Why Entrepreneurs Who Keep Playing Always Win, with Lee Brower

Shannon Waller: Hi, Shannon Waller here and welcome to Inside Strategic Coach with special guest and coach, Lee Brower. Lee, this is so fun. You and I have never done this before. It is very cool and special to be able to spend some time with you. And I cannot wait to dive into your entrepreneurial history. You've been a Program coach for a very long time with Strategic Coach and you have a ton of wisdom. I love listening to you. You wax eloquent on so many different topics. So there's lots to cover and I can't wait to have people get to know you better if they already know you or get introduced to you if they don't. So thank you very much for being here today.
 
Lee Brower: Listen, I'm excited to meet as many people as I can. So Shannon, thank you. We've known each other for a long time. Somebody that I've always respected and I appreciate you. So thank you.
 
Shannon Waller: Thank you. Same goes. All right. So let's jump in. Again, this is very much a getting to know you kind of conversation. So I'm sort of curious. Let's talk about a little bit your entrepreneurial story, your entrepreneurial journey. How did you get started as an entrepreneur? Because that's a choice that people make. Well, most people make it consciously. Some do not. Some are thrust into it, or some of us are just not appropriate for anything else. So how did you start out as an entrepreneur?
 
Lee Brower: Well, I think probably unconsciously, because I can remember trying to figure out in living in where we lived and with our family, there were certain things that I wanted to get that I couldn't get because I didn't have any money. And so I wasn't old enough to get a paper route. And so I went, found a neighbor of the paper route, and I said, what will you pay me if I wrap your papers for you every morning? So I got up every morning, wrapped papers, and that was the start of my entrepreneurial career.
 
I went from there to be a paper boy, and went from there to be somebody that worked in the produce docks throwing watermelon. Played football in high school, but I sure got in shape because we would unload these big semi-trucks full of watermelon, and I'd get to throw them. At the beginning of the year, we dropped a lot, and then we learned we hardly dropped any, so we'd have to hide a watermelon in the freezer, and then go out and break it later so we could eat it. So it's been constant with me since I was a young kid.
 
Shannon Waller: So your initial motivation was, well, I was gonna say money, but it's actually the freedom that money would give you, is what I'm hearing.
 
Lee Brower: Totally, totally.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, interesting. Okay, I really like that. And how many years have you been an entrepreneur now, if you started then? Well, I'm not trying to ask you how old you are by the way, but there's a career here, I can tell.
 
Lee Brower: Many decades, okay, many decades. You know, I spent a couple of years in South America on a mission, and that's entrepreneurial, I'll tell you what. Especially where we were, which was a communist country. And therefore, we spent a lot of our time trying to sell the people on our ability to provide service. And so that was a great lesson from age 19 to 21 and gave me a deep appreciation for this country, but a deep appreciation for the entrepreneurial system and what a great country we live in that allows entrepreneurs to flourish. And I really think if you get down to the root of it, I am so grateful for the opportunity to work with entrepreneurs and learn from entrepreneurs. And I think the world needs more of the entrepreneurial mindset more than ever, more than ever.
 
Shannon Waller: So how do you define the entrepreneurial mindset?
 
Lee Brower: The entrepreneur wakes up every morning and says to himself, how can I make things better? How can I make things more easier to get? How do I make things cheaper? They look at things differently. And the great entrepreneurs, the great entrepreneurs, and these are the ones that I'm seeing rise up through Strategic Coach, they don't ask themselves what's wrong. They ask themselves what's right and how do I make it even better?
 
Shannon Waller: You know, entrepreneurs are brilliant problem solvers because they have to be. But you're saying what excites them, motivates them is to focus on not what's broken, but actually what is working. Is that right?
 
Lee Brower: I don't like the word motivate.
 
Shannon Waller: Okay.
 
Lee Brower: Okay, because I think motivates temporary. In other words, people can be motivated to cheat. Yes or no?
 
Shannon Waller: Sure.
 
Lee Brower: Absolutely. And from an early age, there was a book, a study that came out between Harvard, I think it was Harvard Eller School of Management, Wharton and Kellogg, 2009. And it said goals run wild. And one of their conclusions was that traditional goal setting in the United States has done more to destroy corporate culture than almost any other concept.
 
Shannon Waller: Interesting.
 
Lee Brower: And it really took me back, okay? Because why? Because it encouraged cheating. Goal became the objective. And so when you really think about it, so yes, people can choose to cheat, okay? But can somebody be inspired to cheat?
 
Shannon Waller: No.
 
Lee Brower: I don't think so. Do you see the difference?
 
Shannon Waller: Oh, 100%.
 
Lee Brower: And the great entrepreneurs have what I call arrows out. It's not all about me. The great entrepreneurs, that's why I say that they're looking at what is working. Do you know what I mean? And how do they make that even better? So the great entrepreneurs, they wake up and say, how do we make things better? But they're focused on inspiration, not motivation. See, motivation is temporary. Motivation has an ending.
 
I don't even like to use the G word, if you want to know the truth, because I think goal is an ending. And I've decided I want no finish lines in my life. And I think that's an element when you talk about, Dan, one of the things that in Strategic Coach, always make your future bigger than your past. There's no destination in that. There's no retirement in that. Do you see what I'm saying? And so I don't want any finish lines in my life, period.
 
Shannon Waller: No finish lines.
 
Lee Brower: No finish lines. Milestones, I'll say milestones.
 
Shannon Waller: I was gonna ask you, is it milestones?
 
Lee Brower: Milestones, absolutely. That to me keeps you in motion.
 
Shannon Waller: Got you. Okay, cool. All right, before I go into some of my other questions about coaching and the rest of it, you have had a very storied entrepreneurial career. Can you just touch on some of the things? Because frankly, I think your biography is like the coolest thing ever. You've had your hands in lots of different pies and you've done some really cool stuff. So just share some of your favorites, some of your highlights.
 
Lee Brower: All right, let's just skip across the top a little bit to see impact, okay? So for example, in many of these things, they weren't planned. They were just being in motion and surrounding yourself with people that probably have skills more than you have that elevate you. And I think a lot of that was just positioning unintentionally, but being ready and ready for it. I was fortunate to be, after the Iron Curtain came down, I was in Mongolia and I was there working with the president of Mongolian Stock Exchange on how do you take property that's all owned by the government, businesses, and convert them to privately held.
 
So what a great experience that was, is issuing red and blue vouchers, you know what I mean, out to everybody, collecting money, just the concept and the power behind it. So it was a great learning experience. As time went on, I've had other experiences. I've been on global charitable boards, learned tremendously, what I call arrows out. I break entrepreneurs into two broad categories I've learned over the years. There's those that are everything zeroes in, like a reservoir. In other words, how much water can I get in my reservoir? How much shoreline can I get in my, my, my?
 
The great entrepreneurs are more like rivers. When they're in flow, in their motion, they attract. They attract tributaries naturally. They attract wildlife naturally. They attract breeding, spawning beds. You know, if you're in a reservoir, you gotta buy the fish. And they irrigate. They irrigate crops, they irrigate pastures, and they create electricity. So it's that mindset. And I think that probably, for me, it started out like, when I was young, I said, don't be like my dad. It's not all about money, but at the same time, it was.
 
And then there was a turning point. And then the turning point was, wait a second. And things happened like Mongolia. Part of that was actually smuggling medicines into Mongolia that we couldn't get in through China. I mean, some of the things that we got in were kind of what I call arrows out. There was a movie called The Secret that I didn't even know I was in. Some people have probably heard about a movie in a book. Oprah backed it, and a lot of things came out of that. I was smuggled into Venezuela. Smuggle is not a good word. Going against Chavez's decree, but they got me into Venezuela to work with the opposition on how to introduce gratitude into the country.
 
And so I'm working with the head of the El Nacional, which was the newspaper, the person that had several of the largest businesses. So again, it's taking entrepreneurial concepts and how do we use these to do good with them and push them out? And over the years, I was in the estate planning business, And estate planning business was very exciting. I loved the people that I worked with.
 
And then I reached a point where I said, wait a second. If it's true that 97% of family wealth never survives a third generation, then why are we drafting all these documents? Maybe there's a better way to approach the family. And so it rose on my list of things to do. How do we strengthen families? And by strengthening families, I think that if we can help strengthen families, especially with an entrepreneurial mindset, then you'll see true wealth, the things that value most get moved through generations. And with that usually comes the other assets.
 
