213. Exploring Growth, Resilience, and Personal Strength with Kimi Donahue

Host: Just to circle back on everything we talked about, it all comes down to my favorite word: respect. Regardless of somebody's gender, spirituality, whatever, everything we're talking about, if you respect them and where they're coming from, you're going to give them the opportunity. In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

[Intro music fades]

Host: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Kimmy Donahue, agency success maestro at Openly, and just an incredibly dynamic individual who I enjoy talking with so much. Our brains work very similar, and she is able to bring a unique and diverse perspective from her career, her experiences, what she's trying to achieve. She also went to a couple of really cool conferences recently around professional development, and she shares those experiences—not just what she actually learned at them, but what she learned, what questions were generated out of the experiences themselves. It's things that we can apply to leadership, to our own growth, to how we handle our teams, how we recruit. Incredibly interesting, awesome conversation. This is the second time Kimmy's been on the show. I hope there'll be many more as I just love talking to her because the way that our conversations tend to roll, we just get so much out of them. I hope you enjoy them as well. I hope you'll share the show. If you find value in it, share the show. It gets more people to learn about what Kimmy is doing, what her vantage point is. She's got a lot of interesting things going and I'd love for more people to connect with her as well. We'll have links to her LinkedIn, et cetera, in the show notes. So if you want to connect with her directly, go to the show notes on whatever platform you're listening, whether it's Spotify or Apple or YouTube, and make sure you subscribe, share the show, connect with Kimmy, do all that good stuff.

[Transition]

Host: Guys, you may have heard if you've been listening to the show that about a month ago, SIA decided to go a different direction and shut down Rogue Risk. Rogue Risk no longer exists. So what I have been working on the last month is what's going to be next in my career. Here's the first thing that I'm going to be launching as my career moves more into consulting, speaking, coaching. I do not want what we learned at Rogue Risk to die. We figured something out at Rogue Risk. We absolutely did. When I sold Rogue Risk to SIA back in April of 2022, we were doing $164,000 in revenue. 17 months later, when Rogue Risk was shut down, we were doing $694,000 in revenue. That's a three and a half X growth in small commercial during the hardest market our industry has seen in 20 years. We figured something out. The one call closed system works. It works every time. Basically what we saw was reps who would come in, they would be closing inbound business at about a 40% clip. After learning and growing into the one call closed system and really adopting it, they were seeing north of 80% closed ratios, with my own personal top being 89.2%, which I achieved over a year and a half of selling. Most of our reps settled right around 85%. Imagine if your reps were closing 85% of all the qualified leads that came into your business. Absolutely incredible. I do not want that knowledge to die with Rogue Risk. So if you want that information, I'm going to be launching a course and a masterclass coming in January. If you want to get on the wait list, go to masterclass.insure. That's masterclass.insure. Get on the waiting list. You'll be notified of when the course launches. I'm going to use this platform as a way to share everything that I've learned from the amazing agencies that I've worked with over the last 18 years of my career, as well as all my personal experience. I want this to be my brain dump, my give back to this industry. If you want the information that's in my head that I've learned—the battle-tested practices, ideas, concepts, thoughts, mindsets, frameworks, etc. that I use to grow an insurance agency, to grow an insurance business—this is where I'm going to be sharing it. That's masterclass.insure. Go to masterclass.insure and sign up today. Guys, I love you for listening to this podcast. Let's get on to Kimmy Donahue.

[Interview begins]

Host: So what's going on?

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Oh my goodness. Everything. Life has been really good. I went and got my certification to be a master practitioner of NLP and a bunch of other cool stuff and really just been diving into personal development 10X. So I feel really good about that. Excited to be on this.

Host: I am really proud of you. I've seen your numbers just start climbing. Your Instagram has grown, your LinkedIn has grown, you're putting out content like a madman.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Well, being unemployed helps with that. So that helps. But I appreciate it.

Host: When I feel like my life is in chaos—when the company that was your baby gets shut down completely unbeknownst to you, and you're shocked by that, one day you have your thing and the next day you don't, quite literally—it generates chaotic feelings. A lot of people ask me why I put all this content out. I get that from local people. People who know me professionally and have seen the way that I am outside of this area, the Albany area, maybe get it a little more, but inside of Albany, I don't have a big network in the Albany area. Most people know me as a kid's coach. So when they see me putting out personal development stuff, one of the things that I've found over the last six months or so, maybe even longer, is that I want to someday write a book about this or do something bigger with more longevity around the idea that I think we misunderstand why we do these things. There's a general misunderstanding or a topic that is not addressed enough when it comes to personal development. I'm super interested in your take on this too. I see it all as preparation. I think too often we wait for something bad to happen. We have a health scare. Our wife leaves us or our husband or our boyfriend, or someone in our family, some major awful thing happens. And then all of a sudden, we think, "I got to get it together. I got to do this and do that." Unfortunately, at that point, it's not too late so much as you can't get better, but it's too late to stem off the emotional tidal wave that you are going to feel. What I have found by consistently focusing on personal development, by focusing on physical health, mental health, habits, discipline, all these things, is that when I found out that they were shutting Rogue down, I wasn't even really upset. I was disappointed. I thought it was a shame because when you look at our numbers, we probably rank top 5% in the country in terms of growth rate. We grew our agency from $170,000 in revenue in April 2022 to $695,000 in revenue in September 2023. That's three and a half X growth in 17 months. I would put that up against any other agency in the country, entirely organic and done off a relatively small marketing budget. So looking at that side, it's a shame because I feel like we were close. Now I understand why they did it and I'm not knocking them. I have very positive feelings towards SIA. There's no hard feelings towards them. They did what they had to do for what they were going through. It's fine. But what I didn't do was fall apart. That to me is why we do this work and why we do it before there's a problem. I feel like we don't talk about that enough. What is your take on all that?

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): A thousand percent. In the last couple of months, what I am learning is specifically in Western culture, they teach us what you want to grow up to have, what you want to grow up to do. There's this famous saying about we are human beings, not human havings or human doings. It's more of a question of who do you want to be. A lot of other cultures teach you from a young age your purpose. You are here to go find your purpose. I would say probably you and I were taught, "What do you want to do when you grow up? What kind of things do you want to have?" So here we are focused on material things and some skills, but not necessarily interpersonal skills and definitely no self-reflection. I definitely didn't learn or even understand what that was up until very recently. To circle back to what you're talking about, it's a lot of knowing who you are and your boundaries and your values and being able to stay true to those. That way, if you're in a place that is not aligning with that, you can pivot and get out. If something's not going the way you want it to, you can still stay within your limit, so to speak. Props to you for not having a reaction that maybe some others would. I follow a lot of your stuff on Instagram and LinkedIn and the stuff that you post. There's a lot of stoicism, which I like to subscribe to as well. I think it's a matter of how do you react to something rather than something that you can't control.

Host: I do love stoicism. I found personally that a mix of stoicism, Christianity—but like from the Bible Christianity, not derived Christianity, which we can talk about the difference of—and then a little bit of Emerson, transcendentalism. It's tough to put Christianity and transcendentalism together, but there are some really interesting takes. If you mash those three together, in my opinion, I get this really interesting worldview. This is the problem that I have. If you go pure Bible—and I have friends who are devout, and I think it's amazing. I think whatever framework works for you is exactly what you have. I'm a believer and I talk to God and I read the Bible almost every day. It's right next to my bed. But I struggle with the purist "those words are the words of God" piece because I have a hard time with the fact that it was written over 300 years by possibly thousands of different people. The selections were handpicked, and I want to know what did they throw out and why did they throw it out? There are all kinds of obscure records around things that were written that just weren't put in. They don't know what they were, but they know there were things that were written that didn't make it in the book. It's been translated through different languages over and over again. If it's a literal translation versus a metaphor of some sort, it definitely can be misconstrued. Take the word "meek." I was just listening to Jordan Peterson on Chris Williamson's podcast the other day, and I devour Jordan Peterson. He was talking about this idea of the word "meek." "Meek shall inherit the earth" is a very well-known passage from the Bible. He is of the opinion, and I believe him because I've done the research after I heard this, that we completely misunderstand this. The scripture is longer, but this particular phrase, this idea of "meek" is completely mistranslated and misunderstood. Today, meek means mild, inward. We think of someone who can't defend themselves. That is 100% not what the original word "meek" actually meant originally translated from the Greek word. What "meek" actually meant was someone who was a warrior but sheathed their sword. His whole thing of "be a monster, but know how to control it" is actually his derivation from this piece of scripture. "The meek shall inherit the earth." What it meant to the Greeks when they wrote it—the word "meek" translated from Greek in that time period, 2000 years ago—meant someone who was strong and robust and a warrior and can defend themselves, but knew when to keep their sword sheathed. If you reread that scripture with that meaning, you're like, "Whoa, this makes it completely different."

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Totally different.

Host: Right. So I feel like if the Bible is our—and people who love the Bible are going to hate this, and my mom and I debate this all the time—I feel like you have to have your own relationship with God and you can't take the Bible as the only input as to how to live your life, I guess is what I'm trying to say. That's a very long-winded way—especially coming back from the gym, you can tell my ADHD is off the charts. I love saying that. Stoicism, transcendentalism, essentialism, all mixed in with a core of Christianity tends to be a pretty decent framework for living your life.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): A thousand percent. I would say that. The event that I went to last month was really cool. Such a diverse group of people. Some of the topics we talk about are spirituality, and they do a really good job of leaving it open for everybody's different type. As you know, I love music. One of my favorite musicians that I really look up to is Ronnie James Dio. A lot of people caught flack. A lot of people said, "Oh my gosh, it's devil music. He worships Satan." When you listen to his interviews, it's quite the opposite. I think he's a very spiritual guy, but leaves room for what else could be out there. There's a line in one of his songs that says, "We pray to someone, but when it's said and done, we're really all the same. They're really all the same with just a different name." It all kind of comes back down to that core. A lot of different beliefs still point the same similar way. They still have those values that everybody's still going after.

Host: The event that you went to—you said you just got NLP certified. I don't know what that is.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yes. Paraphrased, NLP is the programming in your brain. Your unconscious or your subconscious, however you want to call it. Basically, programming in your brain to develop lasting changes or habits. Prior to learning NLP, which stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming, I really followed Lanny Basham's mental management. He's got a book called *With Winning in Mind*, which is one of those books that really changed my life. Basically, he teaches how your unconscious mind and your subconscious really drive everything that you do and then how to manage that come time to perform under stress, how you view yourself doing things. Learning NLP just validated all the stuff that I already kind of followed and really helped me. I went in with an open mind and it was so much fuller, I'll say that. It's really cool. They have all these different techniques to change habits in different ways. Whether it's a strategy that you have towards feeling motivation or towards how you do things and reprogramming the strategies that you take to get there. If it's something like you're a procrastinator, you can use anchoring techniques. If you follow Tony Robbins at all, he uses a lot of these techniques.

