This interview clip is courtesy of the EntreLeadership Podcast. Check it out for great teaching on business, team building, and leadership.

A few weeks ago, while at the Nashville airport, I walked up to the security line.

There were three lines open for the station where the guy checks your ID and your boarding pass. The one on the left had 25 people in it. The one in the middle had 25 people in it. The one on the right? It was empty.

Nobody was in the one on the right, which I thought was weird.

I stood there and thought, “Maybe it’s closed. If it’s open, why did those 50 other people go into the long lines? I don’t want to make the wrong decision and get in trouble.” I started to walk toward the long lines but, at the last second, decided against it.

I walked down the entire line right to the front. I felt a little silly passing all those people who were waiting in the other lines. Some of them definitely looked at me. But, for once in my life, I didn’t really care what people thought. At the front of the right-hand line, I waited for the TSA agent to tell me I’d made a mistake and order me to the back of the other lines.

He didn’t. In fact, he said something completely different.

“Just because you were brave, you got to go to the front of the line. Good for you.”

Then he checked my ID, marked my boarding pass, and sent me on my way.

I skipped 50 places at the airport because I took a small risk. I was brave for a second and it paid off.

Next time chasing your dream takes you across an empty line, don’t be afraid to stand in it. A small act of bravery can go a long way.

Question:
What’s a small act of bravery you can make today?

“If I share my weaknesses, my followers will never be able to trust my strengths.”

That thinking helped create leaders who, in meetings, and in speeches only share their successes or mistakes they made twenty years ago. The ridiculous assumption is if you don’t share your weaknesses, people won’t know you have any. Usually, the people you lead are already well aware of your weaknesses, even if you’ve been fronting like you’re perfect.

This next generation won’t stand for that line of thinking.

New generation leaders know:

“If I don’t trust my followers enough to share my weaknesses with them, they’ll never trust my strengths when I share those with them.”

The days of fake leaders are drawing to a close.

Don’t overshare as a weapon or a way to manipulate, but don’t think you can be an authentic leader without being an authentic human first.

Question:
How would you define “authenticity?”

Regardless of the request, I feel like I am disappointing them, failing them, and letting them down.

So instead, I say “yes” a lot and then secretly hate the person who’s requested something from me. Or I say yes and then break my commitment at the last second.

Both of those options suck.

And I realized I tend to say yes so often in part because I feel like I have to justify or explain my no. I have to lay out in the best possible ways why I feel I need to say no. But recently I heard a guy say something really powerful about the word no. He said,

“’No’ is a complete sentence.”

How great is that?

No.

That’s a complete sentence.

You don’t have to justify yourself. You don’t have to apologize for saying no. You just have to say it. And move on.

Is it always easy?

No.

But I’m learning there’s big truth hidden in little ideas like that.

Question:
Is it ever hard for you to say “No?”

Only they haven’t. Despite the hype, the product was a dismal failure. Despite what all the experts said, it never really blew up. And smart people really thought it was going to be huge! Take this quote from a Segway enthusiast:

“If enough people see the machine, you won’t have to convince them to architect cities around it. It’ll just happen.” (Page 146, The Dumbest Moments in Business History)

That’s crazy for a few reasons. One is that the person doesn’t say “If enough people try it or buy it.” They said, “If enough people see” it, as if the machine was so obviously superior that the mere sight would be enough to cause worldwide change.

The second reason is that the person didn’t say, “Builders will construct houses around it.” They said, people will “architect around it.” Whole cities will be impacted by this machine. Not homes. Not streets. Entire cities.

Looking back on what happened, that’s a crazy thing to say. So who said it?

A guy named Steve Jobs.

You probably have heard of him. He’s the brilliant mind behind the iPhone and the iPad and iTunes. He was one of, if not, the most innovative minds of our generation. How could he say something that far off base about the Segway?

Because no one who dares to swing the bat a lot hits 1,000%.

But everyone who refuses to play is guaranteed a 0.

Steve Jobs was wrong, a lot. And you will be too.

But the possibility of striking out is never as bad as the guarantee of going hitless because you refuse to even pick up the bat in the first place.

Dare to swing.

Dare to miss.

Dare to do it all over again.

The number of times I walked my kids to school in August.

Know how many times I want to do it this year?

50.

Know why I wrote it down?

Because I tend to ignore things I don’t write down.

For years, I was pretty good about making goals about my dreams or my career. I’d write down hopes and dreams and then try to chart the course there. My family? My wife?  I just assumed those parts of my life would happen naturally on their own.

I was wrong. And I share this post not as a declaration of “look how great I’ve been over the years,” but more as “look how I blew it for so long but have found something new I’m trying.”

So now, this year, I am going to walk my kids to school at least 50 times a year. It slows our life down, gives us time to talk, and creates the simple kind of moment my kids won’t forget.

Make sure, as you chase a dream, you give your family and your friends and your faith the best of your time and creativity, not just the rest of your time and creativity.

Question:
Have you ever had a goal related to your family or friends?

So is “See Tony Dungy for free.”

So is “See Cokie Roberts for free.”

So is “See Patrick Lencioni for free.”

So is, well we could play this game all day because there are 14 speakers at the World Leaders Conference and the entire webcast is free.

That is awesome.

Going forward, I’m going to try to do a better job of giving you access to cool stuff I find. Like this.

Don’t miss the free webcast. It’s on September 27 and 28. (Or in layman’s terms, this Thursday and Friday!)

Click here to get access to it.

There were about 15 of us in a small room in a conference center.

Godin spoke for about 30 minutes, and then opened up the floor for questions.

Here was one of the most successful marketing minds in the last 20 years.

Here was someone who has sold millions of books.

Here was a keynote speaker who gets paid tens of thousands of dollars, asking 15 strangers at lunch if they had any questions. And do you know what happened?

Nothing.

Crickets.

It was deathly quiet.

Nobody asked a question at first.

Why? Because we were all afraid to look foolish in front of each other.

Even though we were strangers, we didn’t want to say the wrong thing. We didn’t want to look dumb or embarrass ourselves in front of Seth Godin.

We all wanted to look cool.

Finally, I couldn’t take it any more and asked a question. Not because I’m brave or incredibly self-confident. I’m actually pretty insecure, but I did some simple math in my head. I added up the number of opportunities I’d have to ask Seth Godin a question in the future. The total was 0.

I then added up the number of moments I would be able to try to look cool later. I added that up to the number of conversations where I could try to impress somebody. The total was around 1 million.

The math made my decision pretty simple. I’d never get to ask Seth a question later, I’d have lots of chances to try to look cool later.

So I decided to look cool later and run the risk of looking silly right now.

I asked Seth a question. And then another one. And then another one.

I’d pause after each one to give someone else a turn. But, for the most part, only one other guy jumped in. (Mark Batterson.)

Together the two of us fired as many questions at Seth Godin as the 30 minutes would hold. It was awesome. I learned a ton that day.

But the biggest thing I learned is that trying to look cool in front of people is a waste of time. A waste of energy. And often a waste of a rare opportunity.

To walk when you could actually fly.

To hold your tongue when you know you’ve got a great idea.

To let fear win the day when there’s a smoldering bit of boldness you need to act on.

When presented with the choice to accept average this week, I want you to remember this photo.

I want you to be this duck.

Because all the ducks on the sign have the gift of flight, just like all of us have some innate ability inside.

But only one of them is daring to use it, the rest are walking. And it doesn’t look like he’s having an easy time, does it? He’s not soaring. His wings aren’t spread in a heroic V like a hawk high above the trees. He’s struggling, pushing agains the sky with everything he’s got. He’s going to fly, not walk. And I hope you will too.

Be this duck.

A few weeks ago, they grabbed my iPhone, took a photo, and then added cats to that photo.

This is what kids do. They add cats to photos.

I then posted that photo on Instagram. It was a funny photo. I’m a dad who loves sharing how awesome my kids are. End of story.

Next morning, L.E. comes downstairs. I tell her I posted the photo.

Her first response was, “How many likes did it get?”

That is why my kids won’t use social media any time soon.

She’s 9.

She doesn’t need to be worrying about how many “likes” something she created got.

I’m 36. I’ve been to college. I’ve worked at a lot of companies. I’ve purchased a house, done my taxes and a lot of the other things you do as an adult and, even so, I have a hard time handling “likes.”

I don’t want to add that to her tiny self-esteem.

When I was in the seventh grade, a guy named Dan Smith laughed at me in the courtyard before school started. He didn’t like the shirt I was wearing. He got other people to laugh. I didn’t feel like I had a whole lot of “likes” in that moment.

