you, what was going on? To me that’s very, very helpful mentally to keep that positivity rolling.
LF: Ladies and gentlemen, I can promise you that is not an act. Jimmy is the most positive person, even if he’s having a bad day, even if he is busy, he’s going to stop and take that time to acknowledge and to reach out or just text or a quick card or a postcard. It’s legitimate, and it’s real. I think it’s rare to find people like that in the world. I personally am so grateful and excited to be able to flip the script today and put Jimmy in the hot seat because I consider him one of my mentors, and it’s great to hear how he perceives mentorship. I think that probably is one of the keys to this podcast, is to inspire people and remind people that mentoring is so simple and so easy and it’s something that we should all be doing and something that we can all do and take with us the rest of our days.
JW: Yeah. You want to blow your kid’s mind someday, when Noah’s 17, 18, 19, whenever he goes off to college, I want you to blow his mind. What I do is I send my daughters handwritten cards from me. Now you got to understand, these are girls that are 25 to be, soon to be 25, going to be 20 here in the next few days for the younger daughter, and they go to their mailbox, Lori, there’s this thing called a mail box.
LF: Yeah.
JW: I have to tell them, “Did you check your mail?” “Dad, I never get anything but junk in there.” I go, “Hey, you just need to check your mail.” I’m trying to teach them that there are still some of us old school writers that wish to give them something they could put on that refrigerator or hang on that bed at your dormitory or whatever. So I send the cards to my children from time to time, not doing anything more than letting them know I’m proud of you. I think you’re doing a great job, the encouragement. The world right now, Lori, after COVID-19, it’s still continuing, but I call it afterwards. If you look at all the disruption, especially those kids that are just starting their career, like our older daughter. She’s 2000 miles away, alone, and then if you look at our younger daughter, she’s at a university where they’ve had to go online classes and all of this stuff that’s not the true experience they signed up for. Well, a card might just do it. Matter of fact, our older daughter called me and she said, “You even sent a card to Gidget.” Now Lori, I did, but Gidget is the family kitty that stays with Alex. It’s her kitty, and she got a card as well as Alex. Now that to me is just good parenting.
LF: That is good parenting, and that’s a good, honest answer. So now ladies and gentlemen, if you need someone to send your cat or dog a postcard or a letter, you have found your person. Sign up.
JW: It might be a little “ruff”. But anyway… Okay, that’s bad. Okay, that’s bad. Don’t laugh at that.
LF: One of the other questions, burning questions that people want to know, what actually led you to your line of work?
JW: I’m going to turn this story into something exciting for our listeners. I am a reformed certified public account. I love this. Don’t laugh, I had in undergrad school such good grades on the ACT, I’m not bragging, science was my highest score and I love medicine. I loved helping people through medicine. In other words, not necessarily just being a doctor, but the feeling that people trusted you as an advisor over something that’s most important to them that money can’t buy. What is that? Their health. So I went to undergrad school thinking, “Okay, I’ll either be a doctor or I’ll be a CPA.” Now don’t laugh, that is quite divergent. I get it. Let me explain the reason, I love the science and so forth. I loved all of the lab work. I loved all of the helping other people. But every doctor back in this day, now don’t laugh, Lori, but this was back in the day in the early ’80s. You had these things that just came out called beepers. They didn’t have phones. They had beepers.
LF: I remember beepers.
JW: Yeah. So these pagers and beepers were stuck to all the doctor’s pockets. I got to go to what we’d call shadow today. Back in my day, they just basically called it a day at the work of whoever. So I, that day, saw just the really busy time. It was such a frenetic pace. The doctor didn’t have time to think, and I thought to myself, “Wow, he’s pretty busy. I see all that.” I wanted to do something where I could really help people. So don’t laugh, a lot of our clients are doctors or in the medical field, because we understand what that takes and what they need to be successful in their career as far as financial means goes and emotional means. So I became a CPA, and we started out the whole process of making good grades through that. Had a great time. I was actively involved in student leadership while I was an undergrad. I was the Accounting Club president for two years, Phi Beta Lambda, all those other things with grades and so forth, and had just the best time. Matter of fact, Lori, I will tell you, and I’m honestly saying this to everyone listening in the 50 plus countries now who are listening, I will tell you if I could earn what I’m earning today and still be in college, I’d moved back into the dorm. I’m telling you, I loved … Well, maybe not the dorm. Okay?