Host: [Affirming] No, I was reinforcing your point. Yes, he uses anchoring quite a bit.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Tony Robbins, yes, huge. So we learned how to do that. A lot of it's about visualization, how you talk to yourself, how you talk to others. The whole reason I went to it—because this is a question I get a lot: "Kimmy, why'd you go to that?" About a year and a half ago, I was introduced to NLP and it was sold to me in a way of, "Hey, you can become a better communicator." I'm like, "Heck yeah, let's go." Everyone would benefit from being a better communicator. I know you'd agree because that's literally what you've been talking about in a lot of your reels that you've been posting about speaking engagements and how to connect with people. That's what I went in there wanting to learn. Come to find out, it is so much more about how you can build your confidence, how you can change habits. A lot of it is taking action, which is one of my favorite things to do and tell people to do. And then of course, just having a positive focus on it. You can't let your eye off the ball. You got to consistently take action towards said goal or said habit.

Host: What are your feelings on the concept of manifesting?

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): This is a good one. It's such a broad word, and I think a lot of people have different definitions of what that looks like. For me, I was introduced to what we'll call positive affirmations when I got into the shooting sports. Growing up, I was not a good athlete. I'm probably one of the most uncoordinated, coordinated people you'll meet. I didn't necessarily get that kind of coaching that you get from standard sports where they teach you how to visualize something and go after something. I had to learn this in my adult years. When I got into the shooting sports, I was introduced to positive affirmations. Let's say you've got the physical skill, but most everything in sports, in performance, is all up here. Probably 90% of it is actually your mental state. What I found was I was consistently getting—the way they rank you in shooting is percentage. Let's say first place is 100%. I was consistently in the 60% range, which just—I don't like to be mid-pack. It drove me up the wall. Through some self-development and reading that book *With Winning in Mind*, I found it was because I didn't believe that I could win. For whatever reason, years of baggage from childhood, whatever, maybe the environment that I was in at the time, for whatever reason in my brain, I didn't believe that I was capable of getting first place. So I read that book probably three times, listened to the audiobook as well. What Lanny teaches is visualization and positive affirmations. He teaches there's three parts of your brain: conscious, unconscious, and your self-image. Conscious would be like—do you drive stick shift?

Host: I can, yes.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Okay. Do you remember when you were first learning how to drive manual transmission? You were like, "Okay, I got to push in the clutch. I got to shift." It was a very conscious effort. Eventually, throughout however long it took you, it becomes an unconscious thing. You turn the car on and you're at your destination. Your self-image is how you view yourself doing that. I think that's one of the things that they don't teach us when we're young, and coaches don't teach this: how you view yourself. That's what's going to change your habits. That's what's going to make you you. Who is Kimmy? Who is Ryan? Your self-image. What he teaches is visualization and positive affirmations to basically change that. For whatever reason, in my little monkey brain back here, I was thinking I'm not allowed to win, or maybe I'm just not capable of it. So I literally wrote down, "I am a winner. I always win. I always shoot perfect shots." It's all stated in present state, and it's all positive. You can't say, "Oh, I never miss. Oh, I don't do this." Because what happens is your brain only focuses on the "don't" piece. For example, you have kids. Do you remember when they're little and you tell them not to spill something, what do they do?

Host: Yeah, it's going all over the table.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah, they spill it all over the place. Instead, you can reframe and say, "Hey, please be careful," or "Please hold on with two hands," whatever it might be. It's programming that positive aspect of it. Both Lanny's book, NLP, a lot of these self-development things that you're involved in, I'm learning, it's all programmed at a young age negatively. Whether it's society, the environment, being told no, being told to focus on one thing. That's what we grow up around. We're not taught to do self-development. I think we're talking about that. When we first started, we were talking about how we're not taught to focus on self-development when we're young. I would say I had a really great English teacher in high school that kind of planted that seed for a lot of people. But I think that's really rare.

Host: Think about for all the parents out there, think about your ratio of "do more of that" to "don't do that" that you give to your kids. Every day your kids walk through the house, live in their life. How many "do more of that" do you give them? Like, "Hey, that's great. Awesome. Do more of that." Instead, it's "Don't do that. Don't sit there. Be quiet. Don't listen to that. Don't watch that." All "don't, don't, don't, don't, don't." Then it's like, "Why don't my kids want to be the best at this? Why are my kids getting C's in class?" It's because everything they do they get a "don't." It is very limiting. For me, it's funny. I thought manifesting was the biggest load of bullshit I had ever heard in my entire life. I read *The Secret*. I blew through it. I thought it was stupid. I was like, "This is all just foo-foo-y, hippie shit that they sell to people who are willing to spend their money on nonsense." That was my original thought. Then about three years ago, I was listening to Andy Fursella, who does the *Real AF* podcast. Love him or hate him, he has a lot of value to add to the world. He had an episode where he talked about how manifesting is a big part of his life. It shocked me. I literally had to rewind five minutes in the show and listen to it again because I was like, "This big, tough bearded, strong guy is manifesting? Really?" So I started listening. I started searching other podcasts that I listen to that I respect and trust for episodes on manifesting. It was crazy. What ultimately sold me was a very trivial example, but it rings true to me. When's the last time you bought a car? Say you buy a car, all of a sudden you see your car everywhere. You never see that car. You've never seen that car before. You've seen two of them ever in your life. Then you buy it and there's two every time you drive the car. It's because what you have done—and this is my understanding of manifesting at its take—take the universe out, which I don't necessarily not believe in anymore, but take the universe stuff out, take any of the psychoactive aspects out of the equation. Simply what you're doing is telling your brain to look for that thing. At its core, at its simplest, at its most basic, all manifesting is saying you want to sell more by telling yourself that you can sell more, that you will sell more, that you are selling more. By telling yourself that, by saying "I will sell this," what you're doing is just telling your brain, "Look for those opportunities." Now all of a sudden you look for these things to sell more. Maybe it goes for a partner. If you're looking for a partner, "I'm looking for someone who [insert the thing]." All of a sudden, what you've done is say, "Don't worry about these things. I'm not so interested in these. But these particular things I want you to focus on, brain." One of the most important books that everyone can read is *The Untethered Soul*. If you haven't read *The Untethered Soul*, make it the next book. Literally stop whatever book you're reading now and read *The Untethered Soul* by Michael Singer next. Have you read that book?

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): No, I'm putting it on my list now.

Host: It's fucking incredible. You'll fly through it. It's a fairly easy read. The concept is something that I have believed for a very long time: you are not your mind and you are not your body. You are your soul or your spirit, depending on what religion you are. What you are has a different name. The idea is we are not our mind. Your mind is just a computer program that operates the body. Neither one of those things are you. What manifesting is, is your soul telling the computer in your brain, "Hey, dummy, start looking for these things. I want this thing. Start looking for it." If you want to buy a new car, "Hey, I want a new Tahoe." All of a sudden you start seeing Tahoes. You start seeing sales for Tahoes. You start seeing used Tahoes. You start seeing accessories on Tahoes.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Because Facebook listens to you.

Host: Yes. Oh yeah. All of a sudden, both of our phones will be filled with Tahoes. Absolutely. That concept to me—all of a sudden I was like, "Well, that makes complete sense." Okay, manifesting isn't the universe aligning with my psychoactive whatever bullshit, which may not be true, I'm not gonna comment on that. But this simple idea of the computer that runs your mind—you're just giving it the programming. That's all you're doing. You're just executing a function inside your mental computer. That to me makes sense. I can say that early results are very positive.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Literally everything that you just said is NLP in a nutshell. It's all about that programming. You could call it the soul or the self-image or your identity, your unconscious mind. It all ends up being the same thing at the end of the day. It's how you reprogram yourself to do X, whatever it is you might want to do. That is so cool. I'm going to go get that book now.

Host: *The Untethered Soul* was recommended to me by three people that I really respect at different times. Finally I was like, "Fuck it, I need to go get this book if three people now have referred it to me." I read it and now I recommend it constantly because I believe that so much of the trouble that we face in our lives is misunderstanding the signals that we're getting from our mind and our body with our soul.

Host: Like we feel physical pain from a workout and we somehow think that's us. That's not us. That's just your body. It's not even real. It's not you. You, your spirit, isn't feeling physical pain. Your body's feeling physical pain. That's it. So you can work through it. You can push through it. You can tell your body it doesn't hurt. And some people like Wim Hof get so good at it. They can literally reprogram their body in real time so that they can operate despite physical pain or exposure to different things. Ice cold elements.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah.

Host: You see those things and you're like, "Holy shit, how does he do it?" When you really break it down, what he has figured out how to do is disconnect his soul, or his spirit, from his mind and his body and just basically say, "That's not real. Stop doing that. I don't want to feel this. I know I'm okay, so don't feel physical pain right now." That is incredibly difficult to do. I'm not saying this is something you can snap your fingers on 100%. There are courses and all kinds of things. This takes years and years to get to that level. Nor do I think most of us need to get to Wim Hof's level of connection or ability to disconnect.

However, the reason I bring this up is to come back to my original statement around preparation. If you are mentally healthy, physically healthy, emotionally healthy—and by healthy, I mean doing the work—you're preparing yourself. Then when that thing happens, that person leaves you, the job ends, the investment goes belly up, the company you started doesn't become what you thought it would be. Whatever the thing is, you can disconnect and say, "This is not who I am." To your point, I am not the founder of Rogue Risk. That is a thing that I did. That is something that happened during this brief period of time for this physical body, but it's not who I am. I can keep going. That preparation allows you to weather these storms and keep going. That to me is the key.

You keep hearing people say—someone said the other day, it was either Cody Sanchez or Alex Ramose, one of the new thought leaders that have popped up in the last year or two. Both are great. Anyone listening, go follow them.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah, they're tremendous.

Host: Absolutely tremendous. They're the next wave of really, really good. I keep trying to find holes in their game and I struggle with it. They're doing a really good job. But one of them said the other day, and this isn't new, but they packaged it in a really interesting way. It was something like, "The only reason I'm successful is because I'm willing to outlast people." That's literally all of it. Win by attrition, baby.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Let's go.

