The Kevin Miller Podcast

Wrapping up my series on Elliott Bisnow, co-founder of the Summit Series events, part festival, part personal development conference. His book, Make No Small Plans, gives focus to the entrepreneurial journey, and the power of hosting and attending events. One of the masters in both categories who I know personally, is Dan Miller, author of 48 Days To The Work You Love and host of the 48 Days podcast. I know him personally as…my Dad. I asked him to listen to my show with Elliot, episode 1038, then join me to discuss it. You’re about to hear our conversation. As this is the Self-Help(ful) show and my focus is just that, this episode addresses some of why we want self-help, and it’s to grow ourselves and live out our values, which we do, or want to do, in our work. And being an entrepreneur is a great way to, help ourselves. So here talked about what evidence you look for in being an entrepreneur. We then discussed what makes for great events in this day and age and how Dan has done it with so many events where it was more family gathering than seminar. A week prior to this recording we attended a podcast convention together and we share what we learned and the opportunities in both podcasting and events. Then we dwelled a good bit on just that, opportunity. In podcasting, event hosting, and so many areas of business endeavors, things are evolving at a more rapid pace than ever. The good news is it leaves the door open for innovation and entry for anyone who comes in savvy. A reminder you can find Elliott Bisnow’s book, No Small Plans, anywhere, and connect with him and his events at summit.co. Dan Miller you can find at 48days.com or his podcast, 48 Days. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is my Functional Friday episode where we focus on our health and wellness so we have the ability and capacity to pursue all we desire, and today we discuss the sensitive and actually volatile topic of your health being your fault. Your genetics matter. Heck, you could be born with a severe deformity. You could have been dealt a bad hand. Which means you must do harder and work more than someone else to be at your best capacity. And your best capacity may be less than someone else’s and even less than the norm. The good news here however is simply how much power and control you do however, have over your health and wellness. Why did we get to the place culturally of not wanting control and responsibility for our health? Would you rather know you have significant power to help yourself feel and be better? Also, the biggest area of blame most of us have regarding our health and wellness is simply ignorance. What we don’t know. But again, this is great news, as we are highly capable of learning. I encourage you to brave up and listen to this episode and you may very well find a new level of hope and confidence in helping you feel and perform better, so you can do what you want to do. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with Elliott Bisnow to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive him to produce the massive Summit Series personal development events, and design a life that fulfills him. Elliotts life is spent with the elite of self-help and business success and he has some incredible insight he puts in place for his own success. Such as using meditation as a tuner for the brain. His exercise is being a sparring partner for elite tennis players. On the health and wellness front, he battled bad asthma until doing a dietary cleanse, basically an elimination diet, and his asthma disappeared. His daily decision making process is focused on making decisions that will create less stress in the future. In business he talks about how we do business being more important than what we do in business. And regarding money and his own success he places more value on not wanting things, than what more he wants. It’s a quality discussion. You can get the book, Make No Small Plans, which we discussed in episode 1038, anywhere, and find Elliott and his pals at Summit.co and info on their November 2022 event I’m looking to attend. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We take a bit of a detour from pure self-help in this episode. I started off with the story of a guy who wanted to be an entrepreneur, yet had no idea how to be, and was as he said, “socially uncalibrated,” which in his case meant he was the guy always trying to sell you something that everyone avoided. His first two attempts at being an entrepreneur, completely failed. Completely. Meaning he created a business and didn’t make one sale. It’s a great story for anyone who feels out of their depth or who is meeting literally zero success in some endeavors. My guest, is Elliot Bisnow. Elliott’s somewhat ridiculous story takes him from literally zero, to now being co-founder of Summit Group, which began and still includes the Summit Series events that are as much festival as self-help conference. They’ve held 250 of the events, loaded with celebrities, thought-leaders, billionaires and politicians. And lots of people like you and me. The event has hosted luminaries like Jeff Bezos (bay-zos), Richard Branson, Jessica Alba, Shonda Rhimes, Brené Brown, and Al Gore in some of the most beautiful places on earth like Playa del Carmen, Mexico, Squaw Valley, California, and Washington, D.C. In this talk though, we really got into discussing the nuances of what makes the events so successful, as opposed to all the events you are used to attending. How they focus on who is attending and where the event takes place, even more than who is speaking. So if you have any interest in holding events, whether paid for as a business, or even just socially, you’ll want to hear this. We even talk about what to look for in events as an attendee. Just really intriguing. A little more on Elliott, he’s a startup investor, having made almost 50 early stage investments, including Uber, Coinbase, Warby Parker & Allbirds. At the start of the show in a moment, you’ll hear he’s talking to me from Powder Mountain ski resort in Utah, America’s largest ski resort which he is co-owner of. Elliott and his three biz partners recently published the book, MAKE NO SMALL PLANS, which entails the again, fairly ridiculous story of how four, very average guys, created such a successful company after doing so many things wrong. I think you’ll find great comfort and come away feeling you can be as clueless, and successful, as they have been. The story really inspired me to think bigger than I have as of late. You can get the book, Make No Small Plans, anywhere, and find Elliott and his pals at Summit.co. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title “How To Feast On Fasting” is meant to help us change our paradigm. Look, I adore food and eating. I’m generally always looking toward my next meal. I enjoy it so much I won’t waste the effort or calories on just any food. I want quality food and excellent tastes. I also don’t like to deprive myself, and in my perspective, I literally don’t. I do however, often delay. I look at fasting this way. I grew up with fasting being a spiritual discipline, which is surely can be. I also know of some radical puritans who abstain from many pleasures as a lifelong discipline. Great for them. That’s not me either. I look at it more mechanically. Most of us are running on too much anxiety and cortisol, we eat on the run and thoughtlessly, and we are very, very often eating foods that our body struggles to deal with and a lot of inflammatory ingredients like gluten, dairy, sugar, and chemicals. So think of it like your car overheating and realize most of us have some overheating going on internally in our gut and digestion. What do you do when a car is overheating on the highway? You pull over and let it cool down. You have to. Or it will blow. Think of fasting this way. Whether you do some intermittent fasting and eat less often, or go an entire day. Or two. Or five. You are simply letting your body recover from digesting. Mentally as well though, we can fast from all varieties of things for the same reason, or just to increase our gratitude. I’m joined by my co host, Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert at truelifemedicine.com. While we don’t expect to get you excited about fasting, I think you’ll find yourself better able to consider the benefits and find ways to do it that you can handle. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Series wrap up on Andy Norman and his book, Mental Immunity. Here I bring on my frequent co-host, Tom Ziglar, CEO of Ziglar and son to Zig Ziglar, to talk about this concept of how we view our beliefs. What came out on the discussion was a question of what is more important. Our beliefs, or relationships? In our culture now that is arguing and polarizing about beliefs, what we most have is just a fight from two warring sides. And how similar is it often in our personal relationships? No one is considering the other, they are just arguing their side. Without putting the relationship first, it’s hard to find validity for even making an effort. We lead off discussing a Facebook post Tom made after listening to my initial talk with Andy in episodes 1033, where Tom said, "To reject unconditional love is to embrace hate." Think about that? As you’re about to hear, this was from talking about how we view and fight for our beliefs. You’ll want to hear more and see how you feel about the statement. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m back with Andy Norman to walk through his personal values, motives, and habits in the key areas of life fulfillment so we can hear what has driven and does drive him to help us create mental immunity and consider our beliefs, and design a life that fulfills him. Previously in episode 1033 we talked about the message in Andy’s book,  Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. Andy is striving to help people develop immunity to bad ideas, and my focus with him was looking at how we define and embrace our beliefs. Here we cover Andy’s personal values and habits. The very things from which his own beliefs are derived from. He discusses how he sifts his own ideas through a filter of asking if it’s actually useful or true. Relationally he talks about “emotional dislocation” and we banter a bit about the issue of “objective reality.” Spiritually he cites his upbringing simply expected a devotion to serve a greater good and this still guides him today. You can find Andy’s book Mental Immunity anywhere and connect with him at andynorman.org. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a story for you. A case study of health turnaround and success for you. Dan Miller is the bestselling author of “48 Days To The Work You Love” and a prolific writer, speaker and coach. However at the end of 2018 at age 71 he found himself barely able to work. He shares the incredible amount of resources he sought for help, including his Primary Care Physician simply stating, “Hey, you’re getting old, make peace with it.” Today he is back to more energy, vitality and overall wellness than he’s experienced in many years. He said, “I didn’t simply get back to where I was before my decline, I’ve far surpassed it.” As you’ll hear in the show, he’s now excitedly finalizing two new books for his publisher and planning out the next 20 years of his productive life. It’s no miracle. It’s just the basics. It’s the things you can do too. Now at age 72, I’d pit his cognitive abilities and much of his physical abilities as well, against the average 50 year old. I believe you’ll relate to much of what you’ll hear in this candid conversation between Dan, Dr Randy James, and myself, as you found out…how Dan did it. What the story is.. And for disclosure, Dan is my Dad! Many of you will know him from his top ranked “48 Days” podcast. You can find him at 48days.com. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I grew up with very strong beliefs and I viewed being resolute and concrete in them as a strength. In our culture today we see this played out every moment of every day as the media pits one side against the other and everyone’s belief as right or wrong, even to the point of the other side as being flat out evil. Social media isn’t a place of consideration, but of unabashed opinionating. In this episode I’m with Andy Norman, a PhD who is the award-winning author of Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think. His work has appeared in Scientific American, Psychology Today, Skeptic, Free Inquiry, and The Humanist. He has appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, public radio, and The BBC’s Naked Scientist. His research is on the emerging science of mental immunity as the antidote to disinformation, propaganda, hate, and division. Bottom line, Andy is striving to help people develop immunity to bad ideas. My focus is really on the harm we do to ourselves and others when we are so rigid in our beliefs we won’t consider anyone who differs. Andy showcases how many, if not most of our beliefs, are more tied to our self-image than truth, and how this hurts us and everyone else. It’s ok to have strong beliefs, but if you feel strong in them and it’s not just to support your personal bias, then wouldn’t you be strong enough to allow someone to explain their differing beliefs and actually seek to understand them? Even if you don’t change your belief, you are showcasing it by being willing to understand another side. And in doing so, you’ll help your own peace of mind and build better relationships. Andy directs the Humanism Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University and is the founder of CIRCE, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative. You can find him at andynorman.org. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wrapping up my series on Terry Real and the message of his book, US: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. I’m with my co-host Randy James, Medical Doctor and Functional Medicine expert and you’re about to hear a very candid discussion on this concept of being we, without losing me. Randy listened to my conversation with Terry in episode 1029 and came into the discussion with his own insights, questions, and grapplings. We hit on some big issues, like the wedding tradition of each person having a candle, lighting one candle in the middle, then blowing out their individual candle. Is that really the intended idea of marriage? And do you come into union with anyone so they “complete you” as the Jerry Maguire movie celebrated? Are you not to be complete on your own? Randy and I have been best friends for nearly a decade and partnered in multiple business endeavors and much of this US concept is relevant for our relationship, and we also bring in parenting to this US concept. I’m eager for you to hear this conversation and would be honored to hear your feedback. Self-Help(ful) is presented by Ziglar, the most trusted brand in personal and business development impacting over 250 million people worldwide. Visit Ziglar.com to see how they can inspire your true performance.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices