Today’s episode is going to be about the why of contribution. Join your host, Dr. Gary Sanchez, as he talks to, who he believes to be the best example of this why. Contribute today with Glen Campbell as he creates the great leaders of tomorrow. Glen is the Chief Executive of Brandheart Method. Discover his long and impressive career before he found his own company. Know when to listen to your intuition and understand how when to leave your job. Glen spent all his life helping people find their who and why that he forgot about himself. Find out when he had an epiphany and how his business now, contributes to society. Learn how he is developing the leaders of tomorrow today!
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Contributing To The World With The Leaders Of Tomorrow With Glen Campbell
We’re going to be talking about the why of contribute. To contribute to a greater cause, add value or have an impact in the lives of others. If this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause. Something that is bigger than yourself. You don’t necessarily want to be the face of the cause but you want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. You love to support others. You relish the success and contribute to the greater good of the team.
You see group victories as personal victories. You are often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate. You often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources and connections to add value to other people and organizations.
I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Glen Campbell. Glen started his career with degrees in commerce and psychology. He also has a master’s in NLP and hypnotherapy. For years, Glen has been a Director and Chief Executive of some of the world’s best and brightest brand strategy and communication companies like Clemenger BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett across four continents.
Twelve years ago, he created Brandheart and developed unrivaled methods for leaders, best self-identity and organizational brand identity. He has worked with over 500 business leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world in developing their personal and organizational brands. The results have been nothing less than transformational.
Glen’s unique and proven method is para-disciplinary in nature. It’s a harmonious fusion of his extensive experience, the latest in leadership research, unique brand identity model, neuroscience, quantum physics, Eastern and Western philosophy and spirituality. Glen is considered a world-leading authority in empowering people to profound higher self-realization in business and in life. Glen, welcome to the show.
I’m delighted to be here, Gary. I love that description of contribution.
Let’s start here, Glen. Let’s go back to even when you were in your teens. What were you like? Take us through your journey on how you got to where you are.
I went to a private boys’ boarding military school. I’m sure a lot of people can identify with that. I’m very disciplined, very exact in everything we did. We played a lot of rugby union. That was my sport. This is was in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I played a little bit. It’s very much a sporting school, very big emphasis on the sport, academia, the military and discipline, all that sort of stuff. From a very early age, you could say that achievement, discipline, being scholarly and seeking answers were very important to us. That was part of the culture of the school. I was a part of that. That starts to forge the way you go through life.
From high school, you went off to get your degrees. Where did you go for that?
I stayed in Brisbane. I went to a university called the Queensland University of Technology. I did a commerce degree with a major in marketing. I was playing rugby at a representative level so I graduated playing for my state Queensland, which in those days was an amateur sport but it was pretty cool because we were probably one of the top five provincial rugby sides in the world. Queensland would play against Scotland and we’d beat them. It was a pretty impressive side I was a part of. I was playing rugby at that level, so I decided not to go into the workforce. I decided to do another degree and that was a psychology degree. I did that at University of Queensland.
If you're feeling like a hamster on a treadmill, it's time for you to find your own brand and what makes you happy. Click To TweetWhy did you pick a psychology degree?
After I finished my commerce degree, I did a number of psychology electives. For some reason or other, I did particularly well in those subjects and I liked it. I remember the head of the faculty at the time said to me, “If you’re thinking about doing further study, you should do psychology because you’re pretty good at it. You’re bit of a natural at this stuff.”
I naturally went to the other university, which was not far away, that had a specialty in psychology. I went there. I had no problem getting in. The other thing was I’ve done so many subjects at that university, so I got a number of exemptions. Instead of doing a three-year degree, I ended up doing a two-year degree. That was good.
You’ve got your commerce degree and psychology degree. Glen’s off to do what now?
I got a job straight away in brand strategy and communications in the best agency in Brisbane at the time. It was called Clemenger. It was a part of the Clemenger BBDO Group. The BBDO Group is in America. They had offices in New York. I ended up getting a job straight into the business of brand strategy and communication development and execution.
How long did you do that?