But I couldn’t measure them. I didn’t count them. Other people weren’t about to see how low I was on “likes” in that moment, but with social media you can.

I don’t know how old your kids should be before you let them use social media. If you’re a parent and your kids have Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, please don’t think I’m judging your decision.

The title of this post is “Why my kids won’t use social media any time soon,” not “Why your kids shouldn’t use social media any time soon.”

I don’t have the answer for your family. I honestly don’t have it all figured out and will make countless mistakes along the way.

What I do have, though, is a recent realization that as a dad, I want to do everything I can to protect my kids from anything that will force their hearts to ask, “How many likes did I get?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I looked up the comment he was referring to. Someone had written a long diatribe against me, my writing, my choice of life decisions, places I vacation, my preference of tangelos instead of tangerines, etc. At one point, they compared me to Kim Kardashian. (Obviously, the similarities between she and I are endless, and it would be insulting to your intelligence for me to point them out.)

The comment was pretty stunning and concluded with a promise from this person to actively campaign against the future sale of my books. I’m not sure if he’d make up stickers and buttons, but he’d definitely tell his friend group, “Don’t buy that Jon Acuff’s books, he’s a lot like Kim Kardashian.”

Just when I was thinking about getting upset about the vitriol, I remembered a rule someone once told me about hate mail:

“Hate mail signed by no one is from nobody.”

And this particular hate was anonymous. Therefore, it was from nobody and you should never let a nobody make you feel like less of a somebody.

You might never get compared to Kim Kardashian. But, at some point, someone in your online adventures might anonymously throw a rock at you.

Don’t let it land.

Hate mail signed by no one is from nobody.

And nobodies don’t really matter.

Question:
Have you ever run into criticism online?

Here’s the formula:

Success + Arrogance – Input = Death

By itself, success can be a great thing. It’s encouraging. It’s fun. It’s winning!

But when you add success and arrogance, the result is often nuclear.

You start to think every decision you make is the right one.

You start to think your past success will guarantee your future success.

You start to give up on all the things that got you there in the first place and, instead, believe that you’ll win because you deserve to.

You become blind to reality, and that’s painful, but there’s still hope. There’s still time to save your dream. You just have to listen to people you trust. People in your life who love you will recognize the Molotov Cocktail of success + arrogance. They will reach out and tell you when things seem off course. That the decisions you’re making don’t seem in line with why you started working on your dream in the first place.

Listen to those people and your dream still has a shot at redemption. You can peel back the tentacles of arrogance and push forward again on your dream.

Ignore those people and your dream is in peril. If you subtract input from your life, at the moment you need it the most, you’ll get lost.

This is true for CEOs, pastors, bloggers, housewives, and everyone on the planet.

You don’t need a huge success to get cocky. It only took me about 3 followers on Twitter to become a jerk. I only had to write one book to think I was pretty amazing.

Without the input of my wife, my dream would be on the bottom of the ocean. I wouldn’t be working for Dave Ramsey right now. Quitter wouldn’t exist. The Quitter Conference wouldn’t happen.

The formula is simple, but brilliant people fall for it every day. You need look no further than the last year at Netflix.

In an incredible article that details how Netflix lost 800,000 subscribers and saw their stock price drop by 77% in four months, CEO Reed Hastings makes an honest confession. He says:

“I messed up. I owe everyone an explanation. In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.”

I hope you succeed. I hope your success is wild and robust and far larger than you could ever imagine.

But above that, I hope you never give in to the dream-killing tailspin that arrogance always offers us.

Via emails, tweets and conversations, a number of people said something that surprised me:

“Jon, one of my favorite parts of the conference was networking with the other attendees.”

My first reaction was honestly, “Wait, I think you meant to say, ‘One of my favorite parts of the conference was when you were speaking from stage, Jon. If we could increase one thing, it would be more stage time from you!’”

But that’s not what they said to me. What they said was,

“It was so encouraging to meet another customer call center representative, nurse, stay-at-home mom, college student, etc.”

“I thought I was all alone until, during one of the breaks, I had a great conversation with someone who is working on a dream like mine!”

“I wish we had more networking time! It’s so hard to find someone in my town or circle of friends who understands what it’s like to chase a dream.”

