Achieving Your Dreams: From Million to Billion W/ Allan Pease

0:28Welcome to the Big Success Podcast. today, it's going to blow your mind. Alan was Mr. Body Language. The guy sold more than 33 million copies of his books around the world from the biggest training company in Russia, who's an Australian, massive in sales, communication, all of that stuff. When you think back to, this is a guy that's about to have his 72nd birthday, and you go back to when he was 21 winning national sales awards, this is someone who's been doing it for 50 years. Study Alan. Dive right in. I know in the second section, my first question to him there will blow your mind. Dive right in.

1:08Enjoy Alan Pease. Enjoy the Big Success Podcast. Let's go. The Mr. Alan Pease. G'day mate. How are you doing? Thanks for joining us from the beautiful Sunshine Coast in Australia. Yeah, we miss you down here, Brad. The sun's shining and the ocean is beautiful and the sand's golden. And everyone's having fun all the time. So that brings me to the point of question number one. How do you define success, Alan? What's your definition of it? Well, the old saying about success is not an objective, it's a journey, and that's where a lot of people miss the idea. They set a goal, they set a target, and they say, well, when I get to that end, I'll be happy when I become a multi-millionaire or run my own business or become a Buddhist monk or whatever their goal is.

1:55But they can be unhappy and miserable on the journey, whereas the journey is really the success. Getting to the end usually with most goals, and most people have said to go and get to the end fine, it's kind of like a bit of an anti-climax because it's taken them as long as it was to get there, and they didn't enjoy the journey. So the key to success for me is to enjoy the journey. There's every day to enjoy what it is you're doing, And the goal is not that important when you actually get there. And you would have experienced this. It's like an anti-climax in some ways. So has your definition of success changed or evolved over the years?

2:30Well, look, it probably has because, I mean, I started setting goals back in the 1950s with my father. He was a life insurance salesman in southwestern Victoria. He was a country agent. And he used to bring home a HMV record player with these big 78 records that we'd play of people like Earl Nightingale and Dale Carnegie. And they talked about, you know, Dale Carnegie, especially his original guy who talked about setting goals and people to like it. So that's where it started for me, you know, right back in those days. But he talked about the goal being the objective. But since then, I've learned from experience of being an expert goal setter my whole life, and I'm 72 this week, a matter of fact, and I've learned that the journey is the best part of it.

3:12So if you focus on the journey, there's every day, every hour, what enjoyment can I get out of moving towards the goal now as opposed to actually achieving the goal? It doesn't mean you let the goal get out of sight. So it's changed from the standpoint, I guess, that I love the journey. I'm having more fun on the journey, whereas in the past when I was a younger fellow, I was hell-bent on achieving the goal, and it doesn't make you happy on the journey if you're focused purely on the goal. So do you think those records was when you chose success or where did you choose success in your life? Well, I grew up with it because my father had been a life insurance agent.

3:51Now, those guys were the cutting-edge motivational speakers of the 50s. They were the guys doing what we do now. And they talked about setting goals and having time plans and having deadlines. And so I learnt that stuff as a kid around about the ages of 8, 9, and 10. So I grew up thinking that was normal. I thought everybody knew about this stuff. And so I started knocking on doors selling pots and pans and selling all sorts of things as a 10 and 11-year-old. And I was great at that. So I went into major selling as a teenager, knocking on doors, selling again pots. I was the king of pots and pans in Australia back in the 60s.

4:26It was terrific. I loved every minute of it. But the whole thing about that, it's a process. You have a goal and you work out your objective. You break it down into the smallest possible parts, working out what you have to do next as part of that, and then decide to enjoy the journey. So, look, I've been doing this forever. So then what is the Alan Pease formula for success? Like how does success happen? What have you created or how have you created it? Well, look, the hardest thing for any person trying to answer that question, and for all of us, I guess, is deciding what it is you really want to have, be or become.

5:03And a lot of people don't do that. They start with that, well, how would I have a business? How would I create my own life? How could I become a wealthier? Could I become whatever you want to become? They start with the how. And what we know is if you start with the how, it's not going to work because you don't know how. If you start with the what, what I will have, what I will do, what I will become. Now, remember, when you start with the what, you don't know how, and that's part of the excitement and part of the terror too. If goals don't ski you, they're not big enough. It's that simple. So they've got to be right out of reach, but you're not out of sight so you can't see them.