Host: When you think about it, that really kind of is it. Are you willing to keep going when everyone else stops? If you are, you're most likely going to be successful. That goes back to preparation and all this stuff. I find this incredibly interesting because I'm 20 years into my insurance career, 26 or 27 years into my real-world working career. I can't find one example in my life where tactics is the reason anyone failed. Every time I failed, every time anyone I know has failed, it's been because of emotional shit. They couldn't keep their shit together. They didn't do this properly. They couldn't handle the stress. They were too egotistical. They were too insecure. They didn't have the right communication or interpersonal skills. They couldn't read a room. They couldn't listen. Whatever the thing was, it wasn't because they couldn't figure out a lead funnel. Those things help, don't get me wrong, but those are small wins and losses because of tactics. True game over, you have to start again, in my opinion, is 100 out of 100 times because of this stuff—because of personal development.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah, to circle back to the sports arena about it being 90% mental, 10% physical, it goes exactly with what you're talking about. You could have the physical skill, you could have the tactics down, but if your mental game is not there, game over. To circle back to what you mentioned about Wim Hof and people who can dissociate themselves from emotion or from a feeling—that's something I just recently learned how to visualize and how to do through the trainings I've gone through. Typically, when people are feeling an emotion, you're seeing it through your own eyes. You are very well associated, bright and clear, and you're right in it. What they've taught these very successful leaders—CEOs, entrepreneurs, whatever—is how to take a step back, disassociate from it, see themselves in third person to release that emotion.

For anyone watching the video, I recently posted this on my Instagram: "Take a step back and observe the emotion." That is something I am learning to do, learning to release that yuckiness so that I can make good decisions dissociated, not from emotion. I will tell you, I am one of the most emotional people out there. I cry. I threw temper tantrums as a child like crazy. Learning how to disassociate allows you to get a different perspective. You might even be able to see the other person's perspective, which is really helpful when coaching somebody, having a hard conversation, setting boundaries, or about to fire somebody. There are a lot of emotions that can be attached to that if you don't learn to detach.

Host: I wrote a post the other day about "You are not your feelings." I got some people who agreed, and then other people who disagreed with me. I spent a decent amount of time reading through the disagreements. They said, "Your feelings are part of you. God gave you your feelings." I struggle with that because to me, your feelings and emotions are a mechanism of the mind. What I meant quite literally by "you are not your emotions" is that your emotions are data points of the mind. They are actually important. If you feel a certain way, it is important to acknowledge, "I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling energized. I'm feeling whatever." But I love this idea of disassociating. If you're able to separate yourself from that emotion, you see it as a data point, not as your interpretation.

It's not real. Sadness is not real. Sadness is not your soul. Sadness is a data point your mind is giving you to try to turn something ethereal and manifest it into something tangible. When we feel sad, we allow ourselves to be consumed by it because we think it's who we are.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It becomes your reality because you're seeing it through your lenses.

Host: Ryan is not sad. Ryan's mind is telling him that this situation should make you sad, but I don't have to be sad unless I choose to be. I don't have to let it impact me unless I choose to. That concept is very hard. Now let's apply this to business. You are struggling with an employee who is a high performer but has a bad attitude or doesn't get along with people. They could do something or say something, and you could feel frustrated, angry, or disappointed. If you do not disassociate or separate yourself from that emotion, you might walk into their office and react poorly. Or you could say, "All right, what they did—I am feeling frustrated, angry, disappointed. I feel that. My mind is giving me those data points. I understand that what they did was probably incorrect. But removed from the feelings, not allowing the feelings to be me, but just a data point, I can go in and say, 'Here's the feedback I'm getting. Here's what I saw. Let's talk about this.'" You can approach it from a much more restrained, meaningful way because you're not allowing that emotion to take over who you are. It's simply a data point in a series of data points. "Hey, this one time you jumped in and helped Sally with this thing. That was awesome. I love that version of you. I want more of that. At this part over here, let's get to that." That allows you to be a better leader, manager, husband, wife, spouse, partner, friend, parent, child. We just can't allow our emotions to become who we are because they're not who we are, in my particular opinion.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Absolutely. I think the first time I really learned to go back to your example about firing somebody or reprimanding someone, especially in a leadership position, is remember not to attack the person. You're attacking the action, the choice that they made. Driving that home and reminding them, "This is how I'm looking at it. This is not you. Your actions are not you." It's called the sandwich effect—give them something great, then the crap, then something else they did really well. My high school football coach referred to it as a "shit sandwich." "Hey, I really like this thing you did. This thing you did like an asshole, maybe you could work on that. This over here wasn't bad either."

Host: I'll take it.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): This brings me to a whole new topic. I did not realize this until probably just last week, which sounds silly. I never realized how many people don't want or are afraid of criticism, even constructive criticism. So many people are scared to hear what they're doing wrong or what they could do better. Do you follow Andy Elliott at all?

Host: I do. That was on my topic of questions for you.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I got to meet him on Sunday and be around a bunch of people who subscribe to his stuff. I was like, "Wow, literally everybody in this room is here to be told what their gaps are." You don't find that anywhere. It's so rare. I was also floored that 99% of the people there were men. I didn't see any women.

Host: Why did that floor you? What was your preconceived notion about men that made you think they would not want to be in that room?

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I asked myself the same question. I was like, "How come there's no women here?" So let me reframe that. Were you surprised that it was all men and women weren't there, or were you surprised that more men were there?

Host: I guess both. I didn't even realize it until probably towards the end of the day. I was taking in all the information, got about 18 pages of notes from this. I was super excited. When I got up to go meet him—there's a chance where you get to go meet him and sign up for his 100-day challenge. The 100-day challenge is very similar to 75 Hard. For 100 days, you're doing a 45-minute workout, eating clean. The only thing I wasn't currently doing was reading 20 pages a day. I listen to audiobooks, but he said no physical pages—you need to read 20 physical pages. I'm like, "Okay, cool. I can do that for 100 days." So I signed my ass up. I'm a marketer's dream. I'm a salesperson. When someone has a really good sale, I'm buying it. So I signed up for all the stuff.

