Gina Mollicone - Long, Speaker, Trainer, Peak Performance Expert
Gina Mollicone-Long helps people get what they want. She is an international best-selling author, compelling speaker and peak performance coach with a mission to reveal greatness in individuals, teams and organizations. She is the co-founder of The Greatness Group, a global team building and personal development company. Since 1998, she has trained, coached or spoken to tens of thousands of people on six continents. Her books, Think or Sink and The Secret of Successful Failing are widely read and enjoyed by people around the world. She can show you exactly how to get out of your own way.
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AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive.
[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Gina Mollicone - Long and she is a founder of The GreatnessU. I met her years ago at an EO L.A. event talking about change, how people change, how organizations change, how teams change. Learned a lot of really interesting things, things that I think explain the heart of the experiences and challenges I had as a CEO, as a leader. So really insightful. And I followed her over the years. She had a couple of great books, Think or Sink and the Secrets of Successful Failing. I love it. She's an engineer by training. Originally I was an architect by training. So I've got a lot of, I think, kind of connection with her in terms of the work that she's done and how she's evolved her career and the work that she does. I'm excited to talk to her about this and understand what she's doing today and hopefully develop some insights about what it means to be a leader, what it means to be at your own peak performance, what it means to take teams to a higher level, particularly leaders that are leading teams of leaders and how they get the most out of them and create greatness in the work that they do. So with that, Gina, welcome to the program.
[00:02:00] Oh, thanks for having me. Bruce, it's been a long time. It has.
[00:02:03] And I know is all this world of social media and, you know, LinkedIn and everything. I feel like I I've kept track of a lot of it. But it's great to actually have you on the program to actually have a conversation about this and really hear firsthand what you're working on. What do we start a little bit with a background? I gave away a little bit of the a little bit of it. Now, your beginnings were in engineering, but you know.
[00:02:22] Tell us about that. Tell us about how you've kind of logged your career, how you focus on this whole thing of performance and understanding what greatness is and how people achieve greatness. And then we can talk about some of the work you're doing today. I know you're doing some really interesting research and some of the speaking you're doing on the topics. But let's get the backstory and then we can get into those topics.
[00:02:39] Awesome. Yes. Well, I always, you know, like like any good yo focused person I like to start with. Why? So let's get some little bed in the morning is two words reveal greatness. And that is literally what fuels everything that I do in the presupposition there is that greatness is everywhere and it's everywhere. And I just really help reveal it.
[00:03:01] And, you know, the way that I do that is I take my engineering background and my philosophy background in a cram them together. And I work on that with mechanistic models of the mind. And I always try to explain this to people by saying, you know, if I cracked open your head, I don't think I'd find a bunch of gears inside you.
[00:03:17] But if it helps to think of the mind mechanistically and if you isolate some of these mechanisms, then you can start to tinker with the variables, the input variables, and see if that affects the output. And so based on that sort of principle, as I do all of my work in the area of peak performance and the mind, but I try to ground it all in empirical evidence, logical linear thought processes, which, as you know, is very palatable to business people, CEOs. And so I've got this kind of unique way of taking sometimes complex or even intangible concepts, you know, like intuition. You were talking about my latest research and then making it easy to understand, but also easy to action, easy to translate to technique. And that is a lot of that is my thing. And you were talking about change. I mean, it all kind of hinges on the process of change for me. And that was my work as an engineer, as a process control engineer. My thesis was in process control. And so a lot of the work that I do started and still continues to this day around understanding this constant, which is the process of change, which is ironic because everything's always changing.
[00:04:30] The only constant is strange.
[00:04:32] Only constant is change. And so I kind of hang a lot of my head on that. And then, you know, we go from there. So let's see where it leads us.
[00:04:38] Yeah, well, it's a little let's give people some examples. Just gonna ground folks in the conversation a little bit. You mentioned these these sort of mental models or models for how kind of the brain works. I was like my favorite quote around models is that all models are wrong. Some of them are useful.
[00:04:54] So I have written in my notes, make sure you say that the mechanistic models of the mind aren't true. So so it's true that the models that they're there are not proof. But if you sometimes look at something through a model, it just it helps you to to clear away a lot of the noise. Yeah. And then it's useful because, you know, if you do isolate one or two variable and then you change it and the output change. That's extremely useful. Yeah.
[00:05:23] So the big mind model that I use is this notion of performance or behavior. So here's the big picture. Not show, if you will.
[00:05:33] You know, going on outside of us right now is trillions of bits of information available for our brain to utilize. Now, I often quote a study that was done in 1954.
[00:05:47] This was sort of pre-computer, preto model. These guys were trying to create computers. Right. Trying to make the computers we now use. So when they measured that stimuli outside the mind, it was two million bits of information. Now you know that that's at least a trillion now.
[00:06:03] Yeah. In 1954, it was 2 million. And with these guys, it was Miller Problem Galanti. They're like these were the original computer scientists.
[00:06:11] What they found was the brain could only use one hundred and twenty six bits a second to create the patterns of behavior that you know, the things that cause our behavior. So if you do the math on that, it's basically nothing. 126 over two million, as you know, point 0 0 6 percent. Now, that's obviously the outside stimuli has gone way up. So that number has even gone way down. So the brain uses almost nothing to create behavior. So then it comes into the mind. So then the brain's tinkering with honor and £26 to create behavior. And then you create behavior and then you try to tell me it's based on reality. And my first argument is that's nowhere near reality like that.
[00:06:52] So much filter. I mean, you've basically filtered out the vast majority of quote unquote raw information to go through this process.
[00:06:58] Exactly. And so if you're not producing the behavior you want, the problem is in in the circumstances or the events outside of the problems in the filtering. Yeah. OK. So that's first of all, one mind blowing way of looking at it, then one that comes into the mind. I've chopped it up into three sort of three. I call it the triad, write three posts on which your behavior is dependent. Right. Which is the mental, the emotional and the physical. So mental processes.
[00:07:23] I mean, we could talk about how you have sixty five thousand thoughts a day, but that's overwhelming. So when I like to do is say it's it's your focus because your focus will determine what you're filtering will be. And then the other component is your emotional state. Right. So you're in an emotional state 24/7. Do you understand what it is? Do you know how to leverage it? And then finally, it's your physiology. So that's all wrapped up in you probably heard me say this in my talk when I did this in New York. Was the meat suit. Right. So it's all wrapped up.
[00:07:54] Right. And I try to use that term because I really want people to disengage from thinking that they are their body.
[00:08:01] I mean, you're so much more just your body. I literally just wrote a paper on extended cognition. And how much of her cognition extends into the world around this, you know, outside of her body. And so those three components focus emotions and physiology kind of couple together. And then that dictates what is, quote unquote, real for your behavior. And then you behave, you do whatever you do, and then you get your result. So your actions are absolutely important, but there's so much dictated by your focus, emotions and physiology. And then we just optimize that. Right. So to focus on what you want. Choose positive emotions and be in a physiology of power, you know. So those are variables that we optimize if we're looking at the mind like a system, like a performance system. It's not the only way to look at the mind. It is not the true way of looking at the mind. But if we just isolate those three things and optimize them the way I just said be, if your changes and performance is enhanced and what are some of the things I mean, I see that there's there's a couple of fundamentals here that you suggesting, but like, how do you actually take control of this?
[00:09:04] Like, how do you how do you move from a position of like, oh, like I get the idea that these are things that are impacting to one of, you know, how do I actually turn to move the levers? Right. Like, how do I have influence over the levers or what are the things that that give me some control over these pieces?
[00:09:18] Awesome question. So it's I mean, I like to start with focus because the filtering process seems to me over the last 20 years of my work and my research and then my results. It seems to me that focus is the big lever that changes the filtering process. So it sounds really trite to say focus on what you want. And most people will say, I am focusing on what I want. And here's the thing. Just because the words you're using or air, quote, pause, it doesn't mean you're focusing on what you want. And the best examples that I give, you know, are sort of all centered around a yo yo diet, a yo yo result situation.
[00:09:59] Right. So, you know, yo yo dieting is basically a given for people. They set a New Year's resolution and they it works for a little while and then something happens and they bounce back. And and this happens with the money. They set a New Year's resolution. You know, they're gonna make tons of money. And at the end of the year, they're right back where they started. And not in an absolute way, but in a. Turned away, right? So thorough, always 10 percent below the waterline, even if they make a million dollars, they spend a million and a million 0.1 still 10 percent below the waterline. So it doesn't matter. The absolute factor, it's the pattern that's interesting.
[00:10:35] Whenever I see a Yo-Yo pattern, it is 100 percent indicative of someone who's pretending to focus on what they want. Well, their real patterns that run their lives are the opposite. So the way that I language this is instead of moving towards what you want, you are moving away from what you don't want.
[00:10:56] Moving in the same direction. But your focus is wrong. It's on what you don't want because you're moving away from it versus your focus being on what you want.
[00:11:07] So give us an example.
[00:11:08] I mean, I think I like I get it at apps at a kind of abstract level, but like, what is it like when you actually work with somebody or when you're actually looking at their thinking or looking at their focus? What are the things you're looking for? Either in their language or how they're approaching this. That tells you whether they're in the towards what they want or away from what they don't want mode.
[00:11:25] So language is a huge thing. So let's use money because obviously the clients that you work with there are trying to tenfold their businesses or whatever their 100 times their business is. So often times we measure that revenue and money. Right.
[00:11:38] So someone might say to you, oh, yeah, I'm totally focused on what I want. I want to make tons of money. I want to I want to have tons of abundance or whatever the word of the day is. Right. That all sounds great. If you were taking a positive thinking course, you'd get a star. So here's the thing. And I don't mean to be negative, but if positive thinking was all that it took, everybody would be, you know, rich, skinny and loving and successful. So why are they so?
[00:12:05] The difference is that if you say I want to make lots of money or I want lots of abundance, but really what's going on internally is you are terrified of being poor. For example, you're moving away from lack. You're constantly focused on not being poor. Not not failing. You're constantly focused on not, you know, not like not having enough. If that is how you're internally focused. That is what you will bring into your reality. And so the language is important, but your language can be bullshit. So I have some techniques that I use to dig into the real language. But I also am reading their body. So ninety three percent of the communication is in verbal writing. So I am trained in the vocal quality and the physiology. So looking for incongruity in their language. But honestly, it's the results. So if there's a yo yo results, I a hundred percent. There is no question in my mind. Their focus is on what they don't want. It doesn't matter what their language is saying. And so then I I based on the mechanistic models that I use and some of the peak performance techniques that I'm trained in. We go in and we change the focus. Now, that's a lot of technical terms. There's another way to really know where you're focused. And it's the second part of the triad, which is the emotional part. So I said choose positive emotions. But the truth is, most of are like, oh, what? What?
[00:13:30] I guess just choose to be happy. Like happiness is something that I have. Yeah.
[00:13:34] Here's the thing. I want to I want to. And this is for business people. So you're welcome. First of all, emotions are not something to be ignored or pretend you don't have or to be dominated or repressed or whatever you're doing with them. The emotions are guidance system. Now, again, I've got to preface all of this with it's not capital t true. They're just models.
[00:13:53] Men travel in this emotional guidance system that I've created. Right. So so what I use is an acronym called SNAP. And the reason why you snap and I'm to try and snap near my mic. phonier snap. The reason I use snap is because truly the point of change, the point when you change behaviors happens in a snap, right? It doesn't mean the lead up takes forever, no matter what.
[00:14:15] The change itself is instantaneous. So I use the acronym SNAP with the emotional guidance system because the emotional guidance system is a way for the unconscious part of your mind, which is where all your programs are stored, all your habits, patterns, you know, strategies. It's a way for you to communicate with the conscious part of your mind, which is the part of you that makes goals and strategies and makes it like sets goals and imagines and creates and problem-solvers brain. So it's a wonderful way to communicate because the conscious part of your mind is linguistic. Obviously we're speaking English. That's all conscious. The unconscious part of your mind doesn't have domain over language. It has no linguistic capacity. It only has domain overrunning your body, storing all your time and memories and your emotions. So a model that I use is that the unconscious part of your mind communicates via the emotions when the patterns that it has access to don't match the words coming out of your mouth. So if the words coming out of your mouth is, I'm going to make millions, I'm going to have tons of abundance.
[00:15:14] Right. So that's the conscious part. That's the positive thinking. So you're going to have it. But then the unconscious mind goes to run the. The patterns, the the ways, the bit, you know, let's get the get the strategy for business. Get the strategy, whatever, it's brining these things. Now, if those things are focused on what you don't want, which is poverty, lack and whatever else you know, then the unconscious mind is in a quandary because it's like, shit. I'm trying to give you what you're asking for, but I don't have a program like that. They're actually opposite. So what it does is it sends up a negative emotion. And the negative emotion is a communication. And the communication is simple. It's what you're saying and the ways that you have to achieve that. They don't match. No one is focused towards what you want. That's your goal. But the pattern we have down here, the habit it's focused away from, and because of that, the negative emotion is what's present. And that makes sense. Obviously, when you're when you focus on what you don't want, you feel like shit. All right. You have terrible you have emotions we would classify as bad. So so then the emotional guidance system basically says, yo, down here, we're focused on what we don't want.
[00:16:21] Upthere, you're focused on what you want. This is a problem. Now, here's what the acronym comes in. So SNAP, the first letter is s it means stop, stop what you're doing. The minute you feel a negative emotion, stop what you're doing, because right now you are moving yourself towards what you don't want. So stop.
[00:16:39] Notice he's just gonna kind of the like when you find yourself in a hole. The first thing to do is stop digging.
[00:16:46] Sort of step. Then notice the emotion that's present. Let's just say it's fear or anxiety because that's a big one. And then do something. So that's not noticed in his notice. A is alter. You have to do something to alter either consciously alter your focus or do some sort of emotional technique. I mean, I do things like timeline therapy, A.P. hypnosis. But there are thousands of techniques. I'm sure you've had hundreds of people on your show that have techniques that, you know, do one of them. Yeah. And the emotional state changes because that's indicative of the fact that the focus has now changed. Interesting. Now then the P stands for proceed. Right. Focusing on what you want. So step. Notice. Alter, proceed. And so, you know, people will say to me, oh, I don't agree with you, though. I tried this technique and it didn't work. Let me give you the lowdown on change. There are only two requirements for change, desire and willingness. So if you are 100 percent in it, like 10 out of 10 in desire for change like you wanted so badly, you can taste it. You know, often my private clients will be an eleven. Right. Like, I don't even take a private client if they're not attending a. No. And I only take ten or twelve clients a year. I turn more people away because you have to have 100 percent congruent desire. It can't be something your partner wants your wife.
[00:18:09] You're exactly right.
[00:18:11] So 10 of the 10 for desire, but 10 at a 10 for willingness or to use your language in your world coach ability. Because if you're not willing to do what it takes, no matter what the technique is, it can't work. So sometimes I have techniques that might you may never have heard of, or maybe you consider them to be a bit out there. And if you're not willing to do them and or you don't have the desire. Guess what? It falls flat on its face. Yeah. So went on training like a lot of coaches come to me for like additional training. Just mind training, right. Behavior thing. So when I'm training them, I spend an unbelievable amount of time drilling into their minds that if the client doesn't have 100 percent desire and 100 percent willingness, this technique and any other technique, quite frankly, will produce zero results.
