Unlock the Full Power of the Greatest Change Agent Imaginable... Your Mind with Christina Curtis

0:02Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on fire brought Brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like CEO School. Today, we'll be breaking down how to unlock the full potential of the greatest change agent imaginable, your mind. To drop these value bombs, I brought Christina Curtis into EO Fire Studios, a thought leader on goal attainment. Christina regularly contributes to the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, The Psychology Today, and more. In her new book, Choosing Greatness, she provides an evidence-based approach to achieving exceptional outcomes.

0:36And today, Fire Nation, we'll talk about choices and being intentional. We'll talk about people who walk around on autopilot zombies. We'll talk about confidence and value over volume and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Christina and our sponsors. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food, and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com.

1:17Outbound Squad, hosted by Jason Bay, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in for convos with leading sales experts and top performing reps to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients. One of my faves, the monthly app with Jason and Ethan, where they share hacks, tips, and tricks. Listen to Outbound Squad wherever you get your podcasts. Christina, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. John, thank you for having me. I'm feeling so fired up to talk to entrepreneurs out there and share some of the things I've learned over the years.

1:57gosh something I believe about becoming successful most people would disagree with this may be controversial but I think people believe success comes down to hard work and I am not saying I'm not saying hard work isn't necessary I think it's a critical ingredient but I don't think it's the most important one in the recipe card I actually think it's how we set our mind up to be our greatest competitive advantage and here's why I find those I work with who achieve exceptional outcomes, like really stratospheric levels of achievement, they have been very clear on the daily conditions that are required to bring out their best quality thinking, to reach and influence their network, to generate trust rapidly and sell their ideas with passion and communicate in the most impactful way.

2:43And to do all of those things, they have to make sure their mind is primed for peak performance. So they have a clear plan that they put in place every week so they can show up at their best. And to me, that is the biggest game changer. No different than like a professional athlete who creates regimens required to maximize their speed or agility or strength. I think we need one for our brain, for our mind, so we don't show up cloudy or reactive or our relationships aren't strained or our message falls flat. That to me is the critical differentiator. It's a great start to a podcast, Fire Nation, that is all about unlocking the full power of the greatest change agent imaginable, your mind.

3:26And Christina, you've made some very intentional choices that have led you to where you're at today here chatting with us. The founder of a successful leadership consulting business you are, you're the author of Choosing Greatness. Talk about how these choices that you made very intentionally led you to here today. Sometimes, John, you know, when you step back and you see all those choices you made along the way, and you can tie them into this really nice narrative. It's just lovely life story. But when you're in it, when you're making those choices, it can feel so hard. And the most pivotal choice for me was about 15 years ago, and I was running the Xerox National Sales Training Program up in Canada at the time.

4:10I was in Toronto. and I've been called out to facilitate this workshop for Xerox agency owners in Niagara Falls and I was pretty stressed out I have at the time a two-year-old son who was experiencing these blackout spells and he would just stop breathing and he'd fall unconscious often without warning and it was super scary and terrifying and so the hospital had run some tests to figure out what was going on and there I was wrapping up this workshop and I got the call the call from the doctor in the back of the room. And I remember having this moment listening to the doctor speaking where I could almost, it was like I was in this fog.

4:47And she said, Christina, we figured out what's going on. It's the signal from your son's brain to his lungs that just stops working. It just stops working. And so he's waking up every 45 minutes, because he's gasping, literally gasping for air, or he is blacking out because he is running out of oxygen. and that very moment I realized I am not where I need to be I am like I am not in the right place this is not where I'm supposed to be right now I need to be home and I need to be with my family and I picked up my laptop in the back of the room and walked it over to my boss and handed him the laptop and said hey I I can't be here I have to go home be with my family and And if I take this laptop home with me, I will be back at work on Monday and I need to hit pause.

5:38And he said, no, no, Christina, honestly, take your laptop. Go take care of your family. Come back on Monday and we'll think through it. And I left the laptop there and got in my car and I was shaking. And I called my husband and I said, Steve, I just quit my job. And he was like, what are you talking about? So, and also in other news, we got to bring our son to the hospital tomorrow. And I drove home on the phone with my husband just crying about our family issue. And also super clear I'd made the right choice and got home. And that little two-year-old wrapped his arms around me and gave me a big squeeze.

6:16And that moment of choice to choose my family at that time gave me six months reprieve so I could get him on the right trajectory towards good health, which we did. and after that, I started my own company. So that was a really pivotal moment for me in my life. Wow, that's powerful. And Fire Nation, some of you may not have had quite the wake-up call. Some of you have, but I mean, man, let me tell you, you shouldn't have to wait for something like that to make these type of choices in your life because it's all out there for you to choose greatness as Christina's book, Choosing Greatness, is all about.

6:52And Christina, a lot of humans, they have their brain on autopilot. I mean, talk about what needs to happen to these walking, talking, eating zombies. Yeah. Well, I always say we set goals and then our habits happen, right? It's this, the brain is ultimately this economical organ that is not going to want to spend its neurological reserves when it's already made a decision. It knows how to engage with this person. So it'll do that again. It knows how to deal with this problem. So it'll do that again. and actually john we end up spending 40 of the day on autopilot plugging in coordinates of where we've been versus frankly where we want to go in life and that was a massive eye-opening experience actually just watching my son go through some neurological challenges i learned a lot about this power of habit and i think we think of it as a really good thing and it can be in situations where there's very little variability like going to the gym or grocery shopping or brushing your teeth or filling up that water bottle on your desk.

7:51Those are habits that are helpful because very little variability is required. But as you know, the world around us is constantly shifting, emotions are changing, relationships are shifting, macro pressures are constantly evolving. And so we have to really pause and think we got to like elbow our way into that space between an event and our reaction to it and choose what's going to align with our best outcome. That's it. And it sounds simple, but to me, it's transformative because you think about something like your phone. We look at the phone 96 times a day. It's once every 10 minutes and seemingly harmless.

8:28As soon as you look at it, it shifts your brain away from whatever you're doing into another task. It's like it pulls your energy away. And it can lead up to 30 % of productivity decrease just because that simple action. Or like gives you that low-grade buzz anxiety, you know, where you're thinking, gosh, did someone text me? Is there a new notification? I better look. I'm going to just take a quick look. And it pulls us away from relationships. You're sitting with your partner on the couch having a conversation and they pick up their phone and you think, gosh, for whatever reason, even though logically you know why they're looking, you don't feel valued.

9:01So that's a really simple habit that people can look at and say, is it bad in itself? No, it's just eroding our ability to be hyper successful. And so anytime you choose something else, like I'm not going to look at my phone, you're going to feel discomfort because you're breaking a pattern. The brain's like, I want to do this pattern. You say, I don't want to do that pattern right now. And you feel discomfort. And oftentimes we'll just then say, okay, I'll just do it anyway. Instead of scratch it, man, discomfort be damned. I'm going to choose this other action. I can hold discomfort and still choose.

9:33I can hold speaking up in a meeting and the discomfort that brings and still choose to do it. I can hold starting my own company and the stress involved with that and still do it because discomfort is just us saying, oh, okay, you're breaking a pattern. This is not the pattern we're used to, but do it anyway. Do it anyway when you know it's in service to your long-term goals. Fire Nation, I can't see you, but I can feel a lot of you nodding your heads as Christine is talking right now because we're all guilty of this. And it is eating away critical productivity from our lives. I like to say my definition of productivity is producing the right content.

10:11And guess what? You are not being productive, looking at your phone, checking your notifications. In fact, I honestly have had so many conversations with people that like have sound notifications on their phone or computer. I just tell them, I say, hey, real quick, are you as successful as you want to be right now in this moment? And they're always kind of like, well, not really. I'm like, your sound notifications on your phone are the reason why. And they're like, what are you talking about? I'm like, once you get that, you'll get it. And until you do, like just keep on coming up short in your life.

10:43Now, Christina, you're a huge believer in confidence. How can Fire Nation become more confident in our workplace and our professional goals? I think the most important thing is to recognize that confidence is a skill. So it's something you have to build. It's not a trait. You're not born with it or born without it. And I think people think confident. People are confident all the time. but there is not one single executive I work with at any level in any organization who doesn't struggle with confidence as well and people find that actually surprising the executives can't say so one of them actually I said oh can I quote that in my book and he said well only if you want my stock price to drop but because people don't want to write a CEO to not be confident that being said it's human nature it's human nature to have self-doubt show up what's problematic is when we think it's predicting the future, right?

11:35And doubt is a universal neurological safety mechanism that's triggered anytime we think or even like think of stepping outside of our comfort zone. So if you have some meeting or presentation coming up, sometimes it can fire even when there's no threat in sight. But it is helpful. It helps us look at situations with our eyes wide open and really scrutinize information and act as a barometer for risk. So it's helpful as long as you don't let it run the show, as long as you don't give it the mic. And so confidence One easy way to think of it, I'll share a story of Daniel Nestor, who has won eight Grand Slams and an Olympic gold medal in doubles tennis.

12:11He's actually won more doubles tennis matches than any other person in history. He's from Canada. And he and I were talking in my book, and he said, gosh, Christina, I used to be out there on center court, Wimbledon. Imagine yourself there. It's really fun just for a moment. You're out there on the court. And you hit the ball, and it goes in the net. And for him, when that happened, what he found himself doing is immediately beating himself up. Gosh, how'd you do that? Oh, you're going to lose the match. Why are you screwing this shot up? This is the moment. And if you can imagine it, all of that neurological resources he had driven towards the point just went back into his head and focused on himself and his inner critic.

12:51It was like taking all that horsepower and driving internally versus back in the game. and so for him what he did is he saw a sports psychologist and worked on confidence building and addressing it in the moment by coming up with what he calls anchor words so it just breaks the pattern he'll he'll hit a shot that'll go in the net and he'll say okay put your body into the ball step back what do I need to adjust that's it you act you adjust and you keep going you act you adjust you keep going you don't make it a big deal you're learning each time you're getting stronger as you go. And so for him, that really helped him break that self-doubt soundtrack that kept looping in his head and allowed him to build the confidence.

13:30And interestingly, there's a fascinating study where they looked at the 2000 Olympics to see what's the difference between people who make the medal and who don't. And those who won the medals were the people who had the positive talk track playing in the background. And John, that doesn't just mean, Christina, you're great. High five sister. Like it's not like that. It's just, God, I made a mistake. What did I learn? Let's go. Next point, continuing to channel your passion and be in the state of activating rather than allowing your energy to flop and drain and ruminate over the weekends. So for me, confidence is a skill.

14:07Choose it every day. Don't wait for it to come. You got to feed it. You got to fuel it. Your success depends on it. And remember, it is not the same thing as perfectionism. Perfectionism and striving for excellence. It's striving for excellence you think about. Anytime you're striving for excellence, you have high standards and you're always learning. You always want to get better to that next level of excellence. Striving for perfection, any deviation from excellence is seen as a failure. And I think that's partly where we get tripped up from a confidence perspective. Any deviation, any setback is seen as failure.

14:40That's not effective for performance. So just feed it, fuel it, and continue to build that skill. And Fire Nation, if you've been digging these tennis analogies, you have to watch Breakpoint on Netflix. It is fantastic. Just a little segue there. But also I want to say we are going to be talking about the number one thing that you need to remember when it comes to achieving your goals, Fire Nation, and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. More and more entrepreneurs and investors are discovering the awesome franchise opportunities that exist outside of food. Franchising can simply be the better path and interest in franchising is at an all-time high.

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15:48500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today, or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. That's Fran, F-R-A-N, bridgeconsulting.com. Content is a major driver of traffic and leads in most businesses, but creating great content takes a lot of time and people. That's why AI is making major headlines these days and HubSpot's AI-powered content assistant is coming in hot. HubSpot's AI-powered content assistant helps marketers brainstorm, create, and share content quickly and easily.

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17:01Get early access to HubSpot AI today at hubspot.com slash artificial dash intelligence. Christina, you've worked directly with many high profile executives, leaders. What's your number one takeaway from these interactions? It might be unexpected, but it's actually around energy. Energy is the most contagious thing in life. You can actually have two people sit in a room and not speak. And the person with the dominant mood or energy will transfer that energy to the other person in under 10 minutes. I mean, that's how powerful it is. And so the high profile executives and leaders I see have found a way to manage their energy effectively and understand that it's essential.

17:47They actually are able to galvanize the energy of those around them. So they'll walk in, they'll ask the powerful questions, they will bring the right mood to a meeting, they will almost act like electricity running through the neurological wires of the group to maximize performance by sparking ideation and excitement and drive and so i think energy is something we take for granted we we get pretty burned out by the end of the day and you have to remember at that point your impact on a room is going to be neutral or negative and how can you take a five minute break to quickly maximize your physical well-being and get yourself activated again so you can again bring the best out of those around you um it's fascinating i was reading the study uh it's actually a 20-year study where they were able to actually identify groups of happiness and unhappiness across a community with negative people being surrounded by clusters of negativity and positive people being surrounded by clusters of positivity i mean that's just how contagious it is so i think it's also important to watch who you're around what energy you're catching and then what energy you're transmitting because it will ripple through not only your sphere, but also their spheres.

18:58It just keeps on traveling, almost like electricity. Fire Nation, have you ever said yourself, I don't really know why, but I like that person? Or I don't really know why, but I don't really vibe with that person. It's all energy. Like it's energy. That's the reason. Some people are just great energy emitting from their soul. They don't have to say a word. and you're just drawn to them. You like them because we are energy. All we are is energy when it really comes down to what we are as beings. Christina, talk to us about the concept of value over volume. Value over volume, this concept came to be because I find we tackle a ton.

19:39We take on a lot of volume, but we don't always analyze the value of what we're taking on. And that means we're burning a lot of calories potentially in places we don't need to be because the brain only has so much cognitive bandwidth available. And as soon as you burn through that, you can feel your intelligence dims or mine does, I get a little bit, I get a little less bright, my decision making suffer, I become more reactive when the kids say something I can, I can spike pretty high without need to, I can be more impulsive. And so it's really important that I'm not just walking headfirst into a logjam and saying yes to everything, because that will block my path to success and to be able to achieve my goals.

20:21So value, look every week with an eye towards value on what you're taking on. Even using a calendar, it's a super helpful way to look at the past, present and the future simultaneously. So you can optimize this. Where are you double or triple booked? Right? Is that which one is high value? Which one isn't? What days are you unable to eat? That's probably a low, low value moment for you. Where'd you forget to include exercise? Where are you so busy you can't actually get things done? What meetings do you not need to be in? What can you defer? What can you delegate? I mean, it's a constant mechanism each week when you're not in a hot state, meaning you're not in the week.

20:58It's before the week has started. So you can actually tap your prefrontal cortex and critically think about where do I need to invest my time and what will have the greatest return on my effort and energy and intellect in the next seven days. Fire Nation, we talked about energy. We talked about value over volume. I promise, Christina, that we're going to talk about the number one thing that we, Fire Nation, need to remember when it comes to achieving our goals. Take us home strong. Trust in yourself. I mean, you can do this. You may not want to do it, in which case pressure test your goals to make sure you're running after the right ones.

21:34I just challenge people. I meet thousands of people every year who I'm working with. And those who are tolerating fine or okay, things are okay. I just got to get through the next couple months. I challenge you, life is too short. You work too darn hard for fine to be your future. And every single one of us is at our fair share bumps, John. I mean, setbacks, failures, relationship breakups, work issues. It's proven that we can get through those. So if you're in a low slump, find the people who can bring you back up and pull you onto shore and get you on your feet so you can keep going. And if you're on a high, propel yourself forward, use it as a flywheel, bring others around you and just trust that you're going the right way at the right time and the right moment.

22:16And this is your life. So make it count. We're going to make it count, Christina. And I know Fire Nation enjoyed this interview. So give us a final call to action. Where can we connect with you? Where's the best place to go to get value over volume? And then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, well, the book Choosing Greatness is coming out May 2nd. It's available for pre-order and there are going to be some programs that you can get specially if you order now between now and May 2nd. It's available at Barnes and Noble or Amazon.com. And come check me out. I've got a website, Christina Curtis, official on Instagram and Curtis Leadership Consulting online.

22:53And let's continue the conversation. I'm looking forward to it. Fire Nation, her new book, Choosing Greatness, provides an evidence-based approach to achieving exceptional outcomes. Why don't you want that? Christina, thank you for being on Entrepreneurs on Fire, for giving us your value, your knowledge, your time. Because Fire Nation knows they're the average of the five people they spend the most time with. And they've been hanging out today with CC and JLD. So keep up the heat, Fire Nation. Any direct questions for Christina, find this episode on the podcast listening app. Podopolo, post a comment, get the conversation rolling.

23:30EOfire.com, type Christina in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with links to everything. Christina, Fire Nation salutes you. We thank you. We'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Christina for sponsoring today's episode. Fire Nation, what can 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs teach you? How about how to achieve financial freedom and fulfillment? My first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, is a revolutionary 17-step roadmap that will lead you to the lifestyle you've been dreaming about.

24:03This book took me 10 years of accumulating the genius of the world's top entrepreneurs. And you can get it all in one place when you visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. And I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food. and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com. Outbound Squad, hosted by Jason Bay, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

24:45Tune in for convos with leading sales experts and top performing reps to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients. One of my faves, the monthly app with Jason and Ethan, where they share hacks, tips, and tricks. Listen to Outbound Squad wherever you get your podcasts.