I was in line and I looked around and there were no girls next to me. This is me being real vulnerable on this podcast. One of my intentions when I was at the NLP seminar prior to the Andy Elliott event was to make more connections with women. So here I am at this event, looking for some girl who can be on my level and talk about this kind of stuff. They are nowhere to be found. Maybe a few on the other side of the room, but they're walking out. I asked myself, "What is happening here?" Is it because women don't want to be criticized? Is it because there are more men in sales? Is it because this particular culture happens to be more guys in this sales culture? It's something I'm still exploring. But that was the one thing I walked away from—like, "Damn, how do we recruit more women to that mindset of 'I want to be told what my gaps are because that's how I grow'?"

Host: That is a hyper-masculine culture for sure, so I think that's probably part of it. While present culture seemingly wants to sell us something different, men and women are very, very different in the way their brains are wired, their incentives, and all different kinds of things. Not that one is better than the other, just different. Not knowing anything about the program, I think in general, there are an absolute shit ton more men in sales than women.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): That boggled my mind because I absolutely agree with you on differences between men and women. That's a whole other polarizing topic we can get into. But when I think about even in the insurance industry, there are very many women in sales, very many women principals and leaders. Yet to see the lack of women—let me rewind. That was never important to me until recently. Not specifically because I'm looking for gender equality. I was just more like, "I really want to connect with other women, other moms, other people I could relate to on a feminine level that I can't around a guy." Plain and simple. Because like you said, we are different. You're going to have very different conversations with the genders.

Host: There are a ton of viewpoints, ideas, activities, thoughts, feelings that I simply could not empathize with that you could say to me. It's not that I don't care or don't think they're important. I just don't experience them or see them from the same vantage point. And vice versa.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): And vice versa.

Host: There's been some stuff in our industry recently—shakeups and different groups that I don't want to name explicitly—that have involved women in particular. I am of two very different minds on the gender thing. Part of me says I am a staunch equality of opportunity guy. I hate equality of outcome. I loathe it. The idea of it I find very hard to swallow. I'm sure there are exceptions that I would be willing to accept, but they are very rare. However, I have even more distaste for individuals who remove opportunity for people. I look at something like more women are nurses than men. Do we have an equality of gender nursing problem? No, because women, for whatever reason I don't understand because I'm not a biologist or a psychologist, choose nursing more than men choose nursing. For whatever reason, in sales, men choose to be sales professionals more. So there shouldn't necessarily be an equal number of men and women in those professions.

However, every woman who wants to be a sales professional and every man who wants to be a nurse, who has the skills to do it, should be allowed to do it and should be given every opportunity to do it. This is the battle I feel like we're missing. Today there's so much nonsensical socialist talk—post-modern Marxist bullshit—that we need to have equal numbers of every ethnicity and every gender. There are literally not the same number of humans of all these things to have equal numbers. The percentages don't match. If you were to have 50/50 white people and black people in every industry, there are simply not enough black people in the country to do that. Not enough Asian people. If you were to take white people and put them in Nigeria, there wouldn't be enough white people to do that. This is nonsense.

However, the thing we have to fight against tooth and nail with every ounce of energy is to make sure that anybody who wants that thing gets an opportunity to get it. They're not blocked. They're not talked negatively to. They're not discriminated against. They have every opportunity to be the thing as everyone else. When I look at situations like the one you were presented with—highly masculine, highly sales oriented—I think what is more often the case is that women are still not given the same opportunity to sell that men are given. If you put a man and a woman applying for a sales job and they're both equal, the benefit of the doubt today is still going to skew towards the man if their skills are equal. That's the thing we have to fix.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Exactly. That's the thing we have to fix. I will give big props to Andy that I didn't get to mention before. One of his top salespeople is female. He didn't have a lot of salespeople. I wasn't making a knock on him. I just want to make sure in case he's listening, don't worry Andy, we're not talking smack about you.

Host: No, 100% not talking about his event. Just talking about the fact that there is such a disconnect in numbers.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Absolutely. I feel like if more women who wanted to be sales professionals were given the same opportunity as men, there would most likely be more in that room agnostic of Andy's program. To the situation you're referencing, I'm privy to as well. We don't have to dive down that. But to circle back on everything we talked about, it all comes down to my favorite word: respect. Regardless of somebody's gender, spirituality, whatever. If you respect them and where they're coming from, you're going to give them the opportunity. Plain and simple. That's what's been really cool about everything I'm diving into. I get to learn about these things. I will be the first to tell you I was so naive to everything we're talking about. This is all very new to me.

I grew up in male-dominated sports and got into sales at a very young age. For me, it was just, "Oh, I'm in sales." I never realized, "Oh, I'm a female in sales." Sometimes I forget that my heritage is considered a minority. I never put a label to that. It wasn't until recently that I started hearing these labels and becoming more aware of what other people are seeing and why there is a need to fight for opportunity, like you're saying. I never realized that until people brought it to my attention. I'm like, "Wow, how come I didn't see that before?"

Host: Do you think that's positive though? In a fictional scenario where there are no barriers of opportunity, does it matter? Do you want this constant, unending focus on where we're from? I struggle with that. I miss when it used to be fucking cool that we were different. In high school, I always looked at the black kids and thought, "They're so much cooler than I am. They can sing better. Their style is way better." I wanted to hang out with them. They were fucking cool. They didn't want to hang out with me, this dorky white kid from the country. I always looked at it like I loved our differences because it's what made the country so interesting. Now it's like, "Oh no, we all have to be this blended version where we're all exactly the fucking same." We're not the same. That's the amazing part of it.