In moments like that, you’ll get to choose between arrogance and confidence. Confidence will tell you, “Let’s figure out how to best serve the people around us.” Arrogance will tell you, “Do what’s best for you.”

That’s the easiest way to tell the two apart. Arrogance never helps anyone but you. Its only aim is self-preservation. Its only desire is to grab land, grab credit, and grab attention by any means necessary.

So what did I do?

I added a night session to the Quitter Conference. Instead of just one day, we now spend Friday night and all day Saturday together. I found ways to carve out more networking time. I talked with the team about creating amazing moments where attendees can work and dream together.

It didn’t happen overnight. Blog posts tend to make it look like you have a sitcom life. Conflict and resolution wrap up in about 30 minutes. That’s not how this went for me. I’ve got a pretty loud ego and an arrogance that, at times, is very convincing, but Dave Ramsey has taught me a lot about what it looks like to super serve people.

After the first Quitter Conference, we decided we wouldn’t have another one unless we felt like there was real help, real hope, and real action we could give people.

And so we held another conference, with more networking time. Weeks after we held the second one, we didn’t get the same feedback we got from the first one. People walked away with relationships and friendships and networking opportunities and a whole lot of other things they would have missed if arrogance won the day.

Today or tomorrow or next week, you’ll have to decide if you’re being arrogant or confident in a situation. When you face that crossroads, ask yourself honestly, “Will anyone else benefit from this decision?”

If the answer is no, you might be under the sway of arrogance.

Question:
What is another way to spot arrogance?

And the other day I saw a picture that said, “Failure is the best way to learn.”

That is ridiculous.

Success is the best way to learn.

It’s also the most fun way to learn.

The problem is that you have to ask “why” after you succeed.

Why did that work?

Why did that succeed?

Why was that such a win?

Success you improve on is always a better teacher than failure.

Can failure teach you lessons? Without a doubt.

But don’t buy the romanticized version of failure our culture loves to shop around. Losing your only client sucks. Going through bankruptcy sucks. Getting fired sucks. You’ll definitely learn some lessons from those experiences, but having a successful business, having a successful job and having a host of successful clients will teach you far more than failure ever will–if you’ll stop to ask “why?”

Then his personal life blew up, and he wasn’t awesome at golf.

And the crazy thing is we’re surprised.

He made a whole boatload of bad decisions. Wrecked his family, broke his marriage, fractured an image that had been carefully cultivated for decades, put his kids and wife through the tabloid ringer, and lost anything that matters.

Now he’s playing golf again, and we’re confused at why it’s taken him years to win again.

He took so long to get good again because Tiger Woods is just like you and me.

He’s one person.

There’s not a “golf Tiger Woods” and a “family Tiger Woods” and a “father Tiger Woods” and a “business Tiger Woods.”

There’s only one Tiger Woods. And when one portion of his life gets wrecked, he’s incapable of sealing it off completely from the other parts of his life. We don’t work that way. That’d be like smelling smoke in the vents of your house and saying, “Don’t worry, the problem is in the basement. We’re on the second floor. We’ll be fine.”

But, when we express doubt about Tiger’s struggles, that’s exactly what we’re pretending is possible. And the same goes for politicians. Whenever some scandal comes out, people are so quick to say, “Yeah, but he was a great politician!”

He might have been a good politician, but he wasn’t what he could have been. It’s exhausting and distracting and crippling to fight a fire no one knows about all alone. Nobody makes their best decisions from a place of hiding.

If you’re a leader and your home life is on fire, there will be smoke at work.

If you’re a dad and your job is on fire, there will be smoke at home.

If you’re a wife and your friendships are on fire, there will be smoke at home.

Nobody is perfect. Not Tiger Woods. Not you. Not me. This isn’t about perfection. This is about putting out every fire you find. Don’t think you can contain one in a closet of your life somewhere, and just make due in a house that’s increasingly hard to breathe in.

And when I do, I say these four words:

This too shall post.

It used to be “This too shall pass,” but then I learned something about sharing your failures with people.

1. People can relate to your failures.
Chances are they’ve had their own. Chances are they thought they were the only ones. Chances are they know what you’re going through because they went through it too.

2. They can learn from your experience.
If you share honestly about your own failures, people can often avoid having the same thing happen to them. If you stepped in a hole and it hurt, it helps if you tell other people not to fall down that same hole.

