Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business. Do Life. I have Jon Acuff back here with us today. Welcome, Jon.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. Thanks for having me again, Brad. Looking forward to it.
Brad Johnson: And I say back again. We were just reminiscing before we hit record here. You were a guest on my prior show, The Elite Advisor Blueprint. Loved the conversation. And you’ve just kept writing books and kept pouring into people. So, let’s go. Let’s come back for another edition. So, glad to have you back, man.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. I love when we can have a follow-up conversation. And also, you and I just spent the last 15 minutes just catching up and talking about things we agree about and overlap on. So, conversations like this are always fun for me. So, thanks for letting me have it.
Brad Johnson: For sure. Well, let’s go in. We were talking about kind of where to kick this conversation off. And you said you were just having a spirited debate here recently about the difference between what’s remarkable and what’s relatable. So, fill us in. Where do we want to go with that?
Jon Acuff: Well, it caught me off guard. I’ve started to be more open in conversations about money, where encouraging people to be deliberate with their money. I speak to a lot of financial advisors, a lot of financial planners. It’s still in a lot of circles one of those things you just don’t talk about, and so then people don’t get advice about it. They don’t get to kind of work it out with neighbors who can’t talk about it. And so, I was telling a friend that I think if you change a few things in your life, you can make an extra $100,000 a year. And his response surprised me because what he said back was, “Well, I wouldn’t share that publicly. It’s not relatable.” And I totally understood what he meant. He meant, “Hey, somebody’s going to see that. It’s a big number.” And I thought about it some more and I went on a run. It’s where I do a lot of my best thinking. I can have my bravest thoughts when I’m running. Like, I need a little bit of endorphins to kind of shake loose what I think. And I realized, “Well, I’m not trying to be relatable. I’m trying to be remarkable.” Like, relatable is safe because it’s common. It’s average. Like, the average American right now watches 34 hours of TV a week. According to Nielsen, 34 hours of TV a week, that’s almost a 40-hour week job. That’s relatable. But when you become remarkable, you become a little weird. That’s why you need people. That’s why you need groups. You and I talked about that, like the value of masterminds. By definition, if you dare to live a life that’s not normal, you become weird and you need other people that are weird with you. And so, for me, I think when it comes to the topic of money, finances, people have a really hard time talking about that. And I’m trying to engage my audience, my friends, the people I work with in more money conversations because I think it’s the only way to have great conversations about it.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. I relate a lot to that. When you’re an entrepreneur, which we were just talking like you grew up in a really cool organization and then made the jump over a decade ago. And I made the jump just over four years ago, and you can read all the books in the world about it, but you don’t really know what it’s like until you’re in it, down in the trenches. And I’ve found a very common theme. Independent financial advisors, they’re truly entrepreneurs. They’re building their own small businesses. And it’s almost like I can’t celebrate this thing at the family barbeque. You can’t be like, “Hey, I closed the $5 million case.”
Jon Acuff: No, dude.
Brad Johnson: Back to relatable, it’s not relatable. It sounds like you’re bragging. And so, you’ve got to have those groups. I feel like it’s almost like self-help for entrepreneurs. You got to have your people.
Jon Acuff: You have to. I had a really successful automotive executive ask me the other day said, “Have any of your relationships timed out?” And I thought, “What a good way to ask it.” And the truth was that some have, not out of blowups or blowouts, but just there’s been relationships where it’s hard when you’re an entrepreneur to explain what you do. I had a neighbor say to me one day, “I still don’t know exactly what it is you do for a living.” And I thought, “That’s a funny question.” But also, you need people around you that when they hear something you’re working on throw fuel, not water. And so, I told somebody recently, “Hey, I’m really going to go all in.” We’ve got this live event we’ve never done before. Like, we’re trying things in 2025 we’ve never tried before. I’m stretched. I’m uncomfortable. But like, the goal isn’t comfort. The goal is growth. So, I now see discomfort as a sign I’m headed in the right direction, not the wrong one. And he said, “Why are you going to go to all that trouble? Like, why don’t you just enjoy the success you’ve already had? Why don’t you just speak X amount of times a year?” And I thought, “What are you even talking about? I’m 49.” Like, ask a bird why it still flies. It’ll tell you, “Because I’m a bird.” I think, Brad, like one of the things I’m really passionate about right now is I think there’s a lot of people in their 40s and 50s who are confusing boredom with burnout. They’re over-labeling boredom as burnout, meaning they go, “Man, I’m just burned out,” and I’m going, “You haven’t left it all on the table.” Like, I meet a lot of especially young men who would say, “Oh, if I’ve got ten gears, I’m at gear eight,” and I go, “You’re at gear three. You have so much more to give. You’re just bored. You’re not being pushed, you’re not being stretched, you’re not being tested, and you’re not actually burned out.” I think we talk about burnout way too much and not enough about boredom and not enough about people going, “Wow, this thing is pulling me.” And so, for me, I’m starting to say things like embarrassed beats bored like busy beats bored like I know like I don’t want to rust. I know more people that are rusted out than are burned out, meaning it’s not that they’ve pursued a passion to the nth degree. You’re an entrepreneur. I guarantee there’s things that you’ve stretched in the last four years that you’re like, “Oh, ten years ago I used to tell people I was busy.” I had no idea. Or ten years ago I used to tell people I had a lot on my shoulders. I had no idea you were capable of more. And once you are in the fire of it, you were able to go like, “Oh, I am. I have other gears I didn’t know about.” That’s what I’m seeing. And that’s why you do need other people that like, I love to get around other leaders that I respect and look up to and go, “What are you doing to stay you? What are the things you’re doing to stay you?” I told you just ten minutes before we started, we’re having dinner. My wife and I are having dinner with Gail and Michael Hyatt because we really look up to them and they live in our town and they’ve parented adult children so much longer than I have. I have a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old. I am a rookie, dude. I’m a rookie and it’s stretching me so why wouldn’t I go ask them, “Hey, what was it like with Megan? Like, what was it like? How have you…?” because I want to learn that you need people like that. And if you don’t seek that community, you kind of play to your lowest denominator and that’s when I think you leave a lot of yourself on the table.
Brad Johnson: So much there. One of my favorite quotes of all time, Jim Rohn, “You’re the average of the five people you surround yourself with.” And we were kind of talking about that even before we hit record here. But Michael and Gail, yeah, they’re a little bit further down the path. And I find in any domain that you want to improve in, whether it’s be a better husband, better father, better business owner, you just have to find people that you respect, admire. It’s kind of like the WWJD bracelet of life. It’s like find that domain and the individuals that you look up and aspire that are further down the path than you. And from experience, I have found you go in as a humble student, almost all of them are willing to share. And Michael, actually back to kind of goal setting and what you said, I love the burnout versus boredom. I’ve seen that so much in entrepreneurs. It’s like I’ve played this same game for ten years. I’m bored of it. So, then they just kind of hit autopilot and then they almost feel guilty because they’re like, “I’m actually not achieving. I’m like a car that’s in neutral that’s just idling,” right?
Jon Acuff: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: And Michael I remember when I was in his mastermind, this is close to a decade ago, he said, “If you aren’t a little bit scared of the goals you set, if they don’t scare you a little bit, you probably haven’t set a very good goal.” And I’ve just found all of my growth. What we say at the Johnson house is, “Get uncomfortable. Do hard things. That’s what Johnsons do. That’s where the growth comes from.” And I just found it to be so true. Like, it’s not like some mantra that I feel like I got to get on a podcast and say. It’s like, no, it actually works in life. So, what’s your version of that? Like, how has that played out for you? You’ve made some tough decisions along the way, gotten uncomfortable, set some pretty big goals.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. I mean, I think it looks like a million things. I mean, one of them is that one of my kind of rules or standards is I practice positivity. I’m a very naturally negative person. By nature, I’m very cynical.