I worked there for five years. It was a very small agency, only about 35 people. It’s a strategic and creative boutique. Amazing work considering it was a small agency in Brisbane, Australia. After five years there, I got headhunted. Things happened. I was asked to work for an agency called Saatchi & Saatchi in Sydney, which at the time, Sydney is the biggest city in Australia with the biggest population density. This agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, was one, if not the leading agency in Australia at the time. Certainly, one of the bright lights of Saatchi & Saatchi was it had a $6 billion global net worth at the time.
You were there for how long?
I was there for five years as well. My role there was to look after the Toyota Motor Vehicle business in Australia. That included the Hino trucks, the Lexus brand, which is the prestige brand and all the Toyota vehicles. It was a very big account for us at the time. In Australia, they were spending $75 million on advertising and brand strategy.
It was a big step up for me from Brisbane to work on such a major piece of business. I certainly learned a lot. They weren’t easy guys to work with the motor vehicle game. They want to see results. Interestingly enough, in that time, I wouldn’t say we did it all but we contributed a great deal to getting that brand from number 3 to number 1 in the Australian marketplace.
Keep us going. What happened to you next?
I got headhunted again to go and work for Leo Burnett, which I’m sure Americans if they knew anything about brand strategy and communication companies, they’ll know that Burnett is a Chicago based company. It’s another global powerhouse, about $7 billion or $8 billion company. I got headhunted to work with those guys. I spent quite a lot of time there.
I ended up going straight into the national board of directors. I was the National Business Development Director. I worked on a number of pieces of business that I led in terms of the strategy and the development of all the marketing and communications work. I’ve worked on brands like Woolworths Supermarkets, which in Australia is a 700-store supermarket brand.
I worked on Subaru, a number of alcohol brands and Gatorade. We introduced the Gatorade product into Australia, which I love working on. That business was a lot of fun. Big brands like that. I worked on our military over here. I worked on the army, the air force and the navy with their recruitment. There was lots of interesting stuff. It’s a lot of fun.
How long were you there? Then onto the next thing.
I was nine years there, then I went into my first chief executive role. I was the chief executive of a small agency that was only turning over about $30 million, $40 million. That was a creative boutique, the creative powerhouse in Australia at the time. It was a dream job for me. I ended up taking that company.
When I started with them, they were doing about $18 million. I got them up for about $42 million in the two years I was there. After that, another chief executive role in another agency called Ideaworks. That was a part of the WPP Global Group, a publicly listed company. That company was turning over about $400 million and I had about 120 people in my team working with me. I did a very successful couple of years there. Then I left the industry and started my own business, Brandheart.
Take us into that moment when you knew you needed to leave the industry and start your own. What happened?
Seriously, Gary, this was the turning point, the epiphany. This is where I started to think about this whole idea of why. I remember it like it was yesterday. There were two things that happened in a week. One, I was pitching a banking business. It was a second-tier bank but it was still a pretty big piece of business. Inside the context of that pitch, there were lots of things going on, which I didn’t like morally, ethically and professionally. That bothered me a lot.
In the same week, I was pitching a burgers, Coke and fries business. I thought to myself, “Is this what it’s come to burgers, Coke and fries, Glen? That’s not you. That’s not your thing.” I remember coming on to my wife and saying, “I’m not happy.” I’m working 60 hours a week on average. I feel like a hamster on a treadmill. It’s Groundhog Day. All I’m doing is all about money. This can’t be it for me. It’s got to be more to it than that. How did I get to this point? It’s like I blinked and 25 years have passed of 60-hour a week. I’m sitting there going, “What am I doing?”
The message from the universe from your perspective is manifesting in your intuition. Trust and listen to it. Click To TweetI asked myself those two primordial questions, Gary. “Who am I? Why am I here?” It bothered me a lot. The epiphany was this. I thought, “Hold on a minute. All I do for a living and all I’ve done for the last 25 years is help big organizations develop their why and who. That’s all I’ve done for a living.” I go in there and develop a strategic positioning or their brand identity. Those terms were interchangeable.
It’s like how are we going to position ourselves in the market. Then we do all this work around the personification of the brand, what’s the personality of the brand? How do they look? If this brand was a person, what would they look like? What would they be like? What kind of friends would they have? Where would they live? I thought, “I’m good at this stuff. Why don’t I do it for myself?”