The temptation, of course, is to only share your success. From the stage as a public speaker or from the mailbox as a neighbor, it’s much more comfortable to tell a story in which you made a wise decision. You look a little like a good guy. You win.

Fight this temptation.

We’re full up on leaders who only recount mistakes they made from 20 years ago.

We’ve got enough people on Facebook telling us about their perfect life.

We’ve got more celebrities crafting fictional reality lives than we can possibly stand.

What we’re missing is people who, when they fail, say “This too shall post.” We need people who, instead of dramatizing the failure or glamorizing it or oversharing in inappropriate ways, simply ask the question, “What did I learn in this experience that might help someone else?”

You don’t need a blog to “post” either. A post for you might mean coffee with a friend or a phone call to a family member. We all have the chance to post every day in a million different ways.

This too shall post.

It’s the new “This too shall pass.” And I’ll go first.

Several weeks ago, I found out that I lost 99% of all the Facebook fans of Stuff Christians Like. The group went from 10,000 people to 23. Facebook changed the rules of groups. There must have been something I was supposed to do in order to accommodate that change. I did not do what I was supposed to do. And so the group essentially disappeared. Why? I was lazy. I started to coast on a few of my social media platforms. I thought I had set them in motion, and that’s all I had to do.

You can’t coast with social media.

Lesson learned.

Starting again.

This too shall post.

Question:
What’s something your last mistake taught you?

Part of the reason I think that way is that people have often told me silly, empty little platitudes like “Turn a frown upside down!” Or “Let your smile be your umbrella.” And I feel like those cheesy, “go get em’ tiger!” sayings can’t possibly be true. Attitude and perception aren’t that important are they?

I didn’t think so until I met a 22-year-old college senior named Santiago who really challenged me. (He’s the same guy that inspired me to start seriously thinking about the importance of mobile apps.) One night at dinner I told him I’d been reading about how high unemployment was for college students. Some studies say that it’s the highest it’s been since World War II. Up to 20% of all college grads don’t have jobs.

Santiago smiled when I told him this and then replied,

“Sure. The unemployment rate is high. But even if it’s 20%, that just means you have to be in the top 80%.”

I love that philosophy.

Santiago wasn’t worried about the unemployment. He saw it as an opportunity. You can’t be a B-minus? That’s all it takes: top 80%. And if it gets higher, even better. If unemployment is 30%, you just have to be in the top 70%.

Now you can interpret that approach two ways:

1. Wow. That is a great way to perceive the challenge. Way to hustle!

2. That’s just an empty statement that doesn’t really mean anything.

Number 2 is cynical, but I understand it. It’s how I’ve approached life for years, but there’s a problem. Santiago isn’t just saying he’ll be in the top 80%. He’s hustling to make sure he is. He started his first business before he turned 10. He’s got one right now that is winning more clients than he knows what to do with. While other students are worried about the unemployment rate, he’s driving 90 miles each week to the biggest city near him to set up meetings and appointments. He’s going to be able to buy and sell me 10 times over by the time he’s 24.

I was initially going to title this post “Perception changes everything,” but it doesn’t. It’s only part of the equation. The full formula is “Perception and hustle change everything.”

Don’t believe me? Wait for somebody to give you a dream job. In the meantime, though, please know that Santiago will be making sure he’s in the top 80%.

Question:
Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

I’m busy. There are hundreds of things I need to cross off my to-do list each day. Respond to emails. Attend meetings. Return phone calls. Answer text messages. Pick up the kids from gymnastics and art. Finish work projects. Start home projects.

Recently, I realized my list was getting longer, and my days felt like they were getting shorter.

In order to survive, I came up with a 5-step secret to getting it all done. If you’re busy too, feel free to use it:

Step 1.
Admit that you can’t possibly get it all done.

Step 2.
Give yourself the grace to accept that as reality, not failure.

Step 3.
Do the things you can do with your full attention.

Step 4.
Celebrate what happens during step 3, instead of obsessing over the things you didn’t get to.

Step 5.
Repeat as necessary.

That’s it. I was thinking about turning it into an app, but checking that would just be one more thing you would have to do each day.

Instead, just print this out. Put it on your fridge, or whatever the more relevant sounding appliance is, and start on Step 1. If you can get that one done, you’re 99% of the way there.

Question:
Do you ever feel the pressure to “get it all done?”

Days when whatever it is that I am required to do feels hard or stressful or above my capabilities.

He said, “In June of 2011, people spent more time using their mobile apps than they did their desktop browsers.”

This was the first time that had ever happened, but it’s not that surprising. That same month, combined sales of smartphones and tablets were greater than the sales of desktops and notebooks for the first time ever.

That’s not really shocking information. The idea that people use apps a lot won’t knock you over. Small surprise. Thousands of articles have predicted this. What is shocking, though, is how many people missed the arrival of the next Internet.

People spend more time on mobile apps than desktop browsers, and yet most businesses don’t have a mobile strategy.

The world is shifting in a gigantic way, and yet most businesses are pouring millions of dollars into a platform that is shrinking, while ignoring the one that is mushrooming.

It reminds me of conversations I had with companies in 1997. In meetings, we’d try desperately to convince companies that they needed a plan for the Internet, and they’d say, “Let’s talk about our brochure.” They missed the Internet for months, and sometimes even years, as they waited to see what would happen.

I’m no better. Try to download the Quitter App or the Jon Acuff App. They don’t exist. I missed the next Internet. At first.

I’m working feverishly now to figure out my mobile strategy. To listen to guys like Santiago, the tech experts at Dave Ramsey, and more importantly to the millions and millions of people who are trying to loudly say:

“There’s a new Internet. Will you be ready?”

Question:
What app do you use the most?

The article raised a challenging idea that keeping up with innovation can become “a cyclical problem all successful companies eventually face as the technology around them changes, but they cannot change.” The success of the past essentially makes it hard to recognize the necessary innovations of the future. (Read the article here.)

In response to my question about why didn’t Nikon build Instagram, someone tweeted, “Maybe because they’re imaging hardware companies, not social media companies?”

I think that’s a good push back, but there’s a problem, Kodak and Polaroid could have said that same thing. Can’t see Polaroid saying,

“We’re an imaging hardware company, not a digital photo company.”

Can’t you imagine Kodak saying:

“We’re an imaging hardware company, not a digital photo company.”

And in some ways, they both did. Entrenched in decades of film-based success, it was nearly impossible for them to successfully navigate the transition to digital.

Polaroid is out of business. Eastman Kodak recently filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Instagram was purchased for 1 billion dollars.

What does this mean for your business or idea?

It means you better make sure you’re not a travel agent.

When I was a kid, if you wanted to go on vacation, you had to go see a travel agent. You had to sit in a small office, look at an out of date brochure and then pay someone to give you access to vacations. There was a gatekeeper. Now?

The travel agency in my town is out of business. Why? Because the Internet made us all travel agents. I can go on Kayak and Travelocity and Expedia and a million other sites to put together my own vacation. Specialized travel agents still exist in some capacity, but for the most part, that industry has disappeared.

The Internet is not done changing the rules. It’s still the wild, wild west out there. Whole industries are going to become obsolete. New ones are going to spring up. The days of shift are not over. If anything they’re only beginning.

Make sure you don’t get left holding a Polaroid in your hand wondering where the rest of the world went.

Lately, I’ve felt the invitation to be vulnerable extended to me in a number of different ways. Frankly, I find the term “vulnerability” a bit terrifying. In this clip from the TED conference, Brene Brown unpacks what it means to live with vulnerability and why it’s so important. If you don’t have time to watch it, here are some highlights:

1. The original definition of courage was “to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.” The courage to be imperfect.

2. Based on intense research, Brown found that people who live with their whole heart possess three things:

Compassion – to be kind to themselves first and then to others because as it turns out we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly.

Connection – they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be.

Vulnerability – they believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful.

3. My favorite quote was “I know that vulnerability is kind of the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it’s also the birthplace of joy of creativity of belonging of love.”

Question:
What was your greatest takeaway from this clip?

Question #1
Who said it?

Was it a close friend or a complete stranger? A business colleague or someone driving by you on the highway? It sounds ridiculous that you’d need to ask this question, but you do. Most of us receive all hate as if we’re receiving it from someone who knows us deeply. In the heat of the moment, we act as if this person can see deep into our soul and that their words carry truth.

Case in point, a few months ago, I got some hate mail. Instead of stopping to ask “Who said it?” I immediately wrote a long response. I wrestled with it emotionally for hours, never once answering this first question. If I did, I would have quickly realized a stranger said it. Someone who has never met me, had a conversation with me, Skyped with me, or had any interaction with me. So why was I giving their words such power?

When someone leaves a hateful comment on your blog or tweets about you, that’s the equivalent of someone driving by your house and yelling, “I hate your yard! Your heart must be horrible too!” You’d never listen to that person in real life. Don’t listen online.

If on the other hand, my friend Grant had called me with some criticism about something I did, I would listen in a different way. Grant knows me. He cares about me and wants the best for me. His criticism would come from a place of relationship. And that’s different than hate. But unless I ask “Who said it?” I tend to give anonymous hate and friendly criticism the same weight.

Question #2
Why did they say it?

What was their motive? Were they exposing a blind spot in my life so that I might improve something I was doing? Or are they mad about something completely else and just looking to lash out at anyone who gets in their path?

Pausing to ask why gives you time to reflect before you act. I once worked with a guy who was really angry and combative. It would have been easy to label the way he acted as hate. But when I stopped to ask, “Why does he say the things he says?” I learned his wife had breast cancer. That wasn’t hate bubbling up, that was hurt. That was fear and hopelessness. His hate didn’t have anything to do with me and, instead, had everything to do with a terrible situation he was facing. Once I knew that, he became invisible as a hater and visible as a guy who needed a friend.

Asking why works at work too. Sometimes your boss will hate one of your ideas because she just got back from a meeting and her manager hated one of her ideas. Once you learn about her motive, you can help her fix her idea instead of lashing back about the feedback she just gave about yours.

That’s all it takes to make 99% of all haters invisible.

Who?

Why?

Six simple letters.

Next time you get hate, make sure it’s not valuable criticism from someone who is trying to help you get better. Once you’ve identified who said it and why they said it, chances are you can stop worrying about it and brush the dirt off your shoulder.

Question:
What’s your first reaction when someone criticizes you?

Whether you speak on a stage, on a blog, or in a meeting at work, you have an audience.

And fear is in the business of making your audience look massive.

Why?

Because making a mistake in front of a lot of people is generally more terrifying than making a mistake in front of a handful of people.

Bombing in front of a bunch of people is scarier than bombing in front of one person.

So when you’re talking to an audience, fear always tries to swell reality until what’s a simple presentation to a roomful of coworkers feels like an address to a million people.

That’s why I shrink every audience I speak to using a trick my 8-year-old daughter taught me.

A few weeks ago, I was filming a video that millions of people will see. I was the most nervous I’ve been in a year. Dave Ramsey was going to be in the audience, my team leader would be in the audience, dozens of people I worked with would be in the audience. The size of the room started to swell like a puffer fish in my head.

I talked to my daughter L.E. the night before the event as I was putting her to bed. I told her, “I’m nervous. Millions of people are going to see this speech I’m recording. What do you think I should do?”

As she grabbed a handful of stuffed animals she said, “Just pretend you’re giving the speech to me, not millions of people. Imagine I’m the only one listening.”

And then she went to bed.

Shrink the audience, dad.

It’s such a simple idea, but I promise it works.

From here on out, I’m not talking to 10 people or 100 people or 10,000 people.

I’m talking to one L.E..

And so are you.

When you write your book, write it for one person.

When you give your sales presentation, give it to one person.

When you lead the PTA meeting, lead it for one person.

Shrink the audience.

Question:
Do you ever get nervous when you have to speak in front of an audience?

Here it is:

Don’t gossip.

Seriously, quit it.

Not only is it toxic for your heart, it’s a silent killer to your bottom line.

I never knew how much time, productivity and creativity I wasted by gossiping at work until I joined a company where it was a fireable offense.

That’s right. If you gossip on the Dave Ramsey team, you get fired.

And for 12 years in corporate America, I was the worst at gossip. I’m a people person. I like to make people laugh. I like to talk, and I’m insecure. Those four things were a deadly combination. Throw in a down economy where people are being laid off, and there’s a culture of uncertainty? I was out of control.

So are you and so are your employees. Especially during the current chaos a lot of businesses are facing.

If you want to improve company morale, go home feeling happier, and double your productivity, it’s simple:

Don’t gossip.

Question:
Is gossip ever a problem at your office?