5:38Hang on. Say that again because that's really important. Is that an out-of-reach thing? Yeah. Well, first goals, they have to make you nervous. They have to scare you. They don't scare you. It's just a cruise. It's not worth it. So they've got to be big enough. They go, oh, holy hell, how am I going to do this? And they've got to be big enough to frighten you. They've got to be out of reach but not out of sight. If they're over the horizon, well, you lose motivation because people are motivated by the idea of the end goal. So when you set a clear goal somewhere on the horizon, that's what motivates you to overcome obstacles as you go along, because there are obstacles.

6:13People think that you might hit a few bumps as you go along, but there are a hell of a pits and there are highs and there are lows and you get bashed around and competitors come after you. That's a normal part of it. And if you've got a clear decision about what your goal is and what you're going to do, once you come across those obstacles, you'll learn how to jump over them, jump around and kick them out of the way. They don't bother you. But if you don't have a clear goal, you'll be motivated by what happens next. And most of what happens next in any goal planning, goal chasing, is not going to be positive.

6:41It's going to be more negative than positive. Dang. So you mentioned three things there. Decide what I want to have, be, or become. Explain that to me. Well, it's what I call the what. Decide what you're going to do. So, for example, I'll give you an example of the what. My life's been full of these what's. I decided back in the 70s that I would go to the Soviet Union and set up a training business there and become a famous celebrity, go on TV, write books, the whole bit. And I can remember people saying, well, how are you going to do that? I don't know. And this is the point. Once you decide you're what, when people say to you, and the skeptics say, but how will you do that?

7:20I don't know. But that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, but how are you doing that? I don't know. And if they keep asking you, don't tell them anymore. and the worst offenders are doing this, as we all know, are relatives, family members, because they're scared you might go arse up or something. You might fall over, hurt yourself in doing all this, or you lose your money or get depressed. They say, oh, you want to do what, Brad? You want to live in Las Vegas and do what? You could have stayed here in Australia. You could have been foreman of the local bank. You decide the what without knowing, and that is the scariest part of this.

7:57Don't think about the how, because the minute you think Think about the what, the how appears. If you buy whatever car you drive, whoever's listening or watching this program, whatever car you drive, the moment you decide to get that car, you saw it everywhere. Everybody's driving that car. You see it in an Avis rented car at the airport. You see it in movies. You know, the bad guys in getaway cars. It's your car. Yet prior to that, prior to deciding to get that car, you probably never saw that car before. And that's what happens. A part of the brain that searches for the how. You only have to decide the what.

8:28what I will have, do and become, and it's that simple. It's not easy, but it is that simple. And then the how will appear. So let's flip that over then. How do we learn success from failure?

8:45Well, around 90 % of most goals that you set, most significant big goals in your life, will amount to 90 % of the steps you take will amount to nothing. There'll be dead ends. There'll be black ends. Maybe 10 % can be contributing or heading towards the goal. But if you start off understanding that most of what's going to happen in goal setting will not yield a result, then that doesn't bother you. So if you've gone through the first six things and they didn't work out, well, you've only got three more to go until you get the one you want. It's like selling us the law of averages. But most people are motivated by what happens next.

9:19And most of what happens next is not positive. So they get depressed, they get despondent, and they go back to doing what they normally do, back into their comfort zone again. So expecting negatives and knowing they're going to come and getting excited about it. The more negative, it's like selling, the more people who say, no, you can't have an appointment, the closer you are to the one that's going to say yes. And if you operate your whole business life on that basis, you won't have the highs and lows that we tend to get in business and in personal life and setting goals. How long do you reckon it took for you to realise that though, Alan?

9:50And, like, I know as a young man I was so impatient about this stuff. I wanted it immediately type thing. Did you have to learn it or what was your thing? I remember that guy, yeah. Well, when you think back to it, you know, I still have one of the – this isn't the original. This is the hardback of the Alan Pease Paul Dunn book. I mean, geez, you looked about as young on this book as I did 10 years ago. So there you go, mate. That's how long we've known each other. But, I mean, how did you learn that process or how did you learn to become okay with that? Was it just from being in sales or? Well, initially, going back again to my father on the records he used to play at night after school for me on Dale Carnegie and all these guys who were master salespeople back in the 50s and the 40s, the first thing that I understood was when you set a goal and you decide that's what it is, you'll be motivated to overcome any obstacles that get in your way because obstacles will get in your way.

10:51That's the first thing that I think was important. What was the question again? Jake, how did you learn to become okay with the nine things that go wrong to find the one that goes right type thing? Well, it was through repetition and learning, and this is what it is in training, as you and I both know, that repetition over and over and learning the same thing until it becomes good because you've got to hear the same piece the training six times over before your brain will accept the first time it probably conflicts with a lot of your preconceived ideas so your brain doesn't take it in you reject it even though you think it's a good idea and then second time you hear it you say well yeah i understand what you're getting at brad but you know i don't know whether it'll apply to me third time you say this is a good idea but it's still not working by the time you get to the sixth time you own it now you're teaching it to other people so when i started i can remember back as a kid i come from a small country town, southwestern Victoria, a logging town in Lawn.

11:47800 people lived in that town. And your objective as a young fellow was to be the foreman of the mill. You know, if you were the foreman of the mill, you were the man back in those days. And I decided at 19 years of age, because I lived in what was called Housing Commission, which is state housing, you know, the government owned the house, you know, because I come from a pretty poor background, which in many ways was a good start. I decided that by the time I got to 30 years of age, I was going to be a millionaire. Now, I didn't know what that even meant because I didn't know any millionaires in town.

12:17There might have been two, but they weren't visible. But I thought that's what I'm going to do. And the reason I wanted to do that because I watched on TV all these shows called How to Marry a Millionaire and the Millionaire Man of My Life and Richard Bardot and all these beautiful women were chasing this guy because he was a millionaire. So I said, I'm going to be one of those. I had no idea what it meant. All I knew was that I'd have a crack at Richard Bardot being interested in that. So I just decided by 30, I'm going to do that. Now, in housing commission, you say housing in a small country rural town.

12:45You can imagine if I told anybody, which I did. Oh, yeah. How the hell are you going to get up with living on the coast here? You know, if you're knuckle down, you could be one of the second right-hand men at the mill. I said, no, I'm going to be a millionaire because I was on TV. That's the way to go. So back in those days for me, it was a combination of determination. That's what I was going to do. How I was going to do it, I had no idea. but I knew that's what I'm going to do. And if people kept saying, but how? I'd stop telling them about it. And that's what you've got to do with friends and rallies who are the biggest offenders.

13:19They love you. It doesn't mean you don't love these people. You just don't tell them anymore. You only tell people who are likely to say, Brad, that's a great idea. I've got faith in you. You can do it. I need to talk to people who will support you. And so for me, it was determination and understanding from what I've learned from the insurance records about you set goals, you have a plan, you break it back to the smallest possible thing, and then you do the next thing. And that's how it started. It was a combination. I've always been a fairly determined bloke, being like yourself, Brad. I've always decided what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do that.

13:50But the difference is I was going to do it without having any idea how, and this has applied to most things. When I went to Russia, I decided to go and set up this business in Russia. How do you do that? It's the iron curtain. They steal your kidneys. You wake up in an ice bath, blah, blah, blah, which could be true. but because I decided that's what I'm going to do. Finally, when communism fell over in 1989, 1990, I was ready to go. I'd practice it so much. And six weeks later, we arrived. And then I lived there three months of the year for over 30 years. It was our biggest business. It was a massive business.

14:24And it all started just by deciding that's what I was going to do. But I had a thought about how it never would have happened. You're on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. We're going to be back with Alan Pisa. We're going to look at goal achievement and how the blocks and the things that get in the way of you achieving your goals. Without the proper methodologies and strategies, building a wealthy life can be difficult. If you're struggling with building wealth yourself, this is the time to join Brad Sugar's 30X Wealth Program. The 30 videos in this program will help you learn how to make your money work for you rather than you working for it.

14:55Create the life of your dreams. You're back here on the Big Success Podcast. I'm Brad Sugars. Today, we are with Professor Alan Pease. Peasey, I've got to ask, goal achievement, because, you know, body language, you taught that for 100 years type thing, sales, the communication stuff. We'll touch on a little bit of that. But what you're teaching these days around goal achievement and how that happens, take me through that because I think it's phenomenal to help people achieve what they want to achieve. Well, where things have probably changed for me in that, and I wrote a book about that's called The Answer, which was a big seller everywhere on how the biology works with this.