Shannon Waller: Can you talk about the four quadrants?
 
Lee Brower: Sure. You know, this is a learning experience. It happened when I was in that dilemma of should I continue on as a state planning or should, I thought maybe I should go become an ER doctor and solve problems every day. You know what I mean? And I was really transitioning and I met with a lot of professionals and I woke up one morning. Early, it's four o'clock in the morning and I saw a commercial by a company, Les Olson Company, was the company. And they had a four quadrant on the wall and some words went in it and all of a sudden my mind went crazy and I sat down and wrote down.
 
Later that morning I was on an airplane flying to Atlanta and the lady says, what do you do? And I said, well, and this is coming from the four o'clock moment. I said, I optimize assets. She goes, well, what do you mean by that? And I said, well, when you hear the word assets, what do you think of? And she goes, well, her husband happened to manage most of the real estate for Ted Turner in the United States, Western United States. And she said, real estate. And I said, what else? And she goes, well, stocks, bonds, cash, you know, she just started making all these lists.
 
I says, what, you're talking about things? And she goes, oh yeah. I said, well, are there other things that you value more than your money and your stocks and your bonds? And she goes, you mean like my family? I said, well, would you sell your family for more money? No, of course not. What else? My health, I wouldn't sell for more money. My values, I wouldn't sell for more money. And so I put financial down in the lower left quadrant. I put the core, the things that are essential to you up in the other quadrant.
 
Then we got talking, she said education. And I saw, well, that's different. Let's put it up in a different one. And that's really our experiences. Learning from our experiences, our reputation, those kinds of things that are assets that happen after. So that came in another quadrant. And then we got talking about family and future. And I said, of these quadrants, which ones would you want your kids to have? And she said, well, all of them. And I said, well, what if you couldn't give them all? And she really thought about it.
 
And then I thought about the fourth quadrant. I said, would you want your kids, when they leave this planet, would you want them to be known as someone that consumed more than they created or contributed more than they consumed? And she says, contributed more than they consumed. I said, so there's another box of assets, you know, and so she goes, oh, I said, so now of those four, if you can keep one back and only give your kids three, which one did you keep back?
 
Well, I was writing on the back of a Delta napkin, by the way, and she just took her finger and she slapped the financial down. And I was like, whoa, everything was clear at that moment. Chills went down my spine because I was really disturbed by where to go. I was in Coach for just a few years. Very entrepreneurial-driven, making a significant income. So then I said, have you ever done estate planning? And she goes, yeah, several times. And I said, all right, where did you and your advisors focus? And she turned around and hit that same quadrant.
 
Because I asked her, I said, why did you say that? She says, well, I know this. If my kids were bankrupt in any one of these three areas, the money's going to go away. But if they're rich in these three areas, the money's going to take care of itself. And that's when I asked her, I said, have you done an estate plan? She says, yeah. And I said, where'd you focus? But didn't we just agree that if we focused here, here, and here, that this will take care of itself? And that was the aha moment.
 
That was a big pivot for me in my career to be able to focus in on entrepreneurs, not necessarily through the financial services industry, even though I believe in it and I support the financial, I think great financial advisors are essential, essential, but I was taking a different pathway. And how do you strengthen? And I focused on entrepreneurial families. When I'm working with businesses, most of them call me to help with their business. Okay. And they'll say, can you help me with my business? And I'll say, maybe you get your spouse and come spend a couple of days with me and we'll figure it out. And they go, my spouse, what does he or she have to do with it? And I said, exactly.
 
And so using entrepreneurial principles, true principles are true principles. Imagine being able to put these principles down through the people that you love the very most and impact your community. And these are the things simultaneously with taking your company to 10x. There's other things that you can take to 10x as well.
 
Shannon Waller: I think her comment about if they're bankrupt and the other three, you know, then the money will go away, which we've seen and, you know, heard stories about and read about the news and all the things. So I know you've got a fabulous book on it. You've spoken about it all over the world. Before we get into more coaching, let's touch a little bit on families. You came from an interesting family. You have, we were just talking about your latest grandchild, which is amazing. So tell me a little bit about family and yours.
 
Lee Brower: Well, sure. I mean, I think that one of the most important things that we can do today, first of all, let me say, I think families are under attack. Okay, I think they're under attack and by numerous different sources. A couple of things that you can do to strengthen families. One is you have to know who you are. Okay, and that's done through a number of different things. One is traditions and rituals. Traditions and rituals in a family or even in a business strengthen the family.
 
When you have a language that you can use within your family that nobody else understands, that is meaningful. And it's one of the things that's bled into my business. When there's experiences that teach principles, we try to name the experience and own the experience. So for example, my experience in Mongolia, we call a Zolo moment, because Zolo was the name that we used. It's a long name with lots of consonants, you know. But I learned so much from that experience, and I want my kids to learn from that experience. So if I say this is a Zolo moment, they know exactly what we're talking about.
 
So identity, Brower power, never underestimate the power of Brower. Browers are powerful and we let them choose what powerful means for each one of them. So right now I'm working with my grandkids. I want you to come up with a letter P that describes who you are and who you are as a Brower. So they may say prayerful, some may say purposeful, but so prayerful, obedient, worthy, eternal, reverent, forthright, understanding, loving. Do you see what I'm saying? And so then we collect stories around that and it helps pull the family together.
 
So I believe in identity, being able to understand who you are, what makes you unique, what makes you a Brower, you know, and what a great exercise for every family to go through. And so we've had the opportunity to work with many families via the entrepreneurial way, because they'll say, well, we're creating this entrepreneurial company. How do we bring that into our family? Well, here's some ways that you can bring it into your family. Come on.
 
I mean, you really want your business more than your family. And I've had people say that to me. I literally have had somebody that's well known that said right in my office with his wife sitting right there, if I had to choose between my business and my wife, I'd choose my business. And you would know this person. And not just because you're with Strategic Coach, you would know this person because everybody knows this person.
 
Shannon Waller: I would not want to be her.
 
Lee Brower: No, I felt bad for the moment. It was an awkward moment, but I chose at that point not to work with him.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Lee Brower: Because, you know, why would I want to create more of a division there than a strength? And I'm so grateful. I mean, you're talking about me, but let me talk about Strategic Coach for a second. I started Strategic Coach 30 years ago, 30 years ago, this summer. And I have to say the number one takeaway for me, people say, what's your greatest takeaway? It's not a thing. It's a process. And the process is I started out early saying, every time I leave Strategic Coach, I wanna ask a question that I've never asked myself before.
 
So imagine going into the experience where every day you're saying, okay, what's the question that I've never asked before that I can start asking now? Now, if you start doing that, you're going to get different answers that you would have never ever seen before because your subconscious mind wouldn't have allowed you to see it by putting it out there in the form of a question. So when I walk in and I still go to my own class, okay, I still go to my own class and candidly, I'm in such a wonderful place because by being able to be an affiliate coach every month, I'm sitting in with a group of amazing entrepreneurs from all around the world.
 
I'm asking the same question when I go in as a coach is, what questions can I take out of here today that I would have never asked had I not been here today? Too many people waste time chasing answers. You know, when you chase, why don't you attract? And you attract by asking questions. You know, what's the smallest step I can take today to move me closer to this? How can I see something like that? Okay, that's an interesting idea. How can I ask more of that in my life? What new step could I take tomorrow that I haven't ever taken before?
 
You know, you just move into a curious atmosphere, what I call grateful curiosity, because Dan is such a great thinker. There's a quote by Albert St. Georgie that says, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” Now, he was a Nobel Laureate. I consider that to be Dan's Unique Ability.
 
Shannon Waller: Can you say that again? That is so good. Discovery.
 
Lee Brower: Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
 
Shannon Waller: That is such a perfect description.
 
Lee Brower: Isn't it?
 
Shannon Waller: Yes.
 
Lee Brower: If you wanted to get Dan's Unique Ability, I would say that's his Unique Ability.
 
Shannon Waller: Oh, fantastic.
 
Lee Brower: Yeah. Yeah. And so for me, being around the concepts of Coach or learning from Dan and his thinking allows me to think in ways that I've never, ever thought before. So you piggyback on that. I'm in for the ride. You know what I mean? You piggyback on his ability to see things differently so that I can see things differently.
 
Shannon Waller: So you've been in Coach for 30 years. How long have you been coaching for?
 
Lee Brower: 25 years this month. And you know, I was thinking about it today. I don't think I may have missed one of our funerals in our family, but I don't think, and I'm not sure about that. I don't think I've ever missed a day of coaching in 25 years.
 
Shannon Waller: That's impressive.
 
Lee Brower: Yeah.
 
Shannon Waller: It is fun to learn more about you, by the way. So just for statistical reasons, how many kids do you have and how many grandkids do you have?
 
Lee Brower: Well, we have eight kids, eight total. One has passed away in 2011. And of the seven kids that we have, we have 20 grandkids and one on the way.
 
Shannon Waller: Amazing.
 
Lee Brower: I hope I didn't mess it up. We might have 21 with one on the way.
 
Shannon Waller: It won't be true at some point when someone's listening to this, so you're fine.
 
Lee Brower: Well, thank you. But we have a lot, and you know, we have a lot of traditions, things like Thanksgiving, because when our kids got a little bit older, that it's hard when they get married, whose house do we go to? Do we go to your house? We say, no, we'll make it easy for you. Here's a day, and we get it towards the end of the year, but some place, but our house is always open for anybody, but for Thanksgiving, you come to our house.
 
And we've got other traditions that we do. I just lost my brother. I never would have thought I'd speak at my younger brother's funeral. We have a tradition in our family. I mean, right here up on my wall, I can show you a picture of me and my mom, me and my dad. For years, we have a trace your hand on the napkin. And so we trace our hands on the napkin every year, every member of our family, and we write something down that we're grateful for, or especially now we've moved to some experience we had during the year that we're grateful for.
 
And we've got tons of tablecloths now. And nobody wants to miss it. We got little tiny hands that become big hands. But there's a picture of me and my mom and her last hand, my dad and his last hand. And I got to share my brother's last hand. And, you know, and it works in business the same way. I mean, as entrepreneurs, we have such an opportunity, especially now, because literally, I think, personally, I think God's under attack, families are under attack, and we have this attack that everything's about me.
 
Just look at social media, everything that's going on, okay? Entrepreneurs are the ones that can turn that around. Politicians aren't doing it. You know, and so we're the ones that can turn that around. And I think we're doing it all the time. I can tell you stories about companies that we work with, the workforce. I mean, hard hats to heroes. Stories like this where you have 2,500 people in the construction business that have become heroes because the owner of the company reaches out to them and says, go into your communities. I can give charity all the time for golf tournaments, my buddies, but why don't you go out into your communities and you come back and tell me what they need?
 
So Jorge comes back and says, our junior high and our elementary school, they need computers, okay? All right, we'll buy them, Jorge. But you deliver them, you get your wife and your children and deliver them. And so they got 8x10s all around of all different kinds. Think of that culture that you're creating. You have a billboard that shows a guy with a hard hat looking out over a community and it says, strengthening families, shaping communities. Oh, by the way, we pour cement. Okay, and where did I meet him? I met him as a Strategic Coach. You see, and that's the beauty of this network. We're seeing things that inspire.
 
Shannon Waller: It's so fascinating listening to you, because you're so conscious and clear about creating traditions with your family, which creates culture, right? And you've also been talking about the entrepreneurial mindset, which is also a culture, right? And those rituals. This is the secret to coaching, which you've shared, which is when we coach, we take away, we get so much. Yes, we do our best to give the best we can, but it's like, we're kind of in it for what we can learn too. It's so incredibly gratifying.
 
So tell me about, what's some of your favorite aspects about coaching? Obviously it's the people that you meet and the questions, but like, what's your favorite concepts or tool that's been really impactful for you? What does coaching mean for Lee Brower?
 
Lee Brower: It means the way that I live every day. You know what I mean? And I'm a great believer that, for example, the concept of questions or anything, I've moved away from saying things like, I need to, have to, got to. Okay. And that's come as a result of listening to other people say, I need to, I have to, I got to. So when I hear somebody say, I need to strengthen the relationship with my spouse. Okay. What is your subconscious mind really hearing? The relationship isn't good, okay?
 
And the subconscious mind is like the richest soil in the world. And if I put a seed into the richest soil, it's gonna nourish that seed. So I could put a tansy seed, which is poisonous, a beautiful yellow flower, but it'll kill. Or I could put a wheat seed that'll create life. The soil doesn't care. And our subconscious mind is the same way. So, you see, if I say I need to do this, your subconscious mind's gonna show you all the reasons why you need to. So if I need to strengthen a relationship with my spouse, and he or she doesn't get up with me in the morning, see, this is why you need to strengthen it. So it focuses you on the problem.
 
I wanna focus my subconscious mind on the solution. What can I do today to strengthen the relationship with my spouse? We'll write her a little note, put it on the pillow and tell her you love her. So you're coming from a solution-based rather than a problem-based mindset. And I think as a result of coaching concepts, focusing in on solutions rather than problems has helped me immensely.
 
Shannon Waller: Even just the question you asked, what can I do? So it's taking full responsibility for it. You're like, okay, this is up to me. My daughter wrote me a really lovely note with my lunch that says, hope you have a good day at work, love you. That's C for Charlotte. You know, it's like, she did that and she doesn't have to do that. But I felt very …
 
Lee Brower: Now how often has she done that?
 
Shannon Waller: This is the first time.
 
Lee Brower: Okay, so name the moment.
 
Shannon Waller: Right.
 
Lee Brower: Same this in a lunch bucket note, okay? And then share with her how valuable it was to you. And then in the future, you could have other lunch notes, moments that have nothing to do with lunch or nothing to do with notes. Because that becomes then an asset that just the two of you know about. And you could say it in front of her friends. You could say, is this a lunch note moment, and telling her that maybe she should express gratitude to somebody else. It just gets back to the principle, but it also develops another level of intimacy between the two of you.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Lee Brower: How cool is that?
 
Shannon Waller: That is very cool. Thank you.
 
Lee Brower: Welcome. I like it.
 
Shannon Waller: That is so cool. It's fun to be coached by you, Lee. Actually. So what has been one of the key concepts? I don't know if it's Unique Ability or a tool like Impact Filter. Let's just talk about Unique Ability for a moment. Cause I think that's kind of the core to so much that's valuable.
 
Lee Brower: So you're going to get my take on Unique Ability. This is something that's evolved. Okay. One of the things that Coach says early on is never delegate your Unique Ability. Now I'm going to go against that because that's what I've learned. That's in the early years, but what they're really teaching us to begin with, what we think is our Unique Ability, don't delegate it till you really understand it and you know what it is. Unique Ability for me is a lifetime journey. It's a lifetime journey.
 
And part of the way that I grow is if I'm not willing to delegate my Unique Ability into areas that I'm not getting the greatest results, I might want to give it to somebody else that maybe just does it excellent. Okay. So that I can take more of my Unique Ability and put it where I get the greatest results. But I also find out that when I have that process, well, I need to let that go so I can do this, but I'm the only one that can do it. This is my Unique Ability. And then I find out maybe that wasn't my Unique Ability because look what they're doing. They're doing it pretty good themselves.
 
So it's a constant search. And when you have that, and again, questioning, is this my Unique Ability? Can I tone it down even more? And I've watched Dan go from here to here. I mean, oh, I thought his Unique Ability was doing workshops. You know what I mean? Now he's gotten to knowing, man, he's gotten sharper, sharper, sharper. He cuts through things that he could have never cut through 30 years ago. I just think Unique Ability is a real blessing. So I'm on a constant search on how to improve and identify and uncover my Unique Ability. And it starts with a question, what is my Unique Ability? And then how can I use this? If I peel this off, am I giving away my Unique Ability or just something that I do excellent?
 
So I think it's just having that understanding. So a lot of people get frustrated because they want to have their Unique Ability right now. Just identify things that give you passion, that you love, that you're excited about, you know, that make you feel good. And focus in on those as your Unique Ability, and as you do them and you start to have experiences, you'll start to see that they're opening up doors that you even love more. And you can let those go because this is along the same line, but things that you just love and enjoy more. Accept the concept. Don't worry about the destination. Get into the journey.
 
Shannon Waller: That's a fabulous description of the process of Unique Ability. And it is a lifetime pursuit, you know, to discover, uncover, might be an even better word.
 
Lee Brower: But imagine if it wasn't.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah, it's not.
 
Lee Brower: How joyful is it to be able to just get out there and kind of keep working at it and get more clarity about it?
 
Shannon Waller: 100%. And I totally agree. There's a shedding process. So superior skill with passion, where you can be a hero. Let's put it that way. It has to create value. But at some level, at a certain level of audience or of complexity, been there, done that, got too many t-shirts. Right? And so then it's time to shed and get more focused and what's going to have bigger impact? What's going to actually challenge me? What's going to keep me engaged at every level intellectually, you know, with my heart and with my will. So, yeah, it's a deepening or nuance, like, Dan's original Unique Ability statement was maybe a couple inches long. Now it's five inches long. It's a paragraph. And he's doing fewer things.
 
Lee Brower: I have a saying that is, the enemy of thriving is arriving.
 
Shannon Waller: Yeah.
 
Lee Brower: And I live by that. And so if I've arrived, then what am I looking for? I mean, look, people arrive and then what happens? You know what I mean? Then they dive, they go over the top. I have a philosophy, striving, driving, arriving, but I don't want to arrive because then you start to dive, you know, and then start all over again. Let's bypass that and let's thrive.
 
Shannon Waller: I think that's really critical. And I think it goes back to whether or not you're motivated or inspired. Let's go with that one. Because if you're an entrepreneur for the money, if you want it so that you can get somewhere, it's a much shorter duration.
 
Lee Brower: And then what?
 
Shannon Waller: And then what? And then we see people who are like, okay, I'm good. And we're like, what? Yeah, there's more to go. Get more ambitious.
 
Lee Brower: How long can you take the temperature in the pool?
 
Shannon Waller: I don't get to shuffleboard. Do you want to play? If my husband wants to scare me, he just threatens to move to a trailer park somewhere. And I'm like, yeah. It's not happening. And I'm with you. So Dan and I have been talking a lot about ambition as a lifelong capability. It's not a gas tank that you run out of. It's actually a capability and a skill. And that only happens if you have that mindset of thriving and never arriving and keeping growing.
 
And the whole thing about an entrepreneur who's focused on that is they're gonna create an ecosystem around them. Right? River versus a reservoir. Thank you. And that's very much. So the mindset that you bring to being an entrepreneur and clearly when you're coaching entrepreneurs is like, yeah, this is who you are. This is a way to be. There's no end point. So don't stop. So I find that very inspiring. Last point I want to touch on is, what for you is important about the Coach community?
 
Lee Brower: There's a number of things. I could just pick one. I'll pick one right now because I was just thinking about it. And that is that, you know, I have people that have come to Coach with their arms folded. Show me. You know what I mean? I'm here to receive. I have a great story about somebody said right in the corner closest to the door because somebody said, you know, he's supposed to go there. Very, very successful, largest in the nation in what he does. And today he is probably one of my very dearest friends.
 
But at the time, I remember the second workshop we were giving, I'm actually talking Kolbe, but yeah, we did that in our company, it didn't work. And it took an experience of really having a conversation with him that it's not gonna work until you open up your arms. And so people say, well, I didn't come because I didn't get what I wanted to get out of it. No, the reality is what makes it work are the people that come to give. Think about the wisdom in one room, the experiences that are there, and if you're there just to get—imagine that if you were in a room where everybody was there just to get, how terrible would that be? Do you see what I'm saying?
 
And what I'm seeing from it that I really enjoy is a diverse background for people coming together. There's a thing called hybrid vigor. Okay, I was in the breeding business. And again, I have stories galore, but you know, I don't know if you know this or not, but I had a Kentucky Derby winner. So I was in the breeding business for some time, but there's a thing called hybrid vigor. And if I wanted to have a Kentucky Derby winner and I didn't know what I was doing, I'd pick a horse like Man o' War and I'm gonna breed into their line.
 
But then you get what they call inbreeding. When you get inbreeding, then you get decreased size, decreased stamina, they become ugly, they become unathletic. But if you outcross to a completely unrelated line, then you get what's called hybrid vigor. Okay, so you get increased size, increased intellect, increased all this kind of stuff. Well, Strategic Coach is an environment where you have so many people coming from different backgrounds coming together.
 
One of the things that I found when we started doing virtual is when automatically we put people into their groups, okay, and I would have somebody say, how long has he been in our group? I said, five years? How come I never sat down with him before? So now when I'm in my groups, when I break him up into groups, I say new blood, hybrid vigor. I'm sure you get new people because there's a book called Range by David Epstein that proves it. But the concept of … so what I really think is the key to Coach is diverse backgrounds coming together with their wisdom.
 
And somebody that's in technology listening to somebody that owns a chain of restaurants, getting a connection that you would have never gotten and vice versa by sitting there with a bunch of other technology people that are all breeding down the same line. So I think to me, that's one of the great, great gifts of Strategic Coach. And I think it's one of their secret formulas that I'm not even sure they really know to the nth degree of how powerful that is.
 
Shannon Waller: We keep learning just how powerful community is. Yeah, it's pretty magical. I would agree. Any famous last words, Lee? Anything you want people to know about you, about the Program?
 
Lee Brower: Well, I would just say this couple of things. One is always go big. It doesn't matter where I'm at or what I'm doing, whether I'm speaking, I've shared the stage with many luminaries. I have six, seven, eight thousand people at a time. I've called Lori and said, I don't know about going big. She said, don't you dare skip it. So I can't think of an event that I've had or even with my company that we haven't developed a tradition around doing a Positive Focus, as they call it in Strategic Coach.
 
I mean, we've called it go big, begin in gratitude. And gratitude to me is one of the greatest gifts that I've had an opportunity to learn about. It started with the movie The Secret. I don't think I was that grateful, but I had had an experience that I shared around gratitude. And as a result of it, from around the world, I get email all the time that talk about grateful moments. And I can now see how powerful it is.
 
And so I think coming into life, not looking at the things that are wrong, but looking at the things that are right, and being an emissary, how do we do more of that? I think great leaders are looking at how can we do things that are right and how do we do more of that? It starts with gratitude. And I think arrogance is an outward display of a lack of gratitude. And so be careful.
 
Shannon Waller: That's a really good definition. Yeah.
 
Lee Brower: Yeah. And be careful with your confidence. The whole essence of Strategic Coach is building our confidence, right? I mean, that's what it's all about, is strengthening our confidence. Don't confuse it with arrogance. Keeping arrows out. Arrows out's my language, okay? And that's just where it's not all about me, it's about others. And if you can make it about others first, you'll be taken care of. You don't need to even worry about it.
 
And so I think to me, what a great platform, what a great gift I've had for 30 years, and I look for another 30 years. And it's just, to me, I used to be on the board of the Jazz, I had front row seats to the Utah Jazz all the time, and I'd walk into the arena and it would be exhilarating. I could have the worst day of work and walk into the arena and sit down and just like all of a sudden, you know, and then I'm excited and everything.
 
I was walking one time from the Sheraton over to the Coach in Chicago, and it had been a tough quarter. And when I walked into the room, I felt the same way as when I used to walk into the arena. It was like, I'm home. Everything's behind me. I got like-minded people that talk my language. I don't have entrepreneurs I can talk or share with like I have here. So grateful.
 
Shannon Waller: What a fabulous way to wrap this up, Lee, thank you. If people wanna look at your bio or get more information about your available dates, please go to strategiccoach.com. All the good stuff is there. You've got other great stuff out in the world. Anywhere else people should go and look for you or track you down?
 
Lee Brower: leebrower.com.
 
Shannon Waller: leebrower.com.
 
Lee Brower: We're right now opening up a collaborative network, not a mastermind group. It's a collaborative network of like-minded thinkers who think like the rivers. And we call it TH apostrophe rivers, which is Thrivers.
 
Shannon Waller: Nice.
 
Lee Brower: We have another group thinking that we're doing called the Sentient Advisors for people that are advisors like attorneys and women that are sentient, not AI, but how they can be empowered. So we have a number of projects that we're working on that are overlapping. Certainly always open to people's contributions or thoughts around it.
 
Shannon Waller: Awesome. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've learned more about you even though we've known each other for a very long time. So I love this. This is super fun. And thanks for the coaching. And thanks for sharing your thinking and the very inspiring way that you think and communicate about entrepreneurs and what matters. I really appreciate that. And I know our listeners do too. So thank you, my friend. Great to spend time with you.
 
Lee Brower: Thank you, Shannon. Thank you.