Tell me about your vision.
Man, that's feels like a loaded question all the time when I hear that.
Biggest thing for me is family.
Seeing I've got two girls under three right now really just trying to lead them in a good
direction.
Seeing the way that our country and the world is kind of gone, I want to make sure that
I raise good children that are going to become leaders in this world.
So that's the biggest, most important vision for me outside of my faith of course to really
build those two little girls up to be something that can really change the world.
As far as the business side for me, very similar, but I want to be able to help leaders be better
communicators.
More specifically men and dads, I want to help them be able to communicate better because
that's a passion of mine.
I've seen the way that me getting better at speaking, being an engineer, electrical engineer,
very introverted when I was younger and how communication has impacted my life.
Give me opportunities to be on amazing podcasts like this to be able to be interviewed, leading
teams, learning how to delegate, navigating the waters of marriage through communication.
I want to be able to help other leaders with that because I look at the MLKs and people
like that and who was it that was the impact or the influencer in MLKs life to be able
to change history for the black people in our country.
I want to be able to help other people with that because I realize that I can only do
so much and I want to help other people.
So using my skills that I've learned with communication and so that's my vision really
just to help let's say a thousand people.
I want it to be more than that but right now it's to help a thousand people become better
communicators so we can create a ripple in the world.
That's very interesting from what I heard from your background, you going into better
communication.
So Phillip, where did this vision of you helping people become better communicators come from
when you came from this oil and electrical engineer background and Texas moving to Carolinas,
where did this fit in?
Really just being in the oil and gas industry where it kind of started for me, I was an
engineer by degree like I've already mentioned but I was going out and fixing these systems.
I was starting up these systems up in North Dakota going out by myself as at that time
I think I was like 23 something like that so very young, very green, freshly out of
college and yet I was the one making this stuff happen doing the actual work and yet
every time an issue would come up, the customer would start talking about oh that young dumb
engineer, that young dumb engineer, I was the young dumb engineer that they were talking
about yet I'm the one doing all the work, I'm actually making it happen and I'm actually
fixing the issues that were there that weren't necessarily my issues but I was helping fix
that.
Then another oil and gas job actually when I moved to Georgia, I was in South Carolina
for a little bit, moved down to Georgia then back to South Carolina but when I was there
I kept getting talked down to and kind of similar situation, we would have engineering
meetings weekly and I was the youngest of the four engineers, the others were over 50
years old for sure and 50 minutes of the hour meeting would be talking about my work that
I was working on and maybe at that time there was more things going on for my area than
theirs but still I was the one doing all this work and yet my manager kept talking down
to me and he wouldn't call me the young dumb engineer but he was belittling me and well
hey if you feel like you can't get all this work done maybe you should work more hours,
I'm only paid for 40 so why am I going to sit here and work 50 or 60 hours, I'm not
getting rewarded for that, it's basically I'm getting paid less than at that point and
that was really the catalyst for me to realize that I needed to speak up for myself and I
started to speak up for myself and as I started doing that more opportunities in the corporate
world started coming towards me as well as getting paid more because I was willing to
speak up and then because of all of that and feeling lesser than I wanted to help other
people and that was really the spur of all this is just to help people realize that there
is value in them and even as I got into speaking, well what kind of value do I bring, what can
I bring, I haven't gone from rags to riches, I haven't built a nine figure business or
anything like that, how can I help somebody out and it's because of who I am or who I
was and who I've become that I can help that person that I was two or three years ago and
so now I help people understand that they do have a message worth sharing, that they
can help somebody and they don't have to have this crazy success or that rags to riches
story to do that.
Wow, that's a very powerful story and I can already think of a few people that I come
on my show already that I can introduce you to and make an introduction that they've done,
two of them specifically have helped, one of them is named Dana Skak.
She is a counselor slash speaker slash author where she helps people with boundaries within
the work environment where they can communicate better.
So I think that the way she's doing is very powerful and impactful and I also see now,
I also see now the speaking sessions which goes with your name sessions, I think that's
a very clever advertising so that's awesome.
Yeah, thanks, I would love the connection and that's something as well, the more people
you connect with the better, it doesn't matter who it is, just connect with people is they
know somebody most likely that you need to be connected with.
So just connect, that's the biggest thing that we can do is just connect with more people,
have real genuine conversations.
Yeah, your network is your network.
Exactly.
Awesome, well thank you for sharing that Phil.
Would you say that that is also your why of what you do, what gets you out of bed every
morning and you do podcast sessions at the same time and I don't know if you still have
something else that you do for work or is speaking is your main income source, what
gets you out of bed and do these?
Why are you on the show?
You know what I mean?
What gets you to do all these things?
Yeah, really building that legacy because I've been in the masterminds, I spent the
money to go to conferences and stuff like that and just seeing these people get out
there and speak and build these things and not that I had a bad childhood or anything
and not that my parents told me I couldn't do anything but I want to show my kids that
if you put your mind to it, it can happen and I feel like there was that kind of bread
in there but maybe not given to me as much because my parents didn't have a lot of money
growing up and that's okay.
They loved me, they showed me everything they could and I grew up what I thought was a normal
household but two loving parents.
That's not that normal of a household anymore so a very unique household in that sense
but why I get up every day is to leave that legacy for my children, to show them that
because I wanted to do something, I at least went and tried it and I want them to be able
to do the same thing because I think for us to create success, we have to be willing to
fail forward and so I want my kids to see first hand that daddy is willing to try something
and fail and still keep going and even if the success isn't there yet, he's going to
keep going no matter what and he won't give up until he gets there, until he can help
the amount of people that he wants to help and everything and make that change that he
wants to do and so that's really my why is to create that legacy for my children but
then also other people that are watching me on social media or wherever to be able to
look at me as an example and continue to push forward when they're going through that struggle
because we all struggle in life so that's the why.
Wow, very powerful, very, very powerful yet very simplistic. Not a lot of people are thinking
about legacy at your age Philip, they're not and most people realize that at I'm assuming
50s, 60s, 40s when they've spent majority of their peak years in frivolous efforts or
something else that they're trying to build and they're like oh my gosh, I don't have
a legacy to leave so wow, that's very powerful. Well, that goes directly into my next question
for you Philip. How did you get started with, what did you do, how did this all come about
when you started doing podcast sessions and speaking and helping people?
So the podcast side, it actually started with another endeavor. I've always really wanted
to get into entrepreneurship and everything and the first endeavor I did was actually
fitness coaching so I had the Healthy Living Sessions podcast. Again, the play on the last
name there and everything but that's what really got me into podcasting but what got
me to actually start it, I had bought a mic and everything for a year, sat on it, didn't
do anything with it and somebody said, I asked them how do you start a podcast and they said
just start and luckily they have some other advice but that was the biggest piece of advice
was just start. So start with that podcast but I started to feel burnout with that and
actually while I was at BMW manufacturing, I went into an HR role in the training department
and they had me work on presentation development skills and at that point in my outside career,
I was trying to look for what's that next thing and I was thinking leadership but I
was feeling like okay, I've never really been in a leadership position per se although people
have looked up to me as a leader and everything and when they asked me to do presentation
skills, that's where that light bulb clicked because I want to do something different.
I saw how podcasting helped me. I saw how learning to communicate better has helped
me in my career which ironically got me into that role because of doing a podcast outside
of the business by being a good communicator and not just being the engineer and I saw
that BMW saw this need and wanted to spend money on this or spend effort at least on
fulfilling this need for the people which at the plant here in Spartanburg, South Carolina
has 11,000 people. It's basically a small city and they saw that need and that's the
light bulb that catalyst for me was like this is a business that I need to start for myself
because of how much it's helped me and I want to be able to help other people.
That's awesome. Wow. Thank you for sharing all that, Philip. I have one more question
for you before we end today's session and actually it's two part. It's not one part.
It's two part.
All right. Oh, good one.
You will be able to answer this. The first part is why do you leaders hide from funding
the vision and the second part is how do leaders lean into funding the vision. I've given you
both the context and now we can start the question. Philip, why do you think that leaders
hide from funding the vision?
Because when you're putting money towards something and you're not seeing a return on
it, a lot of the outside world and yourself inside your head, you're lost. You don't know
why you would keep doing this but the outside world I feel screams a lot more about that.
Why are you putting money into this? Let's use a podcast as an example. It may seem silly
to spend hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars on producing a podcast that for
a lot of people isn't really making them money directly. I see you have sponsors here but
a lot of podcasts they don't have sponsors. They're not actually making money directly
from that and that seems crazy to do that. It's the same thing with our vision. When
we're putting money into that vision, that self-development ourselves to create the systems
and processes for that business, it seems crazy because there's not a return on that
investment and I believe that's why they're really hiding from that vision or they're
not really going towards that and then why they hide that funding is again because they
don't want to show that, hey, I've put $10,000 into this and haven't seen anything yet. Andy
Frazella and if you don't know him you should definitely look him up. His first 10 years
in business he made I think it was like average to like $500 a month or a year that he made
over 10 years in business. It was something just so small, such a small amount but now
he's like 25 years into business and it's a nine or 10 figure business but it took him
10 years before he started really making any traction and too often especially in today's
society we don't want to show that we haven't made anything for ourselves and there's always
that outside pressure but also that internal pressure that says we should be doing it faster,
that it should happen faster and with social media it should happen a little bit faster
than Andy's case with the 10 years but even if it does take 10 years or 20 years you shouldn't
hide from that vision because that's something that's your passion and if you're really truly
passionate about it, it doesn't matter how much money you poured into it because it's
a passion of yours, it's a vision of where you want to go, it's a legacy you want to
leave. So I think part of this as well why leaders hide that vision is they don't want
to look like a failure but they also don't want to express that this is my vision and
then it doesn't come to fruition either so it really just comes back to the people that
are around them, they're afraid of what people are going to think about them instead of what
they're going to think about themselves in the end.
I couldn't agree more. There is, we have this program but in one of the programs there's
a segment where most people and most entrepreneurs they're not going to succeed in their business
anyway or they're destined to fail if they don't have a vision, most of them. There is
very selective few who have the grit and the integrity and the work ethic to surpass that
where with their hard work they will overcome the failures of not having great systems or
great leadership skills but most people without a vision and a passion will not even get to
a point where they are able to fund their vision through a lot more effort and a lot
more things so I completely agree. When it goes to the next question about it,
Phillip, is how do leaders lean into funding their vision?
So how they lean into it is realizing that and I want to give an analogy here of ice
cream. If you are just a vanilla loving ice cream person, that's great but vanilla is
a basic flavor. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, those are all basic flavors and people will
agree with you like, hey, I like vanilla, I like chocolate, I like strawberry but they
like it. They don't necessarily love it but if you start talking about how, man I love
pistachio ice cream, Rocky Road is my favorite ice cream, these more unique ice creams, more
people are going to resonate with that or be repelled as well like, oh my gosh, I can't
believe you like pistachio ice cream, how gross but they are going to remember you for
that whether they like it as well or they can't stand it and think you are the craziest
thing for liking that and it's the same thing of why we need to lean into that vision because
when we lean into our vision, people then can be with us or they can be against us and
we can know who it is that's actually there for us and who is going to support us in that
vision and like you were just kind of mentioning, if we don't have a vision, if we are not talking
about it, people can't know if we are going in that right direction so you have to lean
in so you can know if you are going in the right direction plus it's all about just being
all in on it, you can't be half way in, half way out, you can't show your wife love some
days and not love the other days, you got to be showing your wife love all the time
is if you show it none of the time or show it here and there, she is going to question
if you truly love her but if you are always showing her that love, she is always going
to feel or most of the time will feel loved all the time and same thing with our vision,
our vision will start to happen as long as we continue to lean into it, we continue to
be all about it so I think that's why leaders need to do that and they just and how they
do it, talking about it all the time, communicating with people, being about it, sharing it on
stories, sharing it on social media, being in environments around that vision, let's
say you want to be into public speaking, go to public speaking events, go to business
seminars, learn how to develop yourself in that area and be around those areas, that's
how you actually lean into that vision besides just thinking about it, talk about it, be
all about it and eventually people will start to see that and start to follow you, that's
how you lean into it.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on that Phillip, I think that's very impactful for
our audience, it was a unique perspective in a way and you're very authentic, I thank
you for being very authentic.
Thank you for being here today, I'm really happy that you tuned in to 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
want to invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention, have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro
yourself.