15:32Because now today we've got brain scans, we've got FA-RMI, we've got things that look inside your body and find out what's going on, which we didn't have, say, before the 1990s. And what was found was on the back of your brainstem, just behind the – you put your finger on the ear and move it to the back, you put your finger on those little parts about the size of a walnut. It's called the reticular activating system. It's just a little round bundle of nerve endings. And we've known about it for about 50 or 60 years. Most higher animals, like your dog and cat, have got one as well. And the thing about it, it's the distribution centre for information to your brain.

16:07So everything that you see, hear, taste, feel, everything except smell goes into that reticular activating system. We call it the RAS for short, RAS. It goes into the RAS, and the RAS then distributes it to the brain based on the part of the brain that deals with it. Now, that's, as I said earlier, is one of the most exciting things because the RAS has got two important things in it. It's got a Google search engine. That's how it works, at least. Yeah. A Google search engine, meaning if you decide that you're going to drive to, like, it's funny, you know, talking about that, we have ultimate faith in our GPSs.

16:43We have ultimate faith. If we set the address to go to 22 Smith Street, South Nevada, we have 100 % faith we're going to finish up at that address within metres. And that's exactly what the RAS in your brain does, that you put in there what is it you wanted, the what. You put the what in there. You don't have to think about the how because you don't know how. If you knew how, you would have done it by now or be currently doing it. So you put into the RAS the what. And if you decide the what is a four-door Mercedes-Benz coupe, the minute you decide that's the what, you'll start seeing these things appear everywhere because the RAS searches the whole environment to try to find it, just like a computer.

17:22and it's got a google search engine that does that as well now we've known that it operates this razz operates your metabolism and other parts of your body function but where it's been discovered recently is it also just links right into your goals and that's why if you decide what you will have do and become and just think that and get images of it pictures that's why putting pictures on the wall works so well the images on your computer of the what whatever that is Your RAS will search the environment and suddenly you'll start to see people and events and things related to that everywhere. If you start with the how, now your brain's searching your own database and you don't know how because it's only little.

18:01But the minute you decide what it is you're going to do, have it become put into your RAS and away it goes. And that's the interesting thing about it is that simple. Not necessarily easy, Brad, but it's that simple. And that's why deciding what is far more important than how. But most people, certainly in Western societies, we start with the how. How will we do this? We don't know how, so we quit and go back to our normal, comfortable life. So what happens then when I'm not achieving goals? I've sort of set the goal. I've done that. How does it get blocked? Well, it gets blocked for a number of reasons.

18:35Many of the reasons are things and preconceived ideas from way back when we were a kid. That your parents or Aunty May or somebody told you, look, you can't sing. you've got to stop singing in the shower you're hopeless at doing that which what happened to me I was told from a young kid I stopped singing you know in the shower and I love singing but they said no stop so I didn't sing until I got into my 60s because I believed in my brain that I couldn't sing so I never said it as a goal forgot all about it and until I decided that one of my goals was to join a rock and roll band as a lead guitar player by the time I got to 65 So at age 50, I started really getting into the guitar, and at 65, I joined the Coasters, which is a pretty heavy rock and roll band.

19:18And now I'm playing rock and roll as a 65-year-old. And the band said, listen, you've got to do some backup. We need the backup singing on this. We've only got one backup singer. And as soon as that happened, my ancient training from Artie May took over, you can't sing, Alan. And every time I attempted to do it and I practiced at home, I just could not get the key. I couldn't understand it until one day. I was on stage with some singers and they had this little blue box and they were singing through the blue box. And I said, well, how does that work? They said, well, it corrects your voice and puts it to the right note.

19:50And so when they're dancing, you know, you see all the singers dancing and singing, you cannot sing and tune and dance. It's not possible because you're going, well, you're dancing. But this little box takes all that out and corrects you to the right note. It's kind of a bit like cheating. So for$300, I said, I'm having one of those and I bought one and I started singing through this voice corrector. Man, Brad, I was unbelievable. I'm doing Frankie Valli and I'm doing all of Beach Boys and it's absolutely great. Now, here's the interesting lesson that came out of this. After about a year or so of doing this, I was starring with his backing singing and I just turned my machine on, my safety blanket, and I wouldn't think about it again.

20:28We did a big concert one night and we did a lot of Beach Boys and harmonies and other stuff and I was great as usual. And when I was packing up the gear, I noticed that somebody kicked the cord out of the back of my voice corrector. It hadn't been on all night. In other words, my brain believed I could do this, and so I did it. So next time I tried it with the voice corrector, guess what happened? The brain said, oh, you can't sing, and I'm out of tune again. So slowly I weaned myself off it. So now I will do backing without the voice corrector. But I'm 72 years old. I've had that you can't sing thing in my brain for a long time.

21:02So to answer your question, a lot of the things that stop us, the things that we were taught, most of them with good ideas. They don't want you to look like an idiot singing in public, so they say, Brad, stop singing. Don't sing. And that's what happened to me, and that's what happens to most of us. And there are obstacles that come up, and we don't know why. Just for some reason we get towards the goal and we start losing motivation. But many of them are intrinsic from the past. But if your goal is crystal clear about what you want and you decide, I'm going to have that, I'm going to have that goal, end of story end of discussion over and out that's the way it's got to be you've got to be that firm on it and people who keep asking how don't tell them anymore just decide that's what you're going to do and have faith that your razz will find the hows you'll start to see how let's talk about influence mate because uh when we think about you know everything from body language to communication leadership getting people to move what is the keys to succeeding at influencing others?

22:04By influencing anybody is, I mean, the bottom line is to accept that you're a salesperson in the final analysis. If people buy you, that is they feel comfortable with you, they feel that you're not threatening, that you like them, identify with them, they buy you, there's a good chance they'll buy whatever goes with you, which is where influence comes from. What goes with you is what you've got to say, what you've got to sell or whatever goes with you. and all of us are trying to influence and persuade people to like us, to buy from us, to marry us, to hire us, to do all these things. And so if you get people to buy you, and that's the last part of what influence is, and where body language fits into it because we know people form up to 90 % of their impression about us in the first four minutes on a first meeting.

22:48So if you screw the first four minutes up, you're going to struggle to get that person to buy you. In fact, most of that happens in the first 10 seconds and we spend three minutes, 50 confirming what we think we saw and heard. And the great news about that, you can rehearse and practice the first four minutes of meeting someone in terms of your handshake, certainly your dress, you can control that completely, how you behave, eliminating negative gestures and behaviours, saying positive things, all the things that you teach in the course by saying positive things and getting people on site, they buy you, they'll look for reasons to say yes.

23:19And we also know that reverse is true. If somebody doesn't buy you, there's something about you that they just can't take to. They don't even know what it is. They can't articulate. There's something about that person. I don't know what it was. I just didn't hit it off with them. They'll look for reasons to say no, even if it's a good idea. So that's why it's a good idea. Because maybe if I'm going to do this, Brad, I'll get it from somebody else who I like. So selling yourself to somebody, that first critical four minutes is important, but you've got to continue it, which is why having great positive open body language and getting people to feel relaxed and comfortable and being able to read how you're going.

23:58Are they with me? Are they against me? Are they believe me? Are they holding back information? Having those sort of skills makes you become a charismatic type of person. And studies with charisma show that around 3 % of people in the world appear to be born with the charismatic gene. It's not a gene, but it's called the charisma gene. Like Bill Clinton's like that. He did a lot of shocking things, but everybody loves the guy, and they pay him$100 ,000 to talk about it at a luncheon function. I mean, you imagine George Bush getting paid to talk about what he did. He didn't have the charisma. And 97 % of us don't.

24:34But the good news about this is you can learn by doing training, by doing courses, by reading books on self-development. You can learn to become charismatic because if you're not charismatic now, it's only because you've picked up a whole series of non-charismatic behaviours your whole life. And once you identify what they are, you can eliminate those and replace them with positive ones and become influential. Yeah, it's interesting, Alan, because I remember as a young man when I first read How to Win Friends and Influence People. And it wasn't until later in life that I realized you can use that for a period of time, but eventually you have to actually be that person.