It was a lovely place, lovely time of life.
Are you from the Austin area?
Originally, no, I'm from Buffalo, New York.
Buffalo, New York.
You've been in the Austin area for how long?
I've been here this time since 2000.
So I'm working my fourth year,
but I lived here for about five years, 2009 to 2014.
Then I moved back to Malaysia for a year.
Then I was in North Carolina for about four years,
five years.
Wow, what were you doing in Malaysia?
So my wife is Malaysian, my son is Malaysian.
I had lived there for four years,
running a security company.
And then in 2015,
I went back to actually run
the international crisis room for a year.
Wow, that's awesome.
That's a whole new life perspective.
For me, I haven't spent very much,
I haven't spent any time on the Eastern side of the world.
And only virtually have I had that experience.
What's Malaysia like?
What are your favorite things about Malaysia?
And what are some of the most surprising things?
So the one, I guess,
the thing that most people would be surprised about,
I guess, is,
because a lot of people think of Malaysia
as almost a third world country,
but they're actually very developed.
And it's more of a developing nation.
And a lot of people there do speak English.
Even though it's an Islamic country,
there's a lot of modern things there.
Cause you have the Chinese culture there,
you have the Indian culture there.
So the Islamic culture doesn't,
it does kind of dominate the culture,
but I mean, it's not all you see there.
So you don't have all the Islamic rules
so that you wouldn't in like Saudi Arabia
or somewhere like that.
The thing that I really like about Malaysia
is it's like Hawaii, but at one 10th the cost.
So it's beautiful there.
It's tropical.
It's either hot or hot and rainy every day.
And it's a beautiful country.
That's awesome.
I gotta go check that out.
That is one of the fun things about living abroad.
When you find the,
there are certain economies
where the dollar carries further.
Mexico being one of them,
I spent quite a bit of time in Mexico
and man, you can get the best food.
Yeah.
It's amazing, amazing food at super affordable prices.
And then the connection of the people.
I also found to be amazing where,
if you're spending time with one family,
next thing you know, half the neighborhoods there,
hanging out with each other, making friends,
just hanging out.
And I don't sit too often in the States.
It's hard to find those types of communities nowadays.
Yeah, I got married in Malaysia also
and we were gonna do like a little reception
just in the neighborhood.
And where my wife's from, it's a tiny town really
called Port Dickson.
And of course, being an American guy in Port Dickson,
marrying a local Malaysian person, that's not very common.
So we had planned on about a hundred people
coming to our reception area
and kind of cooked for 120 people or so.
But my aunt had gone out and told people,
hey, my niece married a white guy from Malaysia,
I mean from America and everybody came in droves.
I mean, we had over 200 people show up.
Oh, that's funny.
Pretty incredible actually.
A lot of spectators, that's fun.
And all right, so as far as leadership goes,
we're gonna be exploring the gap
between leadership and training.
What is your favorite leadership book
and what is your favorite book on training?
So that's really interesting.
So my favorite leadership book,
listen, I've read hundreds of books.
It's really hard to pinpoint down a book really
that was super influential.
I kind of like to look at the books that I'm,
sometimes I'm either reading or rereading right now.
Believe it or not, I've actually gotten back
to the seven habits of highly effective people.
It goes back to the same thing.
When I look at leadership books that I've read,
I went through that gamut of,
because when I was running a company,
I was looking for those tips.
How can I get an edge?
What can I do to make this company,
you give it something better?
How can I train my people a little better?
What can I do for everybody?
And I went through all the books that tell you,
the Toyota corporate ways and the Apple ways
and all those leadership books of Steve Jobs
and all these grandiose leaders that,
yeah, they had to achieve wonderful things,
but they weren't really applicable to what I was doing.
I was running a company with, at the time,
I remember we had 300 guards.
So, as far as employees, we had quite a few employees.
We had quite a few customers.
And I was, when I looked at that edge,
I just didn't find it really in the leadership
and the business books.
And I went back to, it really came back to,
who am I being as a leader?
What can I use in me going out there?
And just go back to branding.
When you're talking about, who am I when I go out
and I talk to my customers,
how can I get the most out of that?
So, yeah, I really wanna get back to the books
that are about who I'm being.
And even in the training area,
I haven't really read a ton of training type books.
It goes back to, Branding You is a great book.
If you really look at a lot of the training
that we're doing nowadays, the practice leadership
is all about who you're being as a leader.
And then you take that out into the world
so that, I like to talk about,
if you think of things that leaders do,
feedback reviews, coaching, inspiring,
running teams, things like that,
you can't coach somebody if you're not relatable
as a person.
You can't coach somebody
if you don't have confidence in yourself.
So, it's going back to some of that.
Believe it or not, some of the best coaching material
I'm getting right now,
if you're going back to some of the stuff
that David Hawkins did.
And he wasn't really talking leadership, per se.
He's talking like the scales of consciousness.
And that will all go back to who you're being.
And people don't look at that as leadership books.
But I think if you really get down
to who you are as the leader,
then you'll really start to do some self-reflection.
And I think that really helps when it comes to leadership.
Absolutely.
I think that's awesome.
In fact, one of the resources, Seven Habits
of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
And one book, I normally,
in a non-secular environment that I wouldn't bring up,
but if I'm being fair to the audience,
one of my favorite books on leading and teaching
is called Teaching in the Savior's Way.
And it's a book about how Christ would teach
and help people progress.
And applying that to our own teaching styles.
So there's lots of different resources.
David Hawkins, I'm gonna look up.
I don't know who that is.
So that's a new resource on my radar that I look forward to.
And we'll dive back in after the break.
All right, welcome in to Vision Pros Live.
With Jackson Calame, I'm your show host.
We will be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs
and guest leaders who are building
fantastic visions out there.
And we'll be doing interviews for vision leaders.
Hey there and welcome in to another episode
of Vision Pros Live.
I'm your show host, Jackson Calame,
founder and CEO of First Class Business.
I got George Wheeler joining me today.
George Wheeler is a leader that helps people bridge the gap
between leadership and training.
We're gonna be looking at exploring
how he goes about doing that.
And he's got a few decades of wisdom under his belt,
both leading in the United States,
as well as leading in Malaysia, where his wife and son,
well, I guess his son would then be half American,
half Malaysian, much like my youngest daughter
is half Mexican and half United States of American.
So, anyway, without further ado,
let's dive into some of these sponsors real quick,
talk about the water project a little bit,
and then bring George on stage.
So first things first, the wellness shop,
we're gonna go ahead and start with a couple
of these sponsors.
So we're gonna start off at 365 with Sean
and Juliana Lechuga.
Sean and Juliana believe in an integrated nutrition,
health and wellness program.
They're all about helping people become healthy,
not just from a diet standpoint and an exercise standpoint,
but this wheel of life always draws my attention.
This is why I initially was like, wow,
I wanna know what they're up to,
creativity, finances, career, education, et cetera.
And that's when I'm looking for somebody to help me with my health, I'm looking for somebody who is really looking more at who I am as a person, what I want to accomplish as an individual, again, beyond what I would call the vanity aspects of health.
No, don't get me wrong. I appreciate looking good.
I appreciate, you know, I would love to have a six pack as well and make sure that my physical health and appearance looks good.
But at the end of the day, that should be a reflection of my holistic well-being and how I show up as a father and how I show up as a businessman, but also how I show up for myself and improving my life.
And I found Sean and Juliana to be excellent friends in addition to excellent people and very resourceful when it comes to looking at my health as holistically as possible.
Then there's Melissa Gray in the Law Spot. This is an interesting one.
I used to say that I don't, I don't like to work with two different types of entities, lawyers and financial people. And the reason why is because most lawyers I come across and most financial people I come across, if you ask them what their goals are, their tendency is to turn into that, that
Toby Keith song, I want to talk about me. And they talk all about their own personal goals and what they're up to in life for themselves. And, you know, we all have, we all have selfish tendencies, tendencies.
But I do find that most of the people in those spaces, they have a hard time coming up with why they do what they do for the people they serve.
That was not the case when I met Melissa Gray. I was so impressed with what she was up to, how she's going about building a, I don't want to call it a middle ground territory, but actually a more balanced approach to providing legal services and legal counsel and advice to entrepreneurs.
And so I got to know her and see how much of a nurturer she was and see the expertise that she had. I also started to think about entrepreneurs I work with. And the reality is, I would say 90 to 95% of the entrepreneurs that I work with do not have legal counsel picked out and ready to go.
And that's a huge liability for anybody who is striving to scale, especially people who also want to abide by the reality that we should be wise stewards of our opportunities in life. It's hard to be a wise steward if we don't have the resources available to protect us or to set us up for success by our side.
So, if you are interested in making sure that you have the right legal counsel, thelawspot.com is one of the entities that I highly recommend interviewing and seeing if it makes sense to engage in conversations with Melissa.
You can always find out more on her website. And then of course there's the Water Project. And we've got so much opportunity in life, so much abundance. If we're listening to a podcast right now, even if life is hard, we have more abundance than we realize.
There are millions of people who don't even have access to clean drinking water. So, my proposal to you, my request and my invitation is, if you're in a position to give back, consider this organization. If you're not in a position to give back, but you're in a position to share this with others, then please feel free to do so.
You'll notice that it's set up much like a crowdfunding page. You actually get to pick the community that you'd like to support, see how many people live in that community. And as they finish the projects, the teams do social media updates to show you what's going on in that area.
And you actually get to see your dollar applied to a specific project and the outcome and how it affects those specific communities. I think it's one of the most transparent and awesome causes that I've ever seen. And they specifically look for areas and regions of Africa where it's hard to access these villages.
It's unlikely for them to receive help from an external source in those villages without this particular cause and entity in play. And again, I just love and admire what they've done with the water project. If you, again, have the opportunity to give back, awesome.
If you know of a cause that's near and dear to your heart that also matters that I don't talk about, then of course, feel free to drop that link in the comments. It's not as much of a competition as it is an opportunity to realize that we have the capacity, many of us, to give back, promote, or support multiple opportunities, multiple causes.
And there's 8 billion people in this world that we can come together and serve. So thank you for giving me your time and attention on that. Now, as far as George Wheeler goes, George Wheeler is the Senior Director of Solutions and Implementation at Overhaul.
He wrote a book called Zen Ploye, definitely worth checking out. And in addition to that, he is the co-founder of Protecting Beacons of Hope and the Global Security, he does global leadership, global security leadership, and he's on the Board of Advisors for International Crisis Room 360.
He's been on that board, or at least with that organization, for over eight years now. So as an author, as a leader, as a trainer, there's a whole lot of opportunity to learn from his wisdom. And without further ado, George Wheeler, welcome to Vision Pros Live.
Jackson, thank you very much for having me here today. I appreciate everything that your organization does.
Thank you very much. And, you know, let's, we might come back to David Hawkins, or I might just lace that into our first question. Feel free to pick that up how you'd like. I haven't heard of him myself, and you mentioned him as a leader and trainer.
As we do that, what's your vision for those that you serve?
You know, when you look at leadership, you look at people who are generally, a lot of times, they're trying to achieve something themselves. But you know, Zig Zigly said, you know, you can have everything in life that you want if you help enough other people get what they want.
So, truly, I think when you're looking at what I want for people that I serve, and let me get this straight, you know, I serve everybody. If people report to me, you know, I always said it's my job to make my boss successful. At the same time, it's my job to make the people that report to me successful.
So I'm serving absolutely everybody, all levels of the organization that I meet, and again, whether it's customers or anybody else, you know, it's our job to make sure that we're setting them up for success.
And that's really what I'm trying to do at all times is, is I ask that question, how can I help you? And I mean it. How can I help you? What do you need help with? And if I can't help you, this is why I built a giant network on LinkedIn, let me connect you with somebody who can help you.
Yes, I saw that. Now you're approaching 30,000 connections on LinkedIn, or followers, one of the two, and that's amazing. And you know, that's actually this very similar question that I like to lead with. I'm grateful for, I don't know if it was Zig Ziglar, or if it was John Maxwell, Darren Hardy, or somebody similar that gave me that line, but there was a massive shift in effectiveness in my networking when I began to lead with the question,
how can I help you best?
Yeah.
So, you know, when I, when I was running the International Crisis Room 360, when you're doing leadership at crisis level, you have to be extremely well connected, especially when you're training it. You know, I had to be extremely well connected because people were coming to me and they had problems.
And obviously, I'm not an expert in everybody's problems. But if I'm not, then I made it my goal to know somebody else who could help you with those problems. So, when I would connect with people on LinkedIn, for example, the first thing I always tell them is, you know, I'd love to have you as part of my network. And I want you to know that I actually do use my network. I'm not selling because a lot of times you get a connection with somebody at LinkedIn, especially nowadays, the next email or message you get from them is I'm trying to sell you something. I was never trying to sell anybody anything. I was always trying to give value, give value. How
can I help you? What can I do for you? And there were organizations that reached out to me and said, you know what, I need to find a new security manager, for example, in Bangladesh. Can you help me? And they had zero contacts in Bangladesh or zero resources really to really understand how to find a person that would be qualified to be a security manager at the level that they needed in Bangladesh. I reached out to my network. And I would say within 48 hours, I had 24 contacts for them, people who are qualified for the position.
And they really came back like, that was so amazing. Not only will we be able to fill the top level position that we're looking for, but every level underneath that with all the candidates that you provided us. So when you're networking, that's what it's all about. It's asking how can I help you?
That's amazing. You know, and it is interesting. There's a lot of people on LinkedIn that are using automation. There's a lot of pitching that takes place. I tend to call LinkedIn the spam jungle because that's what it feels like we're constantly trying to wade through as you look for the right people.
But you're telling me that in spite of that, you're creating lots of opportunities for lots of people by just being willing to connect person A to person B. Is that correct?
Absolutely. That's correct. Yes. Yeah, good. And I'm not looking for anything in return. I do it because people need help.
You know, it's through the network on LinkedIn, for example, we had a major cargo theft actually in Asia. And a US insurance company was actually trying to investigate it. And so one of their investigators reached out to me and said, George, I know you've got contacts in Asia. Can you help me find someone who can help me with this investigation?
And, you know, when I reached out and reached out to the person, they're happy to help each other. Because maybe I'm not looking for anything in return other than the fact that I can help you. But this other person, yes, I can now I can actually do some work for you. And then these people get paid for the work that they do. And I'm not I'm not a broker. I don't ask for a cut or anything like that. I just, again, it's all about serving and giving back to the communities.
Absolutely. That's awesome, man. So what's your vision for you, George?
You know, I've always looked at my, my growth. I can't continue growing unless I'm helping other people to grow. So one of my mentors, Tom Hall, he's one of the most fantastic people I think I've ever met in my life. And one day I had, I had given a training to my people. And really, I had given some, one of those, I call them Tom Hall
wisdoms during that training of something that they can do to really help themselves with their growth and everything else. And then several months later, I was in, I was in a training that one of my people were giving to his team now. And he used that same story that I had given from Tom Hall. And I realized, at that moment, I was like, You know, Tom Hall doesn't realize how much of an effect he has because he taught me something. I taught it to somebody. Now this person is teaching it to another group. And Tom, you know, he worked with several people across the United States. And he
will never know the impact, the positive impact that he's had on all of these people, and, and how wide his influence will reach. He's built a huge legacy. And maybe he knows it, maybe he doesn't. But I've done my best to go back and tell him, you know, about this process to it and just helping him to realize, Tom, you've helped so many people in your life.
And I think it's, you know, you get a lot of people when they come up here and they speak, and they can say, I've done this, I've done that, I've done all these things, and that's great. But if you can get somebody else saying, You know, George really helped me with this, or, you know, I was able to get to another level in my career or in my life, you know, because of something that I learned from, from George. So it's really, that's my advantage is to just go through being at my highest self, literally.
Living my highest self that I can affect other people to be their highest self.
I love that. And so in, in modern, I don't know, I guess, influencership, and maybe this has been talked about for decades and years, but I've heard it more so recently, that there's this fourth stage of influence, you know, where once you're gone, you know, your influence maintains that would be the the Gandhis of the world, the Buddhas of the world, the Jesus Christ of the world, Martin Luther King, you know, it's on our hymns, it's his day past yesterday.
And, you know, they made such an impact in their ability to help others, that their influence continues to carry even, even after they've passed away.
So the Tom Haltz of the world in that case, and I think it's a beautiful vision.
You know, if we go about learning and you, those types of people, they achieved that level of influence, not because they were seeking it per se, and they weren't seeking attention.
It was about the impact that they made was so profound that, you know, nobody really can slow it down. It just, it just exists because of what they chose to do.
Let's talk about David Hawkins a little bit. I'm still super curious about that. Who's David Hawkins? I know who Stephen Hawkins is. I don't know who David Hawkins is though.
David Hawkins, at one time ran one of the largest psychiatric, I think, businesses in America, based out of New York, but he had a, he had a, an enlightening moment.
So he became enlightened, basically. And you take, take somebody who truly understood psychiatry and, and human development and human beings,
and add a level of enlightenment to that. And first of all, it just doesn't, doesn't happen to somebody who's so scientifically oriented, generally, has a PhD in psychiatry.
They don't go on to become enlightened beings generally. So you take somebody with that wisdom. I'm here to tell you that if you, if you read his books, they're a little hard to read because
just part of it was just man had a vocabulary that was incredible. Half the time you're looking at the words, you have to kind of take them all out.
He's using it in this context, so I'm understanding what he's saying, but I didn't really ever, never heard that word before. So his books are a little hard to read, but I listen to a lot of audible books.
If you get his Power Versus Force, Truth Versus Falsehood, The Eye of the Eye, or just the book Eye, and those books take you through scales of consciousness, levels of consciousness from 0 to 1,000.
For example, Jesus would have been in 1,000, the Buddha would have been in 1,000. At the level of 200, you're approaching integrity. So over 200, you're an integrist person. Now, most of the world lives under 200.
And he talks about all of this. And, you know, how do you get, how do you move yourself up scales of consciousness? There are a lot of people out there trying to teach people how to do that. But the truth is,
while you can have a quantum leap, I mean, you can jump from 40 all the way up to 1,000 if you became enlightened instantly, I suppose. But most people only move a few points in their lifetime.
And David Hawkins will go through exactly kind of what all of those, what, if you're at what level of that scales of consciousness, what that means for you as an individual, how you actually impact,
you know, if you're at the level 200, he'll tell you, you know, you're probably, you know, you'll work two or three jobs at a certain point. He'll tell you about your relationships and everything. And he's, he's obviously fairly accurate what he does.
But he also does things like kinesiology, so he can muscle test all of this. Truth, that's what truth versus falsehood is. He can say, is somebody being integrist? Are they telling the truth? And you can actually muscle test that.
And that's what truth versus falsehood is. And so, you know, David Hawkins, he's done a wonderful job, he's done a wonderful job at helping us to, you know, if you wanted to improve your level of consciousness in a way, I think things, I have to go meditate, and I have to go live in an ashram for 15 minutes, and then I have to go to the hospital.
You know, if you wanted to actually improve your level of consciousness, you know, everybody, I think things, I have to go meditate, and I have to go live in an ashram for 15 years, and all these things. And he's, and he gets down to the, what if you're just a kind or gentle person? You know, what if you actually just exhibit niceness, you know, in an accrual world? Really, that's all it really takes is just being aware of how you are interacting with the world, not how the, the world is a reflection of yourself.
So if you're, if you're walking around and you're angry all the time, you're gonna get anger back towards you. Because that's all you're gonna see in the world is anger. But if you're a loving person, and you give love, guess what's going to come back to you? And he talks about all of that.
That's funny. That's funny. My way to New York, I was so excited to find an angry New Yorker, you know, like somebody who was mean, because I had heard that they're not very nice. And everybody was so nice to me. And I was like, what the heck's going on? You know, the one person who was rude to me is because I had lost my subway ticket, and I was trying to sneak through the bars, and they wouldn't let me, you know, and they were just doing the right thing.
So, no, I ran into a bunch of very, very pleasant good people. And I also love that you talk about the book, you know, it's hard to read. At the same time, I mean, there's a context to all that. All books are hard to read if you can't read, you know, and there's also layers of wisdom. And you have to be willing to dive deeper if you're going to get to the depth. I mean, let me just John Madden people to death right now and make it as simple as, as can be.
You know, the book, The Effective Executive, for instance, is one of the most overlooked books of all time for business. And I heard Warren Buffett say it was one of his favorite books for business. I heard Bill Gates say it was one of his favorite books. And near the same week, I heard LeBron James talk about the book. And I went and looked at the evaluations, and I was like, why doesn't this have more reviews? You know, like, and then I started thinking about Rich Dad Poor Dad and how effective and important that book was. But I was like, I'm going to read it.
I realized, well, wait a second. Not very, I bet, I bet very few people can read this book. And I started to read it and realized, whoa, this is a very difficult book to read. That doesn't mean the book isn't valuable or important. We do need more simplification for the 8 billion.
But if you want to have an absolutely exceptional life, you have to be willing to do absolutely exceptional things above and beyond what average and average life might look like. And again, I know we're approaching elitism and realities that, that, that we might want to, that the masses might want to talk about.
But at the same time, again, you have, we all have the opportunity to level up. And level up comes from finding resources that are treasures that are not commonly talked about. So thank you for putting David Hawkins on my radar. I look forward to diving in deeper and see more about him.
You know, you talk about the masses, right? What is it that the masses, they need to be able to digest this information also. Unfortunately, the masses aren't looking for it. Right? You have to be the person that's willing to step out of the masses. It's those people that stepped out of the normal, the people that stepped out of being average or just being one of the masses and said, I can do better than what the masses are doing.
And we look around the United States today, right? Being normal, what is normal? You know, you're redefining what normal is at any given moment. Normal, you look at normal in New York City as opposed to normal in Austin, Texas, for example. There's different normals and different cultures.
Things in Malaysia were not the same as they were here in the U.S. And, you know, I went to, when I first moved to Malaysia, I moved there, you know, kind of with this idea of, I'm from America. I've done all these things in my life. And here I'm coming to Malaysia. And I have this, I prejudged. It's like everybody else does. I'm going to be able to come here and, you know, the personnel here, they won't be as educated. They won't. Man, I ate a whole bunch of humble pie, man.
Yes.
You know, anybody who says they're not prejudiced, George, is ignorant to the realities of existing outside of their own bubble.
Yeah.
You can't, that's a survival instinct. And it's one in which when you're in a new place, like you're talking about going to Malaysia, you don't know what you don't know. And you can't. You have to be willing to experience it. But you have, but you're going to experience it under the conditions of safety,
which you were raised with. So go ahead, George, continue.
No, no, absolutely. That's what I want to, I just want to make that point of, you know, you want to read books that are more difficult because you want to rise above what normal actually would be considered to get away from the masses.
Don't think that's because everybody else is doing it that it's right, right? You can, if you raise the bar, you're going to bring other people up with you. If you lower the bar, you're going to bring other people down with you. And what would you rather be doing?
What would you rather be doing? Would you rather be known as that person who is bringing people out of that or dragging people further down? And I believe the people who are listening today are people that would be looking to step out of what's normal and being away from the masses.
And that's, again, it goes all back to, you know, you do that by who you're being, not first. And if you drive your actions from who you're being, then you'll, you'll, you will break away from those masses.
Yep. If you find yourself attracted to and constantly publishing memes and part of meme culture, you're probably in the mass mentality. Just going to say, leave that right. What's that? You're going to hate me or not? But exploring the gaps between leadership and training also means exploring the gaps between knowledge and resources that also exist out there.
So, two books on that note. One, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. Right. There's this young boy in Africa who ends up becoming fascinated with the idea of a windmill and producing electricity. I had no need to do that in my life.
You know, I get to harness that every single day. And so it wasn't a focal point of mine. It wasn't a passion of mine. I got to harness other things in my life based on what my lack of resources were.
And that kid ends up going to MIT, you know, after, after years of struggles and his own culture, saying, what the heck are you doing wasting your time with this stupid windmill project?
You know, now he's a hero to that society. Then I have a friend who years ago was at Lifetime Fitness and he brought me this book. He said this book changed my life.
And by the time, I'm trying not to laugh at the title when he gives it to me. And it said, like, how do I get myself to do the things I'm supposed to do? You know, I'm thinking there's no way this book could possibly help me.
And as a courtesy to him, and being early in my leadership development stages, too, I went ahead and read the book. There's absolutely nothing that book provided me a value.
I did not need that book at that stage of my life. I was already doing all the things that I needed to be doing to progress. So I actually reached out to the author to just thank him and find something productive to do with it.
So I was just sending a gratitude memo. And I say that laughing, but also humbly realizing that, again, we're all at different stages and what we need of our lives.
And while, you know, the book on Success of a Rhino and the 20th iteration of Rich Dad Poor Dad might be the thing that touches another hundred million people who've never thought that way before,
we, to guide our lives, we've got to be looking at what are our gaps as leaders? What are our gaps as trainers? Where do we need to focus in order to improve our level of influence if we decide to be influential?
Now, if you're a visionary, naturally, you have a new level of influence that you're striving to achieve. If you're an entrepreneur, you have a sphere of people that are waiting on you to level up as an influencer.
So let's take a turn for the worse on this same subject, though. And George, you've had a lot of leadership experience. What's your worst leadership experience ever look like?
So I would have to say there was a time when I actually when I first moved to Malaysia, having a security mindset and then moving to Malaysia, and especially having a military security mindset.
And I went there and I was like, you know, you guys aren't, you know, you're not doing things properly. You're not hard enough. You know, you're security people. You don't first of all, you don't respect your security people enough to give them the power to do their job.
And I said, and then the people who are doing the job, you know, they need to be doing it more stringently, because when something happens, they're not going to be ready.
And everybody when I started this, people would come to me and be like, George, George, la, this is in Malaysia, la is a big thing. They say la for a lot of sentences, or it's okay, la. You know, we don't have those problems here, la.
Don't worry about that, la. So I actually found myself after a few months kind of falling into that, like, letting my guard down a little bit, like, maybe they don't have these problems here. Maybe I'm just being, you know, too, too stringent on everybody.
And maybe, you know, I don't want to be looked at, I don't want to be seen as the bad guy here, right? Everybody's going to hate me for telling them that they need to be prepared and the things they need to do.
Well, I went on vacation, I came back to the US, and while I was on vacation, my partner called me. And he said, hey, we just had a massive theft. It was one of the biggest thefts in Malaysian history.
And my guards were involved in that. And so my guards got hurt. So I took that very personally, like, you know, when I got back, when I got back, sure. When I got back, everybody was like, oh, George, we're so sorry. We now we see that you were right.
These things can happen here in Malaysia. But it didn't make me feel any better. You know, being right doesn't make it right. I was wrong, because I let go of that. And I didn't do everything that I could have done to make sure that people were prepared for that, because I started
falling into that trap. And as a leader, you can't let that happen to you ever.
Wow, that's, that's so powerful. I take that personally as well.
You know, I'm a it's one of the hardest things to stand for is the fact that 96% of businesses fail within 10 years. And the 4% they don't, they're not the successful ones, the 4% survive.
And there's a very, very small percentage beyond that that actually win. And, you know, it's not for me to be told Jackson, your, your systems are too complex. Jackson, you're trying to provide too much to people Jackson, you're, you know, you're the end.
So what what I've learned to key in on and try to maintain my focus on is oh and this is against super applicable to all you visionaries. It is so easy to lose sight of your ideal audience catering to the common audience.
Your common prospect is not your ideal prospect. And I see so many business owners fall into that trap of changing their wording, changing their service for the person they come across most commonly, which is equivalent to, you know, selling what sells versus
what doesn't sell right. And, you know, and so there's there's a there's a huge need for me to make sure that I'm not creating concessions and the quality of my service in the process of, you know, trying to make room for the opinions, the feelings, the pain of those who don't want to do the hard path.
There's a difference between having that, you know, emotional appreciation and empathy for people who don't want the hard path. Yep. And doing what's right. So I appreciate you saying that. What about your best leadership? You know what, before I do that, what are your, what are your thoughts on that, George?
You had a chance, you went back. Now you've got now you had the opportunity to implement the training that you wanted to do to, you know, the catastrophe that occurred. How do you how do you go about how do you go about changing the culture for better? And the next time you came across said scenario, what'd you do? How'd you how'd you get people to buy in?
So you just use such an important word that is often misunderstood. It's it's overused and way misunderstood as culture.
In a sense, the situation makes your job easier because now there's a mindset shift. And now people say this is possible. Okay, it is possible. It never happened before. But now we realize this is a changing world. And this can happen now. So that makes it easier for you to go in. And then when you start talking about the security measures you need to take to make sure these things don't happen, they start to listen.
And because I was doing that with my guards, then they can look at that and say, Okay, well, you know, the guards at the front gate, they're not very well trained either. Can you help us with them? So they kind of expand that. You know, the one thing I guess the biggest takeaway I can take from that is you do what you can control, right? I stopped doing the things that I can control because I fell into that trap of maybe they're right, maybe nothing's gonna happen. And no, I couldn't have stopped that situation from happening completely. But maybe if my guards had been better prepared, I
could have called for backup, maybe a little better. Maybe the local police could have responded a little better. But after it happened, being able to go in, give the training without the resistance to the training, to the information I was providing, that was key. Now fast forward several years, I'm doing crisis management training in Singapore. And now I've got those stories that I can tell people that you have to understand. Everybody right now, you're all looking
around, you think this is normal for things right now. And if I give you a situation that's highly unlikely, then you're gonna think, Well, why, I don't really need to listen to this. Or since it's so unlikely, I'm not, you know, we don't necessarily
need to waste our time talking or preparing for that. But then you give them stories of examples of times when everybody else thought that same thing. But when it happened, they weren't prepared the way they could have been prepared. That gives you the ability to go in. I think that's the most powerful thing is
we'll go back later and say, Guys, I thought that once too, that this wouldn't happen. Because when you're honest with people, when you're open up a little bit, be a little vulnerable if you have to be right. And admit that I made a mistake, because I fell in the same trap you're thinking about right now. And I'll never let that happen to me again. And I'm here to tell you right now, I don't ever want that to happen to you. That's why we have to talk about this. You move people's perception of it can't happen to it's possible. And now everybody opens up to, Okay, maybe we should
listen to this. Because when you look at, if you take a, if you take a quadrant chart, and you look at the things that are possible, low impact, possible, high impact, not really all that possible low impact, and then not really possible, but super high impact, people need to start spending more time on that. This is highly unlikely, but it has a massive impact on the organization if it occurs. Instead of spending all your time down on the likely to happen, low impact stuff, let's make sure we take care of all this stuff. And just make sure they're spending time in that upper right quadrant.
Appreciate that. I'm taking some notes on it. What about your best leadership experience, George? What's that look like?
Seeing people get promoted, that report to me. You know, I, for years, I ran a command center with a company called Freight Watch, and getting into our organization wasn't easy. So one of the places people started was in the command center. So I, in the interviewing process, I was lucky enough to be able to bring in
people who were actually, they were more qualified than being a command center personnel. They could do operations, and they could be program managers and things like that. But I, I can, I don't say convince them. I proved them that if they came to my organization, within my
organization, in this organization, and let me work with them for a little while, I would get them advanced into other parts of the organization. So when, when we grew as a company, we didn't have to go outside the company to look for people to fill these key spots in the
organization. I had them in my, in my organization, and I tried to develop them the best I could so that when they were ready to move on to these other places. And I think that that's probably one of the best things I can do for an organization is when people come in, again, it's, it's just, you
be the best you can be to help them be successful so that when they get their opportunity to move out, they're ready, they're prepared. Or, you know, a lot of, a lot of, I'm listening to a book right now called The Leadership Pipeline. And it's amazing how
many organizations aren't prepared for succession planning when it comes to leadership. And a lot of that is you get a lot of leaders still today who they're afraid to bring people into the organization or keep people around them that could replace them. And that, that, and
then when something happens to them, maybe they get fired, or maybe they move on, or a lot of times, sometimes they can't move on because the organization says, I can't move, I can't move George out of that position, because I don't have anybody else to take it. So you can't get promoted
because you don't have anybody taking your spot. So, you know, it's, it's having people around you who are ready to take your spot. So rather than being the kind of person who's afraid of having people around me that, you know, my God, I can't, they're too good, man, they might take my spot if I'm not doing well enough. You're
living your life in fear. And if you live your life in fear, you can never grow. So you have to surround your people, yourself with people who are better than you so that you can actually grow. And, you know, you'll get better results anyways when you do that. But really, ultimately, that's, that's to me. And it's not just one experience that I've had. I've had several experiences, bring people in, and I get to watch them develop their careers. And I always tell them, if you end up being CEO one day, just remember how well I treated you when you reported to me. So.
That's right. I am already this leadership seminar where they interviewed the Dean of Brigham Young University, Idaho. His name is David A. Bednar. And he said that he was trained by his mentor within the first week of him being hired, that your number one first responsibility is to find your replacement.
You know, go start looking, start paying attention, start putting in plans in place immediately for that next person. And that's, again, such a foreign concept for people to consider and realize. But there's great, there's great power and depth in creating that stability early.
And it makes sure that the vision doesn't get lost in the process of trying to not only just lead from a mechanical standpoint, but again, grasp the entirety of the vision of what you're striving to build.
So if you were to, if this was the last opportunity for you to share a powerful lesson with other visionaries, what powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience, George?
You know, I, I think in all the material that I read these days, or even if I go to seminars, everybody's trying to be, they all seem to be getting so tricky these days, right? I want to give you some new secret that if I give you the secret, you'll be able to go out and accomplish X.
And I'm here to tell you that there are no secrets.
And everybody's saying, Oh, I've got this hack for you. And I don't like that word. I have a hack. I've hacked, I've hacked this, I've hacked that and now I can give you better.
Yeah, you're supposed to hate that word.
I had to put those two together. But yeah, so, but, but you know, hack is when you hack something, I guess in a way, yeah, that's not necessarily always a positive thing, but it's still the value is always X equals one, right? You did it.
It's not like thousands of people did it. It's not where the variables are X equals 1000. It's X equals one. Just because you did it doesn't mean everybody else can go out there and do it. Even though you claim that anybody can do it if you did it yourself.
So, if you look at the, you know, these, these secrets, we're not seeing anything new anymore. When you read, when you get a brand new book on something, people aren't saying anything new.
They're saying the same things that we talked about in old texts, and we're just applying those fundamentals to our current experiences. So what you do have new is how I applied a certain fundamental to my experience in which gave me a certain result.
And now I can help, you know, people get this result. So, the one thing for people who are, especially if you're a visionary, and we need visionaries because we need visionaries to help us get to the point where we're not seeing anything new.
We need visionaries because we need visionaries to break away from the normal too. Because, you know, especially when you're looking at politics, you know, a visionary in politics will be a person who goes in and competes with complete transparency, never puts down their opponent, you know, goes in with nothing but good things to say with their opponent, but they can also lead from who they are.
And that's something you don't see anymore. Everybody's trying to lead from the other person's not as good as I am. No other, no reason why I'm not much better. I'm just telling you because they're so bad, you, I have to be better. So visionaries today, get back to your fundamentals. Stop worrying about all the little tricks and all the things that people think that they can do to get away with whatever shortcut.
You know, it's a great time of year for football. So you look at, you look at a playbook of these.
Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
No, they, you look at these playbooks that some of these teams have and they're super thick, but the fundamentals of football, blocking, tackling, passing, you know, catching, they're, they're, they're what you have to do. And a lot of times when a team fails, they miss the tackle, right? They didn't catch it.
They drop a ball, then they're right. They miss on the fundamentals. So, and that's really when I talk about practice leadership, that's what I'm talking about. Getting back to the fundamentals of leadership, getting back to the fundamental of who you are, and then using that to go out into the world from a higher self, from your higher self so that you can impact as the most people that possible in a positive manner.
Absolutely. They called Tim Duncan the big fundamental. And people joke that he won't, you know, he'll be forgotten because of the low key. He's not going to be forgotten. The dude's a champion of the highest levels.
You know, and, and so many of the great sports athletes out there have extreme respect for him. It's been said that he has, he's the most, he has the highest win percentage of any athlete across any sport as well. And it was his ability to rely on those, even if that's disputed and he's number two, you know, like, okay, cool.
You know, number 10. Okay. Cool. You know, no problem there. The, but his consistency was staying focused on those basic fundamentals. I appreciate where you're coming from on that in terms of the secret or the hack, etc.
A lot of that is returning back to core wisdom that has existed for centuries yet core wisdom. You know, if you're learning about wisdom for the first time and you're 30 years old, it might feel like a secret to you might feel new to you might feel like a life hack.
But realizing that, that you're not being left out. And that's kind of what I hear you saying, George, is you're not being left out. This is available to you. There's lots of opportunities. The guru who tries to hide that in the form of a marketing trick may not be your best ally or, or guide in life.
If they're making it seem like they're the only one who has access to said information, you might consider finding leaders who are more abundant and more open to helping you see that these sources of wisdom exist elsewhere too.
That's why, that's why I catch. Go ahead.
You know, Jackson, I don't know this for a fact. I'm just gonna throw this out there. But I'll bet you if you went back and looked at the people around Tim Duncan, right? I'll bet they had some of their best years of their career when they were with him.
Absolutely. I hate to look at the interviews on that because everybody will say Tim Duncan made Manu Janobili and, and Tony Parker's careers and there's of course some truth to that.
You know, and but yes, he absolutely elevated everybody around him. Everybody would would probably agree with that. That was on his team. Go ahead. Keep hitting that.
No, absolutely. When you talk about leadership, it's the same way. If you go out and just be the best leader that you can be, by default, especially in organizations, some of the people around you will have the best part of their career will always be when they were with you and doing the things that you were accomplishing as a team with them at that particular place.
You know, and it'll go back to if they can go off and do that somewhere else or if you leave and they can continue that, that's gonna be your greatest success ever.
Absolutely. In fact, one of the best leadership talks I've ever heard, and I've listened to a lot of them and will continue to do so, but one of my absolute favorites for all of you living in is Greg Popovich retirement talk regarding Tim Duncan at Tim Duncan's retirement.
It is just masterful. There's so much that can be learned, not only from the way that, not only from the example of Tim and all that Tim did to make his career a success for everybody involved, but also from the standpoint of Greg Popovich as a leader of that team and how he
focuses on what you talked about, George, which was the advancement, the success of his team members and how important it is to him that the people that he leads rise up and have the best opportunities in front of them as well.
Greg Popovich is also known for being a very nasty interviewer with the journalists that he talks to, but most of those journalists probably, I think a lot of them love him more than a lot of the other interviews that they go through because of his authenticity and his way of showing up.
The news in some part loves to dramatize what's out there because we pay attention when there's drama. Somebody else fire, we want to see the fire. That's what we all want to come running towards, but as a leader, as a trainer, it's very helpful to, as George said, pay attention to how can I help the person that's in front of me.
It really comes down to that one question, how can I help you? So this was an awesome interview, George. I really appreciate you sharing it with us. If you'd like to follow George, you can find him on LinkedIn. That's how I believe I got in contact with George the first time.
And of course, he's got his book available. We'll have other resources on the landing page for his episode. And if you'd like to apply to Beyond Vision Pros, don't hesitate to hit the button that says be our guest. Learn about becoming a Vision Pro podcast guest yourself, sharing your vision, your leadership skills.
And, you know, as far as exploring the gaps further between leadership and training, that's exactly what George does and what he's striving to help organizations with. So don't hesitate to reach out to him. George, any final thoughts you'd like to add before I wrap up?
No, I'd just like to tell you that I really appreciate, again, your time today. I appreciate your audience listening. And just, you know, the intent of the interview was to be able to have a great discussion and provide as much value as we could to everybody who hears this. So, hopefully, as people are listening to this, there's something they can take away from this and implement within their life that will make something better for them.
Even if it's just, you mentioned the word earlier today, I didn't get a chance to mention it, was gratitude. You know, just being thankful for everything that we do have and finding something, even if you're having a crappy day, find something to be thankful for to change kind of your mindset a little bit.
Because if you're, if you're in that, Zick-a-Zick-a-Lick, it's called that stinking thinking, then, then you can't come up with solutions. Find things to be grateful for. Because if you're having problems in your life, you won't find solutions to those things until you get out of the energy that created those things. So you have to, and very few problems are created in gratitude. So it gives you a completely different mind shift, and you can start finding real solutions to problems when you're coming from that perspective.
Well said. You heard it from George Wheeler, Vision Pros, and we will see you on the next show. Everybody have a fantastic rest of your day. Bye.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent day.