[00:18:58] Not because the technique doesn't work. Techniques work every time, provided there's desire and willingness.
[00:19:03] Yeah, but the underlying motivation is really there. The willingness to make the change.
[00:19:08] Willingness to surrender to the process. You know, it's like when a client won't surrender to the process, like it's painful on it.
[00:19:15] I'm always impressed on the number, the extent, the creativity of reasons why they can't do what talking about.
[00:19:24] Oh my God. Like one client once said to me, you're not gonna make me, you know, cluck like a chicken, are you? And I was like, well, first of all, no.
[00:19:32] But if it worked. Would you do it?
[00:19:34] Thinking to myself, maybe I should make you look like a chicken because I didn't.
[00:19:41] Then we get through this this limiting belief to you that you're gonna hold something back on me. All right. And by the way, how would you do anything? How do you do everything? Yeah. So if he's holding back there, he's holding back in the office. He's right. So, you know, it's literally that kind of thing as a gift because it smokes out the secondary gate.
[00:20:03] Right. But so I say stop notice. Alter. Proceed now. The techniques I use, I stand by and they're the ones I use, but they're not the only ones. So people always come up to me, go. Well, I don't know if I believe in that, but I use this guy Gray. Like, I don't care what you're doing. What you're doing is you're being a cause for your. Using your inherent systems to change yourself so that your results can change. Yeah, right. You know, the definition of insanity.
[00:20:31] I'd like to tweak it a bit because people always they'll come in. I'm doing different things. I'm not doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. And I go, OK, fine, do whatever it is you do, but recognize that if you beat the same way. Yeah. So if you're being the same person with the same focus, emotions and physiology day in and day out inside the meat suit, if you feel the same way and do whatever it is you do and expect a different result, that's the new definition of insanity.
[00:20:56] Yeah, I like as a candidate and the underlying intention and the underlying it's it's almost like you need to be willing to change who you are or how you're showing up to town. There's gonna be. It's not just the technique. It's it's an underlying belief.
[00:21:07] Yes. You totally get it. You just nailed it. You should clip that. That's a quote right there.
[00:21:12] Done. Ditto.
[00:21:14] Let's talk about it in a in the context of leadership, in the context of, you know, kind of being a leader, being a founder or being a CEO inside of an organization, inside of a leadership team. Like, how does this stuff, you know, apply to ply to you and how you're showing up as a leader on your team? And what can you do or what can you borrow to help your leaders? You know, be better leaders, be stronger leaders, you to step into their power on this? What are the things that you focus on? What are things you can focus on? Give us a little bit of your insights on how how this shows up when you're dealing with teams and business.
[00:21:45] Sure. I mean, let's let's be clear. In a perfect world, everybody who works for you wants to know as much as you do and is willing to change as much as you are. But I don't think that's the case in the real world. So what I say to the leaders is this the number one quality, if you have to pick one for the rest of your life to develop as a leader of leaders is flexibility of behavior. The person or system with the most flexibility of behavior controls the outcome. Yes.
[00:22:11] So first out of the gate, you have to be the most flexible person in the room. Barnat Second thing I need to point out is that little triad we just talked about fashion's focus, emotions, physiology. The way that you do it is not the way that the other person does it. So everybody's got a slightly different filtering mechanism. Right. And it's like languages. So you don't speak the same language. They speak a different language than you do. And it's easy for people to go. Okay, I get that. But here's the thing. Most leaders try to lead from their own language.
[00:22:42] And that's kind of the story of life.
[00:22:45] It's selling sound from your own language. It's a nightmare. So, you know, I often do my little story about language. And then I say it's much more effective to whisper in someone else's language than to scream in your own right. So you then as a leader, your real job is to learn how to be able to read people so that you can lead them. How do you read them to be able to discern what their language actually is? And they don't mean their actual language. I mean their their mind language read. Like, how do you learn?
