In this episode of The Get Shit Done Experience, hosted by John Morris, the focus is on intentionality, leadership, personal discipline, and getting shit done. Our guest, Pete Durand, dives deep into his role as the CGO of Instrumentum, a company revolutionizing the sterilization of surgical instruments within hospitals. Pete’s combination of experience, strategic thinking, and unwavering work ethic shines throughout the discussion, providing valuable insights for listeners.
Pete discusses the complex yet essential operations at Instrumentum, including the pressing need for specialized sterilization services and the importance of adhering to rigorous standards. This episode doesn’t just stick to professional endeavors; it weaves through personal anecdotes, touching on how Pete balances work with family life and instills strong values in his children. The conversation broadens to discuss societal observations, such as the need for accountability, intentional parenting, and the disappearance of basic courtesies, emphasizing the foundational principles that guide both personal and professional success.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Discipline and Consistency: Pete attributes a significant part of his success to the consistent discipline of daily routines, combining physical fitness and spiritual practices.
- Intentional Parenting: Pete discusses the vital role parents play in shaping children by setting examples of respect, responsibility, and hard work.
- Instrumentum’s Vision: The core mission of Instrumentum is to relieve hospitals from the complexities of sterilizing surgical instruments, allowing them to focus on patient care and expand efficiently.
- Networking and Personal Branding: Strategies for job seekers and professionals on leveraging LinkedIn and consistent content creation to build a personal brand and attract opportunities.
- Handling Adversity: The importance of responding constructively to life’s challenges, whether in personal setbacks or professional struggles, by maintaining a forward-thinking and positive attitude.
QUOTES
- “There’s a strong chance you’re not that far off from winning in business and at the game of life. It just takes one idea, but you gotta have unwavering belief and burning desire.”
- “They get shit done. So welcome to the get shit done experience.”
- “For us, it’s our entire business. Our teams, they’re our champions, and we can’t ever screw it up. We have to do it perfectly every time.”
- “Discipline is far more important than motivation. Motivation is fleeting. Discipline is cement.”
- “Making something intentional, whether it’s your faith, learning a new skill, education, or giving back, you have to be intentional about it.”
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[00:00:00] John Morris: There’s a strong chance you’re not that far off from winning in business and at the game of life. It just takes one idea, but you gotta have unwavering belief and burning desire. If you can couple that with a lockdown strategy, that’s fueled by heart, hustle and muscle, you got a shot at winning. There’s one thing that all champions have in common.
[00:00:21] They get shit done. So welcome to the get shit done experience.
[00:00:29] Yup. We are back. You are insane. This is the get shit done experience. We also call it the GSDX podcast. we are here today with Pete Duran. He is the third member of Duran Is that true? Third member? I’m a founding member. Founding member. Kicked out early in the band. His bass skills were not strong enough.
[00:00:50] He also couldn’t grow the, the big feathered hair. I’m like the drummer and the Beatles before me go star. There’s no one. Remember? Absolutely. Absolutely. and I gotta tell you, talk about a guy who’s been getting shit done. Let’s go. We’re talking about the CEO of crucible partners, which is an amazing firm that he still is the founder and operator of.
[00:01:12] But he’s on this new endeavor that is just absolutely going next level where he’s the CGO of instrumentum right out of Boca Raton, but going like international baby, let’s take it to the next level. And that’s exactly what Pete was brought on to do. You probably know Pete from LinkedIn because if there is anyone that gives his heart to And soul every single day to all of his following, which is up to about 16, 000 people.
[00:01:39] if you’re not following him, I don’t know, maybe set an alarm, wake up. I don’t know. He’s all over LinkedIn, but if you’re looking for inspiration that is substantive. you’ve got to follow Pete. I don’t know if I could say enough great things about you. You’ve been there for me in tough moments.
[00:01:57] You’ve been a cheerleader for me and really great moments. And I could not be more excited that you are here in studio with us today, Pete. Oh man. It’s,
[00:02:05] Pete Durand: it’s an honor. It’s an honor to be here. Oh, come on. It’s also great to see the progress, man. For those people that are hopefully are watching this is this guy’s like half the size he was less.
[00:02:14] John Morris: Yeah, man. I got to tell you, 40 pounds, right? Intermittent fasting, quit drinking, quit smoking, been hitting golf balls every day. It’s, and your golf game is pretty wicked now, too. I just won the club championship. Come on. Let’s go. I don’t think I could even beat your caddy. No, you could definitely beat a caddy with those muscles.
[00:02:33] Pete Durand: Last time I played with a caddy was in, it was Keough Island, South Carolina. And I, we’ve gone down there. A friend of mine has a place where we’ve played with caddies a few times. So I’ve gotten to know these guys. And I always ask them, like, how many times do you say, oh, no, I’ve seen a worse shot than that.
[00:02:48] Yeah.
[00:02:48] John Morris: And no, that was the
[00:02:49] Pete Durand: worst
[00:02:50] John Morris: shot I’ve ever seen. So I got fired as a caddie at 15 years old. Because at 15, I was like a three handicap, right? So I’m playing, I’m at this, prominent course called Windstone. It’s in Barrington. And, this guy’s, I’m watching his game. We’re on like the 14th hole and he’s got to carry 220 over water, right?
[00:03:08] He goes, give me the four iron. I’m like, sir, it’s a three wood. He’s give me the four iron. But didn’t even come close, like 20 yards short in the water, just plopped in. And we get into the clubhouse, the caddy master goes, this is your last day, I guess he went in, he didn’t getting, He didn’t like the fact that a 15 year old was like, Sir, you need to hit the three wood.
[00:03:30] I didn’t caddy after that, we went to bag boy. I was taking anything this guy would tell me. Yeah, right? I
[00:03:35] Pete Durand: mean Anything. The guy’s a caddying for a reason. Oh, and he was, he’s really a good dude. and he did. sometimes people, when they try to teach you how to play golf, they’re trying to give you four or five tips at once.
[00:03:46] And you just can’t, no, you can’t process that. No. So he waited literally like 16 holes. And then he said to me, dude, you hit the ball as far as Bryson Chambeau, but you just have no idea where the hell it’s going to go. That’s true. So just cut down on the swing, maybe. He gave me one tip, like literally how to position my feet and my hands.
[00:04:05] He’s just try this one thing. Okay. And, it was like a four iron and I hit it. Like 2. 30. Geez. Right down the middle of the fairway. Okay. He goes, see what I’m talking about. I’m like, here’s the problem. I won’t do that again until I’m here with you next time. Yeah, you gotta, because you gotta remember it, right?
[00:04:21] It’s the repetition. No way. And I got, I finally got new clubs after, the clubs I got out of college. And I don’t play it by the way. I don’t play golf. Yeah. My boy, you’re like a triathlete, right? you do all that stuff. I just don’t, it’s one of, I play, I don’t mind. I love to play when a friend calls and says, let’s go, I’ll go, but it’s not something I would ever wake up and doing my, both my boys love it.
[00:04:41] they would play 36 if they could. And they’re both very good golfers. I got fitted and I, and the guy’s let’s take a couple of swings with the cameras, in the whole studio and see what you got. And he goes, all right, we’re going to work on getting your hip back. Through faster.
[00:04:55] Okay. And that’ll change your swing. And you should be able to hit your seven iron 195. I’m like, dude, there’s no, you go, we’re going to get you in 15 minutes. I was hitting my seven hour. Here’s what you need to do. Pete, for the next three weeks, I want you to go practice an hour a day. And I said, I’m not doing that.
[00:05:10] He goes, we’re done. Yeah. it’s we’re done. I don’t have an hour day to do that. There you go. Put it this way. I choose not to make an hour a day. Exactly. I’m doing other things. but, it’s great to be here. love the fact that you’ve got this new format. you’re thriving with it.
[00:05:26] The content’s awesome. And I think she, this is what you need to be doing.
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[00:06:10] Peace of mind, powerful innovation. TTSG. com. Yeah, I appreciate it. This is, it’s been a ride. Thankful to Tim Ward for, granting me the opportunity to do this and, the team here has been, thriving, but this is about you, Pete, you’ve been thriving like crazy. last time I, talked to you, like in depth, talk to you, you had just gotten the phone call from the folks at instrumentum and, you, you had accepted the opportunity.
[00:06:41] Yeah. Yeah. And it there were some, boundaries like, Hey, look, I’ve got this great thing going with crucible. I’ve got a fantastic family and wife. And they were like, look, you’re awesome. Let’s go. They’re very flexible and have given you all the tools to go do what you do, which is fantastic. So let’s talk a little bit about what it is.
[00:07:00] First off, what does the brand do? What’s the problem that you’re solving? And then where are you playing a part in driving it to international level?
[00:07:10] Pete Durand: I found out about Instrumentum through a friend of mine who’d been in the surgical instrument space for 30 years, worked at Stryker and knew the space well, and a friend of my wife’s family, and he said, there’s this company in a Boca Raton that I think you could help.
[00:07:23] they’re a startup. They’re going to build a leadership team and the space and, you might be the right person to help them do that. So I, through a couple of meetings, I met the leadership team and the founding CEO who was with the small investment firm that started the company.
[00:07:35] And, and the plan was I would just help them hire a team. And after about the third meeting, he said to me, he goes, I don’t, know that we want you to hire the team. I want you to come run the company. that changed the direction of the conversation. And this is one of those rare people in companies that I thought they’ve really got something here.
[00:07:53] And, quick summary is when you have a total knee or a hip replacement or almost any kind of a, what I’ll call elective surgery, there’s an implant, like a knee. You get a new knee. Yeah. Or you get a new hip and there’s a bunch of titanium instruments they used to cut you open. Okay. And move your leg around and your hip around to put it in there.
[00:08:13] And it’s about, 50 to $80,000 worth of titanium, about a hundred pounds worth of stuff. And it has to be cleaned after you’re done. Oh lord. Yeah. And it’s, who gets that job? there’s a thing called an SBD or sterile processing department that gets that job. Okay. And it’s a nasty job, but the people that do it.
[00:08:31] they’re, they have a passion for it. And it’s incredibly important. It’s a critical backbone of the hospital system or certainly talk about cost control. You got to reuse those and they got to be really clean, right? So there’s a cleaning process, a decontamination process than a sterilization process.
[00:08:46] And long story short, when hospitals were built 40, 50 years ago, They didn’t contemplate the number or the volume of total knee and hip elective surgeries that are out there now. So most of their SPD departments are understaffed, undersized, and under equipped. And they don’t have a lot of room left in the hospital to expand it.
[00:09:03] And it’s not something that’s, it’s not a, it’s not a revenue generator. It’s like we have to have it, but we don’t really like it. So it’s not at the top of the list of priorities. It’s not. And the people that work there know that they’re treated pretty poorly. we recognized that an opportunity to outsource that and take it off site.
[00:09:23] And the real difference is for us, it’s our entire business, right? So our teams, they’re, our champions and we can’t ever screw it up. So we have to do it perfectly every time. So we built facilities that are world class. we put the best equipment in, we hire the best people, we train them, and we just do it right every time.
[00:09:43] And, it’s like outsourcing anything. Outsourcing a website, outsourcing your copy places, anything you guys do, most people are like, I didn’t even know that
[00:09:50] John Morris: was a thing. We’re in a specialization world right now, too. if you look at, athletics, right? Yeah. I was driving in, they’re talking about, cuts for the Bears, and what are they gonna do?
[00:10:00] And it’s this wide receiver can also return punts and can return kicks and probably will be the prominent person for that. So it’s if you can do one thing well, but you specialize in this element, it increases your odds. And I think businesses are going to that, whether it’s people within the business or the overall business.
[00:10:22] It sounds like that’s exactly the play is this is a specialization. That’s a need. I know for a fact the bears, I know what the bears are going to do this year. They’re going to stop herself. I know you’re a packer. You don’t have to hurt feelings. your Rogers isn’t there. So
[00:10:36] Pete Durand: we’ll see.
[00:10:36] We got some love though, man. We got, yeah, you do. speaking of specialization, you’re a golfer there. I’ve got a good friend of mine who’s a golf coach for some of the pros in the PGA. And there’s a swing coach, a mental coach, putting coach. So they, they’re specialized. Exactly. I, you’re right.
[00:10:55] Early on when, I talked to them, I, had, I would say semi retired in North Carolina. I have a wonderful family and a grandson and a granddaughter on the way. So
[00:11:04] John Morris: if you’re watching this, Pete is older than he looks. Okay. this is a guy who’s physically fit.
[00:11:12] Pete Durand: it’s, I have, fortunately, my kids keep me moving and, and they’re all athletic.
[00:11:16] So they, they make it a, They’ve set a good example. In fact, my son, who just started at Ernst Young in New York, in Manhattan, downtown, texted me at 6 a. m. from the gym with his buddy. Good for him. He was at work till 9. 30 last night. He goes, getting it done, dad. I’m like, that’s my boy. he might, maybe he should be on the Catch Shit Done Experience.
[00:11:33] He should be. He’s, he’s a really good golfer. So is his brother. In fact, my oldest son, I was in, here in Chicago with him. Okay. His firm is doing our site selection, our next facilities. So I was touring around Chicago with my oldest son and his firm. That’s so cool. It’s really cool to do. Yeah. It’s all connecting for you right now when you do business with your kids.
[00:11:50] It’s really cool. Yeah. So yeah, we’re having a, we’re having a lot of fun. There’s a lot of opportunity in this business and getting shit done is the rule of the day for us. Yeah.
[00:12:00] John Morris: so I know the specialization, I know the importance and I also know that it seems to me that People are, electing to have this type of surgery and not suffer, like, generations of people suffered.
[00:12:13] I remember the first time I think I heard about a hip replacement was Ditka, right? Ditka had the, the hip replacement. And now it seems like, There’s 12 people in my neighborhood that are, going through a knee replacement or whatever. So it’s a very prominent thing. It’s becoming a big market for this.
[00:12:30] And most
[00:12:31] Pete Durand: people that I’ve talked to that had a total hip, I’m like, why didn’t I do this 10 years ago? Hip is actually is easier to recover from than a knee surgery. Interesting. Yeah. You can recover really quickly from hip surgery and you’re right. It’s an elective surgery. So for us, it allows us to, Be a little more predictable on how we run our business.
[00:12:47] We run a 24 operation Monday through Friday. We’re getting a lot more requests to do some things over the weekend. and there’s, it’s a complex business cause the people that make the knees and the hips, they have these instruments that they let the hospital use or the hospital buys them. And they’re involved in this supply chain and create some intentional tension in the marketplace by not having enough instruments out there.
