Releasing Your EGO to Better Serve Others | John Maxwell EP 519

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:10I have the ability to cast a vision that people want to be a part of. How do you do that so well? I do it better today than I used to. Let's start there. And part of it is because of who I am now. So, for example, when I started, I started a coaching company 11 years ago. And for 20 years, people said, you ought to have a coaching company. You coach a lot. You mentor people. I thought, I don't need another thing on my plate. I've got a whole bunch of stuff going. And so about 11 years ago, I decided to start a coaching company. And now it's the largest coaching company in the world. We have, you know, 50 ,000 plus coaches in 172 countries.

0:47And it's just, it's just, it's exploded. And, but I think a lot of that growth and casting vision, attracting people is because I've been in the leadership world for 40 years. I was a proven commodity. People didn't say, I wonder if I should follow him. I think part of that ability of being contagious with vision is the success. I think the more success you have, that itself draws people. I think my greatest strength in communication is that I really can connect with people when I speak. The book is a lot about how do you connect with people. In fact, one of the laws, there are 16 of them, but one of the laws is the law of connecting.

1:34And the law of connecting just simply says that communicators know it's all about the audience. So when people come to me and they say, you know, I want to be a good communicator. You know, what advice do you give me? I tell them very simply, you've got to get over yourself. It is not about you. And that's hard for a beginning speaker because the beginning speaker is they're not good yet. They haven't practiced enough. They're nervous. They're saying, I hope I do a good job. I hope people like me. Yeah. I mean, I hope if I tell a joke, they laugh. And so they're very consumed. They go out and speak, but they're all self-consumed and you can't connect.

2:13You can't connect with people if you're consumed with yourself. So it takes a while. It takes a while to get over yourself. But the moment you get over yourself, first of all, the nervousness of speaking goes away. Because now I'm not worried about, well, I hope they like me. Will they applaud what I've done? And do you think they'll take notes? See, that's all about me. It's all about me. So when the book was coming out, Lewis, we did a video on the 16 laws. And I talked to the producers and I insisted that the video start with me in the audience, not on the stage. And so when the video starts, I'm sitting in a seat in an auditorium and I'm the only one there.

2:58And I start off by saying in a few moments, the auditorium will be full of people. And it's all about the people. And it's all about my ability to connect with them, to understand them, to put them first. And it's not about the stage yet. I will go to the stage, but don't go to the stage until you've thought about the audience. It's all about the people. Well, one of the things that we did, it was an idea of a guy in Nashville who, of course, Nashville's music, and he has a company of writers, very successful. And he came to me. I didn't even know him. He said, I read your books and I learned, I built my company off of your books 20 years ago.

3:34And he said, I think you ought to write songs based on your books. And I thought, Oh my gosh, I never even thought of that before. And I love to write poems. I write to my grandchildren and to my children. I wrote, every birthday, I write them a poem. And the night before I write it, and then I send it at 3.30 in the morning on their iPhone, so when they wake up in the morning, they have what they call a papa poem. And so I love to write poems, but I never wrote songs. So I said, I'd love to try it. So I went to Nashville, got the studio with these awesome writers. I mean, these guys write number one songs for all the country stars.

4:14I'm at the bottom of the class. I mean, I know nothing. And one of the things I teach is that if you're the head of the class, you're in the wrong class. Get out of that class. You shouldn't be in there. If you're the head of the class, you're just talking about what you do and you're not learning anything. So I always like to be around people bigger, better, faster, smarter than me. This was huge. And I got in the studio and I watched them and I learned from them. So we started writing songs. And one of the songs that we wrote off of the 16 Laws of Communication is the song, Get Over Myself. And the chorus, the chorus basically says, I got to know myself to be myself.

4:46I got to be myself to find myself. I got to find myself to improve myself. I got to improve myself to get over myself. I got to get over myself so I can give myself to you. Oh, yeah. Get over myself is one. And then another one I wrote from my book, Today Matters. I wrote a song called Day by Day. And that one's coming out. Or that's out now. Those two are out. They're doing great. Oh my gosh, they're doing super. And then I got another one coming out next month on Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn. And I'm having a blast. I'm just having fun.

5:21Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you wanna get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:11Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.