Jon Acuff - Secrets to a Remarkable Life Revealed

Welcome to the 5-Minute Success Podcast. Yes, you too can achieve success at a higher level by investing just five minutes a day. Join host Karen Briscoe each week to hear powerful success stories of inspiration and information that will transform your business and life. Welcome to the 5-Minute Success Podcast.

Karen Briscoe here. Today's guest is John Acuff. And I'm thrilled to share that I have had an opportunity to be part of the Acuff community at the Remarkable You Vince last couple of years. And so I'm honored to have him as a guest.

He is a New York Times bestselling author of 11 books. His titles, including most recently Procrastination Proof, Soundtracks, Finish, and All It Takes is a Gold, have sold more than one million copies. He's also been named Inc.'s Top 100 Leadership Speakers, deliver keynotes to companies such as Microsoft, Walmart, and Comedy Central, and he is host of the popular podcast All It Takes is a Gold, which I have been to listen to, as well as all of his books.

John has inspired hundreds of thousands of people to overcome overthinking and finish what matters most. And John lives outside of Nashville with his wife and two daughters, which we have a connection there as well. Welcome, John. Yeah, thanks for having me, Karen.

Looking forward to it. So the 5-Minute Success community, we love your success stories, success journeys. How did you get to this space? Well, I was in corporate marketing for a lot of years, and then I got to ride the wave of blogging.

The gatekeepers are gone, and if you were consistent and creative online, you could build an audience and talk to a lot of people all at once. So I did that. And then a guy named Dave Ramsey found out about me and hired me to do this on a bigger level. And I spent three great years with him.

And then I wanted to do my own company. And I launched my own company 13 years ago and 11 books later. Here we are. Well, and that there's there's more to the story.

Of course, there's also tell us a little bit more about the books and your community and also. Sure. Yeah. The I mean, the big thing for me is I look at this as an act of service.

One of my biggest elements of my community are real estate agents. And you talk about people who know how to serve people in the midst of one of their biggest decisions. So I was really deliberate about building a community online, on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn. I was very committed to really figuring out how to dial in keynotes.

I get to do 50 to 60 keynotes a year and form long-term relationships. Last year, 40% of my events were repeat clients, which is kind of unheard of in this space. And so, yeah, there's been a lot. I would say community has been a big part of what I've done.

Well, let me do that with a mutual friend of James Shaw. And I was delighted that he's also been a guest of the 5-Minute Success Podcast. Well, so when you say get to, I think that's, you know, fabulous soundtrack, if you will. And that is that the get to, the keynotes means you are actually traveling to these sites.

and I follow you on Instagram and everything and follow your journey. And so, but there was the pandemic changed all that. So maybe share a little bit about how your business and life changed with that scenario. That's as you.

Oh, yeah. So I was set up to have the best year of public speaking in 2020. I'd worked seven years to kind of line up everything. And it just obviously crashed.

Every live event I had got canceled. And so it was a pivot season. So a lot of what I think people relate to my books is that I write them from the trenches, not from a pedestal. Meaning I say like, oh, wow, I've got to pivot my career.

And so I pivoted to virtual events. I pivoted to community. I pivoted to online challenges and courses. And so, yeah, 2020 really threw me for a loop.

But it also showed me that, OK, it's going to return. It's kind of like, you know, you talk to great agents. They great agents who have been in the business for a while don't overreact to a market upshift or downturn because they've seen it before and they know it's going to come back. And so for me, you know, 18 years into this industry, that's what I've learned to do is to go.

How do you ride the waves? How do you prepare for the storms? Well, that's really good insight. Thank you for, you know, making this relevant for the community because it is predominantly real estate professionals.

There's also a lot of coaches and authors and people in the personal development space as well. But the predominant is the real estate community, which is a big force to begin with. So as we segue into the next component of five-minute success, or the first component of five-minute success, which is to commit to get leads. And I call that the business development prospecting lead generation.

Sometimes it is helpful. So when you first started blogging, for example, how did you develop connection? How did you develop community? And then how have you seen that over the years?

And how do you do it now? Yeah, I mean, so at the very first start, it was really about responding to comments. What I've learned, a simple principle is people will read if they know you're listening. So I got really dedicated at responding to comments people left on my blog.

That person had taken the time to write this comment and I was going to read it and not only read it, but I was going to respond. So that was kind of the first level. And then the next thing I did was I did work on an email list. I wish I'd spent more time on that.

I tell people all the time that when it comes to leads, emails are so important. I got kind of distracted, if I'm honest, by the shininess of Twitter. Twitter was kind of fast and immediate, but you don't build long-term relationships in that kind of medium as easy as you can with emails. So I really started to kind of get good at comments, good at emails.

And then over the years, that's evolved. It's evolved to getting people's phone numbers. Karen, I'll tell you one mistake I made in my business that I can fix for everybody else in theirs. I would go to an event.

I'd speak at an event and I'd be in the lobby and somebody would come up to me and they'd go, that was great. We want to book you for our event. I'd go, great. Here's my business card.

Reach out. And I just gave them a job. I gave them a task and they're going to lose that business card by the time they get to their room. That job is my job.

One of my soundtracks is I'm the CEO of follow-up. So now what I do is I say, oh, let me get your email address so that I can be the one that follows up. And that little shift, like watching and going, no, the person who's in charge of follow was me not the potential customer Boy that changed the way I looked at leads And I have the same scenario or situation happening in real estate I just give you an example I was out previewing homes I think it was on a Sunday afternoon even I ran into a neighbor who was a longtime friend.

We chatted, caught up with all the things. And I said, well, if you ever need anything, let me know. And then I got in my car and I'm like, well, wait a minute. I just gave her the job to reach out to me if she needed anything.

So I'm big on handwritten note. So I wrote a handwritten note in my business card. I was like, you know, if you really, truly, if you ever need anything, I'm here to help. Because she had a husband who was ill and, you know, situations where I felt like she wouldn't perhaps need help.

And she called me and she said, I just thought maybe you were too busy. I didn't want to bother you. When you sent me the note, then I recognized that you really were available to help me. So I agree.

I believe it's my responsibility, my job to stay in touch with people until they, well, in real estate, we say that you buy or die or you sell or you list with someone else. But even if you list with someone else, if you don't sell that, we still should stay in touch. So because that's brilliant how you call it, the CEO of follow-up, because that really is, I think, one of the key aspects of this. Yeah.

For me, I mean, another example of that would be figuring out what people really need. I always say it's better to meet a need than invent the need. So, for instance, I have a two-day intensive event we do called Stage and Page, where I help other speakers and writers figure out how to do this career, which I think is the best career in the world. And so being cognizant of that and saying, OK, I'm backstage and another speaker comes up and goes, hey, I saw that thing you did with humor.

I'd love to, you know, figure out more humor in my speech. I'd love to get better at communicating and going, oh, OK. People asked me that question for years, Karen, before I finally said, wait a second, I think I should create something that really helps people. And I've sold a million books.

I think I've learned some expensive lessons on writing books that would help some people save a lot of time and save a lot of money. And so often, taking my real life experiences, finding where somebody actually needs that and then creating a solution for that person. That's kind of how I think about leads. Well, in our business, something very similar in that I saw over and over again, people were really paralyzed by getting their houses ready for the market because they were like, I don't know the contractors.

I don't know who's, I don't know what to do. I don't know who's going to, you know, take advantage of me or who's going to give me a decent price. And what do they start and don't finish? And, you know, so I was like, okay, well, then we'll offer the concierge service to do that for you.

I mean, we'll manage it for you. And the people, they didn't necessarily know that they needed it until they received it. And then they're going, this is really brilliant. There's so many opportunities for this and that obviously we could go on and on, but we want to transition to the next aspect of the 5-Minute Success Podcast.

Before we do, I want to thank our community that subscribes, shares, rates, and reviews the podcast because we want other people to hear amazing guests, which is John Acuff sharing secrets of a remarkable life revealed. So the next component is consult to sell. Some people call that conversion. But, you know, in your community and your work, how do you take people through the process so that they stay engaged, so they stay a part of your A Cup Ideas community?

Yeah, well, I mean, I do think about it in a funnel. So I have a couple of different businesses, if you think about it. I have public speaking. So that's keynotes and, you know, possibly retainers and a second keynote.

So that's kind of one funnel. And then there's reader, like somebody who reads and buys and hopefully shares my book. So I think about those as two different kind of funnels. And I guess the third would be somebody who comes to stage and page, you know, somebody who says, I want to be a speaker.

I want to be an author. So I kind of map out the path for them. You know, I kind of, I'm very deliberate about going, okay, this type of content on LinkedIn I post will be helpful to an event planner and an event planner who asks me a question, here's how I'll follow up. And here's the form they'd fill out if they want to book me to speak.

And here's the video I'll make that says, I'm so excited about coming to see you. And here's the gift I'm going to give them on the back end of that. And here's the follow-up when my next keynote is available. So I think about kind of my three business units, if you will, as three different funnels.

And I think, how can I help people have a great time at each stage of this experience. Well, and I would put the Remarkable You event as well in under the staging page because that really connected me into the A-Coff community. You have so many opportunities there as well for people to dive deeper and become more connected. Certainly.

And I mean, it's a lot like in real estate, like what are the touch points? What are the specific needs and when are the needs? Like, you know, how do I, I recognize that, okay, somebody who just finds out about me at a speaking event, I've never heard of you. I would love the slides from your talk.

How do I give them the slides in a way that's super easy for them? And also introduce the concept of my book. I have a book called Procrastination Proof that'll help you never get stuck. And here's why it fits you perfectly where you are.

And then customizing it to that exact audience. I mean, you've seen me speak before. And when I speak at real estate events. I have so much custom content for realtors because I've done so many.

I've been around with REMAX and Brian Buffini and Inman and so many real estate focused. So a lot of it is you've got these big kind of funnels and then you've got these specific things inside them that you go, how do I customize it to this person or this industry so that they feel super served? And I hear in this an anticipation. So you're anticipating what this avatar, if you will, the speaking funnel avatar, the reader funnel avatar, which I would add podcasts maybe into that, content maybe avatar, and then the events avatar.

Because it seems like what you're doing, or what I found works as well, is that you're anticipating what they're going to need next, and you help them move to it without overwhelming them. Oh, perfectly said. Here's how I would say it. My favorite definition of empathy, which I wrote about in a book, is read less minds, ask more questions.

So read less minds, ask more questions. So a big part of anticipating what they'll need next is asking people you serve. So I'm not guessing. Anticipating isn't guessing.

Anticipating is based on my expertise. I know the next thing that's going to happen. How do I make sure it happens in a really great way for that person And so that they so I give you one really nerdy example Karen So I decided years ago I want to give good thank yous to clients who have booked me to speak And so I have this bag I love called the Tom Ben. It's a great American brand.

It's a briefcase. I carried my laptop in it. I love it. I gave it to a client and a year later, I saw the sound guy again at that same event and he had a bag like mine.

I said, oh my gosh, that's my same bag. And he goes, Yeah, some guy gave it to my boss. She didn't want it. And I realized I had made a critical mistake.

I gave her a gift I liked, not a gift she liked. And that's a terrible gift. And the absurdity, by the way, Karen, that I could buy another woman a handbag. Like, I couldn't buy my wife a purse right now.

We've been married 25 years. Like, I would get that wrong. So what I started to do is say, how do I give somebody something they care about? And the question that helps me unlock that is often just, Hey, what do you do for fun?

What do you do for fun? So when a client says, oh, we've got two corgis. They're like our kids. We love corgis.

Then maybe a chewy gift card is a great idea. If a client says we live by the beach, it's our favorite thing, then maybe a great sunshade that, you know, my wife and I have used before is a great idea. But I customize it. And that makes them feel like one of one, not one of a thousand people.

Well, that's brilliant. And I don't know if you're familiar with Giftology, John. Oh yeah, John Rulon. Great one.

Pass is pass, sadly. But his whole concept is, yes, it's the platinum role, right? It's doing to others what they want you to do for them, right? Because I've got two Cutco knives in my drawer right now that are inscribed from John Rulon that he gave me from our friendship years ago.

So yeah, I loved his work. Yeah, I have Hal Elrod and many of the people in the Cutco community are longtime friends and mentors. And so that made me think of that. So the next concept is connect, build, and grow.

So 11 books, you have, you know, mastered the art or you're on the journey of mastering the art of scale and strategy of leverage. So let's dive a little bit deeper into some of the secrets of that. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of it's just having systems.

So I'll give you a specific example. So every time I do a speaking event, so 50 to 60 a year, I have at least one or two phone calls with the client beforehand so that I can ask them questions and get great information that allows me to super serve the customer who's going to be there. So, you know, I would ask these questions and I would just create examples or customize stories. And I don't ask new questions every time.

What a waste that would be. Do you know what I do now? I have seven surefire questions that get me the best information that make the clients laugh when they're answering them, that are easy for them to answer. That's a system.

Me having a document with the seven best questions, which by the way, I teach at the stage event is a system. So sometimes I think we think system is all technology. It's all massive. It feels overwhelming.

No, no, no, no, no. I look at a system as this, a win repeater. What can I do to repeat this win? That's all the system is.

It's a win repeater. So there's many places in my business, in my life, where I find a win and then I repeat it. You know, this reminds me or makes me think of soundtracks, because that's one of your books. And you listen to the podcast and hear about soundtracks as well as think about them.

Because oftentimes we'll look at something as a circumstance, as a negative or, you know, a situation that we want to avoid. And it can often be our biggest opportunity when we reframe the soundtrack that we've been telling ourselves. And I know that part of being a remarkable life is remarkable thoughts. So let's dive a little bit into that part of this process.

Sure. Well, you're right. I wrote a book called Soundtracks. It's essentially my version of a mindset book.

And the key to Soundtracks is number one, retire your broken Soundtracks. So identify the thoughts that are holding you back. Number two, replace them with new Soundtracks, better thoughts. And number three, repeat those new ones.

So often they become as automatic as the old ones. So it's retire, replace, repeat. And so often we over-focus on the results we want, but we never change the underlying thoughts that are kind of generating our actions so we don't get the results. And so I'm a big believer in being deliberate about what am I telling myself as I've got this big negotiation, I've got this big client situation, or I lost a deal.

What are the soundtracks I'm listening to in that moment? Are they the ones I want? The three kind of questions I ask are, is it true? Is it helpful?

Is it kind? When I listen to a soundtrack that's loud in my life, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

And so I put a lot of focus on that in my own life. And I find that people who are excellent and remarkable are never casual about four things, Karen. They're never casual about their money, their relationships, their time, or their mindset. it.

Well, we're going to get into this secrets of a remarkable life revealed for sure into the next component of 5-Minute Success. First, I do want to make everybody aware that I have a few slots remaining to work with me. Those who want to be mega agents, secrets to the life, you know, living a life as a mega agent revealed and those who want to be. So please reach out if you would like to have a conversation about whether that would be a good fit for you.

Secrets to a Remarkable Life Revealed. That's your tagline, John. And I've been to the Remarkable You event twice now, so I know you have so much to share on this in this component of Five-Minute Success, of success, thinking, activities, and vision. So let's dive into that.

Yeah, so if you think about kind of my last two books, one was called Soundtracks. That was all about thinking. And the next one's called Procrastination Proof, and that's all about action. and I use the word permission, that that's what people are waiting for.

They know they're capable of more. We asked 3,000 people, a PhD named Mike Peasley and I asked 3,000 people if they think they're capable of more and 96% of them said yes. 96% said they're not living up their full potential and people are waiting for permission. And the four permissions you have to give yourself if you really want to have a remarkable life are permission to dream, permission to plan, permission to do, and permission to review.

And if you do those things in that order consistently, it's almost impossible to not have a remarkable life. Well, and that's a lot of the procrastination proof. I think originally was your title of your book to be something about being a remarkable life And yet most people are attracted to the things the pain you know moving away from pain towards more so than moving towards pleasure Oh, yeah. It's your cell aspirin, not vitamins.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's I think that's why you came up with the title for procrastination proof. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah. So it's part of the same concept that what stops people. Well, what stops people is they're stopping themselves.

so you are giving people frameworks on how to do the things that we say we want to do. Well, frameworks for that, you know, my definition of procrastination is when your actions don't match your intentions, when who you say you want to be is not who you're being and the reverse of that, A Remarkable Life, is when your actions match your intentions, when the Venn diagram between who you say you are and who you actually are is like an eclipse, they're so overlapped and so, yeah, that's the, for me, You mentioned the word frameworks.

I'm an action kind of guy. Whenever I see a keynote, whenever I read a book, I go, okay, well, great. What do I do with this on a Tuesday? So if you read my book, Procrastination Proof, it tells you exactly what to do on a Tuesday.

It says, here's the framework. Here's how to build bulletproof motivation. Here's the easiest way to have discipline in your life. Here's how to review your goals to make sure you're headed in the right direction.

And it's so action packed that I think a lot of people initially expect kind of a fluffy motivational book and instead they get an action plan. And I love that. Well, and you and I are so much aligned. So I was in the coaching program.

It's been over 10 years now because I wrote my first book over 10 years ago. And we were on a retreat and the last day we were supposed to share with the group what was stopping us from doing what we said we wanted to do. and to this day the people that were there still remember that what they effectively saw was a light bulb go off in my oh yeah and that was well i'm the only thing stopping me is me and that was what changed everything is that when i decided that i wanted to do it and i committed to do it for myself, that then I figured it out.

But until then, all the reasons, all the justifications, all the procrastination strategies that people use, might be included, would come in to come stop me, right? And I would use these other things as what was stopping me. So that's what I believe is so brilliant about your messaging, your podcast, your books, your events, is that you really do help people see that what's stopping them is them and how to take action to move forward. Well, you're 100% right.

The way I like to say it is you're the most persuasive person you've ever met because before every decision you've ever made, first you talk yourself into it. And kind of one of my core beliefs is you can talk yourself into great things too. You are the greatest you salesperson in the world. You're the greatest Karen salesperson in the world because you know yourself better than anybody knows you.

And you have the most skin in your success than anybody else. And so I think a lot of times having a remarkable life is talking yourself into doing things you really want to do, but won't feel like doing some days. And that's, you know, that's kind of what I work on. And what your future self wants of you too, because a lot of it is like making decisions that will, you know, you're going to be glad you did.

Right now, you're, whatever it is you're keeping you from doing it. But later, I look back to the journey I've been on writing the book as multiple books has led to the podcast to the people I've met through along this journey and the people I've served. And so that's part of this, I believe, Secrets of Remarkable Life revealed as well. Oh, 100%.

Yeah. The way I say it is my approach the discipline is make tomorrow easy today. What can I do today to make tomorrow easy? Every decision you make today, Karen, sends a blessing or a curse into your future.

So how do we make some decisions now that send a lot of blessings forward? Well, that's just brilliant. I really enjoyed our conversation, John. I feel like it's really been a lot of value added to the 5-Minute Success community.

As we start to wrap up our conversation, we'd love to have you share how people can reach you, how they can find your books, how they can connect to be part of your community and all the John Acuff things. Sure, sure. Well, if you listen to this and you thought, okay, I wonder where I get stuck. We came up with a really easy quiz, super fast, 100% free.

You go to johnacuff.com, J-O-N-A-C-U-F-F dot com slash quiz. You can take that. It's a great kind of starter.

I read my own audio books. So if you're listening to an audio program, you're probably into audio and there's bonus content. So that's super fun. And then, yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn.

I am loving LinkedIn lately. So if you're on LinkedIn, so am I. And then all the other social media platforms. And as Karen mentioned, I have my own podcast called All It Takes is a Goal.

Well, we will put all this information in the show notes. Any of you that are driving want to access the information later, You know that you can always find out how to reach our guests in the 5-Minute Success podcast show notes and on the website. So, John, as we close our visit today, we'd love to have you share your inspiring message, your sweet spot of success. Yeah, my inspiring message, kind of my sweet spot, I would say there's a sentence that's driven me a lot.

And here's what it is. Starting is fun, but the future belongs to finishers. And so I love to think about, you know, the world will never be changed by the things you almost did. So what does it look like for you to get a lot of goals in a lot of areas of your life over the finish line?

To have the type of career, to have the type of family, to have the type of finances and physical health. What does it look like to finish the things that matter the most? Well, thank you, John Acuff, for being a guest on the 5-Minute Success podcast, sharing the secrets to a remarkable life revealed. And here's to your success.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please rate and recommend on iTunes, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Continue the conversation and connect for exclusive content, 5-Minute Success Facebook group and website. Here's to your success in business and life.