The Kevin Miller Podcast

We live in a time of more conveniences, automation, safety, knowledge, and creature comforts than ever. In all reality most of us have a buffet of resources that should make our lives today easier than ever. Yet we seem to be sicker and sadder than ever. As a matter of fact, in regards to personal growth, health, and wellness it’s difficult to find any stat where we are improving. This is astounding. In this episode, renowned author, speaker and podcaster Neil Pasricha believes a root issue is our lack of resilience. The official definition of resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. But instead of pushing for anything great and invariably failing here and there, and learning and getting tougher on the journey to success (being resilient), more and more we are just striving to play it safe. Get it right the first time. Neil showcases the tragedy of this and schools us on having a “failure budget”. It’s a very needed and freeing message that Neil delivers in a beautiful paradigm. Neil Pasricha thinks, writes, and speaks about intentional living and is the New York Times bestselling author of five books, including his latest, You Are Awesome. His book, The Book of Awesome and The Happiness Equation, have together spent over 200 weeks on bestseller lists and have sold over 1,000,000 copies. He hosts the Apple 'Best of 2018' award-winning podcast 3 Books which features live conversations with guests such as Malcolm Gladwell, Judy Blume, David Sedaris, and Chris Anderson of TED. I encourage you to visit Neil.blog and subscribe to his podcast, 3 books with Neil Pasricha. And you can get his just released new book, “You Are Awesome” at neil.blog or wherever you buy books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As we continue to breach the hard questions, this one is a doozy that massively affects our relationships. In this episode we hear a six minute message from Zig Ziglar where he shares a story and from it poses the question, “Why don’t we treat everyone like they are a VIP in our lives?” He cites the impact our perspective of another holds in our relationships. From his message I asked The Ziglar Show audience this question, “How much responsibility do you feel you should take for the relationships in your life, from spouse to parent to coworkers and beyond.” And boom...the responses came in. Right away the majority were either 100% or 50%. But differentiations were made between relationships, especially regarding work or parenting and positions of authority. I’ll preface the show by saying this is not a black and white issue. But knowing what our belief is will greatly influence the health of your relationships. It is a foundational topic we would all be best served to make a decision upon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you do to keep your mental edge sharp? This is the answer from Phil M Jones, our guest in show 723, “In my permanent quest for better, I follow every major activity I do with what I call the four Rs, my process is pretty structured; Reflect, review, refine and reschedule. First, I reflect. Then I review, ‘What did I like best?’ Then I refine, ‘Next time, what would I do different?’ Last I reschedule, ‘When will I utilize what I learned’?” That is a structure worth adopting. I also appreciated a primary ingredient for his mental wellness was great music appropriate to the mood he wanted to foster, as this is key on my personal list. He bookends his days with no devices which is something we discussed in my True Life Show podcast, episode six. Regarding financial, Phil says he knows what a day of his time is worth, even down to a wholesale cost any activity must equate to. And this is interesting, in his career spoke right now his most challenging issue is he's already outperformed any expectation he had for himself. That's surely not the norm. Those and more interesting and inspiring habits from Phil M Jones, in this episode. Look for Phil’s books at Amazon or where you get your books, "Exactly What to Say", "Exactly How to Sell" and "Exactly Where to Start" just type in Phil Jones Exactly and there you’ll have it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That show title is a volatile question that will ultimately shape your life trajectory. All of us have made good and bad decisions that have resulted in making our circumstances better or worse. Hopefully we take responsibility for these decisions we know we made. Then there are the circumstances in our lives we did not choose and can not control. They happened to us; a hard childhood, abuse, car wrecks, toxic people, job loss, handicap, and much more. They were not our fault and we are not to blame. But how do we let those issues affect the rest of our lives? That...is a decision we all get to make. So for this episode I posted this question to the Ziglar audience, “Do you honestly believe that your current circumstances are a result of your personal choices?” What followed was 54 of possibly the most lengthy comments we’ve ever had, and some healthy debate. You may receive more freedom and empowerment from this show and topic than anything else we’ve ever covered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“The worst time to think about the thing you are going to say is in the moment you are saying it,” says Phil M Jones, my guest in this show. Though we all know it is incredibly common to not think at all when we speak, we just blurt out whatever we think. Success comes from intentionality and training. As Zig Ziglar says, we are all in sales. Selling is influence and when it is done from love it is truly caring and connecting and serving someone. A speaker on stage with the most profound message ever will utterly fail the audience if they are not proficient in how to keep a crowd’s attention and adeptly get a point across. Likewise in any conversation you can utterly fail if you do not know some basic strategies of communication. But the great news is you can almost always succeed...if you are aware and prepared. This