Brad Johnson: I would have never guessed that, Jon.
Jon Acuff: Exactly. I’m very pessimistic. Like, the joke I sometimes say is I’m not a glass-is-half-full guy. I’m a glass is half full of scorpions and somebody will probably steal the glass if we’re not careful. And maybe it’s because I grew up in Massachusetts and it’s wicked cold and we’re a wicked, bitter people. I don’t know. I just know I tested the ROI of positivity and I tested the ROI of negativity and I made more money when I was positive. I felt better when I was positive. I had more relationships when I was positive. I had more opportunities. And so, one of the things I do is I practice positivity and I would argue most people practice negativity. They practice fear. They practice stress. I’ll meet people, they’ll say, “Jon, I feel so negative lately.” I go, “Well, tell me about your day.” And he’d say, “Well, I got up a little late because I was up late last night watching YouTube videos and I listened to political talk radio as I drove to work. And then I hung out with three other people that hate their job. And then on the way home, I listened to a podcast called Brutal Unsolved Crimes in Your Neighborhood. And then I got on next door and I argued with neighbors about coyotes and mailbox colors. And then I fell asleep to my favorite Netflix show, People Who Look Like You Getting Murdered. It’s the new Jeffrey Dahmer. Like, I don’t know why I’m negative.” And I go, “I know why you’re negative. Like, dude, let me just, this is like a silly thing I’m excited about right now but they did a study. I wrote this book called Soundtracks, about mindset. They did a study years ago at NYU. Daniel Kahneman writes about it where they had college students come in two groups. One group, they gave a bunch of words, other group, they gave a bunch of words, and they said, “Make some sentences out of these words.” So, the first group, completely normal words. Second group, they hid words in there related to being old. So, words like slow and retired and bald and Florida. And so, then they spend 30 minutes making these sentences and they say, “The second part of the test is down the hall. Walk to the end of the hall.” And the scientists secretly time how long it takes them to walk into the hall. And the students who had read the words about being old, physically acted old, just from reading the words, they had consciously walked slower. Now take that and then have a kid wear a shirt that says, “I can’t adult today.” Imagine they just read the words for 30 minutes. Imagine you have a poster of something on your nightstand that says, “I’m sorry I’m late. I didn’t want to come,” or, “No, I’m going to stay in bed.” Like, there’s so much sadness couture that if you walk around in Target right now, there are so many negative shirts that people are like, “I’m going to wear on my body that says, ‘I can’t adult,’ or, ‘Don’t grow up. It’s a trap.’” And you look at that 24 hours a day, no wonder we have so much negativity. So, for me, if you ask me like, what are some of my big standards? Positivity is a standard and I have to work hard on it. It’s not natural to me, but the benefits are so worth it. And I like to say that because people don’t think I’m… That surprises people. And I hope it also gives other negative people hope because I’m like, “Man, I get it, dude. I start pretty low in the morning. I have to get myself back up because I know what I’m capable of when I’ve got myself back up and there’s a lot of things I do to do that.” But hopefully, if you’re listening to this and sometimes you hear these podcasts, you’re like, “This guy probably naturally, he wanted to get up at 2 a.m. He’s doing cold plunges constantly like that’s just who he is. He had a paper route when he was two.” I wasn’t any of those things. I work on a lot of those things because I want the benefits, but they’re not natural to me, and I think anybody can do it.
Brad Johnson: Do you remember when in your life you first realized, “Man, I think I might slant towards the negative side versus the positive side”?
Jon Acuff: Oh, I remember.
Brad Johnson: Anybody call you out or what happened?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. I mean, I think when you get married, you learn your flaws pretty quickly, I think, like your spouse goes, “Well, that’s not normal,” and you go, “No, everybody thinks that way.” I remember this is such a dumb thing. We rented a moving van when we were going to move from Massachusetts down to Atlanta. I married a Southern girl. She was over the Massachusetts winters and was like, “We got to get back to Atlanta.” And we went to rent a moving van, which is insane that they do. The idea that you could drive a Civic to like a moving van company and go, “I have a driver’s license. I like a 24-foot truck, please,” and they go, “Here you go. Good luck.” But I remember when we were walking out, I was like I said to my wife, “I bet when guys that drive 18-wheelers, jackknife it, and they wreck the whole truck, they’re glad they did it because they got it out of the way. Like, it’s probably going to happen so at least the worst part is over.” And she’s like, “What? Nobody thinks, “Oh, good. I got the jack. Like, no. What? Like, that’s so negative.” I was like, “Is that negative?” And she was like, “Very.” But even just little things where it’s like, if I got a voicemail thinking, “Oh, that person’s mad,” I have no evidence that that person’s mad. Like, why is that my first thought to like, “Oh, that client’s upset.” And so, learning little things like that and then again, like with Soundtracks, the core concept was you ask three questions. Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? Like, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? So, the thing I’m thinking right now, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? And if you say no to those three questions, it’s probably a broken soundtrack that you need to do something with. And so, you talk about do hard things is something that works in your family. For me, the book, Soundtracks, I knew it would sell well because I’ve been using it so often in my own life. Like, sometimes people in our space kind of the non-fiction help space I would say write books with their hands, but not with their heart. And when you write a book with your heart, it’s usually because you’ve lived it. And so, that’s what I’m striving to do with books. And so, for me, that allowed me to write a book that I think helped a lot of people because they could go, “Oh, this is negative. How has Jon built a winning mindset?” I didn’t come with it. I build it every day and anybody can build it and you can start negative and end up really positive.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, I love that. You’ve written a lot of books. How many have you written to this point?
Jon Acuff: About ten.
Brad Johnson: Ten. And I’m sure that process has evolved. I have our mutual friend, Michael, says, “There’s life before the book. There’s life after the book,” right?
Jon Acuff: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: It’s truly changed the game for you. I mean, I’m assuming it has. I’d love to hear maybe how. But AI is a hot topic right now. I feel like we’re right on the verge of this content explosion whether it’s video, audio. Now, I mean, literally, you can co-host a podcast without another human and writing, obviously. How do you see that evolving? Do you think that book writing and kind of creating this personal brand, which many advisors that are listening in have done that and benefited from, how do you see that thing playing out as we look into the near future?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. So, like a financial advisor, I would farm to AI all the things you don’t like doing that the customer doesn’t expect you. So, what does that mean? So, it means like if you have, say, you love creating your newsletter. You’ve got a great newsletter. You enjoy writing that. Great. Write that. Don’t write the stuff that promotes it. They don’t expect you to write that. Like, feed that into ChatGPT or Claude or whichever service you like and say, “Spit me out ten tweets. Spit me out ten questions that I could turn this into a study guide.” Now, I’ve got a bonus study guide that comes with each or like four questions for your office or five questions. Like, use it to create, you know, if you have a podcast, you could say, “You know what, I’m going to feed the transcript of every podcast into AI and ask it to turn it into a ten-point free PDF because I want to grow my newsletter.” So, if I do a great conversation with somebody and they’re an expert on _____, I’m going to say, “Turn this into a free PDF,” and that maybe is going to be five things nobody’s thinking about retirement and it’s going to turn into a free PDF that you sign. You get my email newsletter and you get it when you sign up. So, I just think there’s a million things like that that you can do with it, follow-ups like what’s, you know. But for me as an author, I’m just trying to figure out my places with it. So, I think research is a great place. I think anyone who has content should feed it into AI and say, “Hey, create other things for this. Tell me things I’m missing. Who’s writing about this right now?” I mean, from an author perspective, imagine taking a chapter and saying, “Find me ten obscure research studies that prove this idea is correct. Find me ten that challenge it,” and have it go, “Hey, there’s stuff that’s going on in Norway that nobody knows about and here’s what you need to…” So, I think it’s going to supplement. I’m always curious if I was a financial advisor about what makes me recession-proof and now what makes me AI-proof. So, I know in my industry, public speaking is pretty AI-proof. And I learned that because of COVID. If there was going to be a time when a live event got killed, where the live event industry and they said, “We’re never doing them again,” it would have been 2020, it would have been 2021. But they came back roaring because there’s a power to live events. There’s a power to be in the same space. There’s a power to the conversation you have in the hallway with another advisor who’s not a competitor but is on the other side of the country and goes, “Man, here’s this thing I did and it worked. I ask this one question. It clarifies.” Like, I started asking clients this and they’re able to see themselves in the future in a way that they’ve never been able to see before. You should ask that question, too. So, for me, I think it’s a healthy exercise. If you’re concerned about AI, what are the things I do that AI can’t do? Like, right now, AI can’t do humor well. So, like, I use a lot of humor to communicate in my books, so I know, “Okay, that’s a part of it.” Like, that’s helpful. They can’t do live events. Okay. Like me on stage is AI-proof. Coaching, I think, going back and forth, you know. But there’s other things where I’d say if my kids wanted to be a copywriter right now, I’d say, “Be a prompt writer.” Because I went to college to be a copywriter. I was an advertising copywriter. I wouldn’t do that and major the same way I did 20 years ago because I just don’t think it’s going to exist, it’s really 25 years ago, gosh, the same way it existed for me.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s wild. It’s wild how many majors won’t exist in the future due to it. But I love your take on. So, what I’m hearing you say is kind of long-form content, whether it’s your book, whether it’s a podcast interview, feeding that in and using AI to kind of slice and dice it and distribute it however you see fit, whether it’s an opt-in for a PDF, whether it’s tweets.
Jon Acuff: We just did that with a video. Probably the most viral piece of content I’ve had in the last 14 months, I was on a podcast, we fed it into I think it was Pause was the one we used. We fed the video of the podcast into Pause. It clipped it up into 38 different one-minute reels and said, “This is going to be your most viral one,” and it was right.
Brad Johnson: Are you serious?
Jon Acuff: I think it has 830,000 views right now. It got shared 24,000 times, like maybe 3,000 Instagram followers and it said this. And, dude, it was a throwaway comment in an hour podcast where I had riffed about sports gambling. All I did was say like, “Oh, hey, here’s this…” And it just caught that like they were able to go, “Oh, sports gambling is really trending right now and sports gambling is really a hot button.” And like you would never look at my content and go, “If I know one thing about Jon, he talks about sports gambling a lot.” I don’t. It’s just I had like a lot of different answers in the podcast and it was able to see this is one. And that’s what I would say like, dude, even if, say, you had a Zoom call with a potential person, like a potential somebody who’s going to be potentially a client and you feed that into AI and go, “What are the questions they always ask?” You feed five of those in and you come up with ten Q&As that people, they always ask these five questions, “Well, how do I know or how can I be sure?” That’s what you have to think about it like they’re going to see something I’m not seeing and they have eyes on it that I might not notice. Because it’s hard being a financial advisor because you have to wear every hat. That’s like one of the jokes I do when I speak to financial planners or advisors is like, “You don’t know when you start your own thing after leaving a big thing that you’re now in charge of the printer.” Like, nobody tells you that. They don’t go like, “Hey, by the way, you now are in charge of the printer,” because you used to have a number to call, like you can be like, “Hey, there’s a jam,” and now you’re the guy that fixes the jam.
Brad Johnson: Or like an IT guy that you’d be like, “Hey, IT guy, can you come across the hallway?” What’s funny is that was one of the first things when we started Triad. I was like, “Oh, I guess we have to lease a printer now.” And it is so true. You don’t think that at all.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. And there’s a million of those things. So, just look at AI, like which of these things can I farm to AI? So, like I didn’t want to spend X like I’m not a good video editor. I’m terrible at editing videos, so I would never go, “I’m going to save the money and do it myself.” It was super-fast, super cost-efficient, and that’s where I think that it can really chop things up and see them in a way that I didn’t even know. And the other thing is, I would say there’s gold in your content and AI can be a second set of eyes to help you see what it is. Because you’re so close to it, it’s kind of that quote, I think Roy Williams said it, not the basketball coach, because I know in Kansas, you know the name Roy Williams.
Brad Johnson: Do you know the name Roy Williams?
Jon Acuff: But there’s an author named Roy Williams and he said, it’s hard to read the bottle… “It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle.” And I think that’s true of business. I think that’s why you need mentors. It’s why you need masterminds, but it’s also why you need AI because it can see opportunities you can’t see because it’s just going through them so fast.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So true. Can you say again what was the AI tool that you used on the podcast?
Jon Acuff: But, yeah, it was so easy, so simple.
Brad Johnson: And this tool is specifically for video editing?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, video editing. That’s the one I used. And, yeah, I want to give your people the exact name. Hold on. Let me look it up. We’ll find it exactly.
Brad Johnson: We’ll put it on the show notes for everybody.
Jon Acuff: We’ll put it in the show notes as always. We only use like 2 or 3 but this is the one that I was most impressed with. And again, the one that… Okay. Yeah. So, it’s, oh, I’m sorry. I’m glad I looked it up. It’s Opus. O-P-U-S Clip. OpusClip. And dude.
Brad Johnson: So, it basically had like a virality like meter like this is…
Jon Acuff: Yeah. And it wrote the caption. I mean, like everything but I don’t know how it figured out. I mean, I’m imagining it’s probably tied to Google Trends or whatever or search terms and so it’s able to say, “Wow. You in an hour-long, you did 60 seconds about a thing that’s very popular and controversial right now. You should include that in the…” Yeah. So, OpusClip. I’m glad we paused. Thanks for following up on that. I would have sent people toward some terrible app.
Brad Johnson: Well, when I podcast, Jon, I’m just as curious as the listeners, man. I’m here to learn too. I’m like, “What was that thing? I need to go back and check it out.”
Jon Acuff: Dude, you’re a learner. Like, that’s the thing that I like about you is that you’re curious that way. Like, for me, I’m constantly trying to get better and I’m asking questions and I’m taking notes. Like, I really feel like I’m gathering ideas from everybody I meet. I’ll give you one that just happened this weekend. I thought it was fascinating. We went to Disneyland with some friends and one of them is an executive at Paramount and he produces Broadway shows. Just a brilliant guy. And I was telling him I’ve got a live event coming up. It’s called Remarkable You, kind of give him the background, and he said, “You know, I met a Broadway producer ten years ago and one of the things he’d do before every show was he would walk through the aisles of the theater and put 50 different quarters, different places.” And I asked him why he does that. And he says, “Because people get delighted when they find a quarter. And I want them to have a base level of delight that they’re starting our show with.” And I was like, “That is brilliant.” And so, a couple of years ago, I used half dollars to kind of train myself not to text and drive. I just give myself a half dollar every time I completed a big drive without texting like it was a silly little… I test a ton of goals but I have 500 half dollars in my house and my wife’s been like, “Can you please not be an 80-year-old man with this many half dollars? And can we bring those back to the bank?”