[00:13:09] So we can, most instrument sets are used maybe three to four times a month. Imagine having. 80, 000 of titanium sitting in a hospital and only used once a week with our system. We can probably use it two to three times a week, which is a much better utilization of all the assets. He’s
[00:13:27] John Morris: going to get better return on that investment immediately.
[00:13:29] So you’re running a hospital, you’re thinking to yourself, if I’m spending this much money on this, how do I use it as often as possible to get the max return? And you’re providing, you’re essentially providing that gateway. You would think. You would think. You would. But why? So why the hesitation for folks?
[00:13:47] Why is it? Is it because they haven’t heard about it yet? They are not aware of it. Is that your role right now? You’re trying to create the awareness.
[00:13:54] Pete Durand: Awareness is one thing. I think in most of the markets that we’re in, when people find out where they’re like, Oh my God, I can’t believe this is even a thing.
[00:14:01] I would love to talk to you. There’s kind of three customers out there. there’s a hospital system or a surgery center that just spent 10 million on their heart. Sterilization department. I’m very proud of it. It’s beautiful. They probably didn’t design it properly. There’s a difference between capacity and actual throughput, and it has to do with how you staff it and how you run it.
[00:14:21] So they, it’s probably good, but could be better. It’s probably not staffed appropriately and their processes could use some help, but they just spend a bunch of money. So look, I got the timings off. I got this new thing.
[00:14:33] John Morris: And if you make a new decision, you look bad about the first one. So you’re also, they’re also protecting their own assets, if you will.
[00:14:39] Correct.
[00:14:40] Pete Durand: And, they might, if they continue to grow their business, they’re still going to need to think about how they expand it. The second group are people who don’t know they have a problem, right? And they’re, ignoring it. It may be there. They’re not hearing about it. And if they are, they’re just saying we’re good.
[00:14:55] And to those folks, I don’t have, I don’t want to sell them. look, when you have a problem, you come call us, but they’re not going to try to convince you. Cause this is not a. You can’t convince somebody of this. It’s not a cost savings, right? You’re going to shift money from one place to another and you still need your own SPD for trauma and emergency work.
[00:15:11] The third customers are ones that are in a really tough spot right now. They, are, they’re at capacity. They’ve had an incident. they’ve had, somebody and there was an infection in the O R and something bad happened and they know where it came from, even though they don’t want to admit it.
[00:15:25] And it takes about an hour and 20 minutes, give or take, depending on the surgery and the instrument sets to sterilize a set of instruments properly. Most of them are doing it for about 20 to 30. Wow. And you don’t want to, you don’t want to see. No, you don’t want to see. I’ve been in a lot of hospital now and surgery.
[00:15:41] So you don’t want to see what the respite departments are like is. Yeah. I can walk in and in 15 minutes go, you guys are way out of compliance. You guys are running with scissors. It’s just a matter of time. I would say 80 percent of the hospitals and surgery centers fall into that category. And we know we want to help.
[00:15:58] And by the way, they’re, all good people. They want to do the right things. This is not intentional. They just, they ended up here. So when they find out there’s an outlet and we start to partner with them very quickly, we realize that they, we want to do the right thing. We want to help them and we want to do it right.
[00:16:11] And then that gives them some confidence and relief that these surgeries are going to come off without an incident.
[00:16:17] John Morris: So let’s get into some of the brass tacks of you, you get this role. You come in, I would imagine there’s a stage where you start analyzing how we’re going to grow this thing. Yeah.
[00:16:26] So walk us through a little bit of like, when you did your analysis and you said, okay, number one, we have to do this. Number two, we’re going to do this number three. And you set the pillars you set. I would imagine there was core values and those things and principles already set up. So we’re focused more on the growth part.
[00:16:42] Like how are we going to penetrate the market? How are we going to create awareness and how are we going to get people into, I don’t know, is it a sample process? Hey, do a sample or how are we doing? How are we going about creating the growth? I was fortunate.
[00:16:55] Pete Durand: The guy that I worked for Dan Johnson, who’s the founding CEO is a, he’s a real visionary guy.
[00:17:00] So he’s thinking 18 months out. And he’s willing to get on the road and an airplane and a car and talk to a competitor, a customer, anyone or a partner. He will talk to anybody and share the vision. And he has a philosophy that we will do it right every time. That’s a good core value.
[00:17:16] There’s no, and there’s every instrument comes with a set of instructions. It called an IFU instruction for you. So it says you have to soak it for this long in this chemical and then this long in this chemical and this ultrasonic. Most hospitals don’t even have an ultrasonic. So they’re not even doing that.
[00:17:31] We have built every part of our operation to do it. Like literally by the letter. We have electronics in place to track the instrument sets. So they know that we spent this much time and you in our company, you’d be fired if you don’t. There’s not a disciplinary. You’re gone. Yeah. So for me, I needed to learn a, the industry, I needed to learn you would hit it right.
[00:17:49] The analysis. So I’m a spreadsheet guy. So I built some pretty elaborate models to model out how we do what we do and then how instruments are used for the, you. the OEM manufacturers to determine what would be the impact if we turn the instruments faster from a dollar’s perspective. Once I got my arms around that, I went and stress tested it with our partners and with customers and said, here’s our assumptions.
[00:18:11] Here’s the toggles we built, help us get it right. So we did, we’ve honed it down to the point where we know almost down to the penny when it costs for us to sterilize an instrument. And most people don’t really know. and then from, I, once my initial first seven or eight months was to get the first facility out of the ground.
[00:18:27] We acquired a facility here in Chicago that’s up and running and doing incredibly well. Our team came up and just flipped it on its head. And the people that we’ve acquired that, we recognize had the same values that stuck around. We had to make some changes there too. It was difficult. once we’ve got the operational stuff in place, I shifted my role from a CEO.
[00:18:45] I was where I came on board to a CGO to the growth side of the business. And to your point, what do we need to do? it’s a very interesting business. And for guys like you, you’re a juggernaut, right? You’re like, you vibrate through walls. You got to be moving. This is a long sales cycle and it’s a strange sales cycle because we have, we can’t sell unless we got a building in the ground.
[00:19:07] Yeah. So it’s not like I can sell this, build it, put up a website and sell it in an hour. Yeah. Yeah. This is not B2C. No. I literally say, Hey, I’d like to help you sterilize your instruments. great. I need help now. I got to go build a building first here in Provo. We’ll come back and talk to you in 12 months.
[00:19:23] that’s a very awkward discussion. So we’ve built a very complex. And in depth go to market strategy where we market nationally for branding and we haven’t uncorked that yet. That’s coming, to build tier point awareness, the brand, and then we sell like crazy locally. So we will pre sell a market.
[00:19:44] Get enough demand, drop a facility and anchor it and then expand around that facility. So versus building one big one here in Chicago, we’re probably going to build four. Okay. So we’ve got one in Elmhurst right up the street. So we, we’ve got you surrounded type thing. Yes. Because the logistics are the biggest challenge.
[00:20:01] Getting these things back. How fast can you move it back and forth? And they have to be in certain trucks with environmental controls. It’s very complex. So the logistics are, a challenge. And, we were doing site selection in downtown Chicago yesterday in thinking about how trucks get on off the freeways, how employees get off the CTA, maneuvering around the building, what’s the environment like?