That’s what started that journey of self-reflection contemplation. I took the strategic tools that I’d learned from some of the best and brightest brand strategy companies on the planet. I changed and modified them. Then I took myself through my exercise, which is not easy to do. When you try to do that yourself, it’s very difficult. You’re second guessing everything. I did that for a period of three months where I got to the point and I went, “This is Glen’s brand. This is my brand.” When I looked at it, I had this massive sense of relief. It’s like, “I know who I am. What I’m doing is not it. That’s not me and my passion. That’s not what’s going to make me happy.”
After doing all that work, I came home and sat down with my wife, Victoria and said, “I’m leaving.” She said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know but it’s not that because that’s not what makes me happy.” She said, “You have no idea what you got to do?” I said, “No but I’m going to leave because this is not it for me. It’s not my why.” That’s what I was talking about. I can’t do that anymore. I’ve got to be true to my true highest self, my true higher why and purpose. I ended up leaving. What I did was I continued to develop that model. I started to work with business leaders and help them do the same thing.
What was it about what you were doing that you didn’t like or didn’t feel like you?
I was lacking meaning. I felt like this was meaningless to me. I tell you what the thing was. I wasn’t getting up in the morning and feeling enthusiastic about going to work. I was the chief executive. There are a lot of people look at you and take cues from you. I did a good job of masking that and not allowing people to see that. I thought I did a pretty good job but it was bothering me.
One of the other things that contributed to this was when I went into this chief executive role. The group CEO and the group CFO are upstairs and we’d have these quarterly meetings. We sit down and look at the numbers. I noticed they never talked to me about the people or any other kind of KPIs. They only ever sat down and said, “Let’s go through the numbers.” I was like, “Aren’t you interested in the health and wellbeing of my people? Aren’t you going to talk to me about my culture, how I’m improving productivity and all those other things?”
They didn’t want to know about it. They said, “We’re interested in what your EBITDA is, Earnings Before Income Tax and Depreciation Amortization.” “You’re just interested in my profit contribution. That’s all.” All the discussions were around that. The other thing that happened was we went from quarterly meetings to monthly meetings. There was a lot of pressure on the network that was all about contribution to the network. The monthly meetings went from weekly meetings. I go up, sit there and say, “What do you think has happened since last week? I’ve got to cut the biscuit budget or something?”
There are other two things here. There’s revenue. The two biggest costs I’ve got are people and rent. All the rest of it is inconsequential. They’re line items and not very big. I could go through all that stuff all day, cut them by 10%, be the head of the razor gang and cut this stuff. Everybody will know. It has massive confidence.
I’ll fix the confidence of people in a confidence business. Creativity is a high confidence business. When people are seeing little things change all the time, it’s like, “What’s going on here? What are we doing? What’s happening in our company? Why is Glen doing this?” I used to have these discussions since I’m not going to do that week by week. Why are we meeting week by week when the story is never any different?
It’s this constant pressure coming from the top down to achieve things that I wasn’t passionate about. I got into that industry because I was passionate about doing amazing creativity that impacts people in positive ways that can enhance their life and it wasn’t happening. I felt I was the head of the gang of people who was selling more consumables to people that they didn’t need or want. I thought, “This is not good for me. It’s not good for anybody. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
It’s interesting the way this happens. It was like a seismic event where all of these things happened at once all in a short timeframe. I remember talking to Victoria about it saying, “It’s fascinating the way this is happening. I can see it. I can see that’s happened.” It’s like, “I’m getting a message from the universe here to do and change something. I need to listen.”
The message from the universe from my perspective was manifesting itself through my intuition. My intuition is telling me, “This is wrong. I’ve got to change and do something.” I’ve got to trust that. I’m very connected to my intuitive powers. I trust my intuition. I thought, “You got to listen to this. It’s too overwhelming. There are too many signs. There are signs everywhere.” I’ve got to listen to this. I listened and I changed.
I resigned and they said, “Where are you going to? What other job are you going to in the industry?” I said, “I’m leaving the industry.” They were shocked. “How could you be doing this, Glen? This is you.” I said, “It’s not me.” I’ve discovered that. That was what I call the epiphany, that turning point that you were talking about, Gary.
You sat down and asked yourself those two questions, “Who am I? Why am I here?” How did you go about figuring out that answer? What was the answer?