LF: I was going to say-
JW: A suite.
LF: I don’t know, dorms.
JW: I need a suite now. But anyway, I just enjoyed so much helping people. So what I did is I was seeing that instead of helping people with their past with the CPA work we would do on tax prep and tax planning and so forth, I wanted to help them form their futures. Everyone says you live in the present and you see the future. I wanted them not to just see it, I wanted them to realize it. So I became a certified financial planner. My master’s degree is in law and taxation, and the point I’m bringing to the equation is we address those tax issues on a prospective basis, so we look for that future. What can we do to help limit the outcomes to more positive ones for our clients? To make the story even shorter, I got to tell you, I love it. I never work a day in my life. I tell people that, and they look at me and they go, “Are you crazy? I’ve seen you down there for 12 hours.” I got to tell you, I enjoy thoroughly meeting with clients and resolving their issues and helping solve these issues for them. It’s just crazy, but some of us find the real passion in life and go with it. So that leads me as to how this got started.
LF: How did you know that was going to be my next question?
JW: Oh, I didn’t know that, but I just knew it was coming and you’re a pretty good interviewer.
LF: Well, no. That was going to be my segue is that in doing what you love every single day is so important and life is too short to sit idly by and think about what you want to be doing versus what you are doing. If you’re not doing something that makes you happy or you don’t have an outlet that gives you that drive and that desire to be happy, then life goes by even faster. So I would love to know how the idea for this podcast came about. Because honestly, I have people tell me, “I love to listen to the podcast. I subscribe and I listen to it faithfully, and I enjoy it every week. I’m so glad that there’s something out there that’s something positive and it’s something I can take with me.” So how did the idea come into your head?
JW: I have too much time on my hands. I was journaling one day, seriously, had my journal out and I was sitting there thinking, “What one way or method could we help spread the most positivity in the quickest manner?” I thought about my local community. Now we’re a very small community, a little less than 20,000 in our city, 45,000 in our county. Keep in mind we’re just a little over three million in the whole state we live. I thought, “Well, I want to do something bigger than that.” Now Lori, that’s always my attitude. If people want to understand how do you get successful in anything, I have this attitude that everyone wants to be my friend and do business with me. That’s just my attitude. So it hurts my feelings when somebody says, “I don’t know that it’s a good fit.”
LF: You heard it from the horse’s mouth.
JW: Yeah.
LF: That’s the truth. That is a true statement. Jimmy just said he wants to be friends with every person, everybody.
JW: If you look at the number of people on Facebook and LinkedIn with me, that’s probably about true. But anyway, I just don’t turn anyone down. I just think the world is meant to be a place of unity for all of us. I think we all have something to contribute to the peace that the world needs, and my job is just to bring a little bit of that to everyone I meet. I feel either through a handshake back before COVID, now a little pat on the back or a fist bump. But a kind word melts away all of the harshness that they may have experienced before they saw you and met with you is my theory. So I just basically said to myself, “What could I do? What beans could I do?” I was always a fond believer in podcasts. I loved them because they had such an ability to be transportable. It was timely. It was usually a quick listen 30 minutes or less. So I thought, “Wow, this is something that might be interesting.” So I did what every good entrepreneur does. I had a great idea, but none of the technological know-how. So what do you think I did Lori?
LF: You found the right people.
JW: Yeah. I’m a big “who, not how” person. So those of you listening, I have three things I do in our office. You can call any of our team and ask a question, “Does Jimmy do X?” And they’ll say, “No, he does these three things. This is literally it.” But I’ll tell you I’m the best in the world at those three things, and that’s how I feel. That’s my passion, those three things that I do, and they bring great value to our clients. So that’s why I tell people I went out, I sought an engineer, a local friend of mine that’s very technical. I’m not going to say he’s a geek because he’s a great guy, but I’m telling you, this guy knows how to do about anything electronic. He’s just very, very smart. Then I also said, “Well that’s great, but I need a website for how this is going to work so our team can put things on there, such as our blogs, how we’re feeling about things, what’s going on in the world, what we’re thinking about that’s from a positive perspective.” So don’t laugh, Randy Thurman, my great mentor he said, “Hey, I’ve got a gentleman that I know would help you with that,” It happened to be his nephew. He’s down in Texas. So what I’m telling people, you don’t have to have all of these great resources under your thumb in your locale. I’ve got people in Texas. We’ve talked to people all over the country as our guests. We’ve had some of the most wonderful people on this podcast spreading that positivity and helping us understand how their path turned into something greater for them because they followed their passion. So to be honest with you, Lori, it just started with that. I will tell you, did I start the first two or three shows off the way I want? No, I had to find my voice. Right. So at the end of the day, this is where we’re at, 102 episodes now. Wow.