Brad Johnson: I’m just picturing like a big old like wine jar.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. It’s a big mason jar. It’s a mason jar. Yeah. And my wife was like, “You’re giving yourself your own money. You’re not making money. You’re just rewarding yourself with your own money.” It’s like but your brain is gullible, dude. Your brain is so gullible, which is why it can be either amazing or dangerous. It’s amazing when you figure out how you work best and then work within those parameters. It’s dangerous when you’re not curious and you allow the world to set your definition of success, your focus, your priorities. But so, dude, I’m 100% going to put, I don’t know, 100 half dollars in the factory when we do our event. Like, I’ll totally start the event that way. Like, nobody even has a half dollar anymore.
Brad Johnson: Now, here’s my question. Are you going to prompt them? Are you just going to let it just naturally unfold and…
Jon Acuff: I’m going to let it naturally unfold and then I’m going to mention it from stage probably at the end of the day, and I’m probably going to say like, “Hey, it doesn’t take…” I don’t know what angle I’ll take, but it might be like, “It doesn’t take $100 to delight somebody like it’s a half dollar.” Well, like…
Brad Johnson: We’ve already hit it on this conversation, your comment on the shirts, and what you feed in.
Jon Acuff: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: So, you can feed it negative. I’ve heard the analogy of the good wolf and the bad wolf.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. Which one you feed?
Brad Johnson: But basically, you’re priming. It’s like the input in the brain. It’s like, “Oh, today’s a good day,” you know?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, look at that. Yeah.
Brad Johnson: I love that.
Jon Acuff: No. So, but that’s the kind of thing that like I immediately wrote that down on my phone for my kind of idea collection folder. So, often I don’t know where it’ll go. I just know, “Oh, okay. I want to remember that. I felt encouraged by that or challenged by that,” or, “Wow, that’s really smart. I’d never thought of it that way. That’s a good question.” So, I’m trying to constantly collect things like that, that I think are interesting or delightful or are going to change how I think about something, and then I share them with other people.
Brad Johnson: Well, to me, that is the joy of entrepreneurship is you go somewhere, you experience something, you’re like, “We could do that for our people, like either our team or our clients.” And I’ll give you one of my versions of that. So, in finance, obviously, it’s a very money-driven business because that’s all you do all day, every day is work with money. And so, a lot of people, the top performers in our space, it’s like performance-driven, like how much business, how much revenue did you drive in a given year, and sometimes to the detriment of the business. We were talking about that before we hit record. Like, a lot of times it was just do business, do business, do business. The whole concept of do business, do life is the integration of building a business that serves you, not you serving it. But we were like, “What’s a fun way to reward performance and have fun with it?” And you sound like you’re a sports fan, at least basketball. Do you remember the Miami Hurricanes, the turnover chain?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, totally.
Brad Johnson: So, when the defense would get a pick or recover a fumble, as soon as they came off on the sideline, they’d throw this like massive chain on them. And I think a few teams have kind of taken that idea and run with it. But we’re like, “What if we do a leaderboard chain?” And so, we started sending out so we do a monthly contest and we would send out it’s like a big gold like obnoxious, right? It looks like Flavor Flav’s clock.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: That’s what it looks like. And we have been blown away. It was just a fun, random idea that we kind of borrowed from somewhere else. And now we’ve got 55, 60-year-old men saying, “Where am I at on the chain leaderboard? Let’s go.”
Jon Acuff: Yeah, dude. Totally.
Brad Johnson: But that’s like the fun of it. It’s like just don’t take yourself too seriously, have some fun along the way, and you can just kind of snag these ideas wherever they come in from.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. And you don’t know. And what’s fun is you test them like you often don’t know which ones are going to pop off. But like none will if you don’t do any. And so, for me, I’m always like, okay, let me test this in my own life. Did this work? Is this fun? I love the chain. And I think it connects them. They’re competitive. You already know they’re competitive and it gives you another. That’s one of the things if you ask me, like, okay, people who are remarkable, what do they have in common? And one of the things they have in common is that they’re always doing like a hundred games behind the scenes that nobody sees. They’re always like playing, trying little goals, playing little games. They have little rules. And if you’ll ask them, oftentimes, they’ll be like, “Well, I don’t know. Nah.” And I’ll be like, “No, what are you really doing?” They’ll go, “Okay, here’s what I’m doing. Like, here’s this thing. My walk doesn’t count unless I get to the very end. And it only is an extra 50 steps but sometimes I don’t want to do it. I have to touch this rock. And it’s a rule. And I know it’s silly, but I have to touch it.” And so, that’s the thing, like high performers love a chain like that because it’s another little game and it’s another little chance to be engaged in what they’re doing. Because the reality is, if you make, speaking of money, if you make your goal a certain amount of money, what do you do when you get it? Like, you either have to double it or add to it and then you’re like you don’t really even get to celebrate it because you’re always moving the goalposts. Or you get bored and you go, “Okay. It didn’t do what I thought it would do.” So, I think that in order to stay engaged in what you’re doing, it’s helpful to have lots of games like, “Okay. I’m going to mentor lots of people. I’m going to find fresh ways to look at this. I’m going to…” The AI thing like you asked me about like people that are older than me that I look up to, the reverse of that is having young people that are 10 years, 20 years behind you who know things you don’t too and saying, “Hey, I’m 49, I don’t want to be 89 yet, but like I can feel AI trying to pass me. What do I need to know that I don’t know?” And that 29-year-old, they don’t have to unlearn the old way to do the new way. They grew up in the new way. So, there’s the second form of humility is going to a 29-year-old and going, “Hey, I’ve had some success, whatever. I’m 20 years older. What am I just doing backwards right now?” And they go, “Oh, you’re still doing this by paper. It’s a button. Like, just press this button.” And I think that’s helpful too.
Brad Johnson: Well, that is the hack in life. I remember when I first, I mean, I’m 44 now, so I think mentally I’ve stayed a young guy like all of us are like, “No, no, I’m still young.”
Jon Acuff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: And then when you start to hire 24, 25, 26-year-olds and they understand none of your music references, none of your movie references, I’m like, “Oh, wait. It’s like they have no clue what I’m talking about here.” But that can be an advantage because like if you’re trying to build a platform on Snapchat or IG or TikTok, well, TikTok probably won’t be around much longer but they grew up on it. Like, they can do that stuff in their sleep. And it’s one of those things I heard it said a long time ago. Somebody sent the elevator down for you and you rode it up. Don’t forget to send it back down.
Jon Acuff: That’s good.
Brad Johnson: That’s like my joy in life. Like, get a young, hungry student that just wants to learn. That is like one of the greatest joys I have.
Jon Acuff: It’s the best. It’s the best. Like, if anything, my wife will sometimes joke that like, at dinner parties when somebody introduces me to their kid, I come on too strong because I’m like, I’ll grab them and be like Warren Buffett would trade every dollar he has for what you have right now, which is time. He has none of it left. You have all of it left. Let’s go. Like, this is.
And the reverse of that is I have a real heart for, especially like 24 to 32, maybe 34 right now, they’re being told terrible, terrible, broken soundtracks, like you’ll never be able to afford a house. The rules have been written against you. This is the worst time it’s ever been. And like, that is I can’t stand that stuff. And they’re making financial decisions. They’re being turned into constant renters, and then they’re being turned into constant consumers because they go, well, what’s the point? Like, I know, I’ll never be able to build this financial future. What’s the point? And like, that stuff drives me nuts.
So, I’m on the other side going like, no, no, no. The bar is low right now, like the bar’s low and you can clip it. And here’s the three books to read. Like, here’s that, go talk to this guy. He knows more than me. Go talk to this person. And like, yeah, a hungry 24-year-old, a hungry 27-year-old is the coolest thing in the world because some of it is I’m talking to me, like I wasn’t that way. It took me to about my mid-30s to kind of like, really go, oh, wait a second, there’s a lot of possibility.
So, when I see a 24-year-old who already gets it, I’m a little jealous, but I’m more excited because I’m like, dude, you can go so far. Like, you’re going to do some great things or like, the phrase we used in our family is killer. Like, he’s a killer. She’s a killer. Like, oh, like that person’s a… I talked to a company in Columbia, Missouri, and they had an amazing assistant. And the guy, the executive said, “I knew she was going to be amazing within 30 seconds of the interview.” And I said, “How’d you know?” And he said, “Well, our office is hard to find. And when she came into the interview, I said, did you have a hard time finding the office? And she said, no, I drove it last night just to make sure I knew where it was.” And he was like, “Here we go.” Because for an assistant, that’s exactly the attitude you want.
Another one? Like, this is one of my favorite ones. There’s a great agent with Sotheby’s out in L.A. and I spoke at his event. And one of his things is when young agents come up to him and go, “I want to do what you do. You’re super successful, L.A., $20 million houses,” whatever, he goes, “Great. Here’s my favorite book.” He gives them a copy of his favorite book. It’s called Ninja Selling. It’s a real estate book. And he says, “Read this book. It meant the world to me.”
And what he does is he writes his personal cell phone on page 51. And if they never call him, he knows they’re not ready. Because if he says to them, this book means the world to me, this is my favorite book and you don’t even read the page 51, you’re not going to do anything else that it takes to really be remarkable. And dude, stuff… That’s what you have to know, like clients are doing that to you. When you talk to a possible financial advisor, a planner, they are interviewing you and they’re checking their own list of, is this person a killer? Is this person remarkable? Did they follow up, like it’s all this stuff?
And then the young thing, we didn’t even talk about this. When I talked to financial planners and advisors, one of the things they’re stressed about right now is the handoff to the next generation. Are they going to go with one of their friends? Are they going to do the LeBron thing where they hire somebody who’s like their 27-year-old friend they grew up with? How do you manage that handoff? How do you build a relationship with that next generation before the handoff?
So, it’s not the day of the handoff. It’s the first time you’ve ever seen them in the office, and they’re like, yeah, I have a friend who’s closer to my age. This is my dad’s old advisor. No, thanks. Like, how do you build those relationships? So, I think it’s a really fascinating time to be in the industry you’re in because there is a lot of money changing hands right now.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, there’s so much opportunity. I mean, there really is. It’s wild. I think the people that program themselves like back to the programming of the young kids that you were talking about, it is so much. Like, back to mentoring the next generation, 24, 25, 26-year-olds, I look at it as almost like I can help them avoid all the mistakes that I made and I…
Jon Acuff: You could save them 10 years.
Brad Johnson: Oh, my gosh.
Jon Acuff: Ten years.
Brad Johnson: Legitimately, I told Colin on our team this the other day, I’m like, dude… I think he’s 24. I don’t even think he’s 25 yet. He’s been on the team a couple of years. I go, the conversations you’re having at 24, I wasn’t having until I was in my 30s, man. He’s just like, because he’s a sponge, he’s willing to work hard. And like, honestly, for me, that’s a bit of the legacy that we get to leave behind.
And for you advisors listening in there, I’ve heard it said, so much of financial advising is built on personalities. It’s like, here’s this charismatic guy that makes people feel at home and, therefore, he does a great job building relationships and finance. Some of that is hard to transfer, but there are things that you can give to that 25, 26-year-old, the next advisor in line, where it’s like, oh, don’t open the conversation this way. Open it that way. And it’s been trial and error for 20 years. So, you know it works. And there’s just like, I almost look at it like it’s my duty to leave that legacy behind for those that are willing to learn it and put the work in.
Jon Acuff: Dude, here’s two things I’d say about that, one, if you’re young, you don’t understand how excited all the generations are to help you. Like, you’ve been kind of gaslit into believing they’re gatekeeping. They’re not going to ever help you. Like, it’s the opposite. I tell my kids that all the time, our 19-year-old and 21-year-old. I’m like, “Look, if a 54-year-old comes to me for advice, it’s different than if a 24-year-old does.” If a 24-year-old does or sends me an email, like I send them books, I throw it like, here’s a free ticket to our event. Like, you’re really excited about that.
And I think that’s really, really valuable to remember if you’re in your 20s. And then you said like you could save time and money for somebody. I can help you save $1 million on the title of your book. Like, this is $1 million lesson I learned the hard way. And I know there’s going to be advisors that want to write books because when I go to events, I go, “Hey, I want to write my own book.” You need to offer the solution on the cover and fix the problem on the inside. What does that mean?
I named a book, Do Over, and I thought it was positive. I thought fresh start, rise from the ashes. Nobody wants to admit they need a do over. Nobody, especially Americans, people live in denial. Even if the house is on fire, they don’t want to admit the house is on fire. And nobody wants to give a negative book title to a friend. No… Ask any wife that’s…
Brad Johnson: Let me think about. Hey, Jon.
Jon Acuff: Ask any… Yeah, hey, this is about losers. You came to mind. Ask any wife who’s giving their husband a book that they heard about at church about anger, like, “Hey, here’s a book about rage. I thought of you. I’ll put it on your nightstand.” He’s not reading it. And so, for my next book, I wrote a book called Finish. And the initial subtitle was Stop Making Perfect the Enemy of Done, but stop an enemy are negative. We changed it to Give Yourself the Gift of Done, and it sold triple the amount of copies, like Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done.
So, Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking, like, there’s always exceptions where it’s a painful title, but man, I think, in so much in life when it comes to marketing, we have to paint the future and fix the problem. Like, same with retirement, you’re painting, you’re trying to understand what do they really care about, where do they want to head? And then you do the work to get there, but if you start with the work to get there, if you start with the pain, man, it shuts down conversations. And people don’t like to start in that spot.
Brad Johnson: People want aspirational. Just one of my favorite Triad members, they did a complete rebrand that we helped them with when they got to Triad. And as we were kind of interviewing, kind of distilling the DNA out of like why they exist, both Mike and Jess were like, “Man, we just like, our favorite day of the week is Saturdays.” And what came of it was they had this really, like, I forget what it was. It was like some railroad thing. It’s like, train to retire, I don’t remember. It was forgettable. That’s the easy part.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, that’s the problem.
Brad Johnson: And nowadays, they say we believe every one of our clients deserves to live every day like a Saturday in retirement. And I’m like, okay. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about, like, no offense, get out of debt. That’s a little bit of the other side of that. Most people would rather live the aspirational side of that, right? And I know there’s people we know that have built brands on that, but…
Jon Acuff: Yeah, but I mean, Dave’s book is Total Money Makeover. The title of the book is Get Out of Debt.
Brad Johnson: That’s a good point.
Jon Acuff: His main program is Financial Peace University. Even Nike, when Nike does an ad, they don’t go, “Hey, chubby. Hey, you sit on the couch. Boy, you look like you’re out of shape. I don’t think you’ll ever…” You’re like, “No, they go, here’s a video of a marathon runner.” And so, it just blows me away when we sometimes and again, that comes back to that negative-positive, like, how do I… because I’m still going to walk you through the work, but I’m not going to start with the work because I need to sell you on what’s possible, so you’re willing to do the work.
I think the mistake we make sometimes is we think that people just become disciplined or have grit or persistence, but that’s never how it goes. Like, what usually happens is they get a taste of what could be, and then they’re willing to do the work to get more of that. So, my life changed. I had a day job. I felt really stuck in my career and I started to blog, and I realized, wait a second, there’s a lot of people out there and a lot of the gatekeepers are gone. If I’m faithful to this, I can start a conversation.
And so, I started getting up at 6 a.m., not because I was disciplined, but because it allowed me to blog more. I stopped watching as much TV, not because I got disciplined, but because TV gave me nothing, like TV offered me nothing. Blogging was fun. I started to see my time as logs and I wanted to throw it in the fire that was blogging. And I think that’s what happens when you’re like, if you can figure out and you know how people are wired, they’re often wired like consequence based or reward based. I think a good advisor is constantly going, okay, what moves the needle for them?
Some people are consequence based. They do get motivated by, if you don’t make these changes, it’ll be really hard for your kids to go to college without that. Like, that consequence kind of fires them up. Some people are reward based where you’re going, you can move to Florida and get the boat and do the thing, like, and the reward gets them excited. I interviewed somebody today that said like they grew up in poverty and the fear of returning to that gives them positive motivation.
And there’s so many, they’re so far away from that, but they’re like, I’m not going back to that. I’m not like. And so, I think a good advisor is constantly trying to figure out what motivates them. How do I help them see that? How do I help them paint that picture? And the hard thing is you’re trying to get them to embody a future that might feel far away, but you, as an advisor, know is closer than they think because we live in a later culture. People think, well, later, I’ll do that. Later, I’ll do that.
I talked to a group of advisers and they said, one of the most popular campaigns on GoFundMe right now are funerals because people can’t even afford their own funeral. And I thought, what? Like, that is terrible. You die, and the first thing your kids have to do in the midst of all this grief is kickstart your funeral. Like, that’s crazy to me. But people think, okay, well, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it later. And I think part of your job is getting the people to see the future and then build in the now.
Brad Johnson: So, I want to go to this, you’ve written a lot. You’ve written extensively on goal setting and hit some big goals yourself. I heard a conversation the other day, and it was talking about how you actually achieve goals. And it was, is it motivation or is it the belief that you can? And I’m curious because you shared a little bit of your journey. You started out, you’re in your day job, you’re blogging. I’m sure, if somebody would have futurecast your life and said, hey, Jon, you’ll be on a podcast, like 10, 15 years later, talking about your 10th, your 12th book, you’ve sold a ton of copies, that would have seemed so far out there that you’re like, “Is that the same dude we’re talking about here? Or what’s up?”
So, what kind of took you down that path of belief? I know the goals get bigger the more you achieve. But were there hacks where you surrounded yourself with other authors, you’re like, “Dude, you got this?” Like, how did you get through the impostor syndrome of going from blogger to legit author to what you are today, speaking and running events, things like that?
Jon Acuff: Yeah. I mean, I think you’re… somebody, some people always go like, you can be fearless. I don’t believe that. I believe there is new fears at each new level. I think the only way you’re ever fearless is if you’re stuck. So, when I spoke to 100 people, I had 100-person-sized fear, but I worked on that. And then I did it and I did it a couple of times and I got over that. But then I spoke to a thousand people and I had a thousand-person-sized fear, but then I did it. I got over then, I had 10,000-person-sized fear.
So, I think at every level, you’re going through it. So, I never feel like I got over fear or over impostor syndrome. I feel like I got through it and I have ways that I go through it. But I mean, if somebody had told me, if they had tried to tell me what would happen 15 years from then, I couldn’t have understood it. It probably would have been overwhelming, to be honest with you. Like, it probably would have paralyzed me. Like, if they had told me the work it would require to, I would have felt overwhelmed if somebody said, “Hey, it’s going to be like this and you’re going to love it.”
But to get there, here’s the path. That would have felt like really overwhelming. So, one of the things I think about is like three days is firm, three weeks is fuzzy, three months is fiction. So, three days from now, I got 90% accuracy. If you ask me, like, “Hey, what are you doing?” I got 90% accuracy. You ask me three weeks from now, it’s a little fuzzier. There’s going to be some surprises. Some things I didn’t see coming, three months from now, feels largely like fiction.
So, I’m planning on kind of a rolling schedule. I’m adding clarity as I go through my calendar. And so, I just started to kind of blog and go, “Okay, well, I’m going to be faithful to the blog. What does that look like? How do I lean into it?” And then like, oh, somebody asked me to speak. I’ve never done that before, I’ll go do that. And I was terrible at it because…
Brad Johnson: Did that come through the blog writing?
Jon Acuff: That came through the blog writing. Somebody emailed me one day from Oklahoma and was like, do you want to speak at our event? And I was like, “Sure, I do.” And I started with seven main points in a half-hour speech, which was terrible, but then I went to a friend and said, “Hey, what do you think?” And he was 10 years ahead of me and said, “Dude, three main points max, stop it.” And then I gave the speech to another friend in my living room, like you imagine the awkwardness of that, like…
Brad Johnson: What year was this?
Jon Acuff: This was 2008. So, there’s a dude sitting on my floral print couch with my green carpeting because we were so… I didn’t know how poor we were. My wife… I was like, “We sure did love camping when we were younger.” She was like, “No, we were poor. All we could afford is $11 camping trips. Like, that’s what we…” I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” So, I gave the speech in front of him. I was not good at it. If you asked me, I would have told you I was ready for bigger opportunities because I had that belief, but I really wasn’t. I needed the reps.
So, I spoke in an event called Global Leadership Summit in Chicago two years ago. Massive event, led to like 20 other events. Such a great opportunity. If you’d asked me five years ago, ten years ago, “Can you do that?” I would be like, “Totally. I’d be great at that.” I had a lot of belief, but I needed the reps to get better, to make the most of that moment. So, it was just this dance.
And then working with Dave Ramsey for three years blew my mind open to what’s possible. Like, it just… I went from speaking to 80 people in a crowd to 8,000 in like two months, where I would do 10 minutes of warm-up at his arena events and you just get thrown in the deep end and you learn, and just being around the people that were at that organization. Like, one of my favorite things with like, and nobody knows this, but in Dave’s studio, I remember we had 300 employees there at the time I was there, maybe 350, and he has, I think, 1,100 now. So, massive growth.
But I was sitting at his desk in his radio station and I was recording some audio for something and there was a stack of Polaroids with names on them and it was pictures of every staff member. So, during commercial breaks, he’s going over everybody’s name and their photo to make sure that as the company grows, he stays connected to the people that worked there.
Brad Johnson: That’s wild.
Jon Acuff: And I was like, that’s a really cool leadership moment and I got around stuff like that. So, it was just this back and forth, continual dance of trying things and making mistakes. Trying them a different way and testing stuff and going, okay, this didn’t sell, this does sell. But no, for me, I needed the motivation first, and then the repetition led to a bigger belief. Like I had to motivate myself to do the thing. Like I had to kind of get fired up to do the thing, but I didn’t believe right out of the gate. I didn’t, if you had said, again, you’ll be a New York Times bestseller, I would have said, Brad, like, I don’t see it. And again, that might have overwhelmed me.
I like to do it kind of like in bits and pieces and grow it as I go because it ends up going places I didn’t intend, like where I didn’t see it coming. And there’s a surprise to it. And I think that’s just more authentic. And where I see people get stuck with goals is when they think they have to have it all figured out before they start.
Brad Johnson: Yes.
Jon Acuff: So, I wrote this book, All It Takes Is a Goal. And one of the things I said in there was I think we’ve misinterpreted Stephen Covey’s “Begin with the end in mind” and we’ve turned it into “You can’t begin until you know the end.” And I think that’s really unfortunate because I meet really talented people that go, “I got to map out this year.” Or “I got to figure out this next six months.” And I think you’re not going to be able to, like, and if you’re going to wait to start, you’ll never start, Because the thing you have to remember, especially as an advisor, you, like perfectionists are going to change the world as soon as they have all the information.
And unfortunately, we haven’t lived in an all info world in 200 or 300 years. And what I mean by that is like 200 or 300 years ago, Thomas Jefferson owned all the books. Now, I don’t mean a lot of books. He owned all the books that have been published. You couldn’t do that now. You’ll never have all the info. What happens as an advisor is you have enough info, you make a decision and you iterate, you get some more info, you make a decision and you iterate. Like, one of the things I like to say is September you is smarter than January you. Because in January, people go, I got to have all my goals figured out. I got to have, and they try to have a New Year’s resolution.
The reason New Year’s resolutions fail is you try for a year, a goal you haven’t done for a day. That would be like marrying the person you just speed dated. Like you’d never go. I’ve thought about this for eight minutes. I’m going to do it all year. So, people come up in January or December with New Year’s resolutions that they’ve never tested. So, for me, I audition goals, like I’m doing one-week auditions, I’m doing 30-day auditions that go, “Oh, yeah, I like that. Oh, that doesn’t work for me.” You know what didn’t work for me? Drinking a gallon of water a day. Dumb goal. I saw a bunch of influencers.
Brad Johnson: Hard 75?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, exactly, but like…
Brad Johnson: That was what ruined my Hard 75 was the gallon of water.
Jon Acuff: Dude, is it possible his body type is different than mine? He’s a 240-pound weightlifter. I’m a 150-pound runner. And I was like, I just got to drink this much. And my wife, he used to tease me so bad because it’d be like 11 o’clock at night, I’d be trying to guzzle water, like…
Brad Johnson: That was what tapped me out, dude. It was like 10:30 and I had a fourth of a gallon still to drink. And I was like, I am not. Hitting a goal is not worth getting up three times in the middle of the night.
Jon Acuff: No, imagine being on stage. Imagine you’re on a keynote, like, dude, that was my nightmare that I’m on stage and I’m like, all right, give me like, 90 seconds real quick. So, I think, for me, again, I’m testing those things and I think that’s what makes life fun. I really do.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. One of the things that you hit, I’m curious, so when you first started blogging, back to running until you touched the rock, did you say, here is my consistency, I have to hit blogging? Or did you have like a number, like, I got to put one a week out, twice a week, three times a week?
Jon Acuff: I went all in. I remember I read The Dip by Seth Godin. So, he said, like, “What are your favorite books?” Like, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, The Dip by Seth Godin, and he talked about how one of the dips that you can create is you go so hardcore that it makes it harder for people to follow. So, he was like Microsoft, the dip they created with Word, nobody can go through that valley. Like, it’s really hard to, if you are like, I’m going to do the new word and be like, they’ve really worked a lot.
So, I decided I’m going to write so much that it’s going to be hard for somebody else to to hang with me. Because I knew that like, there’s certain things I can do and can’t do. Same with humor. I use a lot of humor in my presentations because there’s not a lot of business speakers that are funny. Like, I was in corporate America for 15 years, like I saw a lot of the speeches. I was like, this is really dull, or it’s like dad, jokey funny. So, I was like, If I really… like, I’ll never out entrepreneur, Gary Vee, but I can be way funnier.
So, I was like, okay, I can use that as a strength. So, I use content production when I was blogging as a strength, and then I made an Excel. And I’m not an Excel spreadsheet guy, like I still use tables and word, like nobody uses a table and word. And I made Excel spreadsheet of like 50 other blogs in my space. And then I would track that. I commented there as part of their communities to try to one day have their community come join mine. Dude, I would print my own buttons. I had my own T-shirts. I would be a catalyst. This big leadership event that was in our town, wearing my own homemade shirt and walking around with plastic bags full of buttons, handing them out like Johnny… like I was doing the MC Hammer, sell your CD out of the back of your car.
And here’s the thing, like, if you’re desperate enough, you’ll do it. And I was desperate because I saw it as a path out of what I was doing. And it was worth doing it because then I could start to see like, oh, wait a second. Like, there’s something here. I couldn’t see the full picture yet, but I didn’t see Dave Ramsey coming, like, dude, that happened because somebody who worked on his staff who I’d never met read my blog and said, we should have him come speak to the team.
So, imagine if I told you, Brad, here’s how you make things like that happen. You have to hope a guy named Jake you’ve never met who worked in the call center, read your silly blog and then tells his boss, who tells his wife, so like, I couldn’t see that coming, but I knew it’s the law of the harvest. Like, if I’m sewing enough, there’s five or six life principles that you can argue with all you want, but they’re like gravity. Like, they just work. And in law, the harvest is one of them. And so, if I put enough content out into the world, good things are going to happen, like good things are going to happen. And so, that was my attitude, it was like, I’m going to lean into production.
Brad Johnson: Well, as you were telling that story, I was kind of living my story and your story and your blogging was my podcasting, and it was very much… actually, our mutual friend, Michael, you can tell him, thank you for me tonight at dinner, because I was explaining a problem I had where I was trying to get a bunch of really successful financial advisors to show up same place, same time on a Zoom. And he’s like, “Why don’t you just record it and turn it into a podcast?” And I was like, “Okay.”
And I remember I would come to these podcast full suit and tie. I was so nervous and I was like, I have that impostor syndrome of why is this dude on this podcast with me? And you’re playing this little mental game in your own head that nobody knows about but you. But back to, I’ll tell you what creates confidence is those reps, the next one gets easier, the next one gets easier, you learn a little something, something hits, you reuse it again. And Amazon has this concept of one-way doors and two-way doors. Are you familiar with this at all?
Jon Acuff: I haven’t heard that.
Brad Johnson: So, where you were kind of making this hit for me, so many organizations paralyze themselves back to perfection. Oh, we’ve got to have all these committees review it. And it’s like, wait, one-way door decision is I walk through that door, it locks behind me. I cannot go back. Two-way door decision is, oh, that was a bad idea. Walk back through the door and undo it, and treat it more like an experiment.
And that concept by itself has helped Triad so much because we would get stuck in these inconsequential decisions. And it’s like we’re overthinking this. Just make it a one-month, two-month, three-month experiment, and if it sucks, just go back the other way. Very few from my experience, very few organizational decisions or life decisions, for that matter, are one-way doors.
Jon Acuff: That’s good. That’s good, yeah.
Brad Johnson: And I would just like, I’m kind of playing with that is you’re kind of riffing on it and it’s so true. Likem we overthink so much in life. It’s wild. Just get out and do the reps and learn.
Jon Acuff: Well, and take notes on the reps and get better. That was part of my thing was that if I was prepared, I knew I could hang, like… and if I wasn’t prepared and I tried to wing it, then I was over my head so quickly, but if I was… or if I was in rooms where I, like, people are so much further ahead of me, I would ask questions. And now, it’s a learning opportunity.
And I would try to not, like I try to show open spaces as a student, and it wasn’t always easy because I felt a lot of pressure in rooms where I was like, I got to talk to the right person and I really worked myself up into tangles with that kind of thing. But once I got a little more confident, I could be in the room and really be present to the person I was with and ask questions versus thinking that you’re one-way door, two-way-door thing. It’s also like you’re not one thing away from it all coming together.
And when you put that pressure on yourself as if every swing is the ninth inning and you’re going to like, you got to drive home the runs, like, man, it’s a lot of pressure. And every room you enter into, you’re like, where’s the one person? And so, when I took off some of that pressure, it made it easier to be present to the moment.
Brad Johnson: Well, and let’s bring this thing full circle. We were talking about kind of your mentors, who in your life has kind of helped you. Once you get in those groups, whether it’s a mastermind that you pay to be in, whether it’s a group of authors that you all get together or whatever, when you actually get in a space where everybody can be vulnerable and real, every single person in that room has impostor syndrome.
Jon Acuff: Oh, yeah.
Brad Johnson: And it’s wild. And I think once I realized, like they’re all thinking the same thing I am, like just that pressure can just go away. I mean, not that it doesn’t flare up sometimes, but…
Jon Acuff: Well, I realize they’re all human and they’re making it up to, like, they’re not following, like, there’s not this playbook that everybody but you got. There’s not like they have the manual for success. And you just didn’t get the manual. But you’re right, if you’ll be vulnerable and they’ll be vulnerable, too, which is why it’s fun when you meet people that are because you can tell when somebody is not, like when you… I asked somebody once like, how do you deal with procrastination? And he was like that word is not even in my vocabulary. I don’t even know what that word means. I was like, oh, stop, stop.
Brad Johnson: I deleted it, I deleted it.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, I deleted it. I was like, oh, never, stop it. Never. Like, I would have been fine if he said, man, I do these 10 things. It stops at 90% of the time or I do these, whatever. But it was just like one of those words, like, we’re not probably not going to talk about vulnerabilities if you’ve, like, that just made me laugh. Every time I think about that, like, I don’t even know what that word means. I mean, you do. You went to school.
Brad Johnson: Well, one thing I’ve learned as a leader, I led a small team when I was an employee, and now, we’re close to 100 at Triad.
Jon Acuff: Amazing.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s mind blowing, really. What I’ve learned as a leader is self-awareness for me. Like, it’s a constant, I’m constantly learning and growing and trying to level up there. But you can’t lead people if you’ve got all these blind spots that you’re not even aware of because nothing against that guy, maybe he is like a procrastination, like ninja or whatever, but everybody has those things. And the more real you are with yourself and you work on them and what I’ve found is when you don’t put up the shield or the exterior hard outer shell and you actually let people in and say, you know what? I did actually struggle with procrastination, and kind of here’s some things that worked or some things that didn’t, people are like, oh, cool, we can talk about this now. You let him in. Vulnerability is a beautiful thing.
Jon Acuff: Yeah. And I think what’s funny about that is when somebody else is vulnerable, we go, wow, they’re so brave. When we’re going to be vulnerable, we think everybody’s going to think we look weak, which is really interesting. And so, if you can remember, like know when somebody is vulnerable in a situation, I think they’re brave and strong. And when I share this, I’ll also be brave and strong. Like, it helps you kind of go, yeah, I’m going to share this, and not with everybody, but with the right group of people can be pretty powerful.
Brad Johnson: 100%. Well, my man, this time has absolutely flown. I’m looking over, I’m like, dang, that was a quick hour.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, the good ones are. The bad ones are slow. The bad one is like, well, we’ve done 11 minutes. This has been, this has been tough, yeah.
Brad Johnson: Well, I just have one final question, Jon, on my side. We’ve danced all around it with this conversation, but I would love to hear your definition of what does doing business and doing life, kind of all of that together mean to you?
Jon Acuff: Yeah, I mean, for me, I think the big thing is I get to be one person. Like, I know I’m doing life and I’m doing business and it’s going well when I’m one person. I’m not a work version of myself. I’m not a family version of myself. I’m not a friend’s version of myself or a health version. I get to be one person. And so, I often find the same lessons I’m learning in business apply to family and vice versa.
I read a book the other day, Beyond the Hammer, which I loved, and the guy said, “The leader sets the tone for the organization.” So, if you show up stressed or you show up angry, it makes the whole company angry. And it’s the same with your family. And so, I’m learning as a dad, what does it look like for me to show up? How do I help set the emotional tone of the dinner we’re having? Like, how do I set the emotional tone of the staff meeting we’re having?
And so, I would say for me, that’s what success looks like when I’m one person and then when I’m not, they joke about like, don’t skip leg day bro. Where I’m not, like, if save my business was my triceps, I don’t have massive triceps, but every other part of me is out of shape, where I’m connected to my wife, I’m connected to my kids. I feel like I have the health level I want. I feel like I have strong relationships where I have people who love me enough to tell me things I might not like to hear. That’s a sign of health for me.
I’ve kind of got 5 to 10 things. I’m like, “Oh, I’m in a good spot right now.” And they go across my life. It’s not just that my business is really good or my health is really good. There’s a fairly good, not balance because I don’t think that word is true, but all parts of my life are working in the same direction.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, I love, I believe this came out of your new book phrase, joy being the best alarm clock.
Jon Acuff: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: And that’s kind of, to me, like my version of the… it’s one person in all aspects. It’s like you’re excited for what’s ahead of you in that day, whether it’s a day with the family, whether it’s a day at work. And I think the intention that you’ve designed your business with, obviously, you had to leave certainty to go start heading up the pens and start growing your brand and write the books. That is a pursuit you earned because to your point, some people are talking about doing it, but they’re not taking the action to do it. And so, I would just say, if you’re watching or listening in, like, if this can be your challenge from Jon and I, like go out and get it, life’s too short, back to the 24-year-old versus Warren Buffett, we only have so much time on this earth.
Jon Acuff: Don’t wait. Don’t wait. There’s small steps you can do right now. And we always say like, what would you tell your younger self? Like, what advice would you give to a 22-year-old? But I think we’re writing the letters in the wrong direction. I think the better question is what would your older self tell you today? And the reality is a 62-year-old would say, don’t wait. They would say, this is the youngest need you’ll ever have. They would say, this is the time to build your business. They would say, this is the time to have good friends. Don’t wait until we’re 60 to try to build, like you can’t make new old friends. Like that’s a famous statement. You can’t make new old friends. Go build friends so that when you’re 50, 60, 70, 80, you’ve planted the seeds for a life that feels like a really full harvest. So, yeah, I agree with you. Like, don’t wait, don’t wait, don’t wait.
Brad Johnson: Regret minimization. I don’t want to be on my deathbed looking back saying, what if, that’s for sure? Well, Jon, this has been a blast, man. Hopefully, we get to hang in person. Next time I’m in Franklin, I will hit you up.
Jon Acuff: Totally.
Brad Johnson: And always enjoy our time together. So, thanks so much.
Jon Acuff: Yeah, thanks so much, Brad.
Brad Johnson: All right, my man. Till next time.
Jon Acuff: See you, buddy.
Brad Johnson: See yah.
