Overcoming Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to Achieve the Impossible with Brendan Keegan

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Imperfect Action. Today, we'll be breaking down, overcoming fear, uncertainty, and doubt to achieve the impossible. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Brendan Keegan into EO Fire Studios. Brendan, the incredibly inspiring American business executive and founder of the critically acclaimed Be Fearless movement, who has had a career where he's raised over$10 billion in capital while leading over 250 ,000 people globally.

0:38In today's foundation, we'll talk about becoming a fearless leader. We'll talk about giving back with philanthropic work and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Brendan and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world, dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success, a must listen.

1:12Listen to Marketing Makes Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Yahoo Finance makes it easy to get financial news, data, and insights fast. For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor, yahoofinance.com, the number one financial destination. Yahoo Finance.com. That's yahoofinance.com. Brendan, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Well, a lot of people think that successful people are fearless and there's this confidence about them and they can do anything. And what I tell you is they actually are fearful, but they have learned and they've channeled the ability to overcome their fear, uncertainty, and doubt and actually able to channel their fearless to propel their success, but they're truly not just born fearless.

2:07They have learned how to become fearless. And Fire Nation, that's what we're talking about today, overcoming fear, uncertainty, doubt to achieve the impossible. And I mentioned this in the intro, but I want to dive deeper right now about the Be Fearless movement. What is it and what do you hope others gain from this movement? It started about 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago now, when I was actually a youth football coach. And I was youth football coach for a police athletic league team. And I saw so many young kids showing up and they talked about what they weren't. Like, I can't play quarterback.

2:47I'm not smart enough. I'm not this. I couldn't be captain. I'm not a leader. We'd talk about school and they're like, oh, I'm a C student. I'm not an A and B student. And I just started like looking at like why. And then as I brought some of that to my professional profession, you know, as as a CEO, I saw continually what held people back weren't having the opportunities. It was their own mindset. You know, they had a fear. I can't do that. They had they were uncertain on. Well, what if I try that and it's not successful? You know, what's going to happen? Or they just genuinely doubted their own abilities.

3:22They just were like, oh, I'm like those young youth footballers. And so I just kind of said, okay, I am going to make my life's passion a fearless leadership, just instilling the ability to overcome fear, uncertainty, and doubt for hopefully almost everybody I meet in my life. Now, I actually want to dive deeper there because I am a military officer. I spent eight years in the U.S. Army, did a 13-month tour of duty in Iraq, was actually a tank officer in charge of four tanks and 16 men. So I saw a lot of leadership. I myself was a leader. And I can remember thinking to myself of the leaders that I respected and the ones that frankly, I did not respect.

4:09And one trait that I really always respected in leaders was 100 % responsibility. If something went wrong, they took responsibility. They didn't let it roll downhill. They didn't blame it on somebody below them. They took responsibility. Now that's one form that I really respected. I also respected leaders who were fearless. So let's talk about how we as entrepreneurs can become fearless leaders. The first thing that I'd say is, you know, one of these mottos that I use in, you know, with a lot of my, my kids, I mentor people I lead is have the courage to fail and the faith to succeed. And so it's the courage to fail.

4:52So just the willingness to, if you're an entrepreneur and you say, I'm going to build a new product and it might fail. That's okay because if you don't build a new product, you don't know if you're going to be successful. So the first is just acknowledging I'm going to try something and I might fail. You might be somebody who says, you know what, I'm going to try golf. I'm going to try pickleball. Um, and, and you might say, Hey, I didn't like it. I liked it. I failed at it, or I became great at it. So the first component is you just have to build up some of your own courage to be willing to fail.

5:27And then when you fail, being able to say, okay, now the second half of that is having the faith to succeed. So if, if I say I'm going to learn pickleball and, and, and I go out on the court and I go, I'm horrible. I'm not a good athlete. I don't have good hand eye coordination. I'm actually sabotaging myself from being successful. If I say this product isn't going to work, I don't even know how to price it. I don't know what the target market is. I'm almost predispositioning it that it's not going to be successful. But if I say, hey, I've got the right product and hey, I can play pickleball. I've seen other people do it.

6:04And if you start to just like believe that you can, and then you actually have the faith, like I'm going to go have a good time. I'm going to build a great product. It may not be the first version. It may be the fifth version, but I just know the world needs this product. If you have that faith that a positive outcome is going to happen, that faith gets you over so many obstacles and so many people stop just short of success. They didn't realize, like if it were a marathon, they didn't even realize on their success journey that they were 23 miles in. They just said, ah, I can't do it anymore. And they just didn't realize if you just had a little bit more faith that success was around the next corner, the marathon example, three more miles away, you could have been successful.

6:44So just a few things I've noticed is that courage to be willing to fail holds people back from taking some calculated risks. And then not having the faith that you're gonna be successful holds you back and allows doubt and uncertainty to creep in. Fire Nation, are you willing to fail? Are you willing to then learn from that failure? Then are you willing to try again? Ask yourself those questions in your life. Now, Brendan, your career is quite the doozy. Give us the highlights of how you achieve the success you're currently experiencing today. I've been very fortunate. I've had five mentors in my career.

7:24I can tell you my mentors have pushed me to be better. They've stopped me from making really stupid mistakes, emotional mistakes. but probably one of the things that mentors did for me is they at times had more faith in me than I had in myself. Like they would say, Bernie, you should take this job. You can do this. Here's a special project we're going to put you on. And I'd get on special part and I'd be like, why do they think I can do this? I have no experience, but their faith kind of fueled me. So the first thing I'd say is I've just been fortunate that I've had five different people at different stages of my career invest in me and kind of, you know, shepherd me to the next landing spot.

8:09You know, a few other points that I'd say, you know, for me personally is, you know, I've always been clear about having a vision for what I want for my career. And if I'm at a company, what I want for the product team, the engineering team, the operations team I led, I led a sales team for a while. So I've always like created a vision for the teams. and then aligned really good people, set clear goals. And then the next component, which is super, super, super basic, is just believed in people. Like when I had a team, even if it always wasn't the perfect team, I just really took what my mentors did for me.

8:49They gave me jet fuel to believe in myself. I just believed in my team and then worked really hard, worked hard with that team. And I found that, you know, between, you know, the good mentors having clear vision for where I wanted to go or take teams and believing in people and then getting them to work a little extra, like in extra, extraordinary, getting them to work a little extra hard. And that was because they weren't doing it because I asked them, they were doing it because they saw the vision, they saw the goals, and they wanted to be part of a great culture. So, you know, I guess, you know, The key components to any success that I've had are mentors and then just believing in people.

9:30Fire Nation, we are all standing upon the shoulders of giants. Anybody that thinks they can and want to do this alone, you're kidding yourself because there's so much you can learn, so many mistakes and potholes you can avoid when you hire people who have been there who have done that. And I love that process. That's why whenever I'm looking to do something new, I'm going for that mentor. Who is somebody who's been crushing it in this space? and not 20 years ago, but recently, so they can give me legitimate and direct guidance. And we have a lot more to talk about around this topic as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

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12:01That's yahoofinance.com. Brendan, we're back. And one thing I wanted to dive into was your passion for sports cars. Because I think passion's important. I think that a lot of people sometimes just focus so much on one thing, head down, and then they look up like 30 years later, they're like, wow, I kind of missed the world around me. But you love sports cars. And that developed into becoming a co-owner, investor, and advisory board member for United Autosports and Andretti Racing. How the heck did this happen? It's Magnum PI's fault. Growing up, We had one TV in our family room, and my dad's favorite show, one of his favorite shows other than sports, was Magnum P.I.

12:45And if anyone remembers Magnum P.I., he had a red Ferrari 308. How cool is that chopper that he used, too? That was pretty sweet. I just thought he was the coolest guy. I just thought it was like if you could be anybody, you either wanted to be a New England Patriot player. I'm a New England Patriot fan. I wanted to be Magnum P.I. So I just kind of became enamored with it. And where I grew up, there were no Ferraris around. so this was like this mystique and I just remember saying I want to own one of that one of those someday and I still remember I was I was 18 years old we had a new mall put in our town and there was one in the parking lot and I stayed there for three hours and waited till the guy came out and asked if I could just see the inside and the guy was so nice he let me get in it um and he talked to me for I don't know it must have been 30 minutes about it and so I just kind of set a goal.

13:35I said, Hey, you know, by the time I'm 25, I want to, I want to have a red Ferrari. And, um, by the way I did, but you should have seen the car I drove every day. I had to sacrifice having the worst car in North America. So I could, so I could have that, that Ferrari. And so I've just always enjoyed cars. I've always enjoyed competition. Like I'm a, I'm a sports guy. So motor sports are that great combination of competition and sports cars. And then, And, you know, my current job, you know, we were partners with McLaren Racing on their extreme platform. And as I got closer to the racing community, I got just more networking and knew more people.

14:15You know, a few opportunities came up. You know, our company's theme is endurance, you know, being great for the long term. And United Auto Sports is a world endurance champion in the world of endurance racing. And, you know, it just fit. and um you know i i signed up with them uh zach brown and richard dean zach's the ceo of mclaren racing and richard dean is the ceo of united auto they were childhood friends united auto sports was their brainchild and so i partnered up with them and that's just been great i was just down at the rolex 24 and and that was fun and and then from there you know i'm a i'm a big proponent of the extreme e racing series now for those of you that don't know it because it's not as well known as say Formula One, it's gender equality.

15:01So there's two drivers, male and female. It's an electric vehicle moving to hydrogen. And the races are environmentally challenged areas to bring some notice to here's an environment we need to work on. So I was a partner in that. I became enamored with Extreme E and the Andrade Autosports Group. They're in a number series. They happen to have an extreme e-team and I was able to join that. So just it's from Magnum PI to sports competition to motorsports. I think I just really get a thrill and adrenaline out of the racing. Fire Nation, there's so much that I love there. And, you know, going to Magnum PI, man, I can just picture the intro right now.

15:45Such a good intro. And of course, you know, Magnum, I was just saying, Higgins! Just so many great memories. In fact, that's probably one reason why I'm in Puerto Rico because they really just made Hawaii look like an amazing place to live, a tropical island with the beaches and the great weather and everybody could just, you know, wear shorts all the time. And I was like, I'm in Maine. I need to, I need me a little more of that. And so here I am now for eight years in Puerto Rico and I'm with you on the Patriots as well. I don't know if you started watching the dynasty yet, but it's Basically, the best documentary ever about the last 20 years of the New England Patriots is on Apple.

16:24And The Last Dance, I thought, was the best sports documentary. But now, The Dynasty is definitely the best. So, Fire Nation, check it out. Even if you're not a Patriots fan, you'll love it. Now, Brendan, once we've achieved success, it is important to give back. I mean, at the end of the day, what are we really doing if we're not looking to help others? Let's chat about your philanthropic work. Yeah, so hey, this goes back to not Magnum PI, but it does go back to my childhood. I'm the youngest of four. My oldest sister, you know, had Down syndrome. And so in our house, every week we volunteered.

17:01You know, I did Saturdays and Sundays. I did tons of things with my sister, with her group, you know, and such. But when you're a kid, I thought those were just weekend activities. I actually didn't know they were volunteering. So I grew up in a house where, you know, volunteering, you know, was was what you did on the weekend. Now, I didn't grow up in a house where, you know, you gave money away. That wasn't, you know, in our cards socioeconomically. So I just grew up like volunteering. And then and then, you know, I went to college, came out of college and right away I started volunteering. I coached Little League Baseball.

17:35And I remember my friends being like, Bernie, you're 21. What are you doing on weekends coaching Little League Baseball? You should be running around. And it was just ingrained. it. I'm so thankful to my parents that they ingrained in me volunteering. And then somewhere in my early 20s, I just made a decision that I was going to put a certain percent of my income away every year and give it away, you know, to different charities. And I just haven't changed that. I've just kind of stuck with that. And like most careers, you know, how much you gave away when you were 22 was a lot less than 32, 42 and 52.

18:10Just because as you go through your career, you know, you have the ability, you know, to make more. So I've just stuck to that percent. Now, we have a foundation. It's called the Keegan Family Courage and Faith Foundation. After the saying, have the courage to fail and the faith to succeed. And what we focus on is youth academics and youth athletics. So, you know, we built some leadership academies at high schools. We're helping one high school build an athletic facility because they've outgrown theirs. we we helped you know a football team you know with their with their locker room and their funding we've helped elementary schools with their technology so the teachers have more technology in in the classroom we've helped the police athletic league where I where where I coached and what's neat is my kids are now 19 and 21 and we sit around a table now as a family and talk about you know what do we want to do with that percent every year where do we want to give it.

19:07And it's just I just hope to do as well as my parents and and pass that legacy of giving back on to my kids, because I think the biggest legacy we leave, you know, our kids behind. And if they're good humans and if they're following in some of the footsteps that we tried to follow in from our family, that would be great. But, you know, I think philanthropy, philanthropy, giving back. I just think that it's something that as good people, we all should do. And again, there's volunteering and then there's the money side. We still do both. But again, as you go on in your career, you tend to be able to give a little bit more away.

19:49Fire Nation, I love this message and I just love this overall philosophy. And I really hope that there's a lot of people listening right now that have that as one of their goals. If you're not currently doing this, have it as a goal. And this has really impacted me a lot. Like I'd say about 10 or 11 years ago is, you know, I was just starting up my business. I didn't necessarily have a ton to give, but I started giving something and it felt great. Then over time, I was able to expand it. So, you know, sometimes you can just blink your eyes and 10 years have gone by and you're like, well, I've never actually been that philanthropic at all.

20:20Or you could say, I'm just going to start small where I can now. And then you're going to blink and 10 years are going to go by. You'd be like, wow, I've really over 10 years been able to do a lot on that giving side of things. So Brendan, we've talked about a lot of awesome stuff today. What would you really want Fire Nation to walk away with? What's one key takeaway you want our listeners to have from today? My one takeaway would be you have the power to have a fearless life. You can become a fearless leader. It's simply by just facing your own fears, facing some of your uncertainty on possible positive outcomes and overcoming your doubt.

20:58And it all starts with the mindset, with having the courage to fail and the faith to succeed. Fire Nation, great content from a great entrepreneur. And Brendan, if Fire Nation wanted to learn more about you, to connect with you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? A couple of things. This is going to sound promotion style, but I wrote a book last year called The FUD Factor overcoming your fear, uncertainty and doubt on Instagram. I'm at BPK fearless. You know, follow me Lincoln on Lincoln, Lincoln in with me. I have a newsletter that comes out every month, you know, send me a note, you know, and, and, you know, if you want to meet, send me a note, ask for some time and I'll, I'll do my best to get that right back to you and get together.

21:41So, and the last thing I'd say, just do good in the world. Just put good back into the world. That's the best thing that you can do. Great way to end in Fire Nation, the FUD factor. Check it out because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with and you've been hanging out with BK and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type Brendan in the search bar. That's B-R-E-N-D-A-N and the show notes page will pop right up. Brendan, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value of Fire Nation for that.

22:13We salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Absolutely. Thanks. Have a great day. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Brendan for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work.

22:51A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success. A must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Yahoo Finance makes it easy to get financial news, data, and insights fast. For For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor, yahoofinance.com, the number one financial destination. yahoofinance.com. That's yahoofinance.com.