LF: I can’t imagine that you had to find your voice.
JW: You’re going to laugh. My mentor, I asked him, I said, “Hey, be candid with me. Tell me what you think.” He said, “Where’s Jimmy on the episode?” I said, “Well, what do you mean? I’m all over it.” So the first couple episodes were just me and then I had a guest. And he said, “No.” He said, “That’s not the Jimmy I know.” So he said, “Hey, just talk and relax and chill,” and said, “Pour on these people all this great stuff you tell me in person and quit worrying about scripts and quit worrying about the microphone. Quit worrying about,” I’m never going to be perfect, Lori, except to my wife, and I’m sure that that’s true.
LF: Yes, it is. That’s absolutely true. Yeah.
JW: I got to tell you a funny story. I was on an airplane once and you know me, I cannot help but talk to these people. There was a young man and he was just fidgeting around in his seat and I’m sitting there and I’m looking at him and he keeps playing with his wedding band, and I noticed it’s on his right hand, his wedding band and he’s playing with it. He’s taking it off. He’s putting it back on and he’s taking it off. I just leaned over and I said, “Feeling a little nervous about the flight?” And he said, “Oh no, it’s not the flight.” And I said, “Oh, okay.” I said, “Well I don’t want to intrude,” but I said, “Everything’s going to be fine. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure everything will be fine when it’s all said and done.” He took his wedding band off like that. I said, “Can I ask a question?” He said, “Sure.” He was in his mid-twenties probably. This has been a few years ago. He said, “Yeah, what can I answer for you?” And I said, “I’ve noticed you have your wedding band on the wrong finger and on the wrong hand.” He said, “Yes, sir. I sure do.” He said, “I married the wrong woman and that’s part of my problem.”
LF: Oh no.
JW: True story.
LF: No.
JW: True story, and I wanted to shrink into my seat. I’m like, oh no.
LF: But it’s the one time that you probably thought, “Why did I ask that question?”
JW: Yeah. Oh man.
LF: Oh wow.
JW: True story. True story.
LF: Great story. I hope it worked out for him eventually. That’s rough.
JW: Oh I don’t know. But if he listens to Live a Life By Design, he will obviously find some answers for those kinds of terrible questions he had to deal with.
LF: Okay. Changing gears just a little bit to lighten the mood, I am going to ask you four questions and I want the very first response that comes to your mind. Okay?
JW: All right.
LF: Okay. This is totally unscripted. We have no idea what he’s going to say. First question cake or pie?
JW: Yellow cake chocolate icing.
LF: Yes, I’m totally a cake person. Okay. Yes. I knew that’s why we were friends. Second question beach or snow vacation?
JW: Beach all the day long. Preferably something in the Caribbean Dina and I took a celebration of our anniversary a couple of years ago before COVID at the Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands. Had the best of time. I’m telling you, St. John was just outstanding. St. Thomas was outstanding. So beach person for me.
LF: Yes, and hopefully soon we’re all going to get to start traveling again. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
JW: It is. But I do want to give one caveat for those of you listening. As we age, apparently the ability for your skin, which I was raised without a shirt, I lived in the country. I did all this outdoor work.
LF: Free tan.
JW: I’d never had any problems. Yeah. So as you get older I think you become a little less tolerant of that thing called the sun. So now I use SPF 80 or whatever. But I still love the waves.
LF: I completely can relate. The higher the SPF the better for pasty skin like myself. I can turn into a lobster in like 2.5 seconds flat.
JW: Well I don’t want to say anything, but if my wife’s not with me and I don’t get it rubbed in well where it just looks like white zinc all over my body, kids run screaming down the beach, like this mummy guy is after them. I’m just like, hey, I’m just trying to keep from getting burned here, okay?
LF: Okay. Question three, paper or plastic?
JW: Boy, I got to tell you, I’m more of a plastic person. I don’t want to say that too much because anytime we can take our own bag, our daughter in California takes her own bags, we have our own bags to take. We highly recommend people not fill up the waste areas with plastics and stuff. But I’m going to go with plastics for your answer because you didn’t give me a chance to say my own custom bags. So I will go with plastic.
LF: Oh, you have your own custom bag?
JW: It’s got a W on it.
LF: Oh, nice. Oh, cool.
JW: It doesn’t stand for Walmart either, Lori. It stands for Williams.
LF: Well I was going to say there are a lot of those W bags floating around. Okay, fourth and final question, and this is near and dear to my heart because everyone knows how I feel about this subject. There are no right or wrong answers. However, it’s such a burning question of mine, decaf or regular? And don’t mess this up for me, Jimmy.
JW: No, I’ll be honest with you, it’s got to be regular. Here’s the reason, it depends on what you want in it. You might even want an extra shot of espresso in there from time to time depending on what energy boost you need. Drinking decaf coffee, why don’t you just drink water with brown color in it? Come on.
LF: It’s just a cup of sadness. You just can’t do it. It has to be regular. I just thank you for saying that because I thought this might be the end of our friendship.
JW: I got to tell you, it’s the same thing when you go up to people that pull up into a nice, great restaurant and they go, “I’ll just have a salad.” It’s probably a steak house or seafood, and I’m going, “Hey, don’t embarrass me. These people know me here. Come on.”
LF: One of our local restaurants absolutely has the best salads. I frequent it often and I don’t have to order. I just walk in and they know what I’m there for, and it’s amazing.
JW: I hate to tell you this but when you’ve been around as long as me, I’ll be 56 here real quick, and I know what you’re saying, Lori, I know what you’re saying. I look older, but listen, it’s not the miles I’ve gone. It’s the roads I’ve taken. So don’t laugh. But anyway, you’re going to laugh though. These people today at the restaurant … Dina, my wife, picked me up at the office and we went for a nice lunch just the two of us in one of my favorite restaurants. I’m going to give a shout out to the ladies at Lucy’s Two today.
LF: Yes.
JW: They do a great job. Food is very fresh, service excellent. But anyway, I walk in and they’re already writing stuff down. I go, “How do you know that’s what I want?” And they go, “This is what you always get.” And I said, “Well okay. Yeah, I’ll have that.”
LF: Well it’s so true, and I think there’s something to be said for that. We are creatures of habit and we do find comfort in things and routines and traditions and things that we like, and it’s sometimes really hard to break out of that shell and to try something new. I totally relate to that. I’m very much a creature of habit.
JW: Some people call it OCD. I don’t call that what this is. What I call this is just happily consistent. That’s all this is.
LF: Happily consistent, ladies and gentlemen, another wonderful statement by the Jimmy we all have come to know and love.
JW: So let me ask you a couple of questions.
LF: Uh oh.
JW: Why did you ever agree to my wonderful request to have you cohost these episodes and work with me on this project? What did you expect to find out of this?
LF: Honestly, when I accepted the challenge I really wasn’t sure what I was accepting. I’m the type of person that I rarely say no. I feel like it’s, not necessarily a flaw of mine, but I’m working on it, I’m getting better. But I am just normally that person that says, “Yeah, sure. Whatever. Yeah, let’s try it. Let’s do it. Okay.” But honestly, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I had never participated in a podcast. I had listened to podcasts before, and when you invited me to come on, I immediately, of course, was thinking, “I need to study up here. I need to be professional. We’re going to talk about some serious topics and issues, and I need to have opinions.” That’s not really what it was. It was fun and it was relaxed, and it was talking about topics that are relatable and important to me. I think that what I love about this podcast is that every time we talk, it’s something relatable. It’s something common. It’s something that I can take away from and laugh and know that there are other like-minded people that need to hear those same affirmations that life has a purpose. We’re all here for a reason. We’re better together, and we’re better when we are in that positive mindset. That’s why I did it.
JW: Man, see folks, that’s what I do. I surround myself with much more talented, brilliant people than I am. Let me give you another couple of ideas though, Lori. The reason that you asked me these questions was to find out the real Jimmy. So let me tell you, I do have a couple of pet peeves I want to share with you.
LF: Oh good. Yeah.
