Making Conversations about legendary support Count transcript

{( speakerName('A') )}

So, Tommy, what brought you to where you are now in the road?

{( speakerName('B') )}

A lot of pain, to be truthful, as I never planned on writing a book, I never planned on running the legendary life movement, and I never planned on this business that I'm in. I thought I was going to be in the world of financial consulting, public accounting, mergers and acquisitions my entire life. That's what I had been successful at. That's what I did at 36 years old, on the outside, I looked like I had it all. I had the fancy suit.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I bet you scrub up quite well.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Yeah, I do. Believe it or not, I do. On the outside, it looked amazing. Cufflink suit, watch, corner office, big city, big firm. And on the inside, I was falling apart. How did that appear? Really what it was was no self love, no self confidence, no self respect. What that appeared on the outside is the arrogant guy, which is just insecurity on steroids. It appeared as the life of the party guy.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Defense mechanism, yeah.

{( speakerName('B') )}

All the armor and masks and defenses. I came from very, very humble beginnings. I came from a lot of violence and abuse as a young man, and as a young man, I became that violence and abuse. And at 18 years old, instead of being the first person to go to university in my family, and I was scheduled to go to university, I committed a violent crime. And at 18 years old, I was looking at seven years in prison, which is not good. Luckily, it was dropped down to a minor offense, but I was still sentenced to two years and spent my 19th birthday, as opposed to being at university, in a jail cell. And so let's fast forward from there. I literally went from a jail cell to a nuclear waste container factory running a machine during the day, community college at night, did end up at university. And I literally went from a jail cell to a company called Deloitte in three years. And so I thought about just being successful. Now, what did successful mean to me? Make a lot of money, get a lot of power, get a lot of status, get the corner office, buy fancy things. I thought that would make me happy. I thought it would fulfill me, and I thought it would make me a good person. But fast forward at 36, I've got the corner office. I've moved on to a different firm, but I've achieved all those things. I achieved the money, the power, the status, the title. But why was I so scared? Why was I so insecure? Why couldn't I be Tommy? And when the money, the power of the status didn't fill me up, I turned to all the darkness. Think everybody's seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street. Well, I lived that. And at 36, it almost cost me everything. It almost cost me my marriage. It almost cost me my career. It almost costs me my firm and it almost cost me my life. And at that moment I said, enough is enough. And I want to find out who I am. Who I am, what do I believe in, what do I stand for and who do I want to show up for in this world? So I made me my full time job. I'm talking about coaching, I worked with coaches, I worked with therapists. If you had told me that I was drinking from a fire hose. And all things self confidence, self respect, self love. So I started working on my emotional mental, and for me it's important, spiritual game. And when I did that, Wendy, my entire world shifted. Let me tell you the tangible results in three years of just making me my full time job, because I was always putting me last. It was all about work, it was all about success, it was all about status. And all those things are important. I think money is important. But here's the problem with money. It's a magnifying glass. And if you're a really good person, it'll magnify that impact. If you're a really terrible person, it'll magnify that. See politics all over the world. All over the world, UK, US, doesn't matter.

{( speakerName('A') )}

It's a universal problem, isn't it?

{( speakerName('B') )}

And for me, when I started working on my inner game, my mental game, my emotional, my spiritual game, in three years, I went from a junior partner in the firm, to a senior partner, to an owner, to running the international practice. And my income doubled. I went from working 60, 70, 80 hours a week down to about 35. My money doubled, my network 10x'd. I just kept getting promoted. They elected me to the board of directors at 39 years old. Most everybody else was in their sixties. And that was the tangible results. The intangible results are what's more important. I found a sense of calm. I went from being one of the most disliked people in the firm to one of the most beloved. I went from my marriage being on life support to rock solid. I became peaceful, I became quiet. I began to believe in myself. So self confidence, courage, self respect, patience, being present, not worried about the past or what's coming up in the future. And so I found this sense of fulfillment. And thank you for letting me share that. When I did that, my entire network reached out to me and asked me to go for a beer or go for a walk, or grab coffee or go for lunch. And I thought we were going to be doing business together. We're talking about entrepreneurs, we're talking about corporate executives, bankers, lawyers, venture capitalists. All of those people started reaching out to me. And every one of them were asking me the same question what did you do?

