Unleashing Your Hero: Rise Above Any Challenge, Expand Your Impact and be the Hero the World Needs with Kevin Brown: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down how to unleash your hero, rise above any challenge, expand your impact and be the hero the world needs. So drop these value bombs I brought to Kevin Brown and the EO Fire Studios. Kevin's a motivational speaker, bestselling author, and is a creator of the hero effect, a simple philosophy that separates world-class organizations and high-performance people from everybody else. And Fire Nation, don't play the victim.

0:33Don't live in the past. Don't set up camp where you've been, focus on where you're going. That's when you can release your gifts to the world and owe so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Kevin and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Kevin, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1:17What's up, everybody? I am so excited to be with all of you. And, you know, a lot of people disagree with me about a lot of things. But I will tell you this. One of the things that I get pushed back on a lot is when I tell people that chasing your passion isn't always the answer. And because we've been taught, we've been taught, look, pursue your passion, make your passion, your career, and you'll never work a day in your life. And I have a couple of thoughts about that. Number one, work is work. Sometimes you have to grind it out. And sometimes even when you're chasing your dream, your passion, you're grinding it out, it's work.

1:52And so this idea of never working a day in our life, I disagree with. But the one thing that people say, after I speak, they always say, man, you're so lucky to be able to pursue your passion for a living. And they're shocked when I tell them speaking isn't my passion. Speaking is my gift. And I think we get confused sometimes about the difference between our passion and our gifts. And I decided to pursue my gifts. And in the pursuit of those gifts, I discovered new passions for serving people, for telling stories, to moving people from where they are to someplace new. Never thought I would be doing what I do now.

2:27Listen, golf is my passion, but there's not a person on the planet who will pay me to do it. I was just about to ask you that. What is one of your non work passions? And that's cool to hear. You might be interested to know it down here in my community in Puerto Rico. We actually have two gorgeous 18 hole golf courses created by Gary, a player. And I just at 41 years old, got my first custom created and manufactured golf club. So I'm about to be hitting the links a couple days a week. I cannot call it a passion yet because I'm too early on the journey, but I hope to join you in that passion sometime, Kevin.

3:04We'll do our next podcast episode. We'll do it down there. I love it, brother. It's a great course right in the Caribbean. Gorgeous. And Fire Nation, as I mentioned in the intro, we're talking today about unleashing your hero. And you, Kevin, actually have a new definition of what it means to be a hero. Share that with us today. I have to tell you, this changed everything for me. I started speaking, I was asked way back in 2007 to give a speech about what it means to be a hero. And of course, I always say yes. And then I freak out later when I'm trying to figure out how to do it. And I said yes to this idea.

3:42I was going to speak to 2000 people about what it means to be a hero. And I had no hero speech. And I remember when I started, I just started asking everybody, what do you think of when you hear the word hero? and everybody I talked to without exception, you know, we honored our military men and women, the world changers like Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, first responders, doctors, nurses, moms and dads, all these categories of heroes. But the thing that was fascinating to me was that everybody I talked to defined heroes as ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And when I heard that, I thought that makes sense.

4:17And I wrote it down And that was the basis of where I started. But about a year into this hero's journey, I realized that that was incorrect. What I realized is that we go through life sometimes saying things that don't make any sense at all. And if you buy into this idea of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, you have to first believe that you're ordinary in the first place. And I don't think that's how it was drawn up. I don't think there's a person listening to this broadcast. I don't think there's a person on this planet who was put here to be ordinary in any way, shape or form. In fact, I believe we were created with talents, gifts and abilities as unique as our fingerprints.

4:54And we were put here to use those gifts in the service of others. And so what I learned was, as I started working with high performance organizations and people, is that we've had the definition actually backwards. I believe now that heroes are extraordinary people who choose not to be ordinary. I think ordinary is a learned behavior. It's a conditioning process. And sadly, in the world we have before us today, too many people show up and make an ordinary choice every single day. They go through life doing ordinary things in ordinary ways, maybe occasionally doing something noteworthy. And then they shrink right back to Smallville, trying to fit in and be like everybody else.