But we have to focus on the differences if opportunity is not the same. If access to opportunity is not the same. In my personal opinion, capitalism solves all this. This is all postmodern Marxist bullshit because capitalism—if you're a capitalist, you want whoever's the best. You don't give a shit if they paint Smurfs on their face and show up to work every day. If they can fucking sell, you're going to hire that person.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): It's metric-based at that point. I actually think you and I touched on this on our last podcast a little bit too about how it's become mainstream to do this. I do agree with you on the differences. If you listen to Cody Sanchez, Alex Famosi, or even Andy Elliott, all of them say be unique. Stand out. Really own your uniqueness. That's what's going to make you last through whatever craziness you're going through. What I am looking to do is figure out what is preventing a girl from going to one of those sales seminars. How can I help empower somebody to make them feel like they can do that too? I've always been a big fan of "you got to earn it." I like the idea of opportunity. We want the opportunity to be there, but you still got to earn it regardless of where you're from, what you look like, what gender you are. You got to put in the work and have the results, especially in sales. You can't just show up and sit there. You actually have to do the work and show up every day.

Host: I bet that if you reached out to 20 women and said, "Hey, I went to this thing last year. It was amazing. There were only like 10 of us there last year. I want to get another 10. I want there to be 20. Who wants to come?" I bet simply by opening that door and reaching your hand out, half of them would take you up on it. I think a lot of times people just want to know. Look, you have a stage presence. You post these pictures and you're screaming into a microphone and you perform. I'm sure you have your own insecurities and things that bother you, but at the same time, you have a confidence as well. That is a unique quality of you. It's also unique that you're simply willing to post that stuff as much as you are. So many people aren't willing to put any aspect of their life out there in that regard.

I don't want to go all Spider-Man here, but I feel like with great power does come great responsibility. Being blessed, whether by nature or nurture, to have any level of confidence—not everybody has that naturally. I think they can develop it. It is beholden to those of us—and I would put myself in this category too—who have a lot of confidence in things. It's why I do this podcast. Simply reach out to people and say, "Here, virtually take my hand and come along on this fucking ride with me because I don't want to do it alone. There's so much here if you come." I think if you did that, you'd get 10. Then the year after that, if you said to all of them, "Hey, reach out to 20 of your girlfriends and bring five more people each or two people each," now all of a sudden there's 40. Now you have half the audience being women who feel comfortable, supported, and energized. I think that's how you get there—one by one, linking this chain of saying, "Here's my hand. Take it. Come along for the ride." That's how you get there. Because everybody needs that.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I can show you the world. Oh my gosh. Also for anyone listening, people pay really good money to get advice like this. If you're next to a pen and paper, write this shit down because what Ryan just said, I'm going to go take action on. Thank you for sharing that. That has probably been the best part of the podcast. I will absolutely admit and tell everyone listening, I was not born with confidence. Let me tell you a little story. When I was in kindergarten, I had a presentation where I was telling the crowd about what a fraction is—how to explain half and quarters. It gets to my turn. I probably turned paper sheet white and I just burst into tears and ran away. I totally ran away. And now I am on a stage, talking to a crowd, singing heavy metal music. It was absolutely learned. It was not natural for sure.

Host: What I would probably say is actually true is that there were always aspects of your life that you were confident in, and other aspects that you weren't. What you have learned to do is allow the parts that you were confident in to start to disseminate into the other parts of your life. That's something I've learned over time. My mom says, "You've been confident since the day you came out of me." But what's funny is I don't remember myself that way. Today I feel very confident in myself. I feel like I just try to walk through life as "this is who I am." But that has taken me years and years to allow that to break out of these very small pockets of confidence that I had into the rest of my life. One of the things I have learned—and I've learned all this from reading. I'm a ferocious reader. I wouldn't want to show you my books because you'd think I was a crazy person. You'd think I was a cat lady who just sits inside. I don't have a cat, but I have my reading chair with my little blanket and my pillows and my books stacked up next to them. I love it.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): I do have a question for you though, Ryan. Because I know that you are ADHD. I want to know how many books do you read at a time?

Host: Right now I have three books going. Yes. I have *Thinking Fast and Slow*. Okay. I didn't know that one. That one is really heavy, and it's just taking me a long time to get through. And to be honest with you, sometimes I just don't want the heaviness. I am reading *The 48 Laws of Power*, which is becoming a must-read for me. But it's very chapter-based, so I tend to read one chapter and be done. And then I just started, because it's kind of a fast read, Patrick Bet-David's new book, *Choose Your Enemies Wisely*. I'm a huge Patrick Bet-David fan. I just love him. I love his story. I love the way he approached his life. I love his position on what it means to be a man, because I feel like men in particular have lost their way. They've lost their role in society. And look, I love women. I love strong women. And please don't take this the wrong way, but feminism went way too far.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Oh, I will absolutely get behind that.

Host: Yeah. I think that women had been treated horribly for a long time. Some of that was because we didn't... I don't want to get into that topic. But the idea is men have lost their way. We are meant to be the protectors. Our body is built to shield women and children from shitty things. We're literally meant to be the cannon fodder so that they can keep going. That's why we're here. But men have relinquished that. And it doesn't mean you get to be an asshole. It just means you have to come back in, be it, get your shit together. Stop doing drugs and masturbating all the time. Take care of your partner. Teach your children lessons that are meaningful and useful. Get a job and make money. It's important. Get off the couch.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yes.