JW: The first one is don’t ever bring the rain on someone else’s parade day. So what happens a lot of times is we run around like Zig Ziglar said, just upset at the world because someone did something to us. Now let’s assume you’re that person I come up to and already somebody has done something to me. So I just, basically, you’re having a great day and I just start pouring the rain on. You know what I’m talking about, that negative-
LF: Yes.
JW: Slandering people, gossiping, talking about somebody else and how so-and-so did you wrong and this and that was happening. I got to be honest with you, nobody wins in that type of a scenario. In particular, that person, me now in that scenario, bringing you the bad news is really the loser in my opinion. It only takes a few seconds for us to take a deep breath, defuse the situation, because 99% of the time folks, it is not about you. It’s truly not. There’s someone else that’s upset because someone said something to them and they’re just rolling it downhill. I tell you, as a leader, this is my pet peeve. Do not bring the rain clouds to someone else’s parade day. The second thing I have, is never tell me no when I’m brainstorming if you have no better ideas.
LF: Oh, I like that one.
JW: Yeah. You ought to be in of our team meetings. They’ll say, “Well Jimmy, now that’s not your best idea.” And I’ll go, “Okay, well what is? Give me another one. What’s your idea?” What I do that for is to help people get out of their shell. Too often we sit there thinking, “Well okay, this guy is the leader of the group so he’s got all the answers.” Wrong. I got to be honest with you, the best CEO in the world, Steve Jobs, did not have all the answers. But what Steve Jobs did have was the ability to extract great ideas and information from a very talented team. That’s why I read his memoir. I loved the stuff that he did from the business team perspective. Now I didn’t buy into all of his personal life. I’ll just be truthful with you. He was a quite tough to work with, I think in the earlier years at Apple. But at the end of the day, he had some great ideas and philosophies that I became a student of. So I didn’t really mimic him, Lori, but I did take what he did and I put it in my own context and utilized it in my situations.
LF: Wow. Pretty insightful. Actually, I love that idea. I think if more people would incorporate that into their business meetings and in their plan and with their team, they might actually see a little bit more productivity giving those people that power to say, “Well, actually I think this would be a better idea because…”
JW: Yeah, absolutely. And I want everyone to quit using the word “but”, the conjunction but, B-U-T. People will say, “Well this has been a great day, but,” well, I can tell you after they use that conjunction word, it’s never a more positive response. It’s just not.
LF: That’s true. That’s so true.
JW: So I want everyone to quit using the term, but, and supplement the word and substitute, “and”. So here’s why it would work. It’s been a great day and I know it’s going to get better before the day is over. You see the difference how that just makes the mind feel better? It’s and, it’s an inclusive. It’s not divergent, it’s bringing things together. The point I’m making with this is we have the ability to literally transform the world if you will join us with this podcast. Share this podcast with your family, with your friends. Ask them all to share it if only they want a positive, life-transforming message every week. That’s our goal. Lori and I sincerely mean that. We gain no money from this. We’re not selling you anything. We’re literally giving away hope by the barrel full.
LF: And how can you not end on a Monday morning on a more positive note, on a way to send it out? Jimmy, thank you for letting us pick your brain this morning. Thank you for sitting in the hot seat, and thank you for letting me try out my hostess with the mostest. I think I still have a little mentoring to do. I could probably use a few more pointers, but everybody-
JW: I think you did great, lady. I’m sorry to interrupt. I think you did great. I will tell you though, I always liked the phrase, and if I may say so: “a few minutes with Lori.” I just love that.
LF: Well maybe in the future. We’ll take baby steps. We’ll work ourselves to that point. I really do like that. I think that could go on a t-shirt.
JW: I love it.
LF: I don’t know how to close this, Jimmy. You always close.
JW: Why don’t you give our audience a challenge this week? One thing about positivity, it’s a muscle. Did you know that Lori?
LF: I did not.
JW: We’re going to close out now, but I want to give Lori a little, I won’t call it biological because it has to do with the mind, so let’s talk about this being something neurological. Did you know that if you’re going to work a muscle, it gets bigger and it gets tougher and bolder. Your body is one thing, but your mind is another. So if you work that positivity mindset every day, smile more, greet people with that smile, I promise you they will return in favor what your facial expressions are. So go out this week, do what Lori asked you to do, smile more, be really intentional to find the positive, the good, the powerful message and share it with those you meet. Who knows, the one that might get the most benefit just might be you.