show will do this. Phil is the author of “Exactly What To Say” and we also get into the message from his new book, “Exactly When To Start.” He’s actually the author of five international best-selling books and has done over 2,000 presentations in over 50 countries across five continents. He’s an incredibly quote worthy individual, some quips I noted down included, “Change your words, change your world,” and “If you do now know why you are doing it, then why are you doing it?” We talked a good bit on that one. And from a literal sales tactic, the chapter on this lead in is incredible, “I’m not sure if it’s for you, but…” As you will hear in the show, I literally edited a promotion of mine after getting this from Phil. Look for Phil’s books at Amazon or where you get your books, "Exactly What to Say", "Exactly How to Sell" and "Exactly Where to Start" just type in Phil Jones Exactly and there you’ll have it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you have a product or service? Are you good at selling it? Between those two things is marketing. Getting interested parties in front of you. Key in on “interested”. Most of today’s marketing casts a very broad blanket out into the digital world and hopes to find the right people. Zig Ziglar referred to that as pursuing “suspects”. He was fond of “prospecting”, where you pursue people you know are interested in what you have to offer, based on three measurements or as Tom Ziglar says, “qualified” people. In this show we listen to a four minute message from Zig on prospecting, then I asked this question, “What type of marketing works best for your business?” (and what is your business?) Tons of responses. Tom Ziglar and I talked through a bunch of them to bring you a great crash course in what you can be doing to appropriately prospect and have more or the RIGHT people to sell to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all know having a plan is the most secure way to ensure something happens. When was the last time you set out for a long road trip without directions to follow? Probably never. In this show we hear the daily routine of Tom Ziglar. This is a guy who has never known anything but planning for a positive, successful day. It doesn’t mean he’s perfect, but just like his father Zig, he has a tremendously solid plan for his day. This is our habits show and we walk through the seven spokes on the Ziglar Wheel of Life with Tom, I think you’ll appreciate hearing what the master himself does to procure his personal success! And if you haven’t already, go check out Tom’s new book, “Choose To Win”, wherever you buy your books.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Business and making money and keeping up with the demands of work tend to take priority in our lives, and to a great degree those pursuits are have-to issues. Of course we all value the relationships in our lives, but to truly nurture them amongst the former demands is tough, even with the best of intentions. So I polled the Ziglar audience and asked them, “With the demands of your job or business, what do you do to make relationships a priority? What are your main challenges?” I was joined by Brian Dixon, our guest from episode 715 where we talked through the message in his brand new book, “Start With Your People.” Brian’s responses to the candid comments were significant and will give you some strategic and actionable steps you can put in place to nurture the relationships in your life, even as you fulfill demanding work schedule! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is it really a choice? Can you really believe that? The reality is, if you are going to win, it will take a whole of of choices. The right choices. So which choices are the right ones? That’s what this show is about. For 53 years Tom Ziglar has been privy to a constant influx of the absolute best in personal development, self help and best business practices. He’s been CEO of Ziglar for 24 years. He’s a featured speaker around the globe. And now he brings us the first Ziglar book in over a decade and it’s the culmination and simplification of all he’s been exposed to, learned and added to in a truly revolutionary way to walk out your personal success. In this show we talk through the core ingredients of Tom’s Choose To Win methodology and expound on these ingredients: We do have a choice, the absolute necessity of having a why, but we get into an interesting discussion about the why not necessarily having to be big, but it must be strong and intense. We discuss desire, hope (the right kind), grit and then...how. Goals. But how goals only resonates with approximately 20% of the populace so if you aren’t thrilled by goals, you’ll want to hear this. Then we discuss the big kahuna of it all, our daily habits. And which one is most paramount? Tom will tell you. We finish by getting into his next book, already titled and in the works. This is a foundational show. You can find Tom’s book, Choose To Win, at Ziglar.com or wherever you get books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Truthfully, don’t you assume people who are the best at what they do were just naturals at it, to some degree? Yet we have so many stories of people who had no natural ability and performed at a very low level, but trained themselves up into a level of mastery. In a stark example we have James Earl Jones, with one of the most recognizable voices in the world, who was almost mute as a child for eight years, thanks to a severe stutter. Not that drastic, but in this show I bring you a message from Zig Ziglar explaining his desire to enter sales solely due to a financial incentive, and his following two years of languishing as a very poor salesman. It’s an entertaining story of course, but it really puts into perspective the reality that often the masters did not start off with an advantage. They simply applied themselves, learned and trained. Which opens the doors for you to pursue even those things that don’t come naturally.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices