--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Often times we live with such a high level of urgency that we don't have time to stop and smell the roses. We're kind of like, "I'll just go in the store and buy some" versus me stopping and actually looking at something living. Every encounter I have with a person is a treasure hunt. Let's go. Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy. The Ryan Hanley Show shares the original ideas, habits, and mindsets of world-class original thinkers you can use to produce extraordinary results in your life and business. This is The Way.
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--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. We have a tremendous episode for you today, a conversation with Dr. Eric Peoples. Dr. Eric is a keynote speaker, executive coach, and pastor, and we dive deep into what he is seeing out in the marketplace among leadership trends, how his most successful clients are using certain mindsets, certain leadership mindsets to dial in and to finish big with the projects they have in front of them. This is an absolutely phenomenal episode. If you are in a leadership position or ever wish to be in one, take notes, my friends. As always, we don't run ads on this show, and all that I ask in return is that if you enjoy the content, share it with a friend, text it to somebody, email it to a colleague, and if you're feeling super froggy, leaving a rating and review on Spotify or Apple helps tremendously for new individuals such as yourself to find this show and understand exactly what we're talking about here and what we're trying to do. Get better, become the best version of ourselves, become focused, formidable finishers. My friends, I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Dr. Eric Peoples.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Dr. Eric Peoples, my man, I'm so excited to have you on the show.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Dude, so good to be here with you, man. Love what you're doing. Love the energy. So excited. I always know it's going to be a good conversation when I have to say, "Stop talking, let me hit record." When we're kicking it before we go live and we're just crushing conversation, and I have to catch myself and go, "This is what we should be talking about because people are going to want to hear this."
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I got to see you speak live. We got to spend about 45 minutes chatting before you talked. I kind of caught you on the side at the event. Dude, I just love your approach, your nature. I'm always intrigued by guys who are confident, who are strong characters, strong-willed, strong in their beliefs, but at the same time have this humility and understanding and compassion for people. That's what immediately drew me into you—not to just stroke your ego right off the rip—but I was so impressed by the way that you handle yourself in those environments. I know, especially when you're a speaker, you're getting bombarded by people all over the place. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, but you're trying to do your thing and you get all this stuff, and you were just so generous with your time. I just wanted to start the conversation by saying how much I appreciated that.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Well, it was a joy to connect with you. I think one of the things too, it works both ways. There's something dynamic when another leader who's a high achiever, who's going after it, has curiosity. And when I say curiosity, not just curiosity to poke holes, but literally you have a learning attitude that is—I love it. I think humility, if you're a learner, a lifelong learner, humility is a part of the package. If you walk into a room and think, "I'm the biggest and baddest and I know everything," then you're in the wrong room. Find another one. Dude, I love learning. So I appreciate what you're sharing.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I think that's a really good point. I love that. I think one of the first descriptors on your Instagram profile is "lifelong learner" because I'm the same exact way. I read voraciously on a lot of different topics. I just love taking in information. I actually had a conversation with a friend about this the other day. He said something similar: "If you're the alpha in the room, you're in the wrong room." And I said, "I agree with that, and we always want to be surrounding ourselves with people who are going to push us." But I also think there is something to the fact that you may think you're the alpha in the room, but there's always something you can learn from people. Someone who's just starting out—they might just be starting out in this part of their life, but maybe they went through something when they were growing up, or they're also a concert pianist on the side. In a certain context, you're the alpha. But I feel like if we approach all situations with curiosity and humility, we can learn from everybody. I think too often, people hit a certain level of success or knowledge or status, and it's like, "What could I possibly learn from that person? They're only doing X amount of revenue, or their business is this, or they're only this old." Except everybody has these ridiculous, amazing stories. You probably know this from your podcast too. There's just so much you can learn from people.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Yeah. With that whole learning piece, the older I get, the more experiences I have, the places I go, I think there's the reality of being in a room and learning from life experiences and hearing what other people think. The gift of presence and listening—not metacognition where you're listening and you already have an answer for what someone's saying—but when you're listening and you're really listening, and you can say to the person, "I'm actually hearing you. You're making a statement. Tell me a little bit more of that. How did that happen?" I'm always curious. I'm on a plane a lot. I might say to someone, "Hey, so how'd you get started?" Life is rarely linear. It's a joy to me to have experiences.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): How do you cultivate presence in your life? I've mentioned on the show, so the audience knows this, but I have diagnosed very high-level ADHD. For a long time, I was that guy who, on the last syllable of your last word of what I perceived was the last word of your sentence, I'm already responding on top of you. Or I'm trying to project how your sentence is going to finish in my head as I'm listening to you, and I can't wait to respond, even if I'm incredibly interested in what you said. I've had to really work hard. Part of my work on this podcast has been an exercise in trying to be a better listener and being more present in the moment. For someone that at least from the outside as an observer is very good at being present in the moment, how do you work on it? Is there a practice? Do you prep yourself sometimes? I sometimes in the hotel room will prep myself: "Be present in this moment. Nothing else matters for the next two hours. You're going to go down, shake some hands, get to know what's going on, do your thing. Afterwards, you're going to listen to people." I will almost prep-talk myself to be present in the moment. Do you have anything that you do like that? How have you cultivated that presence?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): I think there's two things. That's a great question because oftentimes we live with such a high level of urgency that we don't have time to stop and smell the roses. We're kind of like, "I'll just go in the store and buy some" versus me stopping and actually looking at something living. One of the things I trained myself in, just from being around older leaders who are brilliant people, is that every encounter I have with a person is a treasure hunt. So me talking to you, I'm like, "Man, this guy—my attraction to your heart was for the heart for people. You want to help people win." When I hear that, I'm like, "Dude, I'm in. However I can be a part of that story, that journey." That's easy for me. Now, there have been lots of conversations where people are like, "Hey, I've got this big idea and it's bigger than a screen." Crazy stuff. And you're like, "Yeah, but are you making a difference? Are you making it matter for others?" So that's one: I'm just curious. I'm going to be with Ryan today, and it's going to be a treasure hunt. He's going to say something that I'm going to take a note on, and it's going to spark that.
--:-- The other part, from a real practical standpoint, is that I have my wedding band ring. I will sit there, and sometimes if it's a flying conversation with others, I will actually put my hand over my ring and I will spin it 15, 20 times just to make sure that I'm hearing what you're saying. I'm not engaging because I think you're at the end of your sentence. Much like you, my mind works really quickly. So I have to create pauses. Otherwise, I will step on the moment versus add to it.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I was reading Eckhart Tolle's *The Power of Now*, which I highly recommend to everyone. I found the second half to be a little repetitive, but the first 50 to 60% of the book is absolute pure gold for this particular topic. In there, there was this idea of space—building space between your response. It's not just so you can collect your thoughts and make sure your response is thoughtful and something you actually mean to say, but it also shows the other person respect in the conversation. When that person finishes and you immediately jump in—now, there are moments maybe with your buddies or your friends where you're all jacked up and telling stories, and that's a different environment. But when you're in a moment where you're trying to learn from someone and you are listening to them, I've really tried to do this. I'm probably going to mess it up a couple of times in the show, so forgive me for that. But what it does is it shows that other person, "I care enough about you to delay my response and actually be thoughtful in how I respond to you." One way you can see it is how often when you first respond, do you correct that initial three or four words that you start with? Or do you say a few words and then almost repeat those couple words again before you get to your thought? What that shows is I haven't actually collected myself enough to respond yet. I've found I can be much more thoughtful in my responses when I try to build in even a beat, just a beat. That person now wants to listen to you. Versus when you respond and you can just tell they're like, "I don't care what you're saying."
--:-- The other thing in that book—and I apologize, I'm talking, I just want to get this out—he's got this idea that makes perfect sense when you hear it. It's a little ethereal, so I apologize to you guys if you're not into this kind of stuff, but I think it's valid. He makes the very clear point early in the book that there is literally no such thing as the future or the past. It doesn't exist. All that exists is this moment right now with you. To spend every moment that we spend out in the future or back in the past is essentially a waste of time. Not that we shouldn't do self-reflection, not that we shouldn't do goal setting—those are powerful things. But if I'm sitting here going, "Okay, I got to get through this conversation with Eric, and then I got this thing I got to do for this project over here," now I'm not here with you. I'm not in this moment with you. I'm living in another time or place, and it doesn't allow you to be at your best.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Sounds like sports psychology. Working with some leaders in the field with high achievers as it relates to sports—the last miss you made, the poor golf swing you took—living in the present, living in the now. I think that's a very interesting thought. I also do believe in the time and energy that we invest in the moment. A professor told me once, called it "the gift of presence." So not only am I exchanging the gift of being present here, but I'm also receiving the gift of understanding, learning, curiosity, growth. When you curate your respective relationships, you don't find yourself saying, "Wow, what a waste of time," because you're living with such a high level of intentionality. Not just from a give-and-take standpoint, but you're going, "Wait a second. I'm going to be in the right room with the right people at the right time." Being a good investor or even a good steward of my time and energy curates the moment from being simply an opportunity to being distracted by those things to understanding, "Wait, that's a distraction. This is a real opportunity because I'm in a room with curious people. I'm learning, I'm growing, I'm developing, I'm adding value." The idea of past or present—how you learn also has to be a factor. From a purely educational standpoint, some are organic learners, others are not. We can all write books with theories too. Maybe it works in his world and maybe for others too.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Imagine what your life would be like if you were fully present in every moment, viewing it through the filter of opportunity. Every moment, every interaction—from the coffee that you're handed by a barista, to the exchange of a Coke at the counter at a gas station, or a conversation like this one—if you were fully present and passing it all through the filter of "this is an opportunity," and maybe that opportunity is very small and nothing comes of it, but you don't know if you're always just projecting out or assuming. I find that I sometimes in my past worked very hard, especially as I accumulated more leadership positions. That's where I want to take our conversation ultimately—into leadership. By being present, you're able to fully grasp each opportunity as presented and dissect it for what it is. Instead of what I did in the past, which was go, "I already assume I know what Eric's going to say, so I'm just going to plow through this," instead of, "Man, I wonder where Eric's going to take this conversation today. I can't wait to find out where we go. What branch of the brain or knowledge or experience are we going to touch?" It's a tiny little reframing, but man, it opens up the world.
--:-- That kind of leads me into where I wanted to go with you. You work with a tremendous number of high achievers all over the world. We were talking about it a little before. You're recently in Ecuador. You're traveling to Brazil. You're all over the country. When I first met you, you were at a mastermind, a room full of 100 of some of the best minds in the insurance industry, high achievers. What is the state of leadership today? When you're talking about high achievers, the individuals, the men and women that are dialed in, their teams behind them, things are going well. What does that look like?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): I think that's a really great question because we all have internal pressure going on and external pressures that are going on. Depending upon your vertical market, what I am seeing depends on the pressures that people are responding to. One of the things I love doing and why I travel is I love helping leaders lead. I love helping them win and focus and finish strong. One of those pieces in winning is "what's important now." I would say the universal struggle when the pressure is on is living from a silo, living in isolation. It's almost like it's not cocooning—it's just running hard after running hard after things. Some of the questions that are popping up: "I'm running hard after things." That can either be you're acquiring stuff, which is also a knee-jerk reaction sometimes. I have less of a problem with people going after stuff because you can always sell it, than where you're burning your life and time. You can always make more money, but you can't make more time. So I'm watching the burn ratio.
--:-- From a professional standpoint, I'm seeing people who are struggling with the intergenerational disconnect. The average 35-year-old is spending as much time on video games as a 15-year-old now. People are on their social media showing the best, hiding the rest. 34% of our population surveyed said they wrestle with loneliness once a week. Some people think about being lonely once a week, and 10% say they wrestle with loneliness every day. This isn't Joe Average—I'm talking about people who are moving the dial in some form or fashion. When you think about how that's connected to the pressures of winning, it's the misalignment with what's important now. What's important now for a 40-year-old is different than what's important now for a 60-year-old. So it's having those moments of clarity where we really come to grips with our lives and go, "I need to make sure that I'm around the right relationships." I'm a big proponent of the right relationships—people that can challenge me to curate my moments. For instance, do you need to go to Hawaii for a month, or should you go to Hawaii for two weeks because that's where you're going to be best for each other? This difference can sound really granular, but that's where the crazy decisions are made when you're talking to yourself.
--:-- One of the things I found about Eric Peoples is that when I have a conversation with myself—me, myself, and I—I'm always right. I've never had a bad idea that I haven't thought, "Dude, you know what?" Without talking to someone else, I'm like, "That's a great idea." Sometimes it's not. So who are you talking to to help create friction? Friction is good—to focus on what it is you say you're after.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): There's a bunch of questions that I have in there. The first one is specifically about loneliness, and this can be in your work and your personal feelings, however you want to answer. Part of me—I like being alone. I enjoy it. I have two kids. I have a decent number of friends. I have a woman who I've been seeing for a little more than a year now, and it's a great relationship and everything is good. I love spending time with her. But at the same time, I really enjoy being alone. That wasn't always the case. That's something that I've worked on. Do you think that some of the feelings of loneliness are a misalignment with what spending time with yourself really is? Or people aren't doing the work? Can we reframe loneliness as positive time spent with ourselves? Is it culturally that we've lost the skill of being alone?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): I'll say it this way. My wife tells me not to make two points—make sure you finish the second one because otherwise I have two points and I get hung up on the first one. But the first one is there's a difference between loneliness and solitude. What you're speaking about is solitude. You've got all these other relational factors that make you who you are. There's a giving out—you're pouring out, you're responsible for things, you've recognized that responsibility. And now you're saying, "I need some me time," which is healthy. Most people don't have me time because they don't like me time. What I'm talking about is they don't like themselves. When you don't like yourself, the sound of silence is the echo of your misalignment. The dissatisfaction is so loud that you start pulling things into your life. You create a vacuum by nature because you're trying to fill it with something. You hear the word "fulfilled"—"I'm not fulfilled." Fulfillment, I think, is directly connected to the seasons of your life. You said you have two boys. I remember when my daughter was 14 months old, and fulfillment was her sleeping through the night. Rest is a weapon. Sleep deprivation is used for torture—over 50 to 70 hours, you're cracking, you're telling everything. So in the season you're in, what does it look like for you to live a fulfilled life? You've just found what's important now. So let's focus on that. How do we get from here to there? Loneliness is the sense of unfulfillment. Solitude is where you're able to rest, reflect, and even have an attitude of gratitude. There's a disconnect when people are lonely. Most people who say they're lonely are burnt out. You're giving energy to the wrong things. The drive to not disappoint people is dangerous.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): One thing that helped me in this area was I've been described as a disagreeable person. I used to take that as a negative. I did a lot of reading on this. There's a guy named Eric Weinstein—I don't know if you've heard of him. He's intellectual to a certain extent, a physics guy, math guy, and he does a lot of podcasts. I really fell in love with his work. He talked on the show about a year or two ago about his relationship to his disagreeableness. He said we've developed a false narrative around what it means to be disagreeable. What he said was questioning things, having your own opinion, understanding and being okay with "I could have an opinion that I share with you today that you could just say, 'I hear you. I don't agree.'" Technically, that pushback is disagreeableness in the purest sense of the context. But am I going to be okay with this person that I respect, enjoy, and care about disagreeing with an opinion I have? I am. It took a long time to get there.
--:-- My point in this little diatribe is that when you start to be okay with that, I think a lot of that loneliness, that sense of being alone, is "I need everyone to like me and agree with me. I need to agree with them, and everything's to be okay and happy and fun." That is simply not life. When you start to be okay with the fact that I can enjoy someone, care about someone, and we could have two or three things that we just intrinsically disagree about, and that's perfectly fine, all of a sudden you start to go, "Oh, I'm not alone. That person likes me. We're connected. We just disagree on this one topic over here, which is perfectly fine because there's 17 other topics that we do agree on." We don't focus on all the things that we do agree on, the shared values we have. We tend to focus on that one value that we disagree on, and that creates this disconnect. Now all of a sudden, we're isolated and by ourselves. I just don't think we talk about that type of stuff. Coming all the way back to leadership, when you're a leader, everybody's going to disagree with you about something you say. That's part of the job.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): It is. One of the big challenges we face is that when you think that leadership is a popularity contest, then there's two things that happen. Number one: you're not being true to yourself. Number two: the people who think they know you have actually never met you. Imposter syndrome. "I don't want to say this because what happens if I get in trouble?" But what does happen if you get in trouble? I also pre-qualify people in conversations. I ask them, "Have you ever played a sport?" Depending upon what the sport is—you played baseball, right? Can you count how many times you got hit by a ball? That's a part of it. The thing is, you have a resolve that you didn't quit. You did not win every game you played. There's a disconnect even in the leadership development process now. There's the push of followership development process versus leadership development process. One of the folks who mentors me has had a lot of influence from John Maxwell. For me, I'm okay with understanding my inadequacies because I know I need to grow. I know I need to learn. Then I'm not threatened by you saying that you don't think I'm enough. That's okay. It doesn't matter.
--:-- I'm picking at pickleball. I don't know why I'm picking at pickleball. Everyone says don't play it. But I'm an aggressive person. I play sports. I play football, which is full contact. I'm thinking, "I'm going to learn how to play pickleball in the back 40." I know I played racquetball, table tennis, racquet sports, and I just love golf. I love the part of just full on, full tilt. I've got to know my audience, but I also need to know me—learning the game, the different pieces of it. When you are an athlete, I think there's a part of the mix in your life as a leader where you understand what it means to lose, having the resolve to get back up, and also making the decision. Like, you know what?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): The only thing I didn't lose, I'm learning. Football was my – baseball was my love, but football was my favorite sport. I had a scholarship to play football in college, and I got three concussions my senior season. It ended my football career.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): But what I loved about football in particular – and baseball has a lot of this too – I'm similar to you. It was like all those societal governors we have to put on our personality to integrate into rational human niceness. In football, you can turn all those governors off and just get to be 100 percent aggressive.
--:-- What I think we miss when we watch highlight reels or look at our favorite stars is we see the great catch, throw, or tackle. We don't see the play before that. The linebacker who got the sack on the highlight reel, the play before they got blindsided by a guard they didn't see. They were picking themselves up off the ground with drool coming out of their mouth and blood, shaking it off. Yet they turn around, get the play call, get back in their position, and then they make the highlight reel play.
--:-- You are forced – at least from my experience, I've never played sports like rugby that are also full contact – you are forced to say all this pain I feel is not going to stop me from the goal I have in whatever position I play.
--:-- It translates. I do think it translates to a lot of different sports, a lot of different things. But in particular, I find football players get this meathead tag, which I think is completely false. Anyone who's played the game knows you cannot be a meathead. You can act like a meathead, but you are not a meathead. The meatheads don't make it. I think they act like meatheads because it's fun. Who doesn't want to act that way? But the most successful are incredibly intelligent individuals.
--:-- You are going to get knocked down. Not like, "Oh, I didn't make this sale," but literally knocked to the ground and have to pick yourself back up and re-engage in the game. If you have an ounce of hesitation, you are going to get knocked back down again until you lose that piece of you.
--:-- I think that type of mentality is what we need to have as leaders today. It's okay. I'm listening to Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk. I love Elon Musk. I think he has an incredible number of personality traits that could be questioned. However, this is an individual who, in the purest sense, has been knocked to the ground so many times and he just keeps getting back up. That's how he got to be there. It also takes a level of craziness and a willingness to destroy his personal life and all these other things.
--:-- But I just feel like we've lost aggression. Do you agree with that? We've made aggression into this toxic thing that I don't think it has to be. It can be toxic, and I don't mean yelling and being a jerk. But there's an aggressive nature to leadership that I feel like has been put in this box of bad. I don't know how to break it out, I guess.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I think you're onto something because it also comes down to understanding the audience. If we were sitting in a room listening to a leader share about all the wins they've had, our curiosity would be sparked. "Tell me about your failures. Tell me about the challenges." You didn't get from here to there without some valleys, some potholes, some challenges, some pick yourself up, dust yourself off. You didn't even get there by just picking yourself up. There are others who helped you get up and move.
--:-- That just blows up the fallacy of the self-made man. No, there's some resolve and determination that you have to have when it's obvious what your assignment is. I'm a person of faith, understanding purpose. It is what I know why I get up in the morning. I know what I'm after. I love helping leaders lead.
--:-- But there also is that part of the vetting process inside of me that says, "You've got to want it." If I want what you want more than you, then I'm wasting my time. But if I can throw gas on the fire, if I can open a door for you or connect you with someone you need to know, then awesome. I'm excited to be a part of it.
--:-- This domestication of the leadership approach is a great fallacy. In some ways, it's why many aren't winning. When I'm talking about winning, I'm not just talking about what's important now. I'm talking about winning overall, where in the grand scheme of things, you're able to say, "This is the target, this is what I'm after, and I'm finishing well." People can say whatever they want about Elon Musk, but the bottom line is he's winning in a way that others would want to.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say, "I don't want his life." He's even said, "You don't want my life." However, to throw out everything... I hate when I do this, but I had this online argument about Elon Musk with a guy. He's saying, "What has he ever achieved?" And I'm like... what it ultimately came down to was he didn't like his personality. I can appreciate that you don't like his personality. His personality doesn't really bother me that much. I wouldn't want his life. But how can you deny results?
--:-- I had a podcast guest – I'm going to butcher his last name – Rajiv Peshawaria. His shtick, and I don't mean shtick in a negative way, is positive autocratic leadership. He got there because he was doing a survey for some client. It came back with over 16,000 responses asking, "What would you want in a leader?" All these characteristics, like a personality test for what you would want of a leader. It came back unequivocally – more than 20 countries, 16,000 plus responses – that an autocratic leader like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk is what people want to follow.
--:-- I found it so intriguing because everything we read today is this nice, kind of beta personality, everybody's equal, all this kind of stuff. Those come from good places. I don't mean to downgrade those. But at the end of the day, we need someone who's got a vision that we believe is going to pull the ship.
--:-- You see these great leaders stand behind their team, and poor leaders stand out in front. I don't think that's true. I think great leaders do stand out front and act as the tip of the spear. They deflect. They take all the fodder. They take all the hits and the flack so that their team can be amazing. If you're standing behind them, they're taking that crap. I want that guy or gal who's going to be like, "Screw everyone. We're going. We're going to get bloodied and beaten and yelled at. But at the end of the day, we're going to get to this place that we all want to go to." It takes a little bit of guts, a little bit of Angela Duckworth's grit. You need this. I just feel like we don't cultivate it enough anymore.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): I don't think that we cultivate it. Cultivation for leaders to lead requires someone giving an opportunity and taking a risk. It also requires failure. What ends up happening is that whole idea of domestication as far as leaders... It can be generational, but also from a global standpoint, there are lots of nations and people and cultures where that is not the mindset. The mindset is very much along the lines of "my ceiling is your floor." If I'm going to help launch you into your next now, then I've got to tell you the truth. I can't pretend that you're not going to take some hits. You're not going to take some shots. That's a part of the mix.
--:-- When's the last time you went to buy a car and asked, "Does it come with a windshield?" No, it comes with a windshield. It comes with tires. It comes with challenges. And before you drive it off the lot, you have to have insurance because they're betting you will have an accident, and you're betting you won't. You're betting you won't have an accident. But you still get the insurance.
--:-- We have challenges. We have stuff. If we want to be people who impact the future, then we've got to act like it. We've got to have the conversations. I've said to my leaders, "I'm not here for your comfort." I don't say that trying to be an ogre. But I will not be domesticated in the sense of saying, "Listen..." I work with people who are live fire. I work with warriors. I work with people who are all about life to the floor. For me, having conversations like, "Come on, come on, people. Let's go." They don't need to be amped up. They need to understand their big deal is loyalty. Their big deal is we are committed to the cause to win. And here's the other part: whatever it costs.
--:-- I think what some of the things you're saying, if I had to sum it up, I'd say the challenges right now are we're dealing with people who've counted the cost and they think it'd be better for Ryan to pay than for me.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Yeah. Slightly... Something you said just spurred a question that I'm interested in. You can answer however you want or not answer it if you feel uncomfortable. You said "man of faith." Myself as well. I wear a cross tattooed on my arm. I actually have two crosses on my arm. Faith is a big part of my life. I'm interested in your take on free will versus fate as someone who strives to be the best version of themselves. Where do you stand on that particular idea?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): If I understand it correctly, free will is saying whatever happens, happens. And then there's the other side that is, "I'm going to do this because I have the faith for it." Is that what you mean?
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Is our outcome in life predetermined, or do we have the ability to dictate the outcome?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Okay, so from a theological standpoint, it's called predestination by foreknowledge. I think it's really interesting, that question. I've lived long enough where there were enough people that didn't believe in me that caused me to question what I felt was burning in me. Now when I look down the line 30 years later, they were wrong. I was right. I can't say I wasted my time, but I'm so grateful for those challenges, or even the resistance.
--:-- Friction is good. Friction is how we drive our cars. Friction is how we fly planes. The idea of being a purpose-driven person, which I believe is important, and being purpose-driven in my world is not just acquiring things but impacting people.
--:-- I just did a funeral three weeks ago. A guy said, "Hey man, can you do my mother's funeral?" Nothing she said towards her last hours was, "I wish I had more stuff." It was always, "I wish I had more time," or "I wish I could talk to this person."
--:-- When you begin to think about that whole free will thing, I think a lot of folks use that as a really great card to cash when we just don't want to take responsibility. We just kind of say, "I don't want to have to pay the price. I don't want to have to attach. It's not even a belief system. I just want to do my own thing. What will be, will be." I can't imagine living like that because it pops all the hope balloons.
--:-- As a person of faith, it's getting clarity on why you live. I live to help people win. I want to help you win. I don't care if it's riding your bicycle. I'll be out there and put training wheels on that thing. We'll start with a tricycle. What's our goal? Let's go. Because most people who live from the place of it being all about self-requirement, 50 years after your death, no one will even remember you. That's powerful. That's brutal. That's frightening.
--:-- I got my doctorate in organizational leadership. I study all this stuff. How did the mom and pop shops that started 50 years ago not exist anymore? How did they get gobbled up by big box companies? There was something to be said. More and more, that's uncommon – something lasting 100 years. But if you go to Japan, they have a 100-year business plan. What's that all about? They think intergenerational.
--:-- When we start putting into the mix of free will and other things, I haven't heard a lot of that thinking stay connected to generational wealth. The long game, oftentimes, has been filled with a lot of regret because they didn't count the cost fully. But when you step up – when you're living by faith – there's a part of disappointment, yes. There are challenges that happen. But ultimately, at the end of the day, you can say, "I did the best I could" versus "I tried." "Try" means something in horseshoes and grenades. But "the best I could" might make me jump on top of that grenade.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I had a coach in high school on a baseball team. I played on a very high-level baseball team. We were struggling in the middle of the season. A lot of it was just we weren't getting along as a team, kind of playing for ourselves. He said – this is a guy that also smoked a cigar on third base as he was coaching third base, so understand the time period – he goes, "You sons of bitches, you're not just playing for the name on the front of the jersey. You're playing for the name on the back."
--:-- What he meant by that was every action you take out here isn't just a reflection of you or this team. It's a reflection of your parents. It's a reflection of your siblings, of the grandparents that come watch you play, of the cousins that come watch you play. You're playing for more than just yourself or this team. You're playing for everyone who supports you, who cares about you. Because if you act like a clown out here, that reflects on them.
--:-- That has stuck with me. I was probably 16 at the time. I probably hadn't thought that deeply about it. But when he said that, it shut every single guy in that dugout up. We went on to go all the way. We lost a tough game in the state championship. But we turned our season around and played amazing. You could have heard a pin drop. Not a single guy on that team had probably ever heard something like that said that way and explained that way. I'm paraphrasing a little bit, and there were way more curse words. But it was this moment where I think about what you said: when in America did we lose generational thinking? When did we stop saying, "I'm not living for me or just me. I'm living for my kids. I'm living for my kids' kids so that I can install lessons in them. I can set them up so that they then can be in a position to take care of their children and their children." On we go. When did we lose that? I don't know the answer, but it feels like we have to a certain extent.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): I think the word that comes to my mind is responsibility. I talk about this often. There's this part where your coach was speaking to you all, and you took responsibility. Break that word up: response-ability. You have the ability to decide right there. I am empowered to make a decision right now for my future, for my friends, for my family, for my people who I represent, and I'm going to represent them well.
--:-- When you look over the past 50 years, maybe even 75, there was a pivot from that to, "Well, it's out of my hands. We've got shareholders to care for. I have to do this. I've got to make the cut. I'm sorry." That responsibility gets lost in translation. No one has the ability to make me mad. I choose to be mad. I have a response-ability. My response to someone's ignorance doesn't mean I've got to escalate. I can say, "You know what..."
--:-- A couple days ago, I'm in the supermarket. I'm waiting in line at the deli. You take the ticket for your waiting line. I took the number from off the top. I'm standing there, and the guy says "98." I had been standing by the deli guy says "98." I'd been sitting next to a guy for probably five minutes just waiting. He's 98. The guy looks at his ticket. I said to him, "What number are you?" He has 99. I go, "Oh, you were here before me." So I switched with him. I take 99. He's like, "Wow, that's very kind of you. Thank you." He was in shock.
--:-- Remember back in the day when that was just normal? What happened? What happened to just decency and consideration? When you're convinced that you actually have to fight for everything you get all the time, that no one's ever going to take care of you, you've got to take care of you to such a level where if we had the Titanic happen nowadays, who knows who would be in the boat because of the fighting and craziness? We think that our moments right here are the most amazing moments ever.
--:-- I would say this: your moments will be measured 50 years from now when your grandchildren are talking about you. It's like, "I remember what dad said. I remember that guy, Ryan. It was so powerful. I had this moment in my business. I thought I was all over, and he said something to me that was amazing." Let's make our moments count. That's what's missing in today. Our responsibility is like, "I live in victimhood. I live from a place of I'm not empowered." No, you are empowered. You have to choose.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Dr. Eric Peoples, my friend, it is such a pleasure. Oh my gosh, I could go for hours. I'm stopping here only because I could talk for another two hours easy. This is amazing. It's giving me fodder. We'll do this again in six months or so. Bring you back on the show.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Hey, I'd love to.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): I just enjoy your viewpoint on the world. I think your approach, as I started with, is this really wonderful and needed mix today of passion and strength mixed with humility and understanding. I think we need more people like you out doing what you do. Where can people connect with you and go deeper down the rabbit hole in your work?
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): You can find me on the Eric Peoples Leadership Podcast. That's one of them. I can't wait to have you on mine. It's going to be awesome. Stay tuned. I got a new assistant coming. Also, ericpeoples.co. That's my Instagram handle. You can find me through the podcast or Instagram. Stay tuned. I'm looking forward. I'd love to be back in six months to tell you more about the book we're writing. It's going to be awesome for sure.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Done deal. Thank you so much. I wish you another best, my friend.
--:-- Guest (Dr. Eric Peoples): Hey, my friend. Honored to be with you. Thanks again.
--:-- Host (Ryan Hanley): Thank you for listening to the Ryan Hanley Show. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts.
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