My first answers were the standard answers. Who am I? I’m the Chief Executive of Ideaworks. I immediately went to my title. I thought, “Is my title my identity?” It’s not. Then I went, “It must be my CV, my experience. That must be my identity.” It’s not. The more I went through this, the more I thought, “My experience in my CV, my title, where I live, the car I drive and the brands I buy are not my identity. That’s not who I am. Certainly, that’s not why I’m here. That can’t be why I’m here to accumulate more stuff.”
In fact, I’d feel a whole lot better if I got rid of most of it. I defaulted like most people do who don’t get into this level of introspection and journey. They default to what people or the industry has told them or what we’ve been programmed to believe, all those other classic borrowed identities that don’t mean anything to us. They’re not real anyway. As you start this whole thing, don’t contribute to anything in a meaningful way. To me, it was like, “None of that is meaningful. None of that makes my heart beat stronger.” I’d feel passionate about it. That was what started the journey.
I’m at my best when I’m helping other people to realize who they are as well. In my work life, whenever I sat down, forced as a leader to do these quarterly reviews, HR would say, “You’ve got to do quarterly reviews or bi-annual reviews.” I always would find myself in those meetings, putting the checklist aside and saying, “How are you going? Why do you get out of bed every morning? What keeps you awake at night? What bothers you? What basic questions can’t you answer?” I would have these searching discussions. I never tell anybody anything. I’ll just ask these questions.
The questions I was asking were prompting them to think about it. I would leave the meetings like, “Go away and think about that. Think about why you’re doing this job, why you love it and what it means to you. Then come back and talk to me.” I was getting into these amazing conversations with people where they say, “I thought about what we last talked about. This is where I’m coming out on this stuff. I found that we were going on this journey of self-discover, which is what I did for myself.”
We’re going into this discovery. I had many people sitting in front of me going, “I’m doing this introspection work and I’m not liking it, Glen. I’m revealing things that I don’t like to see.” I was like, “It’s okay.” I’ve studied with psychology. I’ve studied Freud, Jung and all these guys. Jung used to call it The Shadow Personality. I was like, “You’re identifying your shadow. Do you know what the shadow is? It’s a part of you. It’s okay. You just got to know who it is. You’ve got to work to minimize that. Go back to the light side of who you are. What’s the light look like? How would you describe the light?” We’d had those yang-yin discussions.
I was doing that with myself as well. I’m aware of my dark and light side. I’ve got to continue to stay myself to that light side, work, build and define that. To me, it was about what does my source self look like? It is the why, Gary. You call it the why. I call it the why too. It’s the same thing. What’s that person here to do? Everybody’s here to do something. That contributes to the planet. All human beings are good people.
You're at your best when you're helping other people to realize who they are. Click To TweetThey all want to do something that’s good and contribute to people. That’s what we’re here for. That’s when we’re at our best. How do I be my best self? It’s through contribution, which I loved what you started. Through contribution, it’s serving others. How can I help others to find their why, get a stronger understanding of who they are, why they’re here and then have the courage to pursue it?
There’s a basketball coach here in the US called John Calipari. He has your same why. He says, “I want to be the pebble that causes the ripple effect in the lives of those around me that goes on and on.” It keeps multiplying your ability to contribute to the world by the people that you help have a bigger impact.
He calls it the ripple effect. I call it the butterfly effect. I borrowed that from a movie. This butterfly effect is where the vibrational energy of you is going to affect the vibrational energy of somebody else, which is going to affect the vibrational energy of somebody else. You want that vibrational energy to be high vibrational energy like, love, wisdom, insight, acceptance, joy, bliss and peace. They’re the high vibrational energies that you want to have the effect on other people.
This was the quantum physics side of it when you talked about that at the front where I do quantum physics. It’s knowing and understanding energy. How can you energetically impact somebody in a way that’s positive? Daniel Goleman does this work. If you read any Daniel Goleman’s stuff like Emotional Intelligence and amazing best-selling books like this, he’s one of the US profound psychologists in leadership and EQ, understanding the role of EQ, what he calls emotional intelligence.
Emotions are energy. The quantum physicist and the neuroscientists have proven this. What kind of energetic or emotional level are you vibrating at? What energetic level you’re vibrating at? How does that impact others? We know from quantum physics that like attracts and impacts like. If I’m operating at a very high emotional level, those levels I was talking about of love, bliss, joy and harmony, that’s going to affect other people as well and infect in many ways. They start to feel it too.
Have you ever walked into a room and felt the vibe of a room? It’s the energy of the people in the room. Creating a vibe through your own energy is very important. You got to know what that is, your energy and so to your work. You wrap your energy around your why. Your why is a high vibrational energy. You can’t have a why that is around death and destruction like, “I want to go out and hurt people.” That is not why. It’s the antithesis of what a why is. Why is something that is positive, powerful and profound that enhances life and the planet that we live on.
Therefore, you wrap this high vibrational energy around it and it becomes massively contagious. That’s what creates the ripple effect. The ripple effect is another way of talking about quantum energy. The ripple is the energy that impacts everybody else. The butterfly effect is the energy that can impact 1 to 5 minutes.
Tell us about how those conversations then led to Brandheart. What is Brandheart?
Brandheart is all about working with leaders. All I’ve done from the beginning of Brandheart is work with leaders. Mostly it’s C-Suite leaders, chief executives, chief financial officers, chief technical officers and chief marketing officers. My rationale was always to influence the influences. If you can positively influence an influencer, then that influencer is going to have the butterfly effect to a lot of people. If you can get to one that’s an influencer, you’ll get too many. That was my rationale.
I want to work with the leaders of businesses that impact their clients, team and culture that has this profoundly positive impact on their business. Coming from a brand strategy background, I knew how to do that from a positioning point of view. What I did was escalate that up and say, “Before I do any work on the organization, I want to work on the leaders first.” Get them to know and understand what their role is as a leader. Unfortunately, the vast majority of leaders on this planet have been organically programmed to be command and control leaders. They command and control.
That’s very low vibrational energy. That’s motivation through fear, coercion and negative persuasion. That doesn’t work. That creates destructive disharmonious cultures. That’s one of the reasons why 3 out of 5 businesses fail within the first two years. Why did they go broke? It’s because it’s a leadership problem. It’s not so much that they’ve got a bad product or whatever they’re doing.
The buck always stops with the leader. When we’re talking about leaders, we could talk about leaders of businesses, basketball teams, families or leaders of anything. You’re being a leader of your own life leading your own life in a way that’s positive. It doesn’t matter. Everybody has the opportunity to be a leader and should be a leader. At the end of the day, I went, “It’s not just leaders. It’s everybody.” I want to help everybody do this work like you do. We’re in the same game in many respects. That’s why in our first discussion we got on so well.
It’s like, “A kindred spirit here. This guy is great. I love his work.” I’m not competitive like that. I look at you and hope you’ll be immensely positive and influence a lot of people to do this work. It’s fundamental and essential, in fact. I’m doing the same thing in my small way. It is the same thing. When you asked me a question about, “Glen, what are you doing?” It’s like, “Pretty much the same as you, Gary. I want to help people to find their why. I want to help people to know and understand that deeply right into their DNA.” That’s neuroscience and quantum physics.
I go very deep into the journey of seeing and understand how this affects your neural pathways. How can you create new neural pathways? How can you create new belief systems that are held in your subconscious mind? How can you get this conscious and subconscious mind coherence where you’ve got this single-mindedness or whole mindedness? Every part of my conscious, non-conscious minds, every part of my body, my cells are in harmony around my why. I’m in harmony.
I’m a walking, talking and the epitome of my why inaction every minute of every day. I try to take people deeply on that journey. It doesn’t become something that it’s conscious. It becomes unconscious competency. I do this naturally. It’s me. It’s who I am. What happens in that process? It’s a similar process to what people go through when they get programmed to be somebody who they’re not, which most people are. We were mostly brought up to be programmed to be something that we’re not. It’s reprogramming into who you are.
Take us through somebody going through this process. What would they like to begin with? What would they like afterwards? What was the impact in their life? Give us an example of how this works.
I worked with a guy who was a group CFO of a big supermarket chain in this country. After seventeen years, he was sacked unceremoniously. He was referred to me by somebody I know who knew him very well. When he came to me, he was a basket case and a mess. He had attributed his identity to his title and job. What happens when you take the title and the job away? Identity gone. When this happens in their life through their work and they’ve attributed their identity to that, they feel this sense of helplessness, hopelessness and may go into, “I don’t even know who I am anymore because it’s been taken away from me.” I don’t what to do.
This guy put on a lot of weight. He was doing a lot of comfort eating. He was lying around the house. His relationship with his wife and family was badly affected. He stopped doing anything because he didn’t know what to do. He lost all sense of purpose and meaning. His life didn’t stand for anything anymore. This is a guy who got a couple of university degrees. He’s an accomplished leader in his field and worked with a very big company but they took that away from him. When they took that away, he had nothing left to deal with, hold onto and take forward.
When he came to me, we went through my methodology. I saw him straight away. He was a blubbering mess. A guy with his credentials couldn’t articulate what he was feeling and doing. He was having all sorts of problems. He had no idea what he wanted to go to either. In fact, when I said, “What do you want to do?” He said, “I need to get another job as a CFO of a supermarket chain.” I said, “You want to go back to doing exactly what you did before?” He said, “That’s all I know. I don’t know anything else. I’m good at that.” I said, “Let’s put that aside and talk. Let me take you through my methodology and we’ll go on this journey.”
We did that. Fast forward about two months later, we’ve discovered his why and who. We’ve been going about the reprogramming work to get that from the conscious that develop new neural pathways to get that from the conscious mind into the subconscious mind. We’d be doing that programming. We’ve been working hard. I must say he jumped in. He said, “I’m going to give you everything I’ve got.” He did the work.
Know and understand energy. Learn how you can energetically impact somebody in a really positive way. Click To TweetEverything changed quickly. His relationship with his wife is so much better. For the first time in several years, he was going out and having lunch with his daughter. He had no relationship with his daughter. He never had the time. He was spending time with his daughter. His daughter was saying, “Dad, what’s going on with you? Where’s your magic dust? I want some of that magic dust. It’s good. You’re so much nicer. We can sit down and talk. It’s lovely.” He was having those relationships as well.
He stopped talking about his previous employer. He wasn’t talking about that anymore. He looked at it and said, “I’ve got that in perspective. That was experienced. That’s a good thing.” He saw the positive in it. He started being very positive. He was back at the gym. He’d lost a lot of weight. He was eating well. His skin was glowing. He was smiling. I hadn’t seen him smile through my whole process. He was laughing and joking again. We’d finished our work.
He rang me one day and said, “Glen, I want to talk to you. I’m going for this dream job. Remember you told me I shouldn’t be a CFO anymore? I should be a CEO. I should be running the company. I’ve been going for CEO roles.” I went, “I didn’t know.” He said, “I wanted to sit down, talk to you about this role and what it’s all about. This is my dream job. It’s in an industry that’s very different to supermarkets, very socially focused, very positive and are good for people.” He’s landed there.
I said, “That’s okay. Let’s do a role play. I’ll interview you the way they would interview you.” I’m going to listen carefully to the way you talk about yourself. If it’s not around your why and who you are, I’m going to be pulling you up on that. If you default your CV all the time like everybody does, you don’t want to play that guy talking about CV. That’s not who you are. We did a couple of role play sessions and a bit of corrective work, also defaulting back a bit.
A week later, he rang me and said, “I need to talk to you. It’s important.” I said, “What’s happened?” He said, “I’m standing outside the building. I’ve finished the interview.” I said, “How did it go?” He said, “There was a panel of five people. They kept talking about my CV. I kept elevating the discussion up to what they were buying and that’s me. They’re buying my why and who I really am. I kept saying you can read my CV. I’m happy to talk about specific things but that’s not who I am. I am so much more than that. That’s history and I’m better than my history, a whole lot better.”
He was talking about that and kept going back to his why. “Let me explain to you why I’m here, who I am and what I’ve got to offer here.” The discussion was so unique to this panel. They said they’d never heard anybody talk like that in that way with such confidence, conviction and understanding of self-awareness. He finished the interview. He walked out to the elevator. One of the guys came out from the panel and said, “We’ve talked about it. We want to offer you the job now.”
He went, “Oh, really?” They said, “We don’t even need to think about it anymore. You are a standout candidate. We couldn’t believe the kind of conversation we had with you. It was extraordinary. Everybody was so focused on wanting to tell us about their experience and you didn’t do that at all. We were stunned.” He said, “Glen, I got the job and this is my dream job.” This was $500,000 a year salary, Gary.
It’s extraordinary. One interview, done. He said, “I talked about myself, who I am, what I’ve got to contribute and my passions. When I talked about being sacked from that job, I talked about it openly and honestly. How the experience has made me a better person and why I’ve gone through this journey. They went, ‘You’re in. We want you. You’re the guy who’s going to develop this business and this culture in a way that reflects you. That’s what we want.’”
Instead of what he’s done, he talked about why he does it and who he is.
He hardly talked about the what and the how at all. He talked about the why and who, Gary. Mostly, about the why. He got his narrative going around that. He changed the narrative of the discussion where they said, “Tell us more about this. We want to know more.” He was very clear on it. I had massive clarity and focus around his why and who.
Whenever they deferred back to the what and how, he kept saying, “You can read my CV for that. If there are specific things you want to talk about, I’m happy to talk about them. Quite frankly, that was who I was then. Now, I would probably do that a bit differently. My answer would be different because I am different. I’ve grown a lot since then.” They couldn’t believe how open, vulnerable, passionate and compassionate he was.
What would a statement, a sentence or an introduction sound like if he had started with his why and his who? I don’t know if you could give us that example or maybe your own why and who so that the audience can understand what that would sound like versus just, “I’m a coach. I can help you with your brand strategies.” What would it sound like from the perspective of, “This is why I do what I do and this is who I am?” How do you do that?
I’ll give you an example of mine. I’m happy to do that. This is through my own process and method. I always start with the two words I am. The power of those words is profound. My vision statement, which is my personal why is, “I am the light that awakens people to higher self-realization.” What’s light? Light is love and a very high vibrational energy. It’s not telling, persuading or influencing people. It’s helping them to wake up to who they really are. The waking up is to their higher self-realization.
Realization is, “I’m not thinking it. I’m doing it. It’s happening all around me.” Realization is the impact and influence I’m having on people, the butterfly effect, the results I’m getting in my personal life, relationships, through my reputation and revenue. It always comes back to revenue because I find leaders who do this always make more money. It shouldn’t even be a focus. It’s a natural outcome. They always make more money.
Why more? They attract people who want to be a part of that. They attract the best employees who want to do the best work. They attract the customers because the customers go, “There’s something about this company I like. Therefore, I’m not going to ask them for a discount. I’m not going to question them because this is the way they work.”
Leaders like that have a tendency to develop powerful leading brands to make a whole lot more money. Even if you take that thought away from it, these people are a whole lot better in their relationships, family life, friends, their associates, strategic alliance partners or whoever. They have better relationships. That doesn’t mean they’re passive or at walkover. It means I have better relationships. I know how to handle that stuff in a way that’s quite positive, as opposed to, “This is not working for me. I’m going to throw a tantrum, go into command and control and get aggressive.” It doesn’t work that way. People don’t do that once they get that.
My why statement is, “I am the light that awakens people to higher self-realization.” I have a purpose statement that sits underneath that as well. My particular model has the vision, the North star. My purpose statement is, “Why am I getting out of bed every morning to get me on the fastest possible track to that North Star? What’s my purpose?” My purpose is I am empowering people to be in heart lead conscious success flow.
What’s flow? It’s effortless. I don’t have to work at it. It’s not a struggle. There’s no frustration. There’s none of that stuff or those low vibrational energies. I am in flow. I know Americans call it in the zone. When I’m in the zone, I mean flow. I’m in this state of effortless flow. I talk a lot to the people I work with about the effortless flow of productivity. Don’t be busy. Be productive. How you be productive? Be in the state of flow. When you’re in flow, that’s when your creativity and imagination are working at its best. That’s when you’re problem solving. You’re getting solutions that come to you. You do your best work when your creativity and imagination are released.
What happens with most leaders is they’re suffering stress, anxiety and depression. They’re in fear. What happens when you’re in fear? You go into your reptilian brain, that primordial brain. What’s the primordial brain? Fight, freeze or flight. What happens when all the blood flows from your prefrontal cortex, your executive function to your primordial brain, your reptilian brain? All the creativity and imagination shuts down. You go into fear and protection.
That’s why you see a lot of intelligent people in this pandemic are in fear and doing crazy things. They’re in fight, freeze or flight. They can’t solve problems with their creative and imaginative mind. It’s shut down, so it’s not working. How do you make sure that you’re a great leader and you have great people working for you? You empowered them to their higher why. The higher why is not a state of fear. There’s no fear.
Everybody has the opportunity to be a leader. Be the leader in your own life. Click To TweetThis is the last question I got for you. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given or you’ve ever given?
The best piece of advice would be this. Stop spending money on personal development. Don’t go get another degree. Don’t do further training and coaching. Find your why first. It is essential and fundamental. There is nothing more important because everything else comes from that. Once you find your why, what happens is you then understand what further development work you need to do to take you on the direction of your why.
Then you can say, “This is the further training and education I need to do. This is the coach or the person I need to work with that’s going to help me most to go on that journey and that direction towards my why, my North star.” I’ve worked in Chicago and New York for twelve months on two separate occasions. I do know and understand in some respects the American culture, the American psyche and the American business because I’ve worked with a lot of leaders there. To me, save that money. Don’t spend any more money at all on that. Get to your why first.
Once you get to that why, what happens is clarity, focus and meaning, then what happens is this journey of fulfillment and joy because you’re doing what you love, which is right for you, which is around your why. That’s the best piece of advice I would give for you, Gary, which I already know you’ve done all this well. For anybody that reads or wants to work with you, it’s crucial. It doesn’t get any more important. This is my final statement if we had a planet that knew their why, we would have a planet in absolute productive, joyful harmony.
Glen, if there’s somebody reading this that would love to connect with you, wants to work with you, wants to hire you, any of those things, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?
They could find out more about me at my website. My website is simply BrandHeartMethod.com. You could go there and find how you can contact me. You can find out more about the work that I’m doing. By the way, it’s very simpatico with your work, Gary, which I loved. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. “I want to have a chat with Gary. It’s going to be great. I can’t wait. He’s a kindred spirit.” I love kindred spirits who are out there trying to help the world in a way that’s profoundly positive. You told me about your journey, which I loved. Your journey from being a dentist to where you are, which is an extraordinary shift. I want to say I love your work, Gary. You’re a treasure to the planet. Keep going.
I appreciate that, Glen. Thank you so much. Thank you for doing your best thinking with us. I look forward to staying in touch as we go on our journey because I know you take a lot of what we do and you go even deeper. You help people manifest that, bring it to their world and see it in the right light. Thank you for being that light that awakens the soul of the people around you.
Thank you, Gary. I appreciate the time. This is a great conversation.
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It’s time for our new segment, which is Guess The Why. I want to pick somebody that I’m thinking most of you know. If you’ve seen the TV series Breaking Bad, it was filmed right here in Albuquerque. It’s funny driving around town. You see so many of the scenes and places that were in the TV series. The one I want you to think about is Walter White. What do you think Walter White’s why is?
I’ll tell you what I think it is. Even though he did a lot of wrong stuff, I think his why is right way, to do things the right way in order to get results. At the beginning, he was appalled by the way things were being done and he was on the side of good but then he rationalized the right way and that it was the right thing to do to make meth in order to make money to pay for what he needed to pay for.
He got way too deep into it but he was always still about doing things right, doing them the right way, creating the structure and processes around getting a predictable result. That’s what I think his why is. What do you think it is? Thank you so much for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you could do so at WhyInstitute.com. You can use the code PODCAST50 and you can get it for half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe below. Leave us a review and rating on whatever platform that you’re using. Thank you and have a great time.
Important Links:
- Clemenger BBDO
- Saatchi & Saatchi
- Leo Burnett
- Brandheart
- Woolworths Supermarkets
- Ideaworks
- WPP Global Group
- Emotional Intelligence
About Glen Campbell
Glen started his career with degrees in Commerce and Psychology. He alsohas a Masters in NLP and Hypnotherapy.
Overa period of 27 years Glen has been a Director and Chief Executive of some ofthe world’s best and brightest brand strategy and communications companies likeClemenger BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett across four continents.
Twelveyears ago, he created Brandheart and developed unrivaled methods for Leader’sBest Self Identity and Organizational Brand Identity.
Inthis time, he has worked with over 500 business leaders and entrepreneurs from aroundthe world in developing their personal and organizational brands and the resultshave been nothing less than transformational.
Glen’s unique and proven method ispara-disciplinary in nature: it’s a harmonious fusion of his 30 years of extensiveexperience, the latest in leadership research, a unique brand identity model, Neuroscience,Quantum Physics, eastern and western philosophy and spirituality.
Glen is considered a worldleading authority in empowering people to profound higher self realization inthe business and life.