[00:20:21] So that’s a, the growth part of our business is very physical and there’s a lot of capital involved. What’s been the most fun for you? I know you like to tackle new projects. we were talking before we started recording. I hadn’t put pants on in four years, John. Yeah, unless I went to church. We got some calls from your neighbors.
[00:20:38] It’s been weird. It has been awkward for them. I worked from my house starting COVID. I built my own practice. I was able to work from home and I am fairly disciplined. So that was okay for me. I don’t mind it. I loved it. So I wasn’t sure if I’d be happy. living part time in Boca versus Raleigh where we’re based and, then spending now time in Chicago and California.
[00:21:00] I’m all over the place. I’m in an airplane every week this year, working in, in, I think you’re the biggest thing that’s been a pleasant surprise is working with a team again. Yeah. I have,
[00:21:10] John Morris: I know your team at crucible is small, right? But they’re efficient, powerful and doing their thing. And now you’ve got that turnkey.
[00:21:16] Yep. So you’re almost just advising.
[00:21:19] Pete Durand: exactly. And we’ve great thing is, we’re, doing a lot of hiring. Yeah, an instrument and we’ll hire 45, 50 people per facility. Wow. So we’ll hire a couple thousand people in the next couple of years. And I was able to take the recruiting model and literally drop it in.
[00:21:34] And we got a woman that runs it for instrument. she is absolutely a stud and has. Taking this to the next level. It’s, actually, I think, a core piece of IP for us. What we’ve built, we built a talent pipeline that everybody thought couldn’t be done in the industry. And she’s an incredible good first impression for the company.
[00:21:50] She’s upbeat, energetic, very pragmatic, and she just moves people through. And in the amount of time it takes to recruit talent, I don’t think people understand how difficult it is because you need to spend time interviewing. Finding people’s one thing, finding talent is another thing. It’s very, it’s a very different thing.
[00:22:07] I also work with a group of people who, and it’s funny when we interview someone and I’ll sit down with Dan and we’ll, for specific leadership roles, he and I get heavily involved. And I’ve said, that’s a nice person, but I don’t think they can dig a ditch. And he knows what I mean. When we, before we launched a new, our first facility, we realized we hadn’t built in enough capacity in our, it’s what called our decounter.
[00:22:32] So we took this gorgeous, pristine facility. And we cut it up. We cut up all the concrete in the floors. We taped off everything with plastic, like incredibly detailed and tight and dug five feet holes, five foot holes in the ground and redid all the plumbing and then put a hole, patch it all back up, put all new equipment in.
[00:22:53] And myself and three or four of the people were in the ground digging the holes just to move the schedule ahead. Like literally, we can’t wait for this guy. Let’s do it ourselves. What if we, did the plumbing? What if it, so literally we’re in these holes digging it and nobody flinched, not a single person that room flinched.
[00:23:09] They were in there digging holes and doing whatever our SPD team was sweeping and mopping and dusting and cleaning. Whatever needed to be done that whole team. I’ve got a team I’ll go to war with now. That’s, the most
[00:23:23] John Morris: exciting thing. I’d love for you to enlighten people here on this. So you’ve got this business that’s recruiting and a lot of your content creation you’re putting out there is talking about how somebody should go into an interview process, how somebody should approach that.
[00:23:43] You’re also talking to the other side of the equation of how they should look at people and make their determination and decision on what’s the right type of person. And you’re cruising along in life. you don’t need to do this. Yeah. So what is the, like the turning point? Like, how do you get discovered in that you weren’t looking for it?
[00:24:01] Like, how did, you get discovered to, to come and take a company that’s in, what, in a seed process and is in, a development process and. All of a sudden they give you a call and now this company is going to have a thousand employees hired in the next, 18 months or whatever you’ll appreciate this.
[00:24:22] Pete Durand: So you, if you’re on LinkedIn at all and you hear people like yourself, John Alex Sheridan, and there’s dozens of other people that talk about, you have to put in the time early from a content perspective and not worry about the numbers. You just got to do it every day. Just do it every day. The algorithm is going to kick you in the teeth at least once a week where your post is going to get zero traction.
[00:24:43] John Morris: Even when you have a following? Correct. you will go through these waves? Yep. Where you hit another level, but all of a sudden it’s just not kicking, and then it kicks again, and then you go to another level, and it just, it’s interesting.
[00:24:56] Pete Durand: And, you mentioned this earlier, my content is, I probably don’t follow, the right procedures to make this work.
[00:25:04] Alex Sheridan is a good friend. In fact, I had dinner with Alex. He’s got it mastered. Yeah, he does. And he’s, cause he’s niched down super hard. He has the same message consistently every day. He’s doing, he knows his message so well. And dude, when we, we got caught up last night, the level that he’s taking this and the amount of content he’s putting out is ridiculous.
[00:25:24] It works. for me, I had to, when I started posting content, I was like, everybody had posted and then look at the numbers. How’s he doing? And I’d be like, man, I stopped doing that. No, just get it out. and, I don’t, there’s enough people on LinkedIn that say, Hey, look how great I am.
[00:25:39] I started a business. I’ve got 25, 000 followers. I’m, I’m rich and this is all, they don’t need any more what I’ll call inspiration and motivation and, I’m not that guy. So I typically try to share things I’ve learned from others, which has been very helpful. Hey, I observed this in a leader or I saw this company do this and I thought it was very valuable here.
[00:25:57] I’m going to share it with you. That’s been good because that makes me feel a little more. I can sleep at night because that’s a little more authentic. If I was sharing the things I’ve done well, it would be about a week long. It would literally be five episodes. You’d run out.
[00:26:10] John Morris: I’m good. I’ve done everything.
[00:26:11] Yeah. see, I have the ability to share things that I’ve done well because I keep messing up. Yeah. So I’m able to, talk about how I messed up and now I dug out of that again. Here I am. I messed up again and I dug out of it. I think
[00:26:26] Pete Durand: it’s interesting. My recruiting business continues to grow because of the content that I’ve put out for four years.
[00:26:31] Yeah. So customers show up because there may be a post resonated with them. I had, I’ve got, in fact, this week I got two great messages from people that I’ve worked with over the last four years. And, my wife and I talked a lot about, what can we do to give back? What can we do to, you get involved with your church, you can volunteer, you can do whatever.
[00:26:52] I have accepted for years if someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn or a friend or anyone refers anyone to me, I will take their call no matter who it is. I will take their call and most of them are have lost their job or transitioning. Some people are very successful, want to look at their next career and I will talk to them.
[00:27:09] And I will be very objective. Sometimes they don’t expect to be as be objective as I am because I want them to know what the reality of the situation is. So a couple of people have sent me notes recently saying, Hey, that conversation or the three or four conversations really changed my life.
[00:27:25] And here’s what I’m doing now. That’s the most heartwarming thing in the world. That’s it. And the fact that someone took the time literally in their busy life to write me a short note of thank you, to me, that’s a better reflection of that person because there’s a lot of people you run across in life that forget to say thank you.
[00:27:44] And when someone says thank you to me, that just says that person has a lot of a lot going on.
[00:27:49] John Morris: Why are we in that world right now? I think that I just look at it. I’m just going to go to golf because I because that’s where I am. And so yeah. 20 years ago, when I’d go play around a golf, there’d be one, maybe one ball mark left on a green, right?
[00:28:06] I’d go and fix it. Now I go, there’s 8, 9, 10 ball marks on the green. It’s like nobody is paying attention that there’s groups behind them. Yeah, that now have to play that whole and you’ve left landmines for them. So that’s an analogy, but I think it’s happening in life. People don’t hold doors. People don’t say thank you.
[00:28:31] there’s, not a whole lot of yes. Yes, please. Thank you. May I, don’t hear a lot of these little basic principles. Why? What
[00:28:41] Pete Durand: happened while we’re going to go in a different direction, the podcast, but a place I go a lot of mine in, in a place that’s personally very important for me. I think parenting is a lost art.
[00:28:53] Yeah, it comes from parenting and then you can’t point anywhere else but parenting. And I had this discussion literally was I was writing with a gentleman yesterday who young dad, He’s got a two year old son. He’s got a little baby girl on the way. my daughter and her husband in the same situation and they’re wonderful parents and they’ve got to figure it out.
[00:29:11] But, his, son’s about ready to go to preschool. And I said, now you’re, now your kid’s going to be raised by other kids parents. He’s yeah, he, goes, I can’t believe 80 percent of the kids in this place are little terrors. There’s no, please. There’s no, thank you. There’s no politeness.
[00:29:31] There’s no ability to stay focused. when I was little, we went to church, pick your church, never miss church, never missed and guess what you had to do. We had to sit in church quietly for an hour and kids fidgeted, whatever, but after crying room, no, but after about a week or two, you just did it.
[00:29:50] John Morris: Yeah.
[00:29:50] Pete Durand: And guess what? Incredible life lesson. Now your kid knows how to sit still for an hour. Three or four years before they’re going to go to school, they can sit still and listen to an adult talk. People are like, Oh, trust me, people, your job is their parent. Your job is not to be their buddy. And, we talked about when, and by the way, a lot of parents both work now.
[00:30:14] Whatever, that’s fine. My wife stayed home and it’s the greatest thing. I’ve greatest gift to our family. She’s the world’s. She’s a professional mother. And if anybody thinks that wasn’t a tough job, she raised three kids. And then when our kids were in middle school, her parents fell ill and she took care of both of her parents, the same literally at the same in an incredible effort of, selflessness.
[00:30:38] And, she just, yeah. Was so attentive, but if you’re both working and you come home and you get your kids from daycare, there’s a little guilt. I haven’t seen my kids all day. So whatever they want, I’m going to give them. Yeah. I’m not going to say no. Or you give them the iPad. You give them the iPad because it’s just easier.
[00:30:53] Yeah. They got a TV in the room. They got a computer in the room and they have a social, they have a, a smartphone when those things become them. Parents, you’re done. If you don’t know what is in your kid’s mind, because they’re absorbed in a screen somewhere, out of sight, out of mind, it’s just easier for you, and that’s what a lot of people do, you’re screwed.
[00:31:12] And if your little kid does something they’re not supposed to do, grabs this, stick their finger in an outlet, and you’re sitting there after a long day, and you say, don’t do that, Johnny. And the kid looks at you and does it anyhow, and you don’t get up and address it, you’re lost. Try doing it when they’re 16.
[00:31:28] You gotta do it right then and there. Impossible. If you do it when they’re then and there, they just know when mommy and daddy say stop. I’m supposed to stop. And I don’t even understand why that is. I just know that’s how it is. to your point, why, are people not fixing their divots? Why, because they just have not been raised to, they’ve never been held accountable.
[00:31:47] They don’t know what it’s like to have a job. They don’t They’ve never been told, that’s wrong, Johnny. You should have stopped and stood to the side and opened the door for that lady. On an airplane last night, I’m getting off the plane 25 year old kid in front of me, this older woman gets out right in front of him and he watched her pull her bag out of the overhead compartment.
[00:32:06] Didn’t you try to help? And I could tell it never even, no, didn’t even cross his mind. Never crossed his mind.
[00:32:14] John Morris: I’m like, how do you not say, can I help you with that, ma’am? And if she says, no, I have it, then you, still are like, let me, just make sure, but Baller. Yeah. But at least you
[00:32:23] Pete Durand: offered nine out of ten women to go, absolutely, yeah, right?
[00:32:28] G. I. Jane wasn’t on the plane. This is a 70 year old woman. Yeah, exactly. I’m just going to throw her shoulder out. To your question, it just, it doesn’t, They’re just not raised that way anymore. there’s no accountability. There’s no responsibility. It’s my fault. I’m a victim now. That’s not every parent.
[00:32:43] I don’t want to generalize. There’s some super amazing people out there who were raised by amazing people, but they’re the minority. Now they are
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[00:33:45] Yep. And I think one of the core principles of getting shit done is you have to be a giver. And I think that you have to. You have to be conscious and self aware of your surroundings. And I think right now people are so in the outer world. They’re, so internal in the outer world instead of, being really focused internally on how you can give to the outer world, how you can make the outer world a better place.
[00:34:10] And this is why I think that people who have those principles, are attractive and stand out brighter than anyone else. They’re like a beacon of light, and then when they come on and they talk about their principles, people like, Oh, my gosh, guess what? Every person I’ve had on the podcast to talk about how they get shit done.
[00:34:29] It’s almost like the same road map. Sure. They all talk about giving. They all talk about getting up early. They all talk about being active. They all talk about saying, thank you, saying, please. Yeah. thinking about others first, the universe works, God works, all these things. They all, talk about the same thing and they’re getting shit done.
[00:34:47] And people are like, why can’t I do that? You can. Unfortunately, you’ve got to peel back layers of not being taught the right way and, being a victim of society. Even though you’re not really a victim, you can take control. but it’s, an awful thing. There is a
[00:35:05] Pete Durand: roadmap. what I have learned the last 30 years is And I use this theme in a lot of my posts.
[00:35:13] I’m a big believer in the word of intentional, intentionality. whether it’s your faith, or whether it’s learning a new skill, or whether it’s education, or giving back. You can’t sit at home and have that happen. No, you need to do some research. You need to challenge your own way of thinking.
[00:35:34] You need to learn. So reading people keep talking about reading, I’m read. I’ve read a couple books, about some of the challenges through world war in, the Holocaust and some of the torture is a book called the nightingale, that my wife read and had me read. And it’s a book I think every high school kid should read.
[00:35:54] And it’s about, yeah. German occupied France and these two sisters, the Germans come in, take over their town, take over their house. And one escapes and goes into the resistance, the other one stays there and takes it for her daughter. And, when you think about somebody whose coffee order is wrong and flips shit on the barista, Yeah, oh my gosh.
[00:36:13] these people suffered, not for days, but for years. the suffering they did mentally, physically, and emotionally, our generation cannot comprehend. No, we have no grace. Zero. a world war can never happen again. I look at our world leaders. Pick your side, whatever you’re on. Their main job is to never, ever let something like that happen again.
[00:36:35] The level of suffering. And again, we, think a bad day is my order was wrong or my boss yelled at me at work today. how can I ever survive? By reading that information, to your point, and learning about the past, and challenging yourself, you start to realize, A, perspective, I got it pretty good, B, these people, most of them, still went out of their way to help others, yeah, that’s your point about grace and generosity, in very difficult times, they thought of others first, so maybe I could, but how do I do that?
[00:37:09] Can I volunteer in a food pantry? Can I help a lady take her bag down? Can I spend some time counseling people? Could you assist a peer at work? Whatever. Can I help a project? can I raise my hand and say, I’ll do it. Whatever organization you’re part of, there’s always looking for the team.
[00:37:26] Most churches, 20 percent of the people do all the work, right? Same thing with most companies. Yeah. 99 percent of the people raise the bar. Intentionality and then the behaviors you mentioned about getting up early, exercising for me there’s very simple principles that everyone who’s successful probably follows to some extent.
[00:37:43] Alright, what are they? go to bed early and wake up early. that’s the first one. There’s nothing your value, you don’t, you gain no value by watching television from 10 o’clock at night to midnight. There’s zero, zero value. Look at what you’re watching. I don’t care if it’s your relax, shut it off, say a prayer, go to sleep.
[00:38:07] Because there’s no productivity from 10 to midnight. Watching television zero and people like, I can’t relax. Yeah, but maybe relax from 9 to 10. I don’t know what it is. Mark, don’t you don’t have to watch TV. I would, be okay not having a TV in my house. if I live by myself, I would, not have to have a TV.
[00:38:24] Wouldn’t even turn it on. Don’t get me wrong. I like a good movie. I like a good show. My wife and I, that’s fine, but I
[00:38:30] John Morris: can’t do the TV and the show thing. I do research. So every, so you talk about intention, right? Right now I’m on YouTube. Yeah. And it’s research and I’m going, how do they do that camera work?
[00:38:44] Like how, are they using sponsorships? So I’m looking at it from that perspective, but I totally agree with you. I want to have a day where I’m burnt out. Imagine, do you think that somebody’s grandfather, do you think your grandfather ever said, I just can’t fall asleep not never once because they worked so hard during the day.
[00:39:08] The minute they closed their eyes, they were out done. And they
[00:39:12] Pete Durand: didn’t have a screen in front of them for an hour before they went to bed. That people don’t have any idea how bad that is for them. So go to bed early, get up early. When you get up early, people are like, Oh, I 5am club. I don’t care. By the way, if you do your workout at 10 o’clock at night, cause that’s how you roll.
[00:39:24] Oh, great. Yeah, I don’t really care. I just know physically that’s really hard to do. It’s really hard to stay mentally. And then sleep. Yeah, to stay, not only just go at 10 o’clock at night, am I going to do my workout after I’ve eaten? No, most people just don’t do that. But if that’s your jam, great.
[00:39:42] The reason getting, and by the way, if you’d like to do your workout after work at night and you got no kids and that’s your thing, great. But then get up at five o’clock in the morning and do something instructive, read a book, meditate. I don’t know what it is. So go to bed early, get up early. I start every day with prayer.
[00:39:56] And when I was working from home, I could find time to do that in solitude. Yeah. But I worked out an arrangement with God. I’ve got to go get a job again and go to an office and get an airplanes at six in the morning. So I meditate while I work out, nap in my phone. And for an hour, every morning I do three or four different things that I listened to while I’m working out.
[00:40:14] Is it perfect? No, but is it working? Heck yeah. And I’ve got my physical and spiritual parts of my life running in alignment and they’re done. 7 a. m. I got the, I’ve, been, I’ve paid it for, invested in myself first. And, I’ve given God the time because God’s funny. He’s you can’t show up when you need me.
[00:40:37] You got to be here all the time. And that’s how this works. People don’t realize that. And the last part, or the third thing is, there’s giving aspect. I have found when I, Go to bed early, get up early, exercise and pray. The rest of the day just flows. Nothing stresses me out.
[00:40:55] Don’t get me wrong, there’s tough days at work and projects go bad and we have issues, but somehow I think part of it comes from the behaviors. Part of it comes from 30 years of experience of just seeing a lot of things. it doesn’t wait me out as much as it used to. Do you lose your cool?
[00:41:12] Rarely. my kids and my wife have seen me lose my shit less than five times.
[00:41:22] John Morris: I would imagine because you don’t. It’s not something you want to see. Yeah, it’s not something because it’s got to be so it’s, and it’s probably a big principle thing. It is. I have it
[00:41:36] Pete Durand: gets you off three hot buttons.
[00:41:37] Yeah. dishonesty, laziness. And, meanness. Yeah. I don’t do well. So you’re a defender. Yeah. I don’t do well with people who are dishonest. I just, the trust is a big thing for me. Tell me, the bad shit, but then I can at least trust you. I don’t jive well with lazy people. At all. And I don’t, understand it.
[00:42:01] I don’t get it. Like when I go to Disney and I see two parents in scooters, cause they weigh 400 pounds, walking next to them. So they get in front of the line. I’m like, there you go. That’s a great example. Your kids, you’re a victim. It’s somebody else’s fault. And you want to be treated differently and you need, an advantage.
[00:42:17] You’re a piece of shit.
[00:42:19] John Morris: I want to walk up to him and say, sorry, you’re a piece of shit. I’ve, I look, we’re not going to be politically correct on this one, because I’m in full alignment with that. I think it’s set such a bad tone now from, a human and Christian and, and just a good spiritual place.
[00:42:39] Should we be graceful? Absolutely. Sure. But at the same time, if you dig to the root of that, That is, an absolutely terrifying existence and you are creating other human beings that are seeing that as a possible existence. Yeah, there’s,
[00:42:59] Pete Durand: that’s this generation where there’s no accountability and I, piece of shit’s a harsh thing to say, and by the way, there are people who didn’t ask to be in a wheelchair.
[00:43:09] My brother died of ALS, I’ve got all sorts of experiences of things that they didn’t make that choice. But when you make that choice on your own and then you blame others and you pass that to your kids, you’re a piece of shit. And the problem is my dad, yeah. And my parents and my grandparents, had I gone down, would have called me a piece of shit and called me out, like literally, they would be in my face relentlessly to change my behavior, but no one wants to offend these people, so we’re going to let them get away with it, and eventually we’re going to say it’s okay.
[00:43:42] yeah, if you’re dishonest, you’re lazy and mean, it’s funny that I can say a piece of shit and say mean, mean means bullying. Okay, mean means. If I see someone being picked on. And they can’t defend themselves. I’m in there. That does, that just doesn’t jive with me. you’re talking about somebody who’s made
[00:44:02] John Morris: a life choice just to let it go.
[00:44:04] Pete Durand: Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent let it go. Yeah. Just because they, no one’s held them accountable. No one said this is not acceptable. obesity is not acceptable. And by the way, it’s not a disease. People want to say it’s a disease. It is not. You ate too much and you stopped moving. And it’s very curable.
[00:44:24] And there’s a lot, by the way, there’s a lot of reasons potentially why that happened. Don’t get me wrong. I was in the fitness space for 10 years. So I ran a fitness company and my mom struggled with obesity for all of her life. And she’s still got a very unhealthy relationship with exercise and food.
[00:44:37] But she’s, to her credit, She’s in her late 70s. She’s recognized that she had to change her behaviors, and it’s still very difficult for her. But God, she did it. She was in late 70s, two shoulder surgeries and two knee replacements. And she finally figured it out. And you can point all sorts of childhood trauma or, people have had very bad things happen to them.
[00:44:57] There are, there can be mental and emotional I don’t know. Incidents or traumas that cause people to head in this direction. I’m not discounting why it happened
[00:45:07] but the science of what’s the result so they’ve got to get therapy They’ve got to figure out what’s causing them to feel like this and go down this path That it can be solved without
[00:45:15] John Morris: medication.