Host: What is up with the Disney song today? They're just flowing out of me. I look at it and I'm like, what are we doing? I'm far from perfect, but God, hold the goddamn door for the woman when you take her out to dinner. I'm like, what are you doing? It's not sexist to open the door for her. I don't get it. And if you're dating someone who thinks that it's sexist for you to open the door for her, get rid of her. She's terrible. She's not someone that you want to be dating. So I just don't understand.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah. So I'd love to ask you a question about that. Let's say alpha woman, right? Let's say I'm alpha woman over here. What can an alpha woman do to help support a man be a man?

Host: Just don't knock him down.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Fair.

Host: Just don't knock him down. He's trying, just like you are. Now he should not knock you down either. It comes back to respect. He should not knock you down. Personally, I need a strong woman. I'm single right now, but the women that I date that I'm attracted to, I have to have a strong woman. I need a woman who is going to push back against me. I am crazy as fuck. I know that. Just listen to this podcast. I can't help this. This is how I am. I need someone who's going to be able to take all this and then push back on me and be like, "You know what that shit you just said? That was nuts." But have the respect to say, "Okay, well, maybe she's right." Not "Fuck you, this is who I am." That's the way most guys react.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): No, most women react as well.

Host: Yeah, yeah. There's a balance. I love strong women. It's very important to our culture, to our society, to our children, to our future. One hundred percent. But that doesn't mean that men should be betas. There needs to be a balance. And I think Patrick Bet-David, contextually—you can tell, again, my ADHD is off the rails right now—Patrick Bet-David is a wonderful example of how to be a strong man while still taking care of his wife in the way that she needs to be taken care of. Not like she's this princess who can't handle her shit. A better example is Alex and Layla Hermosi. The way Alex and Layla Hermosi interact as a couple—obviously we don't know their backstory, but you can watch her socials—they seemingly have a very functional relationship between two individuals who are both very strong, alpha personalities. And I think that's wonderful. Cody Sanchez and her husband. That's another one. I think the rise of these people is because they are with someone who matches their energy and strength, not someone who is pushing them down or that they have to lift up. It doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum, find someone who matches your energy and can rise with you, not someone who you're either pulling or someone who's trying to push you down. I think that goes for everything. It goes for business partnerships. It goes for friendships. I think it's very important to find people who match your energy and align with your values.

[Host gets emotional]

Host: You probably see me getting emotional because I've been there where you're constantly having your energy sucked out of you from trying to pull people with you. You see it in them. You're like, "I see it. You can do it. Come with me." And they're just not.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Everything you just said resonated with me super deeply. It goes back to what I'm doing right now. I'm trying to find my tribe. The cliché saying of "you're the average of the five people"—it's true. Who you surround yourself with is such a big deal in how you show up every day. They're the people that are going to hold your ass accountable. If I slip up, I want someone to tell me, "Hey, that was dumb, Kimmy. Let's fix this." Otherwise, how are you going to grow? So I'm going to give you something, and then we can call this quits. There is a program and a book called *Living Your Best Year Ever* by Darren Hardy. Chris Paradiso originally introduced me to this. I tried to do it on my own two years ago and failed miserably. This really needs to be done with an accountability partner. So I have an accountability partner this year. One of my very good friends—we talked for almost a month before we decided to do this. It was like, "Do we feel like, because we're friends, this is going to work?" We had that talk, and then we've spent basically since September doing the pre-work. My point in saying all this is that he's the type of individual who, if I say something, I can trust because of using this program and the structure it gives us to have conversations, the accountability associated with it, and the respect between us to make sure we stay on task. The program technically is supposed to start in the new year—you go calendar year—and in the fall you do the pre-work, which is what we've been doing. Although you can start at any time. But I can tell you, just in doing the pre-work and surrounding myself on a regular basis with a high-functioning, highly successful individual who is willing to give me honest and real feedback, just in the last two and a half months, I have seen an ascension in my day-to-day life. The way I approach things, the decisions I make. "Don't eat that. You don't need it. You're not that kind of person. You're not the person that eats that cookie at two in the afternoon." Finding that person or people—if you're unhappy with where you are right now, make that the next thing you do. The very next thing you do is ask, "Who are my one, three, five people that I want to surround myself with?" Because if you do that, just by osmosis, you'll become happier. You just will.

Host: Absolutely. And imagine if you had business partners, a romantic partner, whatever, that can do that for you, that can have those kinds of conversations. Imagine what the world would be like.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Yeah.

Host: Well, I'm excited for you. Report back. I'm excited for you. I love it. And anytime outside of this, if you have thoughts or you see something, send it over. I love it. I'm so happy for your journey. I'm happy you came on here. Come back again.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Let's do this again in six months or so. We can do check-ins. We can talk.

Host: I think it's wonderful. You pulled out some great stuff. I love the training. I love *With Winning in Mind*. I'll send you the link on it. I literally probably have ten of those books here. I just give them to people when I hear them struggling. I'm like, "Read this." It's about shooting sports and it's about mental management, but it all applies to everything. So we'll have *With Winning in Mind* and *The Untethered Soul* linked up in the show notes for everybody. I love the word "disassociate." I think that's a wonderful way of viewing it. Disassociate yourself from your mind and your body. I think that's tremendous. And we should all treat each other with respect. Thank you.

Guest (Kimmy Donahue): Thank you.

Host: I'm out.

[Ad break]

Host: Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not. With the One Call Close System, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the One Call Close System eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit masteroftheclose.com. That's masteroftheclose.com. Do it today.