5:32So our definition is extraordinary people choosing not to be ordinary. And that's when everything changed for me. I do 120, 130 events a year, even last year during COVID. Some of them were sitting in a studio staring at a camera, but this message has literally taken me around the world and I'm so blessed to be able to deliver it. This is powerful stuff, Fire Nation. And by the way, just by listening to this, you've decided not to be ordinary because you are spending your time to consume content that's going to inspire you, motivate you, give you tactics and strategies to take on this world and to leave an impact.

6:05So I love you for that, Fire Nation. And when I was prepping for this interview, Kevin, I was pretty fired up to find out you have four characteristics that make up a hero. Let's go through each. Yeah. The very first thing that I realized is that heroes help people. And on the surface, that's not a big aha for most people. They're not running to get a pen and write that down. Because all of us have been conditioned to believe that being helpful is good for the bottom line, that being helpful is good for a happy life. But what I learned is that the challenge for us as humans is that most people are only willing to be helpful to the extent that there's a return on investment.

6:43Right. There's that condition that that transaction aspect of being helpful. I'll do this for you. If you do this for me, I'll scratch your back. You scratch mine. What I learned is that heroes understand there's a part two to this idea of being helpful. And it's that dot dot dot, so to speak. Heroes help people dot dot dot with no strings attached. it's that little bitty no strings attached that completely separates most from the competition. It's that extra step, literally going the extra mile, which is only one more step than everyone else is willing to take. And it's that dot, dot, dot that really begins to define heroes and their mindset about serving people.

7:22They know that pouring into other people literally fills them up. And so that was the first thing that we focused on, this idea of being a great servant, being being helpful with no strings attached. Second thing that we realized is that heroes create an exceptional experience for the people in their life. They are very methodical, very intentional. There's nothing random. You know, we run through life saying things like random acts of kindness. And if kindness is random, then we have a problem already. Kindness should garner our most intention. We should be very purposeful in how we show up. And heroes create an experience for the people at the dinner table, the people at the boardroom table, the people that they serve and serve with, they see everybody as a customer and they create an experience that not only gives them something that they didn't have before, but it also leaves them wanting more.

8:14It's why Disney is Disney. Disney always leaves you wanting more. And it's one of those things. So creating this exceptional experience is it's foundational to being a hero. When heroes show up on the scene, they start solving problems. They start making life better. They start bringing calm to the chaos. And that's what we need, especially now, especially in our world. Now, we need people that can give us a sense of hope, people that can show up and solve problems. You know, there's an old saying that people don't care how much, you know, until they know how much you care. I don't necessarily agree with that one either.

8:48I don't think people care how much, you know, until they know how much it will help them. If you care, it's kind of a bonus, But if you can show up and create an exceptional experience and do it with excellence, solve their problems and make life better, that's what heroes do. Third thing I know about heroes is that heroes take 100 percent responsibility for their life and everything in it. They are they're not pushing blame on other people. They're not playing victim. They raise their hand and they say, what can I do to create the best possible outcome? How can I use the resources around me to create an experience or to create an outcome?

9:23How can I make things better? What problems can I solve? They take responsibility for their life, for their attitude, their actions, their results. And the last thing I know about heroes, which is one of my favorites, is that they see life through the lens of optimism. They see life and each other through this beautiful lens of optimism. They see life not as it is, but as it can be. People not as we are, but as we should be. You know, We run through life, unfortunately, accepting life as it is, accepting people as we are. I think we should hold each other to a higher standard. We can love each other as we are, but we should push each other to become better and help dig those gifts out.

10:03Those four things in my book spell HERO, and it is an acronym. I usually don't point that out, but it is an acronym. It spells HERO, and if ever there was a time this world needed more heroes, it's now. Well, I can tell you, Fire Nation, that my prepping and excitement for this was definitely worth it. I mean, these characteristics, stunning across the board. I want to run through them real quick. Heroes are a great servant. They have no strings attached. They're not just doing random acts of kindness. There's nothing random about it. It's intentionality. And listen, 100 % responsibility. That's actually one of my favorite ones right there.

10:39I mean, I am so much a believer of being 100 % responsible for everything that you do. And that's just such a key for so many reasons. The optimism, I mean, that's such a key factor. And I do love how you made that into an acronym. So can you run through that acronym real quick, Kevin? Absolutely. The H is heroes help people, dot, dot, dot, with no strings attached. The E is heroes create an exceptional experience for the people they serve and serve with. The R is responsibility and the O is optimism. Fire Nation, hero. Are you doing one, two, three? Maybe some of you, all four of those things.

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14:53So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High level, join the revolution. Kevin, we're back and you believe that we all have extraordinary gifts within us. Some people, unfortunately, keep those gifts buried for their entire lives and die with those gifts. How can we, Fire Nation, people who are listening to you right now who want to uncover those gifts or some of whom who have uncovered those gifts but want to fully utilize them, how can we uncover and maximize these gifts?

15:37What a great question. I tell people all the time, take your mask off. And I don't mean the one we've been wearing for COVID. We were wearing masks long before COVID. And the mask is really that mask that we put on trying to pretend to be somebody that everybody else wants us to be or the person that we think we need to be to get where we want to go. And I completely get that. Listen, I went through a dark period in my life from age 13 to 16. I was betrayed by an adult that I trusted very much and life got complicated, spiraled out of control. and by the time I was in my early 20s, I lived in a car and I burned every bridge that I had walked across, hung around the wrong people, developed a lot of bad habits.

16:14I'm a ninth grade dropout. I have no college training and it wasn't until I decided, I got so angry with where I was that the idea of inspirational discontentment is what began to pull me out of the ditch and I really sat in the front seat of that car contemplating life on more than one occasion, that broken 13-year-old kid that I was dragging through life, using as an excuse for not doing well, by the way, that kid was chirping in my ear every night. And he was saying things like, it's time to go, man. This isn't the life we signed up for. There's nothing left here for us. Everybody's given up on us.

16:48And thankfully, thankfully, I was too chicken to pull the trigger. And if I was going to stay, that meant I had to change. And in order to change, I had to change my thinking. I had to figure out what could I latch on to. I spent my whole life running from something I needed to find something to run toward. And I was introduced to a guy, his name was David, and he was a crusty old sales guy from South Texas. And he listened to my whole story, and he was still willing to give me a chance. And he took me under his wing, and he started to shepherd me and mentor me. And he was the first human in my life to grab the storyline that life had given a 13-year-old kid, and he helped me rewrite it.

17:25I am amazed at how many people get up every day of their life, and they accept the storyline that life gives them, and they walk it out as their truth. They take the storyline that a pandemic gives them, the storyline a doctor gives them, the storyline someone else's opinion gives them, and they walk it out, and they make it real, and they never give one consideration, not even one thought, to the fact that the pen is in their hands. And this old man put the pen in my hands and he helped me craft a vision for my life. And it wasn't easy for him because those old tapes were deeply ingrained. I'd grab that 13 year old kid and I'd dump him all over the old man.

17:59And one day David looked at me and he said, son, I don't want to hear that story again. He said, you've told it so many times I could probably tell it better than you. He said, when you came to me, you said you wanted to go somewhere new, but all you talk about is where you've been. He told me, he said, the past is a place of reference, not a place of residence. He said, if you want to go back there, you're going to have to go alone because I won't take the trip. He said, if you want to go somewhere new, I'll take you. And that was the first step in my life. Having somebody that believed in me, that saw things in me that I didn't see.

18:26When people compliment you on things, when you make certain things look easy, when things come naturally to you, tune into those things. Those are your gifts. And so often we want our gifts to be something else or we want to take something like the sport of golf for me or some other passion or leisure time activity. We want to turn that into our dream job. But sometimes when your passion becomes your work, you lose some of your passion for it. And so there's a fine line between passion and gifts. And when you develop your gifts, you'll be amazed at how your passions change. And so this old man saw things in me, and that became a reoccurring pattern in my life.

19:05All these mentors started to show up in my life. And truthfully, they were there all along. I just didn't see them because I was so focused on the hurt, so focused on the pain of my past that I couldn't even see the people around me who actually could help me. So there's really two or three things there. Number one, you have the pen in your hand for the storyline of your life. Number two, that gifting, they reveal themselves to us all the time. It's the things that come easy, the things we do naturally, the things that people just look at us and go, wow, that is really amazing. and the other thing is surrounding ourselves with people who believe in us and be willing to be a good mentee, so to speak.