[00:45:16] So I can speak to this because I’ve been on the other side of being the victim, mental health, abusing, alcohol, and wallowing in my own whatever. And then you find God and then you put the steps in place and you start to get spiritual and you start to, Devise a plan. You start to work the plan. You discover quickly.
[00:45:40] The discipline is far more important than motivation. Motivation is fleeting. It is. It comes and goes. It’s by choice. You decide what’s motivational to you and what’s not. Discipline is cement. It’s there. You have to do it. There’s no other way. And that’s what gets you where you need to be. So the reality is I’m very difficult to allow somebody to play the victim because I’ve already been there, done that and bought the t shirt.
[00:46:12] And I’m somebody who can tell you there, there’s no beauty in it. There’s no victory in that. The victory is in. Self discovery and come to the realization that whatever path I’ve gone down right or wrong. I have free will to modify that path and get on the right one. And then guess what?
[00:46:33] Another path is going to present itself. That’s the wrong one. And you have free will to make the wrong decision again. But guess what? There’s another path to go back and get on the right path. So I don’t have a whole lot of patience for it either. Just because. I’ve been there and I’ve made the mistakes and I know that you could do the right thing to get back on track.
[00:46:52] So it’s like tough to get one over on me. Yeah. whereas I could see somebody who’s never gone down that path or never had somebody close to them in their family that went down that path. Maybe being like, let’s let them off the hook, be nice, whatever. when you’ve been there and you’ve done it and you’ve overcome, then it’s a little bit harder for you to look at that and be like, no, let them, go.
[00:47:17] And it be an enabler, right? an addiction
[00:47:21] Pete Durand: is a really difficult. Really difficult situation, whether it’s smoking or drinking or drugs or food, there’s, there are, and there’s always that first bite, that first smoke, that first drink, that first something, and whether it’s peer pressure, or you had a bad day, or you, somebody broke up with you, or something happened where you, found that vice that gave you some sort of Early piece, in today’s environment, we, most people are aware of the fact that those are things that could lead to an addiction.
[00:47:50] So you consciously choice, you made a choice and you re you know what the, you know what the down, the downstream looks like, you made a choice. And. watching parents struggle with kids with addiction, that to me is the most heartbreaking thing in the world because, something happened where they missed it and this gets back to what we talked about earlier, I had a gentleman on my podcast years ago and I still think it’s one of the greatest moments of my podcast, really super guy and he’s talking about, he’d started his own photography business.
[00:48:19] It was a passion of his and he got home and he was editing a bunch of videos. Pictures and he said, I recognized it was quiet and he goes, and I’ve got an 11 year old and a 12 year old and I got up and they weren’t around and I went in their rooms and they were both on iPads in their rooms. Actually, one was an iPad watching something and was playing a video game in their rooms.
[00:48:43] And I looked at both of them and said, let’s go outside. And I stopped. I said, right there, rich. I said, hold on a second. That’s freaking amazing. Yeah. There’s a couple of lessons we need to pay attention to here. Number one, you were aware of it. You sensed shouldn’t be this quiet. Most parents are like, Oh, thank God.
[00:49:03] Yeah. I can just do my thing. Thank God the kids are just not around. So you recognized it. But the second thing, and almost, if not more important, you got up. And you went to their rooms and you got the eye roll. Come on, dad. And you took them outside and did something with them. that’s the secret of parenting.
[00:49:24] The parents that go, I don’t know why my kid committed suicide or takes drugs. Didn’t get up. They may not have been aware and they didn’t get up. I’m not saying that solves all the problems, but if you bury your head in your sand and you don’t know what your kids are feeling or thinking or doing, then don’t act like you didn’t see it coming because you really didn’t see it coming.
[00:49:44] You didn’t see it coming, right? The third thing that has to happen now, Rich is you take their computers and the video games out of their rooms. Put it out in the open. My kids never had a computer or TV. See, I got that mistake. I got to correct that. Yeah. You can take it out because in our house, when you did homework, you did it at the kitchen table or the counter.
[00:50:01] My wife put classic, Nat King Cole or Tony Benninon in the background softly. She cooked, they did their homework. And then when they did practices, my kids all played D1 sports. They were gone every afternoon after school. But if they got home at nine o’clock, one of us sat and had dinner with them.
[00:50:16] And up until that point, we ate as a family. And it’s amazing with three kids. They’re all very different. They express themselves. They process emotions differently. And if one of them was quiet, like two or three dinners in a row, my wife goes, something’s wrong with Sammy, or something’s wrong with Benny, or something’s wrong with Sydney.
[00:50:35] And then we’d observe, and then we’d go in and say, what’s going on? School, girls, sports, what’s going on. And we wouldn’t let it go until we found out. And then it would eventually tell you. Now, sometimes they just talk, let them talk. But we raised our kids at the dinner table.
[00:50:48] literally, you could observe how they were doing and paying attention to what was going on in their lives. And, if you don’t make a dinner a priority, if you don’t, parenting’s intentional. Parenting’s freaking hard. You can’t just let it happen. You got to make it happen to your point. That is, that’s where you step back early.
[00:51:08] why are people not fixing their divots? That should be the name of this pod. Yeah. It’s all about the little things you do early on in your life to be intentional as a parent. And hopefully you were raised that way because if you weren’t, it’s harder for you to make that course correction.
[00:51:22] I get it. But that’s where it all has
[00:51:23] John Morris: to stop. It’s also realizing you’re not the only one in the world, right? So You know, you, should be operating where everything that you do, you’re trying to leave it better for the person that comes behind you. and I think that’s the same thing with parenting, right?
[00:51:38] You should be trying to leave it better, make it better for the person coming behind you, which in this sense would be your kids. This is a crazy podcast. We don’t script this thing, man. No. it just went this direction. Yeah. and we give you what we give you, right? But the fact is, it all correlates back to Getting shit done.
[00:51:57] The theme, getting shit done, whether it’s about business or a parent. But what we, I think we want people to recognize through every episode is that there’s a set of principles and core values that seem to be extremely consistent amongst those that are successful in business, in life, in anything that they do, right?
[00:52:16] Yeah. And, I think that’s the premise that we’re on. I think that leads back to how you lead other people because there’s not a huge difference between how you’ve led your children, right? To be upstanding human beings. And they’re all successful. Now you said D one. Think about that for a second.
[00:52:37] Three kids to raise three kids that go D one. Mhm. that’s something to tip your cap to as a parent because that’s a lot of sacrifice, a lot of commitment. And it also means that your kids have to have ultra discipline to get to that level of success in whatever their sport was. And that doesn’t come from just all a lot of it is DNA, a lot of it is God’s will, and here’s the gifts we’re gonna give, right?
[00:53:02] But there’s also a discipline of, understanding the science of the sport, the repetition of the sport, and getting to that elite level. So that all correlates to how you’re managing people. Yeah,
[00:53:15] Pete Durand: I would tell you that, the DNA came more from my wife’s side of the family, for sure. Yeah, you’re humble, so I don’t know if I believe that.
[00:53:22] and at some point, I just thought my kids would get cut, right? They just said, and they pivoted to soccer. My daughter, she played volleyball, basketball, soccer, and swimming. In high school, she’s six feet tall. She could have gone D one, probably in any one of them. her husband played D one soccer at Duke.