[00:23:12] You got to become good at discerning their model of reality. Now, there's a million tools out there, right? Like it. Anything from the color thing desk Myers-Briggs, like these tools? Well, on one hand are basically worth the paper that they're printed on. On the other hand, they're really useful in illustrating how many different ways people can be different. So as a leader, your job is to try to figure out in big buckets. Who do you have, not what you don't have. I look, you and I can have a discussion about peak performance and I have an opinion and I absolutely have a model for peak performance for sure. But in the real world, if someone doesn't want to change, there's nothing you can do to change them. Oh, and I would like to say, by the way, if someone wants to change, there's nothing you can do to stop them.
[00:24:01] I just saying it's an interesting I hadn't considered the corollary to them. Actually, I'm on that. Yeah.
[00:24:07] Yeah. So I love the paradox of it. So as a leader of other human beings or other means, it's right. If they don't want to change or you don't have permission to change or you don't have permission to coach, then there's nothing you can do to get them to buy into what you're doing.
[00:24:21] So then your only chance is to figure out what you do have to have and then learn how to leverage what you have so that you can get the best possible performance out of it. Right. So let me use the example. Let's go back to focus, because that'll tie this together nicely. All right. So you should focus on what you want versus what you don't want for peak performance. That's a given. Now, the truth is the people on your team probably aren't thinking like that. So to some degree, because of the way that we are culturally brought up in the way that we're taught to deal with failure or whatnot, we focus on what we don't want a lot. That's just it's just the way it is.
[00:24:56] Voice We did we focus on avoiding certain things from happening.
[00:24:59] So you have people on your team who that's just the way they're wired. Yes. My opinion is if that's you and you want to change it, you should rewire.
[00:25:07] Absolutely. But you can't change other people without their permission. So in business, we call this the carrot or the stick, right. So do you motivate people with the carrot or the stick? Okay. Well, I could write an entire book and tell you why the carrot is. Absolutely the best way to go for sure. But I can also write another book about how you can't change someone who doesn't want to change. So better you should know what you do have. So let's say you have three people on your team, your carrots and seven people who are sticks because that's the reality. OK. OK. You need to understand how the stick motivated person works. You need to. Now, that doesn't mean you need to beat them with an actually, yes. But the language you use needs to resonate with their neurology. Yeah. So you need just say things like here's what we want to avoid or, you know, we won't be able to pay the bonus unless we hit our targets. I know that sounds like negative talk. And I get it. But that's all you have. Now, if you bought carrots on your team, you say things like, here are the benefits. Here's what we're going for our targets.
[00:26:06] You know, we're going to angels are going to explode. We're going to have a big bonus session. All right. And so there are ways to quickly ascertain that in a person to read, get a read on someone by simply asking them something like, what do you want in a job or what do you want in a car or what do you want a relationship? And then listen for their answers and don't be duped by a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yeah. Right. So they say you want the job, right? They go, oh, you know, I want to make good money. And they look at me and they go, oh, that's positive. Oh, no. I dig underneath, say, why is that important to you? And you'll find out that it's important because, you know, they got a mortgage to pay and they don't want to be broke. And they grew up poor and you get all these away firms. And so the word's good money, even though you sounded like it towards. That's really a stick. Yeah. So you just conversationally can get a read on people by listening to what they say and clarifying what's underneath it.
[00:27:01] I think it's amazing how they just so much of this process I find with leadership is, you know, getting leaders to be more aware and questioning and observing and kind of understanding who they really have, who they really are personally and then who their team really is. I know from from a wiring and a motivation and understanding what are their values. And so often that leaders like this conversation and they're like, oh, yeah, I never thought about. And I'm like, really? It could be transformational. And it also be it could be flummoxing. I mean, a lot of a lot of these leaders end up with this like, well, I don't know what to do now.
[00:27:35] Yeah. Now they realize, oh, shit, I might not have the right team. Know, it just sucks. You know, I'll tell you a story about a private client of mine in Australia. You know, he knew he met the right team and it couldn't he could have told you the exact number. Let's say it was, I don't know, like 13 people were wrong. And I was like, well, I know that that's painful, but you kind of inherited this company from someone else anyway.
[00:27:59] So it's not like you hired them. But they don't match your values. They don't match your processes. No. But, you know, he was really concerned with like being a good guy. And, you know, like CEOs, they sometimes they want to be liked more than they want. So he just was like, no, we're gonna, you know, I believe push through, whatever. So then, you know, X number of months later, I get a paint panicked call because like they quit like and Angel lost two good people.
[00:28:27] And it was like, look, you had an opportunity to lead and really defend your boundaries and your values. And now instead, you're playing catch up now. And so the outcome was the same. And you do this as a coach. Right. Like we we are job is to sort of show them what they don't want to see, you know?
[00:28:45] Absolutely. I didn't ask the questions.
[00:28:47] They haven't been asking themselves and provide them with the tools to to get there. And it might be painful short term pain, long term gain right now, but it comes down to what you value more. Right. So, you know, when you're trying to grow somebody like a hundred fold. Right.
[00:29:04] Like what brought you to two million dollars isn't gonna get you to two hundred million. Yeah, exactly. So significant things have to change. And everybody says, I love change and and I said that's bullshit. You like change that you want likely.
[00:29:19] Exactly.
[00:29:21] And so. So but significant things usually have to change. Painful things usually have to change when you're trying 100 times your business. Right. Because like honestly, if it was if it was enough to just think it or set the goal, you'd already have what you want. Exactly. So that means it's something out of awareness. Yeah. And that's where I spend all my time. And most people aren't willing to go there. But I love I spend my time in the conscious mind. I'm happiest looking in the dark. Right. The secret of successful feeling is not a book about how to fail. It's a book about how to turn your greatest adversity into your strongest advantage. So if you want to find your brightest light, unfortunately, you've got to look in the darkest room. I like it. Right. So that's where I spend my time taking up, you know, the things that have maybe be put quietly under the bed. Yeah.
[00:30:07] Because if you can undo those programs that are the you know, like the one like I said, like the money ones, a big one. Right. Think about this. You know, when you you're in college, you maybe you were. And I don't mean you, Bruce. I mean. Like general, everybody in the audience. So they were in college and, you know, you're just at the break even point, right? You you have no money, but you don't spend much money, you know. So maybe your 10 percent. No. Right. Then you get your business going and you make your first million. But you spend one point one. Like I said at the beginning, no call. You're still 10 percent behind then. Hundred million. But you spend 110 million. You're still 10 percent behind now. That's the same pattern.
[00:30:46] Yeah. And you see that so often. I mean, it could be about, you know, over under the way you deal with people. I'm into this whole whole we're all just patterns.
[00:30:55] So even though they'll turn around and say, but, you know, I was broke in college and now I make 100 hundred million dollars. Great. Bravo for you. But the thing is, you're writing the same pattern. And so the work that I do and the mechanistic models of the mind that are true, but very useful.
[00:31:12] Help me break the pattern now so that you can make, you know, make one hundred million and spend 80 million at 20 million in your pocket. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And rolling around in abundance. So but that requires a completely different pattern which is usually out of awareness.
[00:31:30] Now it's interesting because I see you know, I see a lot of companies and certainly a lot of people that come to me, a lot of people I work with, they you know, they go, I want to scale this. And I go, I want to I want to go from, you know, five million to five hundred million. I want to I want to scale up this company. And we start looking at the company or we start looking up a situation they're in. And it is not a great situation. Right either. They're not making money. The profits margin all there. There's a lot of drama on the team. The processes are a nightmare.
[00:31:54] There's a lot of quality issues. I'm like, are you sure you want to scale this company because it's going to scale all these problems? We kind of need to fix it now. Let's fix it at this level before we, you know, 10 times your problems. And it's a real life. It's hard because they they feel like, well, if I just make it bigger, I'm going to solve all my problems. And I said, no, you're just gonna just gonna scale your problems here.