19:42Now, it's one thing to uncover our gifts, Kevin, but you also believe that people need to share these gifts to make life better for both ourselves and for those who we have influence or even contact with. So let's kind of talk this through because you did go through how to uncover and why we should be uncovering these gifts and you even touched a little bit upon sharing these gifts in a way, but I really want to dive deep into this. Can you break that down? Yeah. So the thing about it is if we don't share our gifts, I think it's the most selfish act that we could ever do because, you know, A, it takes work, and some people don't want to do the work, but if you deprive me of your gifts, that's not cool.

20:27How many cures, how many inventions, how many innovations will this world never, ever know about because people were so selfish that they wouldn't develop their gifts and share them with the world. And I think that's the thing. People get confused. They think they can't share their gifts in the context of their job or being a parent or being a friend, a coach, a partner. And the truth is my life got better when I started using my gifts in my work. I spent 32 years in the franchise world and I would not be a speaker today. I would not be one of the most sought after speakers if it wasn't for my career and being able to pour those gifts into my work and being recognized and being promoted and being pushed through this system at elevated to a point where people wanted to start hiring me to speak.

21:14It was because I poured my gifts into my daily habits. I poured them into the people around me. My wife is a great example. We have a 23 year old son with autism. And when he was five years old, when he was five years old, we sat in a school conference room and we listened to people tell us that he would never graduate high school, that he was uneducable in many ways, that he would never go to college. And my wife's one of the biggest heroes of my life. We've been married for 25 years. And she looked at her son and she said, you cover your ears. Don't you listen to him? She said, mom's got a different plan for you.

21:52And she crafted a vision for this kid's life. And then she got to work. She gave up her career to pour her gifts into this kid. And she got down in the ditch. And before she could ever help him find his potential, she had to sharpen the saw in her own life. She had to develop some skills. She had to learn how to draw out the best in him, which is what it means to educate anyway, to draw out. And she got down in the ditch, rolled up her sleeves and was willing to get dirty to help this kid. And listen, it wasn't easy. There were nights when they couldn't be in the same room together because she was pushing him, making him stretch.

22:24And he was frustrated and he would say, why does it my brain work? And I'll never forget. She always used to say, baby, your brain's just fine. It takes a little more work to be special. And one of the things that I believe to be true about kids with autism is that these kids have special needs, but they also have special abilities. And I can actually push that out to the population at large. I think we all have special needs and we all have special abilities. And we as people are called to meet those needs and amplify those abilities. And this kid not only graduated high school, he graduated with honors.

23:01He went to college first in my family to go to college because he didn't accept what people said he didn't have. And he was willing to go to work on what he did have. And those were his gifts. And he found his passion. He found his gifts. And then he used those to create a happy life. So you've got to be willing to do the work just because something comes easy doesn't mean you don't have to hone it and master that craft. Speaking is a gift for me, but I'm naturally an introvert. So I had to overcome a lot of different things to be able to get on stage, to stand in front of 10 ,000 people in Sydney, Australia and tell my story.

23:38So you have to be willing to work on the gifts. You have to be willing to apply those gifts, share those gifts in the context of what you do. I don't care if it's raising your kids, going to work every day as a salesperson, starting a business, being a running a charity. It doesn't really matter what you do. What matters is who you are. People don't come to you for what you do anyway. They come to you for who you are. They come to you to get a little piece of that thing that's arranged in you only in you in that way. Right. Those talents, gifts and abilities that you have are different than the ones that I have.

24:11And they're arranged in a very unique way for each of us. And that's what makes us special. That's why we stop in our tracks and listen to certain performers. That's why we watch certain athletes. That's why we follow certain leaders is because they have something. They have something that draws us in and it's their gifting. So many value bombs in that fire nation. I hope that you're having your finger hovering over that rewind 30 second button a few times, because this is something you need to listen to a couple of times to really let it sink in. And this is the kind of stuff that's going to make you realize that not only do you have a voice, a message, and a mission to share with the world, but you have an obligation to share that.