The Kevin Miller Podcast

#952: The sales process is no longer what it used to be. In the past sales people were needed to inform and educate and fully showcase a product or service to people who came in with a desire, but were pretty ignorant. Today nearly all sales happen online with no need for a so-called sales person. With any product or service we can fully research it. Compare it. Get unbiased user reviews. All that’s left is deciding from which person or company we’ll make our purchase from. So how do we all adjust for this new scenario? That’s what Tom Ziglar and I discuss in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#951: There are key, intrinsic activities and aspects of work that truly make you come alive and within which are your greatest opportunities for top level success, and your greatest fulfillment and joy. But we don’t tend to realize what they are. We attribute them to a specific job or business and the roles we had, the product or service we were involved with, the people included. But nearly every job or business ends or significantly changes and we lose it and try to recreate it based on those external ingredients. And often can’t recreate it. Why? Because those are not the right ingredients. To showcase what the right ingredients are, I have Jonathan Fields back on the show. Jonathan was with me years ago and we talked about his book, How To Live A Good Life. He has a really big podcast called the Good Life Project, and now he’s put together a work profile you can take for free at sparketype.com, and he goes deep into what sparks us in our work, in his new book, Sparked. If you want to go beyond merely listening and join our community of people devoted to making positive change in their life and work, come over to kevinmiller.co and join my Driven To Live Community. Go from listening to this podcast episode with Jonathan Sparks and join us to talk and grapple with and apply the concepts to your life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#950: You have problems in your life that need solving. You have goals for your life that require decisions. The greatest minds of all time budgeted specific time in their days to simply…think. To really sit and without input or distraction, think. To use the machine of their brain to crunch the data and consider the options and do what nobody or nothing else could do for them. The great art and ideas we all benefit from and applaud came from someone who took the time to think them up. To fertilize the seeds of their mind, nourish and nurture, and come forth to bear fruit. If we want great solutions and ideas and actions, we must take time to sit and…think. Here is the concern. In his book, 2 Chairs, author Bob Beaudine who I recently had breakfast with, calls us to spend time listening to God. Setting a chair in front of us and trusting God knows what our needs are, then sitting to listen for his direction. What is the primary obstacle here? Trusting you’ll actually hear from God. My concern is when it comes down to it, we doubt that our thinking…our listening to ourselves, will actually result in anything. Instead we clamber to hear from others so they’ll tell us what to do. This isn’t a call for self-sufficiency. Just a budget. We take in input. We take in counsel. And…we think on it all. Deeply and with faith and expectation. Next Tom Ziglar and I have a conversation on this issue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#949: Tuesdays with Morrie is the bestselling memoir of all time, selling over 15 million copies. Best-selling author, screenwriter, playwright and nationally-syndicated columnist Mitch Albom has now sold over 40 million of his combined books. In this episode he comes to us to discuss his latest, The Stranger In The Lifeboat. The moment I saw the request to have Mitch with me for a the show I simply replied with a resounding, “Yes! Of course.” I didn’t need anything new from him. That said, this new book and the message within is just…incredible. It’s an enthralling story with a powerful message, which is indicative of Mitch, who gets billed as writing messages where the spiritual and the earthly collide, and they sure did in The Stranger In The Lifeboat. I start us off simply talking about personal transformation. Mitch had his own radical life change that resulted in the Tuesdays With Morrie book and in the 20+ years since then, this has been his devotion. What does it take to transform a life? Our lives? That’s what this episode is about. We got…deep. Into the very tenets of faith and our cultural views of God, and our personal lives. It was a significant discussion, and it’s coming up next. Get Mitch’s new book, The Stranger In The Lifeboat, wherever you get books. And you’ll hear him mention an orphanage in Haiti he literally took over Havefaithhaiti.org. And when you hear some of the significant issues of our lives we cover in this episode, I invite you to join our community where we go…deeper. Into meaningful conversations and how to apply what we hear, to our lives. To our transformation. Find my Driven To Live community at kevinmiller.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#948: I asked the Ziglar audience, “To make progress in your work/career/business/vocation; if you had a willing angel investor, what investment or action would you put money toward?” Tom Ziglar and I talked through the listener comments and it was really insightful for us all to consider… where we really feel the priority is, for making progress in our work and businesses. The top three areas cited were Marketing, such as ad copy and social media, physical resources like land and tools, and people, staff and team members. Go beyond just listening to this episode of The Ziglar Show and join me and a group of aspiring people like yourself to dig into the topics and actually apply the messages to your life. Come to kevinmiller.co/community, get my Drive Formula for free, and join the Driven To Live Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#947: We are back with Jon Acuff, the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including his most recent, Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution To Overthinking, which we had a deep conversation about in episode 945. In this episode we dig into his habits for success, which as you heard in his intro, include keeping queso out of the house, which I completely understand. I have a friend who calls it liquid love and I’m prone to ODing on it as well. This references my friend Ben Hardy’s book, “Willpower Doesn’t Work” and the reality that our willpower is finite and instead of relying on it to not eat all the queso, we set up our environment for success and just not have it available. Listen in as I ask Jon about his primary habits following the Ziglar Wheel of Life, and you can get Jon's new book Soundtracks wherever you get books and connect further with him at acuff.me. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#946: “What are the top 3 leadership challenges you see in business, as a business owner or as an employee?” This is the question I posed to our audience. The comments were varied and valuable. Tom Ziglar is becoming a go to expert on what began as a topic of disruption, then recently onto the aspect of “the great resignation” but Tom is rising to acclaim as he looks at it as the “great reimagination.” Here however, with all the responses, you’ll hear most of them coming down to...relationships. The primary leadership challenges point to simply relating to one another with actual care. But as we come to again and again, the workplace so often misses the fact that it’s about people and not business. We take this head on in the following episode. To fully grasp and take advantage of this opportunity in your own leadership...pre-order Tom Ziglar’s new book, 10 Leadership Virtues for Disruptive Times, right now at 10leadershipvirtuesbook.com. Go there now and download a chapter for free. 10leadershipvirtuesbook.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#945: Jon Acuff is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including his most recent, Soundtracks, The Surprising Solution To Overthinking, which is our muse today. This is the second time I've had Jon on The Ziglar Show and he has a knack for bringing profound personal development messages to us in an entertaining and highly digestible perspective. I admire his way to connect with where people are in the reality of their lives. A reality that as you're about to hear, he says we manufacture, and I sincerely agree. In this episode you'll hear us dig into issues such as; We think our memory is a GoPro recording of “reality”, when in fact we're just filtering it through our own cognitive bias, one that has a quick decline in memory consistency. But we base our beliefs on it. Jon asks, “Why is it so easy to repeat negative soundtracks about myself internally and so hard to repeat positive soundtracks about myself externally?” The premise of his new book and message is we are living from soundtracks in our mind we often need to Retire, Replace, then Repeat with the new ones, over and over. Jon discusses with me how our brain builds on overthinking’s habit of negativity by doing three additional things: Lying about your memories, confusing fake trauma with real trauma, and believing what it already believes. And we start in on his insight into no single good event in our life has as much lasting impact as trauma. So...what do we do with it? That is what you're about to hear about. Find Jon's new book Soundtracks wherever you get books and connect further with him at acuff.me. Come join me in my new Driven To Live community at driventolive.co where we go beyond just listening to these podcasts, and we engage with other driven people...to ask questions and have real conversations on how to actually apply the incredible wisdom we hear, to our own lives as we seek to transform ourselves into our full capacity. My guest in this episode is Jon Acuff and you're about to hear what drives him and a message that is worth digging into. Join us to dig in, at driventolive.co. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#944: I like mind games because I think that’s what life primarily is. In this episode I wanted to get us focused on what counsel we most desire if it was critical. I asked the Ziglar audience this question; “You must spend 2 hours with someone for pure Q&A, you ask questions, they give answers. Who do you choose? And why?” People came back with answer such as Adam Grant, Matthew McConaughey, anyone in congress, Caesar Augustus, Ronald Reagan, any former president, Stephen Curry, Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, Gary Vaynerchuk, Andy Andrews, C.S. Lewis and many others. But for more important than who is...why. To think, like with a genie in a bottle if you were to get one wish, if you could get two hours of counsel with anyone, and I did ask it to be a mortal, even if deceased, who would it be and why, with the why really helping give you focus on what your top priority for help and growth is in your life today. Whether you could truly meet with that person or not, it sheds light on where you now spend your counsel budget. Even if it’s listening to podcasts or reading books, are you giving this area of focus priority? This is our show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

#943: How would Zig Ziglar’s kid build a business? What you’re about to hear is a grassroots story from Julie Ziglar Norman, Zig Ziglar’s eldest daughter. If you were fortunate enough to hear one of Zig’s last talks, he was always accompanied by Julie to keep him on the target of his message after his fall that would find him sometimes repeating himself. Following his death and the death of her husband, Julie started a career in real estate. Especially for you fans of Ziglar with a fondness to hear how he inspired not only hundreds of millions of people, but his own family, you will be comforted and inspired by this. Tom Ziglar and I talk with Julie and her business partner Heather Prichard and hear the story of building a business on the Ziglar principles of integrity and ethics, which along with being the right thing to do, is also...the most profitable. This will be confirming for many of you as you can sometimes get the feeling that doing the right thing will be nice but lose money. You can find Julie and Heather at https://www.ziglarrealty.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices