How Fear Controls the Way We Lead, Sell, and Parent with Bryan Post

John Barrows: Hey, real quick, before we get into the conversation, look, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while now, you know I don't have sponsors, and it's mainly because I know most people, including myself, skip right through them and I just don't want to annoy my audience with 10 minutes of sponsor spots every single week. However, it also means I don't get paid to do this. So the way I help fund my ability to provide free content and really interesting conversations like the one you're about to hear is through my sales training and coaching services. So if you've gotten value out of some of these conversations on this podcast and you're looking to level up your sales game, do me a favor and go to jbarrows.com and check out the training tab on the Top Nav bar. I have training for teams or individuals, and you can even get an individual training module focused on a specific skill that you're looking to address, like objection, handling, negotiations, and much more. If you're an individual, you can also use discount code podcast for 20% off the membership. Look, sales is evolving faster than ever right now, especially with AI. Uh, and we all need to level up or risk becoming irrelevant. Whether you're an executive looking to train your entire team or you're an individual rep looking to level up, I promise I can help you get to where you want to go in 2026. Send me an email to schedule a call or sign up to my membership today and let's make it happen together. Now, let's get on with the show. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, uh, here's another one that's a little bit different from the typical sales conversation, and I think it might be one of the more important ones I've done in a while. This one goes deep into mental health, stress, fear, and how all of that shows up, and how we sell, how we lead, and actually how we parent. Brian Post is a behavioral expert and the author of 22 books, including From Fear to Love. He has spent the last 30 years working with troubled children and highly stressed families, specializing in adoption and foster care. He is also building Bondify, an AI powered app that applies his behavioral science framework to help parents in real time. His whole premise is that there are two primary emotions, love, uh, and fear. And most of us grew up experiencing fear disguised as love. What Makes this conversation a little different is how directly it applies to sales and leadership. Brian makes the case that when you are stressed, your thinking becomes confused, your short term memory shuts down and you cannot perform. We actually talk about why the challenger sale approach of adding fear on top of a buyer who's already scared is backfiring in today's market and why it's backfiring. And he also breaks down why discipline means to teach, not to punish, and how that changes everything about how you manage a team. And he says the greatest gift you can give any situation, whether it's in sales, conversation and negotiation, or a moment with your kids, is to slow down. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Brian Post. Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How you doing today?

Bryan Post: I'm doing fantastic, John. Glad to be here.

John Barrows: Yeah, uh, I'm glad to have you here, man. I think it's gonna be an interesting conversation. It's a little bit of a, ah, apart from the norm of, of the sales tactics and tips and strategies that we all talk about. And this is going to kind of delve, dive into, um, a lot of just decision making, but mental health and, and fear and, and stress that we're all dealing with right now. And I think, man, if there's a time to talk about how to deal with stress, uh, I think this is it. Things are moving so fast. I am, I am interested in your new, the app that you got that you put together with the AI stuff that you're working on, because I'm curious in that journey as well. And, and that balance of the human component and AI. So we'll get to that. But let's talk about your origin story, man, because you got a real interesting one. You come from a, a real interesting background with your parents and adoption and, and all the stuff that you've been through with your sister and everything else too. So walk me through that and, and a lot of, in what you. How that shaped you, right? That, that any education could never give you, right? No, no MBA could ever teach you what you got, what you were taught through your childhood and, and also when you recognized that, you know, you needed to really start to pay attention to the human and how people reacted and communicate. So could you walk us through that to give us some context here?

Bryan Post: 100%. So I, I like, people ask me all the time how I got started doing the work that I do. So I've been For the last 30 years working with troubled Children and highly stressed families. And you can pretty much encompass it. My specialty is an adoption and foster care. My. But it expands to human behavior. Um, I really believe that everything I teach is. Is just human behavior. So I spend a lot of time talking about adoption because I feel like that that specifically is what God put me here to do. Um, but I can. I can generalize that to almost every area. And so I say that, John, because I was conceived by a woman out of wedlock. She was married. Her husband was out of the country in the military. She got pregnant by my father. She didn't think her husband was coming back. And, um, she got pregnant by my father. And then, um, realized that she didn't want to be a single mom raising four children in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in the 1970s. And I like to joke that Merle Haggard. Because I'm from Oklahoma, Merle Haggard sang a song called Okie from Muskogee, and I'm who he's referring to. And so most country western people are like, yeah, dreadlocks. Huh?

John Barrows: Huh? Right. Yeah. I was gonna say they're not the typical. What somebody would envision, but I hear you.

Bryan Post: So, um, she got pregnant by my father, and then he went across town and got a cousin pregnant. And then, um, she found out, broke her heart, and realized that she. She wasn't going to be able to keep me. And so she. She told her husband, and he said, you got to have an abortion. And so years later, when I called her and said, I think you had a little boy. You know, June 4, 1973. And I think that was me, she said first, after she asked me, how'd you get my number? She said, well, let me call you back. She said, I'll call you back tomorrow. I said, okay, well, I'm not a crackhead. I don't want anything. I just want to know a little bit about my roots. And let me tell you that, that whole process, um, I finally met her at 37. That started when I was, like, 24 years old. And so I, I. Yeah, I just kind of. It just. It was an process overall. Um, so it took quite a while. And, um, so she. We hung up, and she called me back 30 minutes later. She said, baby, you're right. I'm your mom. I've been praying for you every single night. She said, I had to tell my husband, Saint, married to the same man. He's the father of my three half siblings. And, um, he. He thought I had been aborted. So the only people that knew I lived were existed was my mom and her older sister, my Aunt Gloria, who since passed away. And so my mom, because she was heartbroken, changed, um, my last name so my dad couldn't find me. And so she gave me some information about him. I found him a couple weeks later. He said, I looked for you. He said, I was young. He said, I couldn't find you. And, um, that was all fine because I got adopted. I was in a couple foster placements. And so when I jump forward and say, I've been doing this for 30 years and I believe that God created me to do this, God created me to do this from the moment of my conception. So when I, when I talk to people, families, when we're talking about their kids, when I talk about their own lives, when I'm talking about. I mean, I do coaching with CEOs, presidents, politicians, I'm always taking people back to their birth because most people don't think about their birth experience. But by the fourth week after conception, you're already beginning the process for hearing. And by the second trimester, you're already psychologically processing. And Nadine Burke Harris wrote a book called the Deepest well, she says that in the first year of life, your brain's developing 1 million neural connections per second. By the time you're 5 years old, your brain's 97% developed. So from conception to that first year of life, your brain has already developed 90% of what it's going to, what it's going to carry for the rest of your life. In those in utero experiences, go into developing the foundation of your. This is important. John Bolby in the, in the 50s, John Bowlby is known as the father of attachment. He said that the first three years of your life established the blueprints for all of your future social and emotional relationships. Well, the 90s was the decade of the brain. And then we found out that it's not just the first three years of your life is from conception up to the age of five, establishes the blueprints for all of your future social and emotional relationships. So so many of the, that people struggle with, especially in high stress situations, can directly be correlated to those in utero and five first years of life. And so it's really important for me, just as a foundation for us as human beings, that we not discount the, our in utero experience. You know, there's a whole science around it, it just doesn't get talked about. And all the sciences are so fragmented, but it's pre and perinatal psychology. So I was after A couple foster placements got adopted by my mother and father, who loved and adored us, did the absolute best that they could. Hardworking, salt of the earth people. I mean, I couldn't have asked for better parents until they were stressed, when they were stressed. Both my parents were children of alcoholics, though they never drank, they never smoked, they never partied. My saving grace was growing up in Mountain View, Oklahoma, a town of 2,000 people, because it was quiet, it was slow, I knew everyone, it was consistent, it was predictable. All the things that the brain needs to feel safe. What was really important is that when I met my biological mother, and then I'm going to flip and tell you the sister, the story of my sister, because that's, that's probably as important as anything. When I finally met my biological mother, the first thing she said is I loved being pregnant. All she had to do is tell me love, because love is an experience of oxytocin. So when she said, I love being pregnant, I didn't drink, I didn't smoke, I ate the right foods, I got plenty of exercise. That told me that my brain had been, had been guarded from the negative consequences of cortisol. So oxytocin is your brain's anti stress hormone. Cortisol is your brain's primary stress hormone. So when you're in a high stress situation, your cortisol is out, is pumping out, because it's a survival mechanism. Well, oxytocin, which is a learned experience, has to be taught in you from in utero. So when my mom said she loved, my biological mom said she loved being pregnant, then she was releasing oxytocin, and I was experiencing that. So that shields my brain. Well, to, to put that on the flip side, there was my sister that I was raised with. We weren't biological. She was also adopted. My sister. Now think about this dichotomy. My biological mother said I loved being pregnant. My sister was, was conceived to a single mother who drank alcohol, maybe used marijuana. I imagine during that period of time, she was three months premature. She weighed three and a half pounds when she was born, and she spent her first three months of life in an incubator. So you think about my early experience being sheath and oxytocin in love and my sister's early experience being flooded with cortisol. So then what happens is my sister and my mom and I refer to my mom and dad as the people who raised me. My mom said, when we got you, you were smiling. When we got your sister, she was crying. And that created the blueprints for our relationships. So my sister was always stressed out because of her early experience. She was emotionally arrested. She was developmentally delayed, she was chronically immature. Now this becomes really important. My mom and dad that raised us were children of alcoholics. They, they. My mom, at the age of nine, her, her father had a heart attack in front of her at the kitchen table. No one ever talked about it. My grandmother raised 10 kids. My mom was the oldest daughter of 10. So my grandmother worked as many jobs as she needed to to take care of her kids and to raise her kids. And my mom was parentified. So that's the point. So my mom being the oldest daughter, took care of the siblings younger than her. My father, his father was an alcoholic, was killed in a bar. My dad dropped out of school when he was in the eighth grade. He eventually went to Vietnam, Came back from Vietnam with severe post traumatic stress disorder. So you have two hardworking salt of the earth people. They moved us to this little town, which is fantastic. My dad worked in a rock quarry for 35 years. Came home every single day, got up every single morning before the crack of dawn, got to work, worked all day, came home covered in limestone lime dust. He is, he is the foundation for my work ethic. He's the foundation for my principles of how a man takes care of his home, takes care of his family, his responsibilities. The problem happens when they get stressed. Okay, so kids being kids, number one. And kids, kids coming from, from early experiences of trauma. Adoption is trauma, foster care is trauma. These children are stress sensitive and fearful. So when you've had a really, a really stressful early in utero experience, it forms the blueprints for a very sensitive amygdala. And you're familiar with that. It's your limbic system. Well, that's where cortisol comes from. So then the problem is when, when my mom said you were smiling and your sister was crying, immediately they look at me, they have a oxytocin moment. They look at my sister, they have a stress moment. So then we get older and as we get older we have behavior problems as, as stress sensitive, fearful children do. Well, my, my parents only knew hitting and yelling and taking things away, which is traditional parenting. The problem is you can hit and you can yell and you can take things away from a child who has a pretty nor normal in utero birth experience. But when you're hitting and yelling and taking things away from a stress sensitive, fearful child, all you're doing is increasing stress and increasing fear. Now Joseph Ledo says something really important. He says he's a New York University neuroscientist. He wrote a book called the Emotional Brain. He says in times of stress our thinking becomes confused and distorted and our short term memory suppressed. So when you're stressed you're not thinking clearly and you cannot remember. My parents became really stressed out with my sister and I and our behaviors and they're hitting and they're yelling and they're taking things away, just exacerbated the situation. But the difference between my sister and I is because of my in utero experience I could regulate my stress. So I could get whipped. My dad did not, he did not spank. He spanked maybe until we were five. And then the leather belt came out and then it was whipping. I could get a weapon, I could go to my room, play with my little he man figures. And I could, I could recover. My sister could not recover. So the next day she would go to school unable to recover. It takes high, it takes, it takes, this is something really important. It takes cortisol, high levels of cortisol, 36 hours to clear the body mind system. So if you've experienced a really stressful event, the next day, that stress, that cortisol still in your system. Now there's research that says traumatic events, cortisol related to traumatic events can be stored in your body for up to 15 years. 15 years. So if you take 36 hours and you take 15 years, you take 36 hours with a stressed out child who goes to school, who. And for her the way that manifested is she was just immature, she was chronically immature. Well my parents were parentified. So you take uh, an immature child with, with, with hyper responsible parents, it is just a recipe for disaster. And so that's how you take a loving home and turn again, turn it into World War three. And the foundation of my work comes from all of my childhood experience, my own experiences and the observing of my sister's overwhelm and my parents helplessness. And Einstein said something very pertinent. To continue to do the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Well, the significance of that is that it goes back to what Joseph Ledo says. When you're stressed and your thinking becomes confused and distorted and your short term memory suppressed, you can't remember that the thing you did yesterday did not work. And so you do it again today. And in our society if something doesn't work, we just do more of it. And so that was my experience. Uh, my, my, my, my Earliest experiences that has informed me all of the work that I've been doing for the last 30 years.

John Barrows: Wow. So lots of unpack there. Uh, I want to. One of the things I constantly am exploring is the concept of nature nurture. Right. And you know, one of the questions I tend to ask is, you know, curiosity. Is, is it nature nurture? Right. I think, you know, genuine curiosity is, is something you're born with, but you can become curious. But you're hitting on something that makes me curious here. Um, because, you know, we, we consider nature the environment that somebody kind of grows up in and the parenting that they had. And, and you have really interesting examples of really good parents with really bad kids. Bad. And I'm putting bad in quotation marks or, or really bad parents and, and you know, again, quotes and greatness comes out of them. But what you're saying is like the nature component starts actually way before a kid gets born into a set of parent. Well, physically born into the world it uterine and, and literally so is, I guess, is that the, the line of nature nurture? Is that the nurture? The, the nature component is actually from the minute of, or, or very soon after conception. And all the environmental, the, the mentality, the, the mental health of the mother, the, the environment that they're in, the, the, the positive talk that they do. The, all that music that you hear people say, like all that stuff genuinely matter just in does that develop? The, the nature. Is that the nature component of where people come from?

Bryan Post: The nature. The nature is the genetics. The nurture is the care. So the nature is what you're born with. The nurture is how you're cared for. So that the, the nurture starts in utero. It starts with the mom who's not stressed. It starts with, with the, with the household, with a father who's present and loves, loves, loves his, his partner, his wife, his spouse, whatever, and takes care of her and make sure she's not too stressed. And an extended family that celebrates the, the soon to be arrival of the new baby. That's the nurture. And it starts from the very beginning. The nature is what you show up with. And so Science says it's 5050. However, science says nurture has the ability to shape and overcome nature. So with the right nurturing, you can actually overcome your genetic predispositions. But the challenge in our society, because I believe most of us have grown up experiencing fear disguised as love. I believe there are two primary emotions, love and fear. And most of us have grown up experiencing Fear disguised as love. So what you were told your parent, when they're hitting you or yelling at you or taking things away or threatening you or shaming you or whatever it is that they do, and they tell you they're doing that because they love you. That has nothing to do with love. That has everything to do with fear. So the problem becomes is we end up exacerbating the nature by, by providing a stressed out, fearful nurturing. But because we, you know, parents can provide shelter and food and, and consistency and predictability, we say, well, you know, that child was taken care of, that child wasn't abused, they weren't physically sexually abused, they weren't maltreated, they weren't neglected, they weren't deprived, locked in rooms for hours. What's wrong with them? Well, that doesn't mean you don't have stressed out parents who are hard working, work every day, uh, they got to pay the bills, they put food on the table. But they are one of the most pervasive two, two of the most pervasive things that afflict our society. One is emotional absence. So because of the way we've been raised and because of the stress of our society, parents and adults are under a great deal of stress. Well, when you're stressed, you become emotionally absent instead of emotionally present. The second is in our society, we are emotion and feeling immune. And I like to separate the two. And emotion. Your body only knows two emotional states. Emotion is energy in motion. Your body only knows thriving and surviving. Your cellular systems either constricting in survival or it's open and it's thriving. A, uh, feeling is the cognitive perception of an emotion. So we grow up experiencing parents who love us and provide for us, but they are stressed out, so they become emotionally absent. And an emotionally absent parent actually sends a stress vibration to their child unconsciously and not knowing it. The second thing is we've experienced all of these painful events throughout our lives. These stressful events and trauma is any stressful event which is prolonged, overwhelming and unpredictable. And when you don't have an opportunity to express it, process it and understand it, that short term stressful experience can become a long, a lifelong brain altering traumatic experience. And we don't grieve in our society. That's number two. It is, it is a pervasive, a pervasive traumatic experience in our society is we don't grieve painful events because we are afraid of emotion, we're afraid of feelings. We don't like to cry, we're not sad, we, we, you know, Our parents were baby boomers. And then the generation before that was in the. Was in the dust bowl, in the major depression, and there was no. And then you go, uh, a generation back, and now you're in slavery. There's no time for crying. There's no. It's all, pick your. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps, lift your chin up, you know, wipe those tears away. Crying is a process of grieving and healing. So when you don't get an opportunity to do that, it just gets suppressed and you just carry it from one generation to the next generation to the next generation.

John Barrows: So as a parent or said manager, leader, um, what are the indicators? Because it's hard when you're in the moment, right? Like, hey, I think I'm a great parent. I think my wife and I are great. But we're both entrepreneurs. We both run our own companies. We both live out of our own house. We both work ridiculous, absurd hours. You know, do we force time to be with our daughter? Absolutely. Do we, you know, spend weekends? Are we. Do we consider ourselves present? Absolutely. But I think there's a lot of people that could probably convince themselves that they're a good leader, a good manager, a good father, a good wife, or, I'm sorry, a good. A good mother. But are not. They're in that stress zone. So what are the indicators for somebody who is in that without it punching them right in the face and having the kid yell back at them like, you know, or their kid acting up? What are the indicators that you are in that stress state, even though you might not think it just because you are just providing for your family. I'm working my ass off here. I'm doing everything I can. And, and. But it could be harming your, uh, your employees, your child. What are those indicators?

Bryan Post: I tell you, one of the, One of the major indicators is having a conversation with someone and not paying attention, whether it's your employee or whether it's your child having a conversation. And while they're talking, you're formulating what you're going to say back. Having a conversation and being on your phone at the same time, watching your child, your child saying, hey, watch me, watch me. And you're saying, I'm watching, I'm watching. Then you're looking down at your phone, or you're thinking about work, or you're thinking about the bill that needs, needs to get paid. Those are the m. The major indicators that afflict, uh, all of us as parents. Mindfulness and presence requires energy. It is one of the Most challenging things to do. And we take it for granted because what we've experienced are, uh, parents being physically present. Physically present, physical presence and emotional presence are two completely different things. They're two completely different things. And the thing is, the only person who can be honest and hold someone accountable and judge whether someone's present or not is the individual. Um, you know, whether you're present or not, it's whether or not you're willing to be honest about the fact of whether you're being present or not.

John Barrows: Yeah. Uh, I mean we come down to, you know, from a sales standpoint, active listening. Right. With a client and not having pre. Yeah. Most sales reps, they go through the motions of the questions and then they kind of regurgitate whatever their pitch is. What are some of the things that you work with people, parents, anybody to help cultivate active listening? Right. Outside of putting the phone down obviously and staying present. I don't necessarily know if a lot of people under, truly understand what real active listening is or they don't know how to. So how do you coach people on how to be more present, how to be more curious, inquisitive, and actively, genuinely listen to people?

Bryan Post: I'll give you something very simple. And I always say everything I teach is very simple. It's just not easy. The first thing is to breathe. I teach, I teach people fundamentally how to slow down and breathe. Because if we go back to what Joseph Ledo says about in times of stress, our thinking becomes confused and distorted and our short term memory is suppressed. If you're not breathing, you're already off the realm else. So I teach people how to breathe and then I teach people that instead of actually listening to what the first, to what the person is saying, reflect on what you're feeling inside of yourself. So when you're talking, the first thing I have to do is I have to reflect on what I'm feeling and where I'm at. So if I'll reflect on what I'm feeling and where I'm at, then I remember to breathe and then I become present and now I'm connected to the exchange that is occurring. And this is Alan Schurz, a neuroscientist, wrote a book called Affect, Regulation and the Origin of the Self. And he talks about right hemisphere to right hemisphere attunement. See, we don't realize that three fourths of who we are is emotional. The other quarter is rational and cognitive and process. But 3/4 of it is all emotional. So when you're dialing into who you are and uh, where you're at and what's going on. What you're thinking is it's the essence of mindfulness. That's how you slow down and you get present to what the other person is saying. And then it's simply asking, well, tell me more or explain that further or help me understand that or, or let's go into that a little bit further. And then you're really tuned in to what they're saying because you've calmed all of your inner chatter, your inner mind chatter. And when you can quiet that inner mind chatter, then you can join a space of relationship with another person. And relationship is the most important thing.

John Barrows: Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check out some of my sales training programs@jbarrows.com and use discount code podcast for 20% off their individual packages. If you're not interested in training or you don't think you need it, then you can still support me by leaving a five star review on your favorite podcast platform or G2. If you've already gone through my training before, you can also sign up for my newsletter on jaybarrows.com where every single week I put out a newsletter that breaks down what I'm learning out there, some of the new tips and tools and tech and resources that I'm coming across, and some stories from the streets of train wrecks that I go through and stuff not to do. So if you could do one of those things, either sign up for the membership, give me a five star review, or follow me on the newsletter, it would mean the world to me. Thanks for your support. Now let's get back to the show. Let me ask you this on that, uh, note then. How much does preparation, uh, help or hurt a conversation? And I say this in this, in that, you know, I could do all the research. I've done a ton. I got a lot of notes on you, I got all sorts of your background, I got, you know, all this stuff, right. And so there were some questions that I was curious. But for me I, I use that as a background, as context, and then I kind of just ask whatever questions I feel like asking. Um, but there's, there's a, you know, kind of an over preparedness component to walking in and kind of assuming what your situation is. And then there's the flip side of that, which is the, I'm not going to prepare at all because I just want to learn. I just want to see where this conversation goes. So where are you on that line? And I'm going to bring this into because I think the parent conversation and the sales rep and the manager conversation is very similar. Right. We go in with kind of a preconceived notion and gear and ask the questions to guide it versus coming in unprepared and showing disrespect to the person. Like, if I didn't prepare for this conversation was like, let's just talk, man. I don't know who the hell you are or never had heard your book before, but man, let's just about talk, talk. Like I think that's disrespecting somebody's time, especially in today's world.

Bryan Post: Yeah.

John Barrows: So where is the balance for you of preparedness versus openness?

Bryan Post: I love the question. I love the question. And it, when you ask me the question, it reminds me of Floyd Mayweather, one of the greatest boxers of all time. I heard Floyd Mayweather say, I don't prepare for my opponent, my opponent has to prepare for me. He says, I spend my time on being the absolute best that I can. So when I think about that and I think about preparing, say for a conversation with someone, you want to prepare to the best of your ability and have some core understanding, but really who you're preparing is yourself. You're preparing yourself to have a working understanding and knowledge, but then to really be able to be present in a, uh, in a, a conversation and in a relationship and to really be curious. If you over prepare, then what happens? And I love that, I love that word, over prepare, then you're, you're overthinking the situation. And when you're overthinking the situation, it actually means it's reflective of being stressed. And if you're stressed because you've over prepared, then we're not in sync. And if we're not in sync, the, the conversation's always going to be off. The conversation's not going to flow like it could flow. So you have to be prepared. Like you said, that's common respect. But you don't want to over prepare. But really the foundation is what you're showing up, uh, what you're showing up with in any given moment. Because you could ask me one question and in a reflective way, just keep reflecting on what I'm saying, listening to what I'm saying, being curious about what I'm saying. And we could just go deeper in that and deeper in that and deeper in that. And if you got three to five questions, what is it Grant Cardone says? Uh, it's, it's the person it's the person, the place or the price or the person, the price or something else. You know, you can have three working things in your brain and be able to go through any sales conversation the same way you could go through any conversation with your kids. You don't have to be over prepared. Just be in tune, be present.

John Barrows: M. Yeah, I think that's, you know, it's a fine line because again, I think, you know, we only have so much time to have. If we had all the time in the world, I think that'd be a different story. Right. But people are so transactional in today's world and if you're not getting to the point real quick, you know, and I think this also has to do with personality types, right? Like I'm a pretty high D, right. So if you just take forever to kind of have this meaningful, uh, you know, really, I'm like, dude, I'm sorry, can we just get to the point? Yeah. And I don't know from my standpoint, like when you, like when you layer on personality profiles, right. Disc or whatever you want to use here, how much uh, like uh, do the different personalities is what you're talking about from a uh, from a fear standpoint, right. And, and, and how people react to it, is that dependent upon the type of personality or is that dictate the personality?

Bryan Post: Quite frankly, that's an excellent question. And let me tell you something about stress and trauma. Stress and trauma. So high levels of stress get stored in a part of your memory system called the state level memory. So you have the cognitive, you have the emotional, you have the motor and you have the state. The state's at the brain stem level. So trauma and stress get stored at the state level. Guess what else is down there? Your personality traits. So trauma can become traits of your personality. So it all gets intertwined. So however you have developed and matured in your ability to regulate stress or not regulate stress is all intertwined with your personality. So it's only going to turn it up or turn it down all depending on what your experiences are.

John Barrows: Let's talk about management for a minute here. How does a manager know that? So. Well, let me back up for a second. Discipline. What you're saying is when you discipline a kid or anybody, uh, that's a fear based scenario. And your whole book is fear and love, right? And you said behavior is communication. So do you meet everything with love?

Bryan Post: I love that. John. I love first of all that you said when you discipline someone, right?

John Barrows: Yeah.

Bryan Post: And let me, let me just counter that with the definition of discipline is to teach, not to punish. Okay, okay. The definition of discipline is to teach not to punish. In times of stress. In times of stress, our thinking becomes confused and distorted. In our short term, memory is shut off. So if what I believe is discipline is actually punishment, then actually what I'm doing is I'm stressing you more and I'm making it even more challenging for you to learn because I am suppressing your memory system. If I could get schools to, to operate with this as a first principle that children have to be regulated to learn, then, uh, then every relationship has to lead with love and understanding. And love and understanding does not mean without limits. See, you can, you can have, you can have love and you can also have limits. I can say to you, look, John, sit down here with me for, for a minute, brother. You keep showing up five minutes late every day and I have people calling at 9 o' clock. When you come in five minutes late, I've got, I've got. Our clients are already going to voicemail. Help me understand what's causing you to show up five minutes late because it's really starting to stress me out and it's really starting to impact your job performance. And here's the thing, if you can't show up at 9 o' clock and I can't depend on you, I'm not going to be able to have you in that role. Now if I, if you want to help me understand what's going on and maybe we can figure out something, we can create some flex time and I can put someone else here to be at 9 o' clock because you just can't do it. Or, or maybe you have a child care issue. I can support you on that. A transportation issue. Let me know, brother, because otherwise something's going to change. Got to change, because it's impacting everything. We can have, uh, a completely loving, responsible conversation. See, the definition of responsibility is to take responsibility, to be responsible for how you respond. See, in our society, we've been conditioned to react. So John, if you're showing up five minutes later, brother, that's a pip. Uh, that's one warning, two warning, three warnings, you're out. Well, all I'm doing is exacerbating stress and I'm not actually, I'm not actually creating an opportunity for you as my employee. For one, for you to feel safe with me. For two, for me to communicate to you that I do want to understand what you're showing up to the table with. And for three, for Me to help you understand why it's so important for you to show up at 9 o'. Clock. Now, I had an employee used to show up five minutes late every day. I said, I can appreciate that you show up five minutes late every day, but we need you here at 9. Actually, I need you here at 8, 8:50, because I need you to get the clinic ready. So for every minute after 9 o', clock, you're going to give me $20 and you can show up as late as you need to. But I'll feel better because I know you're giving me $20 for every minute. So now my stress gets mitigated. And uh, if you need to be late, that's great, just pay me the extra hundred dollars or two hundred dollars. She paid me a hundred dollars in total. And then she started not only showing up on time, but showing up early. It was just like that conversation. I wasn't mad, I was screaming, I wasn't yelling, I wasn't threatening. It was just that we have to remember the definition of discipline is to teach and not to punish. And punishment creates more stress.

John Barrows: It's interesting because there's, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there's a book called the Challenger Sale, um, which is, there's, there's three corporate executive board, they wrote three books, right? One's Challenger Sale, one's Challenger Customer, and then they got this jolt effect one. And it's interesting because Challenger Sale fundamentally is there's two components of it. One lead with insights, but then the other is challenge the person and effectively, like, hey, uh, you make this decision once a year. I make it every day. Let me show you how people make good decisions and bad decisions. But the problem right now, that was pseudo effective back 10, 15 years ago. But now because everything's moving so fast and everybody's kind of scared right now, it actually is, is a, it's a compounding negative because what you're doing with Challenger Sale is you're actually adding fear on top of someone who's already scared. So, so to, to transition that into uh, like where we are in today's world with things moving so fast, right? Like every time I'm sure you flip on Instagram or whatever it is, there's some new AI thing that's taken over jobs, that's changing all this other stuff. And, and something that was relevant today is like next week is just irrelevant at this point. So people are scared to make decisions. So let's talk about how do you take Somebody who knows they need to make a decision, right? Like the gap of sales, which is current state and future state. And, and. And now I gotta, I gotta, like. I know I need to make this because this. But the risk of me making this leap is so strong and I'm so scared about it that I'm, um. I'd rather do nothing. So the, the challenge isn't anymore no decision. The challenge is indecision, because people are just scared to make decisions. So how do you bring this? How do you help somebody who's scared knowing that they have to make this choice? As a sales professional or leader or somebody trying to guide somebody through this, how do you. How do you address that?

Bryan Post: Oh, uh, man, that's, uh, so good. You're. You're asking some fantastic questions. And, and I, I. Sometimes I'll get caught up on the first words you say because you'll say, everyone's so scared. You said everyone's so scared, and everything's moving so fast. So as soon as we do that, as soon as we do that, we are invited into that hamster wheel. And here's what we have to know. That because everyone's scared and because the world's moving so fast, the greatest gift we can give any situation is to slow down. That is the greatest gift we can give any situation. Let me tell you what that means, because people think when I say slow down, it means you get less done. It doesn't mean you get less done. It means you slow down your thinking. You slow down your thinking by slowing down your emotional reactions. And that takes us back to the present. So if I'm having a sales conversation with someone, and I know, I know speed is of the essence, and I know I got to close a deal, and I know that they're feeling indecisive of the best gift I can do with them is just slowing down. And when I slow down, I can help them in a very short period of time explore their fear. See, no one's talking about that. No one's talking about. What are you afraid of when it comes to making this decision? What is it about this decision that's stressing you so much? So, so now I'm back into connection. I'm back into understanding. Now we can explore that, right? Because within a sales. In a sales conversation, you got to keep the conversation going. If I want to keep the conversation going, I gotta stay connected to the conversation. These, these, these kinds of. Of exchanges take minutes. People see, what happens is when I say slow down, people are like, oh, My God. I can't slow down. What do you mean? I got so much. I got so many sales calls, I got so many people. I can't slow down. Exact. That's the problem. Yeah, that is the problem, man. No one. No one is gonna die. No, I've been saying this. I've been saying this for 20 years. Yeah. Uh, you're not gonna die in that moment. You're not going to die. And guess what? You can't predict if you're going to die or not. So the greatest thing you can do is just hold the reality that you're not gonna die. Breathe into the moment, calm your brain stem. Calm your client's brain stem and stay present and then move through to getting the cell.

John Barrows: And I think that. So it's kind of the challenge, I find, is if I had. If I was in front of you, Brian, right. If you were a client of mine and you and I had this conversation, and we had to. Ideally in person, you know what I mean? So we could physically slow down together. The challenges is like, once you and I get off this call, and then all the other stuff happens in the background. Right now I'm stuck in this digital world of trying to email, trying to text you, trying to get, like. And so my communication, my intent of that communication is lost because it's in digital format. Right. Because, I mean, we can talk about Albert Munchins and, you know, communication model 835. 57, and how 8% is the words. But how do you convey.

Bryan Post: Uh-huh.

John Barrows: Love, if you will, and. And. And get people to slow down without having the human touch component? And the reason I'm asking this is because I feel like 2020 was a break in us as a society. It turned everything digital, and all these kids grew up in this world that turned everything so transactional. And so the art of slowing down, if you will, has been digitized and try to manipulate it. And I don't know how to do it without. Man, can we just. Can we just go grab a coffee? Man, can we just. You know what I mean? Like, because that's where I get to know you. That's where I get. But how do you convey that or how do you approach that in a. In a world that is. That is forcing us to swipe left, swipe right, look up, look down, text instead of call?

Bryan Post: I think that the one thing that never changes about the human condition is that we all want to be in relationship. We are biologically engineered to be in relationship. So in whatever capacity I am Going to engage you in, I want to engage you in relationship so that first and foremost requires me, me to slow down. Now I could, I could want to run through 50 things in this conversation. I'll tell people in my lectures I have. When I first started lecturing, I had 176 slides to cover a six hour day, I kid you not. And I would get through all 176. 25 years later, I'm lucky if I can get through five because I just slow down and I just go off of the natural feel of what's coming up. I know, I know my information, I'm prepared. And people walk out of the room feeling inspired and feeling like they've learned something because I am not overwhelming them. And in this society that we live in, the art of slowing down starts. It's the same. It's the same as it has been throughout humanity. It starts with breathing. It starts with breathing. It's going to start, it's going to end with breathing. Bruce Lee said, the greatest lesson you can learn in life is to master the ability to be calm. Herbert Benson was a, was a physiologist at Harvard in the 70s. He wrote a book called the Relaxation Response. It's all about breathing. Because if you do not condition yourself to breathe. And brother, I get a lot done. I have about five companies, I've written 22 books. I travel, I have, I have seven kids, I have three grandkids. I have a tremendous amount of responsibility. I have a tremendous amount of pressure. But the greatest gift that I can give my employees and my family is my presence and my ability to slow down. And it doesn't mean we get less done. I get a lot done in the day, but I've got to slow down. And that can take 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever it is that you need. You know, just, uh, an hour before, before we got together, I was scrolling on Instagram and I, I'm always looking for a little educational thing things, and it says, hold out your tongue for 40 seconds. It's been proven to reduce cortisol by 20 by 20%. And I'm like, all right, why not? Okay, 40 seconds. And then I'm thinking as I'm doing that, how many people will discount that just because, number one, they feel weird holding their tongue out and number two, they don't want to take 40 seconds to hold their tongue out. Right? And it's, we, it's just, just because the world has, has conditioned us to believe that everything is now on this roller Coaster ride doesn't mean we have to buy into it. I believe that that is how we continue to be disempowered. We continue to be disempowered, which allows us to be victimized, which allows us to be reactive simply because we're not slowing down. We think. I mean, I, you know, I'm. I'm a little bit biased because I live in the country in Texas. I have eight acres. I have a pond in my backyard. I can see cows, I can see horses. This is as slow as it gets. And let me tell you, when I, I just came from la and it is fast. I remember saying to my wife, oh my gosh, there's so much going on here, right? You get in the, you get, you get conditioned. Your programming, your brain gets conditioned. And the only way you interrupt that is you have to make a choice. And we, we all have the ability to make the choice.

John Barrows: That's funny. It's. I. So I, I had a house in Costa Rica. And um, when I first went down there, I, uh, you know, first I'm Boston, right? So I'm this high D. Like go all day and. Right. So it was furnished, but, um, we didn't have our stuff in it, right? So we went to like whatever the Walmart is down there, right? And I got these two huge carts filled with everything you could possibly imagine. I'm. And I'm in the line and I used to be a bagger when I was a kid. So I'm like shuffling these bags and everything and the line starts building up behind me, right? And I start getting stressed because the poor woman behind me had one item and if she had come earlier, I would have just let her go, right? I was like, oh, man. So now I'm even more stressed fast. And I'm moving, I'm moving, right? And, and the last item, the last item, of course, doesn't have a price tag, right? I'm like, God, man, M. Right? And, and, and you know, something I wanted too. If it was something I wanted, I would have just been like, ah, never mind. But of course I price checked. And I know it's going to take forever, right? So I'm looking at this line and I'm all stressed out and look on my face. And the woman, literally, she goes, hey. She puts her hand on my shoulder and she goes, hey, Pure vita, which is their saying of pure life, right? Just live life. And it's like when I tell you it, it melted, like legitimately melted every stress out of me at that moment. And I was like, uh, it just takes one person, just one person to slow down. That's why, like you. You said it. My out of office is always, hey, I'm not a brain surgeon and I don't cure cancer. So I'm guessing that your email can wait until I get back.

Bryan Post: Back.

John Barrows: Don't forget to smell the roses like every single time.

Bryan Post: Right.

John Barrows: And, um, so I, I think that I. That idea of, of us slowing down is hard because of. I mean, if you're not. If you're in the environment, man. Yeah. I mean, I'm in tech sass Boston, like go all the time. And I feel like I'm almost always on that verge of the fight orf flight scenario. So let's transition quickly to this new Bondi Bond ify that you're working on right now. Because this is, this, this, this transition of, of AI leveraging AI and your knowledge. And I'm curious. Talk to us a little bit about what it's about, but also how you're using it to not lose the human touch, but to, to use AI to, to, to. To benefit as opposed to remove the human experience. Because that's a key factor right now that I think all of us are trying to deal with is like, AI is cool, but it's, it's. I feel like it's. We're losing our humanity with it because it's so easy to get an answer. It's so easy to engage with as opposed to a human that is complicated.

Bryan Post: So we call, we call Bond if I the parenting support you needed in that moment. And the reason I say that is because every parent knows what that moment was. And if every, if every parent had the ability to text me, who's one of the world's foremost child behavior experts experts, and to get a response, it could change the difference between a negative outcome and potentially creating a positive outcome. And that's what Bond defy is for. It's programmed with 30 years of my knowledge. Parents text it. You think you're talking to me. I can't talk to a hundred thousand parents at one time. 24 7. But Bond, if I can, and let me tell you why I started it. I started it because I believe in mental health. Mental. Especially after Covid mental health is moving towards virtual. So people, mental health professionals, the very professionals that are supposed to be trained to be able to sit and be present and reflective with another human being have. Has all began transitioning to virtual formats to the point that clinicians don't want to work in homes. Anymore. They won't, they don't want to work knee to knee. And John, I've spent 30 years working in living rooms in living rooms all around the world. My work, when I go to. I have a whole company in California and we work with at risk adoptive families. When I go to California, I go to homes. I don't sit in an office. So we've moved from, from an office or in my instance, working in a living room at a home with a family to now virtual. And I believe that the platforms that are having all these licensed clinicians using virtual to do coaching with families, I believe they're all collecting data in one day. They're going to say to those clinicians, we don't need you anymore. And all of a sudden, avatars, AI avatars are going to pop up and people are going to be getting coaching from AI avatars. And I listen to listen.

John Barrows: It's already happening.

Bryan Post: It's already happening. I know that, that my model of, of connecting and supporting is as effective, more effective than anyone's. So why would I not provide that platform? And then we still offer live coaching. Like I have certified coaches who, if parent, uh, because Bond ify is free, you don't have to pay for it. You can interact, you can get, you can get, get my Support for free 24 7. And then if you want a live person, we have live people that you can talk to.

John Barrows: Nice. Love it. So I think we'll, we'll end it there. There's a lot more to unpack here, so. But I'm going to leave that to the book. I'm going to leave that to bonafy and for more people to check out. So Brian, it's been a pleasure. How can, how can people find out more information about what you're doing and uh, and the work that you're doing, whether it's with parents or children or, or business in general.

Bryan Post: Just brianpost.com B-Y-A n p-t.com you can pretty much access my whole world through there.

John Barrows: Love it. Awesome, man. Well, like I said, it's been an absolute pleasure having this conversation, man.

Bryan Post: Thank you so much. Uh, thank you so much.

John Barrows: And everybody, I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say it in the, all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how, how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that. Right now. So thank you all very much, and I will see you on the other side.