{( speakerName('A') )}

Why can't I be more like Tommy.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Because I went from this guy to this guy. What drug are you taking? What's the quick fix here? And I'm like..

{( speakerName('A') )}

Ahh Matrix. Is it the red or the blue pill? Yeah.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Red or blue pill, right? They kept asking me to coach them. They kept asking me to help them. And they said, you didn't give up your ambition or drive. You're still successful, but you seem a whole lot happier, you seem a whole lot calmer, you seem a whole lot more peaceful. How do you do that? And they all said, well, you got to write this book. You got to write this book. You got to write this book. So I did. I wrote a very fun, easy to read, very quick book on how I did it with some great stories about other people. There's literally only seven pages about me in the book. The rest of it's all about other people who've done it, the systems and processes that I applied from these great coaches, from these great mentors, from these great people. And it turned into the entire legendary book. Then it turned into the legendary life movement. And we run experiences, retreats, masterminds, and we bring all of these ambitious, driven people together to connect, to bond, to have really independent conversations, but to build a community of other like minded people who want to be better, not only in business, but in life, relationships and love. And so that's what led me to today.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I saw that you were doing Retreats For Men Only, which I absolutely applauded.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Women are quite good at doing it. When COVID hit, they all went, Oh, great, let's just pretend we've got Covid and get rid of the kids and we'll pretend we're on a spa trip.

{( speakerName('B') )}

(Tommy laughs)

{( speakerName('A') )}

You know, women know how to do this, they know how to decompress. And I think that's the culture that we've got, isn't it, in terms of the pressures that are put on the feminine side and the masculine role. And I think what really sort of struck me was, from your story of writing the book, it was a celebration of all the people that had helped you. So it wasn't, Hey, look at me, I'm Tommy, look at how I've changed. This was quite the opposite. And it's when things happen from that place, I've even noticed amazing things happen. We're on a kind of similar journey. I really want to put on a retreat for business owners with their families, because I think that business owners, all the pressures of running a business, how do you explain all of that to a partner who's not in business? And let's not encourage everybody to go into business together when you're already in a relationship, because that could just be a disaster. But it is about having that right kind of support, isn't it? And the conversations that come about from that.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Yeah, I think from a family to your significant other, whether you're married or not or whoever that is in your life. I think it's critical. I think a lot of us, we like to say our family and friends are first, but if we're entrepreneurs or you're a business owner, your business is first. Let's just call a spade a spade.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Honesty.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Yeah, it's honesty. And that's okay, by the way. But it's about when you were talking about family and your supporting system, it's critical to your success. It's critical to your happiness. And for me, no matter what, if you're a business owner, you're going to prioritise your business because you carry a profit burden, you carry the burden of employees. You want to be successful, you're doing it. You employ people, you want to make an impact. There's all these great reasons, and I love business owners, but let's just own that we prioritise the business. But you can. It's about quality over quantity. The quality of time you spend with your spouse, the quality of time that you spend with your friends, the quality of time you spend with your children if you have them, and all being rowing in the same direction. Because relationships are hard. Family is hard, business is hard, life is hard. And so when you bring people together and you teach them to communicate or you bring them together to teach them how to be courageous and self confident and how to love themselves. So to me, my whole goal, and maybe it's your goal too, is shift the paradigm. I think it starts with us. We've got to participate in our own rescues. So if we're not successful or happy or in the relationship we want to be in, we have to prioritize us. We have to self love, self respect, self confidence and courage for ourselves so that we can lead and love others better. Because if we don't truly lead ourselves and love ourselves first, how can we lead ourselves even in business? How do we lead others better? How do we love others better? Because we love our businesses. We love our employees. And so I think what you want to do in the business world and their families is teach accountability, teach courage, teach communication, teach presence and get everybody rowing on the same boat because so many of us don't do that. Life is already hard enough. Let's not make it harder than it has to be.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Loving yourself. That is the core. Often we think that if we are making everybody else happy, that makes us happy. And for a very short time it does. But it's not truly long lasting. It's the subtle difference, isn't it? It's the subtle difference that we don't give ourselves time to really sort of look at it and say, has that just made me happy because they're happy and they're off my back? Or has that truly made me happy because being a business owner and running a business is so that you can do great things with the family. That's the reason for doing it. So if we always remember our reason and our purpose, come on, we should all be just winners.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I agree. And you can't be a martyr. The truth is, at the end of the day, you can't make anyone else happy. You do not have that power. You can influence them, you can lead them, you can inspire them, you can discipline them, you can set boundaries with them. You can love them, but you can't make them happy. The only person that you can do that for is you. And truly, the only power that we have on this planet is choice. We can't control people. We can influence them, we can lead them, we can love them, but we can't control them. We can only control ourselves. And so in order to lead and love others better, we have to lead and love ourselves first. We have a choice. Every single day of every single moment, the only power you have is a choice. And so for me, choosing us first, self confidence, courage, self love, self respect and leadership of self so that we can lead and love others. And you said it best. The whole reason we're in business is to help our families, to experience life more, to have more opportunity, to have nicer experiences and I guess things as well. But at the end of the day, that won't buy you happiness. Only you can buy you happiness only how you feel about yourself, which will then influence how you feel about others and how you lead others. And here's the thing. We make our lives very especially as business owners, our lives become very complex on the pursuit of simplicity. It's already simple.

{( speakerName('A') )}

The paradox is there, isn't it? It's ironic.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Crazy. It's crazy. And so we just got to lighten up and here's what I think is great about entrepreneurs, is we're always forward thinking. But the problem is, as business owners, the corner is always moving. It's like swimming to the horizon. We never get to the horizon. However, if we can measure where we've come from, what we've done, look in the past and see how far we've become as leaders, as people, as humans, what we've built, and celebrate these wins, it's okay that we're always swimming to the horizon.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Let's just sum that up with Tommy going to jail. To Tommy today. That's a serious thing for Tommy to self sabotage. You self sabotaged, really. You hit rock bottom twice. Kind of prove that you could win.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I was a Picasso at screwing up.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah. It's just about finding the right way to win, isn't it? And often we go to the opposite of where we are. So for you, you were coming from a tough background. That resonates with me. I've had more stepparents than I've got, fingers and thumbs. So it makes life complicated. But it also as you get older, and I think this is kind of the hindsight of maturity is go, well, that's the blessing that I didn't see at the time, because I wouldn't have known that it was dark to reach the light.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Couldn't agree more. And I think wisdom comes with maturity. I think lightning up on ourselves comes with maturity. And what I want people to hear is, no matter what you're going through, whether it's relationship challenges, success challenges, business challenges, life challenges, family challenges, children challenges, is they're not alone and we believe we're alone, we believe we've got to do it on our own. And we think our thoughts, our crazy thoughts that are in our head and we all have them. That's that story that we tell ourselves is that you're not alone and that you can choose something different today than you chose yesterday and write the ending to your story. And for me, I'm almost 50 now. For me, for 36, 37 years, I believe the story that was told to me and I was like, at the end, I had a mentor tell me, do you want to live your life or do you want to live that story? And I'm like, I want to live my life. And he just punched me in the face when he said that. And I'm like, My God, I can write the ending, I can choose something different today than I did yesterday and write the ending to my story. So I want people to hear that they're not alone and that we all self sabotage on some way. We all do it. I don't care if you come from the greatest beginnings of all or you come from royalty, to use a British term. Look how much they struggle. Right? Yeah. We're not alone in this journey of life. And I think that's why it's so important to build a tribe, to build a community, and to surround yourself with people that make you happy and make you better.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I think you summed it up really well in one of your posts and I'm going to just call it the Ten Commandments of Tommy. Rewrite this with all positive words and you've got your company value statement just right there. Don't blame others for your problems. Don't complain about everything, don't gossip about others. I mean, these are just things that it's common sense, isn't it? It's being a good human being, but by goodness, it's so easy to get into that judging and having an opinion.

{( speakerName('B') )}

It's so easy. And we're surrounded by noise. You're in the UK, think about UK news, think about United States news. It's just noise. They want us to get angry, they want us to get upset, they want us to blame somebody, they want us to feel like victims. And then you turn on social media and everybody's LinkedIn, successful or Instagram, fabulous. And it's just noise. It's just noise. And how do we overcome that. First of all, turn it off and surround yourself with positive people who make you happy and make you better. And it's really that simple. It's really that simple. If you hang around with positive, abundant people, you will be a positive, abundant person. If you surround yourself with that noise, you're going to become noise.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I just love that social media makes us overnight successes after 17 years.

{( speakerName('B') )}

After 17 years, after whatever our ages are now, right?

{( speakerName('A') )}

I think we're a similar age. Ladies, don't tell.

{( speakerName('B') )}

This is true. Do you know, on average.. I just read this in a book actually. I read it on a book and they said happy people on average live 13.... it's either ten or 13, I can't remember... more years than unhappy people. So be happy.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I just remember somebody saying you use less energy being happy. And I thought, well it's a good job because I'd be absolutely shattered at the end a lot sooner. I would never get through a day without a siesta. I'd be no good. When it comes to advice, lots of guests prefer their greatest tip. What would be the one thing that Tommy would say to entrepreneurs starting out?

{( speakerName('B') )}

Entrepreneurs starting out? It would be focus on yourself more than your business. The number one failure in life and leadership is knowing thyself. It's self awareness. Don't give up. If you show up every day for yourself, we show up, we honor our commitments and we do what we're going to say we're going to do. If you do that, I'm telling you you will be 99% ahead of almost all other entrepreneurs. So I'd say lead yourself first. Work on your emotional game, your mental game and your spiritual game and your physical game every single day so that you could show up for your business. Because you're going to prioritise your business, but you've got to prioritise yourself. That would be number one. Number two, don't take yourself so serious. I founded this entire movement and I wrote the book. I have zero interest in being CEO of this company. I'm not good at it. So know what you're good at, know your strengths and concentrate there and outsource everything else. I've got a badass and world class operator. Her name is Lindsay. She runs the entire operations of the company. I'm not good at that. And so don't take yourself so serious. Outsource everything. Show up every day for yourself. And don't forget the why you're doing it. If you're doing it just to make money, you're going to fail. If you're doing it to make impact because you love doing it. If you love doing it and you're really good at your craft, you're going to be successful. And so that's what I would say to young entrepreneurs. Young is just new entrepreneurs and that doesn't mean you're young. I know people in their fifties who have started companies.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Sure, that's awesome. It's never too late, is it? It's just never too late to change anything.

{( speakerName('B') )}

As long as you have breath in your lungs, it's never too late to change anything.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah, on any level.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Tommy, I don't know if you know this, but every guest, I ask the one question, which is what's the one conversation that you can recall and share with us today that you know, if you hadn't have had your life, would not be as it is today.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I think the conversation with my wife when I was 36 years old, I think she loved me when I couldn't love me. And just to let her know my fears, my insecurities, my mistakes, how I had been living X amount of years, I went to the seven day retreat just to figure out who I was. And I fully expected her not to be there when I got back. But I was open, I was honest. I said whatever she wanted because we were too successful. Business success, life, terrible business success. Whatever she wanted, I said, you can have. Take it, whatever you want, just leave me a pair of pants and I'll rebuild. And when I got back, she was here and she never left. And she stood there like a graceful oak tree. I love oak trees, by the way, and all her grace and all her beauty. And that conversation, we've had tough conversations. I'm not saying we've got it all figured out as a couple, but she's my chief of staff, she's my chairman of the board, she's my rock, and she gives me class. And I think that conversation, there's no way I would be the man, the human, the person, the seeker, the grower that I am today without unconditional support of her. And I can say honestly today, even over the last rough couple of years, we're better today than we've ever been. So that's the conversation.

{( speakerName('A') )}

See, this is kind of why I'm moved to do the kind of retreat that I want to do, is because it is tough to work through business and life. So give your wife a big hug and a kiss from Wendywoo tonight, will you, please?

{( speakerName('B') )}

I will. We're going to grill together tonight. We haven't cooked together in a long time, so we're going to grill tonight. I'm looking at my grill, by the way, so I'm excited.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Well, I can tell those coals are going to get hot.

{( speakerName('B') )}

I love it.

{( speakerName('A') )}

So what's next for Tommy, then? I know that empowering people and business owners is kind of your thing. What's next? What do we expect?

{( speakerName('B') )}

I'm going to slow down to speed up. We've got some big strategic things happening. We're starting our women's movement. I'm so excited about that. I think the women's movement is a blue ocean. Our dream is 1 million men and 1 million women's lives transformed to be more successful in life, more successful in business, more successful in relationships, more successful in their mindset. And so we have big goals, but I can't do it alone. So we're building the legendary life movement and we're in the experience coaching and retreat business. And I can't do it alone because Tommy Breedlove has got a limited life and that's a gift, right? We're only here so many days. We don't know how long that is.

{( speakerName('A') )}

We've got to experience it as well. Yeah.

{( speakerName('B') )}

So we're actively right now building the movement and not Tommy as a brand. So think more people were looking for a CEO. I mean, two days I've just spent in the North Georgia mountains, which are beautiful, by the way, for you people in the UK. We have some beautiful mountains here into the south. But I just spent two days with a guy that's potentially going to be our CEO. This afternoon, I'm talking to another guy who's going to partner with us and it's taken me two years to find these people. It's got to be the right person. We don't negotiate our core values. We absolutely do not. But we have been very intentional about partnering with people to help us expand our reach. And we want to build this legendary life. We want people to be with us for life. We don't want it to be a one and done. We don't want it to come in, like a lot of people in my business, you go to their event, you come out. We want you to live with us forever.

{( speakerName('A') )}

This is like the family that you can choose to have Thanksgiving with. Yeah, that's got to be way cooler, because when most of my family get in touch. I run for the hills.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Ugh when they start talking about politics and I just melt. They're blaming this person or that person, you know, I hate using this word. The pandemic shined a lot of light on a lot of people.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Fantastic for me.

{( speakerName('B') )}

It's fantastic for me, too. And how we showed up in the world and how we showed up for each other and how we showed up in our lives, compared to what I saw some of my other friends and family do, it's just unbelievable.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah, they're calling it, aren't they, the Great Migration and all of that kind of thing. Actually, I just think it was just a fabulous reboot.

{( speakerName('B') )}

It was a reset.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah.

{( speakerName('B') )}

And for those of us who chose to see the light, I think it also shined a light on we're going to be okay. No matter what, we're going to be okay.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Yeah, I think so. We've got some extraordinary people that can really make the difference. It's just about knowing where to look, isn't it? Follow the light.

{( speakerName('B') )}

What we've got coming up in the short term is we've got two men's retreats coming up in the beautiful North Georgia mountains and one woman's retreat. That's what we've got coming up. And I'm just super excited and pumped up that these people show up with courage and they want to lead themselves so they can lead others. So I'm super fired up about it.

{( speakerName('A') )}

You are an absolute diamond. Honestly. Keep doing all that you're doing because it suits you, sir.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Finally living up to my last name, which is a real last name, by the way. Got it. Breedlove. I'm finally living up to my last name.

{( speakerName('A') )}

I think you're right. We always encourage listeners to carry on the conversation with guests, so we'll be sticking a load of stuff on the show notes and I'll probably have to tap Lindsay up for something special for the listeners. But if they want to reach out from listening because we're impulsive people like that, what's the best place for them to find you?

{( speakerName('B') )}

You can find me at tommybreedlove.com. All you need to know about our retreats, our experiences, our masterminds, our community is there. If you want to reach out to us directly, I'm going to give you two emails. Lindsay@tommybreadlove.com or Tommy@tommybreadlove.com, just reach out to us directly. We'll get back to you.

{( speakerName('A') )}

There's a pattern there.

{( speakerName('B') )}

Check out the book. It's everywhere. It's at your favorite bookstore. It's at the airports if you're flying. If you don't read, I will read it to you. You can get it on Audible so I can read it to you. What I would recommend people doing is go there because it is just chock full of simple things to help you be more successful in your life and your mindset, your relationships and in business. It's not my wisdom, it was wisdom that was shown to me, but it's executable to go there as well. So reach out to us at Tommy@tommybreaklove.com. On social we're everywhere. We put out goodness. We don't put out any darkness. Or just check out the book. I think the reason the book has been so successful is because it's fun, it's quick, it's easy, but most importantly, it's not theory, it's actionable. And so check us out there.

{( speakerName('A') )}

Well, Tommy, thank you for making conversations about being legendary. Count with me today.