[00:32:12] Oh, my God, Bruce, that is so I have to tell you that I may steal that example and use it because when I explain the price hasn't changed. That is. So I literally love that. So the pants see on my on my process of change rate is that it's a change point point. See, it's the point where if you've ever seen me draw a little checkmark, it's the it's the pivot point where you're going down and then you're going up. Right. So I'll always pause when I'm teaching and say, listen, be careful what you accept at point C, because whatever you accept at point C is what you will master. You will make it the pattern. And so I use the example up until I heard you're a great example. I used the example of, you know, do you know somebody who's been driving a long time since they're a good driver, but is really not a good driver.
[00:32:55] And that's everybody's got that Anto right. And so happened is they learned to drive badly and then they mastered it. Yes, exactly. So your examples, really? Emmerich's nice book, The Sumo's all over the a different business example. So I'm going to like tell them I got this from Bruce. Right. Let's stay on the business. That's not profitable. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God, that's genius.
[00:33:20] Now I know what that's but that's you know, that's so much the sort of the thinking if I just if I just get bigger, I'm going to solve all my problems like, oh, you're just gonna make your problems me.
[00:33:29] Actually just gonna make that swing harder.
[00:33:32] Exactly.
[00:33:33] I love it. Oh, my God. You know, I'm working on a new book and that's going in there for sure. OK. That is so good.
[00:33:40] Awesome. This has been fun to do. We're going to hit time here. People want to find out more about you, about the work that you do, your books, the organization. What's the best way to get all of that?
[00:33:49] Ok. So first up, I have to say that we've started this new social media thing. I'm a little late to the party. Sorry, I'm old. So we have a big social media presence. We've been going crazy lately. So Instagram is gina.mollicone. So it's gina.mollicone, any Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, they're all just Gina Mollicone with no dot. And then my Web site, the best Web site is really GreatnessU.com. And that's greatness with the capital u dot com. And if you're really interested in there, if you go under programs, we've got something called leader shift and that's an eight module program that is really designed for basically what we were all just talking about, chopped up in eight different ways to look at the mind versus like. Sometimes it's just for the leader. It's like just for this the top of the pyramid. Right. How do you look at your own mind? And sometimes it's like, how do you drive this through? Leaders of leaders and leaders of people. Right. So, yeah, that's that's the way we're looking at it is like how many meat suits do we have? We were talking about which mind are we actually working on?
[00:34:56] Oh, we'll make sure that all those links and the handle on your your Twitter handle and everything are they are Instagram.
[00:35:01] Angela in the show notes so people can click through and get that hasn't been a pleasure. I always I mean, always love these topics. I love speaking with you on is. I really appreciate you taking the time today. I think it was great. I think everyone got some really interesting things. I think they're probably scratching their head a little bit. But I encourage them to go check out your content. Check out the work that you do. Fill in the gaps. Really powerful stuff, so I really appreciate you taking the time today.
[00:35:23] You're welcome. And you know, one final thing I wanted to say is we have this thing called Greatness Week. It's like seven days of focused stuff. So that's also if you go to greatness, you're even if you go to GinaMollicone.com or whatever, it pops up as a as the first thing, because it's like a way to get into the material.
[00:35:39] It's totally free and it's just a way to get into it. Maybe set a goal and see see how the variables tweak for you. So that's always an option. Next time I'm in New York, we definitely have to connect.
[00:35:50] We will lose good people do alive podcaster. I guess that would be something that would be fun. And of course, I'll see you at all of the coaching stuff that we do. We do.
[00:35:59] We're on similar circuits. And that's kind of the fun part of being in those businesses is getting a chance to connect with all the all the other folks that are working with companies, working with leaders to try to help improve their performance, improve their results, you know. So it's it's great. I appreciate it. Yes. We will connect soon.
[00:36:15] You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach, Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com and don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scalingupservices.com/newsletter.