Executive Mentor, Strategic Advisor, Motivational Expert, Sales Consultant, Entertainer & Author of 20 books including The Acorn Principle and Relationship Selling, international bestsellers.
TEDx speaker: Top 1% (over 2 million views)
Inducted: Sales & Marketing Hall of Fame in 2012 (London/Paris),
Top 30 Sales Gurus for 2020,
Listed among Top Sales Influencers of 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2019
Voted TOP 5 Sales/Service Speakers 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014. 5 yrs in a row!
Member: Dean's Advisory Council for the School of Management at California Lutheran University. Entrepreneur in Residence, CLU center for entrepreneurship.
Artist in Residence at High Point University, North Carolina.
Professional Speaker Hall of Fame, CPAE.
Recipient of Golden Gavel Award and The Cavett Award.
Past President: National Speakers Association.
44 years of professional presentations, over 3,300 clients worldwide.
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[Podcast Transcript Using Artificial Intelligence]
Umar Hameed 0:00
Hey, everyone, I really enjoyed this conversation with Jim Cathcart, one of the Titans in the speaking world. And one of the things I took away from this episode was that concept of notice more like there's so much more to notice. And the more you notice, the better insight you have on the situation. So that was the number one takeaway from me, what I've been noticing just generally is that mindset is such a critical element of who we are, and to help people get a stronger mindset have launched two projects. One of them is the COVID-19 survival kit. It has a series of neuro boosters, basically, that software for your mind, that allows you to let go of the anxiety, the fear, it allows you to access peak states of performance, it allows you to imagine a world where you're your very best self. Now I've created that for free for anybody that wants it. So I'm gonna put a link to that in the show notes. And please spread the word because we can get more people to get a stronger mindset. We're going to get out of this pandemic a lot faster, and come out on the other side a lot stronger. Get ready for a really good episode.
Umar Hameed 1:10
Are you ready to become awesomer? Hello, everyone. This is Umar Hameed, your host and welcome to the No Limits Selling Podcast, where industry leaders share their tips, strategies and advice on how to make you better, stronger, faster, get ready for another episode.
Jim Cathcart 1:37
Hello, everyone. Today, I've got the privilege of having Jim Cathcart here with me. He's a best selling author. More importantly, he's a mentor that helps people reach their full potential. Jim, welcome to the program.
Jim Cathcart 1:49
Thank you very much, Umar. Great to be with you.
Umar Hameed 1:51
Jim, we're recording this. And it's the third of April 2020. We're in the middle of the COVID and demmick. And everyone is fearful. And but you're doing something about it. You started this eight week mentoring program to help CEOs get stronger through this than they were when they came into it. Tell me about that program?
Jim Cathcart 2:11
Sure. I realized that we'd been given a gift as well as a problem. And the gift is an opportunity, without distractions to rethink everything that we do. We've got time on our hands with a change in daily required duties, that allows us to reflect and to reconsider all the patterns in our life. You know, am I in the right career? If not, can I use this as the beginning step of emerging into another one. And transitioning.
Umar Hameed 2:48
Probably a billion people on this planet have been thinking about, you know, I'm not really happy with what I'm doing. I want to change. As soon as the weekend comes, or my summer vacation. I'll think about it. And this is the universe's way of saying, everyone stop, take a breath, re examine. So be careful what you wish for, I guess.
Jim Cathcart 3:06
Yeah. And it's more than that we've got an opportunity to rethink our life patterns.
Umar Hameed 3:12
Yes.
Jim Cathcart 3:12
Because we're all creatures of habit, you know, humans are. And we we make a choice. And then we form habits over time. And those habits become a commitment, of source of comfort or satisfaction or safety to us. And we need to stop cold occasionally. and examine whether that habits really serving as well or not, you know, habits of eating habits of communicating habits of day to day behavior, habits of prioritization. So now's a good time.
Umar Hameed 3:45
It's kind of interesting. And I'm not sure if there's a corollary to this or not. But 100 years ago, the Spanish Flu hit. And back then it was 50 million people worldwide died. And it was also like a reset, to kind of go, Hey, we need to rethink who we are. And now 100 years later, we're doing the same thing. So I'm not sure it's just happenstance. Or it's a it's a pattern, but...
Jim Cathcart 4:10
It's a little too close to a coincidence. Yes. There's bound to be something more going on, but I'm not going to speculate as to what it is.
Umar Hameed 4:22
So before we go into this mentoring program, I just want to share a thought with you. So one of the things that has been the bane of existence for human beings is fear. Fear gets in the way of us getting what we want. But if we look at it at a biological level, when you are in fear, you're at your very best, you have the ability to focus on what's most important. Unfortunately, a lot of times we focus on what the fear part is and not what the opportunity is. But with the strongest we have the reflexes at the highest. So this is one of those things at a higher level that we've hit this really scary time, but this is the time to re examine. So how are you helping Those CEOs that are on this eight week journey with you?
Jim Cathcart 5:03
It's not just ceo, it's any person who's a success seeker. Who, who is the type of person who buys books, goes to seminars, you know, reaches out looking regularly for resources to help them grow and be more and better. And especially personal service providers, people who are in the business of being a consultant and advisor, a speaker, an expert, you know, that kind of resource.
Umar Hameed 5:30
I heard this amazing thing the other day, it was this lady runs a leadership institute. And she said this phrase, when the going gets tough, the tough get growing.
Jim Cathcart 5:39
Yeah, that's for sure. And that's, that's well said. In You don't have to be tough. You just got to be intelligent about your choices and intentional about your actions. And those two are very powerful elements. Intelligent about your choices means making more enlightened choices than you've been trained to do so far. And so that's a learned new skill. And that's something I lead people through in my own work. And then intentional, if you look at the degree, the percentage of your life, that is intentional, I do it this way, because I choose to do it that way for a reason. If, if you look at the degree or percentage of intentionality, I'll bet it's directly related to the percentage of success that you experience, the more intentional we are, the more likely our results will be what we wanted.
Umar Hameed 6:38
Okay, I'm going to back you up there just a little bit. So So you've got children, right?
Jim Cathcart 6:42
I have a son, any grandkids? Yep, two grandkids, both teenagers.
Umar Hameed 6:47
If you were trying to get them to think about things more intelligently? What practical advice would you give them? This is how you think more intelligently? Because you just see it from a narrow window. So how do you teach them to do that?
Jim Cathcart 7:01
Well, I've been doing that for all of their lives. I really, I would imagine, yeah, I sincerely have been very intentional about my Parenthood, and grand Parenthood. And that didn't mean I turn it into work. It's just that I think about what matters, what I care about, and about what the natural opportunities are for teaching and role modeling and so forth.
Umar Hameed 7:24
So give us a tip that you would have taught them...
Jim Cathcart 7:27
Say again?
Umar Hameed 7:27
[Garbled] more intelligently.
Jim Cathcart 7:30
I didn't hear you.
Umar Hameed 7:31
Oh, share a tip with the listener...
Jim Cathcart 7:33
I will.
Umar Hameed 7:34
...that you would shared with them, yeah.
Jim Cathcart 7:35
Yeah. I first off, I teach them to notice more. That's a mantra in my family. Yeah, notice more. So someone says, Oh, my God, you know that there's that things are not going our way. Notice more? What do you mean? Well, look around? What's not going your way? Well, this and this. And this? What is going your way? I have nothing notice more? Oh, oh, yeah. And what about from outside your point of view from another person's point of view? Notice more? What about if this was already over? Look back and notice more.
Umar Hameed 8:16
If you were here, I give you a high five for that last one. Because that's thinking at a much higher level, we're slid by notice more.
Jim Cathcart 8:21
Yeah. And see intelligence, the essence of intelligence is the ability to make distinctions. And making distinctions is another way of saying notice more. If you are trained as a brain surgeon, then you notice more about the nervous system, the brain, the body, the functions, you know, involved in a thought process or a natural reflex than anybody else does. I look at a person All I see is the person you look at a person, you see a series of systems, and you know how to intervene in those systems. So you notice more about it? Well, I can learn to do what you do. It may take me longer than it took you. But I can ultimately learn that given enough time and the right guidance, right. So it's not about whether we could notice more. It's about how quickly and effectively we can notice more, and that we don't waste time noticing things or spending time on things that aren't worth digging into further.
Umar Hameed 9:24
So let me add to that because at all that's brilliant. One of the things we can do easily is how would Jim see this situation? Immediately I get insights and notice things I wouldn't have noticed just by asking that question. Yeah, I wrote down that note, notice more is one of the things so let's go back to the to that program to help these people. Sure. get through this. So one of the things is you want them to know they're gonna get through this they're gonna be okay, what else?
Jim Cathcart 9:53
Well, first off, this is a blessing. That's that's the way people need to see this. They need To realize that we have an opportunity to go through a thought process, while being sheltered from the day to day realities of job requirements, that allows us to emerge from this much stronger, much more powerful, much better connected with people. So the thought process begins first with stop the bleeding, do business triage in your life, make sure that the damage it doesn't continue. So that's number one stop that. Second is clear the airway. This is first aid. I used to be an army medic ages ago, man that was trained as a combat medic and hospital corpsman when I was in the army, and then I went to OCS and became an officer. But but the four steps of first aid were stop the bleeding because without the blood, they can't survive. Clear the airway so that they can breathe, because if they can't breathe, they won't survive, protect the patient, and then treat for shock, because they just had a trauma and the effect of that, that shock reaction can often inhibit your recovery. Right? So you do the same thing in business, stop the bleeding, stop the money lost the danger, the damage, clear the communication, the the airway that's communicating all of us in you know remotely or in person, and then protect the patient, the business, the job, that the profits, the whatever, the coworker, and then treat the disease or treat whatever it is that the problem is.
Umar Hameed 11:41
Brilliant. So tell me being an army medic, it teaches you to see the world in a certain way. And it also teaches you not to get caught up in the drama, the stress of it, because lives depend on it. How is that kind of mindset that early training, because you're probably in your teens back then? early 20s?
Jim Cathcart 11:58
Early 20s, yeah.
Umar Hameed 11:59
So they're like, formative years. So how did that change you as a business person? seeing things where other people would have been like, caught up in it? Did it allow you to transcend the situation and see clearly?
Jim Cathcart 12:10
I think it did, but I don't, I haven't traced the direct links in them. You know, basic training is a conditioning process that's involves a great deal of fear and difficulty, under highly stressful circumstances. And you come out of the other side of that being much more confident, much more capable in certain situations. But it doesn't necessarily make you particularly smarter about those situations, just gives you the confidence to keep on going despite the danger and resistance from the other side. But I was also in my 20s I was a bill collector repossessing logging trucks in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas.
Umar Hameed 12:53
Loggers that are going to be religious off.
Jim Cathcart 12:55
Yeah, in the way back in the logging woods in the Ozarks.
Umar Hameed 12:59
Where they could bury you in the forest, you never be found. What was that like?
Jim Cathcart 13:03
And many, many, many times I encountered armed customers?
Umar Hameed 13:08
Yes.
Jim Cathcart 13:08
So they would they would point a gun at me and say, Get out of here. And I would say certainly I'm happy to leave you do need to understand though, after I leave, the next person who comes will be the sheriff. And this and the sheriff will bring other people in all of them will be armed. So you need to decide whether your truck is more important to you than your life.
Umar Hameed 13:29
That's a very powerful argument.
Jim Cathcart 13:32
Yep. And I did okay, as a bill collector. I didn't like the work, but I did okay.
Umar Hameed 13:37
So you were talking about you in that early experience for you? Have you ever read the book, startup nation by any chance?
Jim Cathcart 13:44
No, I've seen it, but I haven't read it.
Umar Hameed 13:46
So the premise of the book is, Israel has a lot of entrepreneurship. And what they were attributing it to was that everybody goes into military service for two years after they graduate high school. And when they go into that service, many of them are officers when they have a platoon and it's a life or death situation. Then after two years of service, they normally go traveling around the world and they come back and start University and something about that early leadership and lives depending on it, just make them kick ass entrepreneurs on the world stage, which is kind of interesting so...
Jim Cathcart 14:22
Let's start that truly makes sense. And I went through officers Candidate School, after I'd been through all this other and had been a bill collector.
Umar Hameed 14:30
One of the things that really impressed me in that initial conversation, which was a few days ago, is you had mentioned that Dr. Tony Alessandra. And he is the executor of my will. Yes, he had a personality assessment that he had developed. And I commented, you know, that's my favorite one because it's the most common sense. And the thing that impressed me was that you had gone about labeling each one of the categories, so rather...
Jim Cathcart 14:57
[Garbled] created it, yeah,
Umar Hameed 14:58
Yeah.
Jim Cathcart 15:00
Yeah, we were partners, we had one checkbook, one office, we were we were full on business partners from 1979 till 1985. And during that time we created the relationship strategies, or the Platinum rule version of the personality assessment that he still uses today. And his company now is the back end that produces all of the personality assessments for Tony Robbins for Grant Cardone for human resources, press for action coach International, and others all over the world.
Umar Hameed 15:34
Brilliant. So the thing that I liked about it was that when you were trying to figure out what to call them, rather than your smart guy, you can do it yourself. But you didn't do that. You started talking to different people. So what do you think, and I thought that was really brilliant, of just testing stuff out to see that it works.
Jim Cathcart 15:52
Thank you. Well, I was in my office was a corner office in an insurance agency, we had the penthouse floor of an office building and Tulsa, Oklahoma. And this was when Tony and I first became partners before I moved to California, and we incorporated everything into one office. But in Tulsa, I had 19 agents and a general agent. And I was the trainer who taught all of them their techniques and their concepts. And so as I was working on this, I just put it on the door of my office. And I asked everybody, when you walk by my office, look at what's on the door, and write notes or comments on it, to help make it better. And so I said, Here's, you all understand this concept. I've taught it to you. Let's find a way to articulate it better. And they helped me come up with the names relator socializer, thinker director, which I would then call Tony, and run it by him. And finally we committed to those four words.
Umar Hameed 16:52
As what's interesting as you were using crowdsourcing before it was a thing.
Jim Cathcart 16:56
That's a good point. It was crowdsourcing wasn't it?
Umar Hameed 16:59
Yeah. Jim, you have spoken? Uh, you're in the speaker Hall of Fame. Yeah. So congratulations for that. Thank you. So you've spoken to a lot of audiences around the world.
Jim Cathcart 17:10
3300 so far.
Umar Hameed 17:12
Does one or two stand out as being a special moment, it could have been a small audience, a large audience, where you just felt that it was a special occasion or the impact on the crowd was profound.
Jim Cathcart 17:24
What, yeah, there have been and I could go on for the rest of the day with examples because literally with 3300 engagements in countries all over the world, and the most recent being 21 separate cities in China. I spent 71 days of last year in China doing lecture tours. I've got a lot of examples. But here's one that stands out. 2010, Lincoln, Nebraska, at the university in the huge basketball arena with 13,000 people. I was the opening keynote speaker for the USA Special Olympics. Oh, awesome. Were 3800 special athletes in the room, I was able to march into the arena with the Arkansas delegation, 176 people. And we were carrying the flag and we came in and then they lit the torch. And the Olympics began in Special Olympics of courses for people who are challenged in various ways. And it was a wonderful, wonderful experience, because every one of those audience members was heart and soul invested in supporting and encouraging the 3800 athletes. And I got to do those opening moments in that, you know, standing on stage theater in the round, so to speak, nice speaking to those people. And when I walked out on stage, the energy was huge. And I looked around at all of them with a big smile on my face. And I said, just stop. And notice more. Notice the feeling in this room. Look around you look up, look down look behind you. Notice what you feel. The amount of caring and concern and love in this room right now is powerful. Don't miss that. And then I went on into my speech. And that was that was just a really, really special moment.
Umar Hameed 19:23
Thanks for sharing that. I kind of feel like I was there was
Jim Cathcart 19:26
Good.
Umar Hameed 19:26
Jim, what's next for you? Not only are you helping other people reinvent themselves. How are you reinventing yourself as we go on to hopefully back to normal in May or June, whatever that is.
Jim Cathcart 19:39
Well, for 43 years I've been a professional speaker and author. I started out doing primarily training. And then I got more opportunity to do keynote speeches. And then I specialized in keynote speeches and became a pretty successful motivational speaker doing 120 dates a year, which meant 121 way to trips a year, and then 120 return trips. So I was traveling all the time. I've written 20 books and published them around the world. And I, when we got to this this current situation, I realized that the likelihood of keynote speaking being my best path from this day forward, was small. But the needs don't go away. They just find different channels to get met. And I asked, How can I best meet those needs. And I looked back over all the testimonials I'd gotten from clients and and audience members and readers and followers over the years. And I looked for the highlights of what they said, what they were emphasizing that mattered to them. And it all came down to Jim is a role model I can follow. He's an advisor and mentor I can trust. And he's someone who genuinely cares, but he's proven it in his own life and career. So he's not just, you know, quoting some formula. He's genuinely invested with this personally, as well as professionally. And so that's why I put together this eight week process that I'm doing where I group mentor, small groups of people who are really committed to transforming their life and making their next chapters, the biggest and best chapters ever.
Umar Hameed 21:27
That is amazing, Jim, Jim, we're gonna put all your contact information in the show notes. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Jim Cathcart 21:36
Oh, it's an honor to be with you and I appreciate that. Thank you.
Umar Hameed 21:44
If you enjoyed this episode, please go to iTunes and leave a five-star rating. And if you're looking for more tools, go to my website at nolimitsselling.com. I've got a free mind training course there, that's going to teach you some insights from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and that is the fastest way to get better results.