[00:53:41] So she, one of the classmates, my boys played at, NC state nylon. So it was a lot of fun watching them. They gave up other sports and gave up some social circles to go after it. And I’m, yeah, I’m very proud of all of them. That’s great. But I think one of the key takeaways for your audience today is something you said earlier.
[00:53:57] That’s really important. when you were facing some things in your life. From an addiction standpoint, behavior standpoint, you’re down 40 pounds. You’ve quit drinking and smoking. Your golf game is on point. I’m at
[00:54:08] John Morris: church again. You’re at church. By the way, that was one of the first things that was the first thing they had to go in.
[00:54:13] First thing that was the first domino. Yep. Because, I’ve hit walls twice in my life and tried to overcome them and didn’t have God. And I kinda did. Talked about it, didn’t do it though, right? Cause you get, there’s two types, right? You talk about it and you talk a good game, but you don’t really, you’re not really honoring the covenant, right?
[00:54:34] And this time I said, okay, that’s the domino missing. So that was where it started. Everything else just fell in place. And when
[00:54:40] Pete Durand: you literally surrender. Yourself to God and say, all right, God, you, I’m going to follow you, but I’ll do my part. I’m not going to sit here back and take it, but I’m going to, but I need you to, I need you to be here with me.
[00:54:52] Yeah. so there’s, that’s really important that people understand that despite the fact that you have some success in this program, my, my kids are great. I’ve had a good career, along the way, I’ve screwed so many things up to your point earlier about how that, how this content happens.
[00:55:09] I, All my kids were different. I had moments with each one of them where I realized, particularly my oldest son, where, he lipped off me one time when he was a freshman or sophomore in high school and I gave him a verbal, onslaught and my wife’s just looking at me and and I let him have it and he needed it and I needed it.
[00:55:32] But I also realized very quickly after that happened, how I felt, I said to my wife, I cannot do that with him. If I, if this is how it’s going to go. We will never have a relationship. Yeah, and he was 13 we haven’t we’ve had even up to that point from that we’ve been a corrupt because what I realized is he’s 13 or 14 He doesn’t know what his communication style is.
[00:55:55] I do. Yeah, or at least know what it shouldn’t be Yeah, and I said, how am I gonna communicate with him differently? That’s gonna allow us to have the same boundaries same respect. I’m your dad. You’ll respect me And I said, I’ve got to change I got to figure this out. This is on me. It’s not on him.
[00:56:14] And I made some pivots and some adjustments. And, I, first of all, I think he’s an incredibly world class guy. He just got engaged by the way, on Saturday. Awesome. Congrats. Fantastic. To an incredible woman who were very happy to have in the family. And when you look at your son and realize he’s going to be a good husband, he’s going to be a good father, a good human.
[00:56:31] That’s all. That’s the objective. Yep. And he’s, deeply faithful. so is she, so they’ve got the right foundation to build on. I won the lottery with my son in law. He’s an incredible human being and a great husband and a great father. And, my youngest son is a really nice girl in his life right now too.
[00:56:48] and they’re all in very different places in their faith. And that’s probably what I pray about the most. I don’t care if they’re successful. I don’t, care how much money they make. I just want to know they’ve got that part figured out. Cause I know if they get that figured out, God will help them find where they need to be.
[00:57:03] And I’m still the dad, I’m the old guy, and it’s funny, you see your parents get more faithful and religious as we get older, and like, why does that happen? you know why it happens. Because you realize, you can’t really do it without them. Yeah. And every blessing I’ve had in life is really due to that.
[00:57:21] They may have to roll their eyes at me a little bit, but hopefully those blessings resonate. And when they see, John, when your kids see you, the changes you made in your life, that’s the best example without any words, just your behaviors, money.
[00:57:34] John Morris: So they’re, yeah, they’re, a gift.
[00:57:37] And, I walked off the green this weekend, I walked off the green and there’s my wife and my three kids, nobody else that I was competing against their families were there. Not one person. My wife and kids were there. The reason they were there is because they know we joined the country club because golf has always been, an outlet, right?
[00:58:01] It’s been like therapy for me. Plus, why would you not want to do something that you’re good at as often as possible? That by the way, is, in nature, it’s athletic, it’s strategic. it’s, For me, it’s not just a game, it’s like a way of thinking, it’s like navigating, and there’s so many ways that I can use the analogy of how I work a golf course to how I try and work life.
[00:58:29] I started in, when we joined the club in late April, I have a journal, right? One of the things I started doing is I started writing intentions. Every morning I start with I am. So I actually had the team of salespeople in here yesterday. I was teaching them social selling and I started to talk to them about part of the reason why you start to create content is not just to create awareness and attention, but it also creates self accountability because when you’re talking about these things, you aspire to be, you then have to become them.
[00:59:02] So the more that you talk about that and send that out into the universe, the more you are accountable to actually take those actions. I pulled out my journal and I showed them my journal entry for the last week. And the guy sitting next to me, he goes, he’s not kidding. It says, I am club champion. I’m club champion.
[00:59:21] I’m club champion. Then the intention. Then I feel grateful because, and then. Again, 6 hours later, I am club champion, I am club champion, I am club champion, 6 times, then 9 times, then 3 times, then 6 times, then 9 times, just repeatedly for a week straight. Wow. But what I told them is, I wrote it the first time, the day after we joined the club.
[00:59:42] That was the first time I wrote it. And then I wrote it again the next week. And then I wrote it again the next week. And every time I flipped onto that journal for the next day’s intention, I had to read it again. So that day in May, it’s raining outside. I can’t get, the driving range isn’t even open at the club.
[01:00:02] I’m driving from work to home, having dinner with the kids, going to the open till midnight driving range, hitting 200 golf balls from eight o’clock to 10 o’clock, drive home, go to sleep, wake up next morning, right? I am club champion. I’m club champion. I’m club champion. I go hit another two 50 and pot a hundred balls repeatedly.
[01:00:23] So literally through that, and that’s the deeper thing that people don’t understand is like. Okay, good. You’re good at golf, but there’s a way you have to handle pressure. There’s a different pressure when you’re playing against other people that are competing for something at that level. That three foot putt that’s a gimme in men’s league, you have to make that three foot putt that in men’s league on a Saturday, they just go take it away.
[01:00:50] Those three foot putts for these guys who have been playing, take it away. I put out all the three foot putts and I put a hundred of them every day at lunch since April 1st, I go put a hundred balls and then I come back to work. You David Goggins, the golf game. I did. That’s, incredible. I went from a three to a plus one, which if golf going from a 30 to a 15 is hard.
[01:01:15] Going from a three handicap to a plus one is. Fundamentally, the discipline, I know I’m stroking myself here and I apologize, but the discipline that it took to go from a three to a plus one to shave off four strokes when you’re already shooting in the mid to low seventies is you have to have that discipline and that goes to business and sales.
[01:01:41] And leadership, you have to do the same thing. I
[01:01:43] Pete Durand: can’t even, I can’t even describe how hard that is. and you’re right. I’ve, competed in triathlons and I’m done okay in triathlons, but it’s a very different thing than a golf game and a triathlon. You are competing against others, but in the length of a two hour race, there’s very few people that you’re actually competing against.
[01:02:02] They’re going to be in your wave, right? So you’re out there by yourself. You’re literally most of the time I get out of the water and get on the bike and do the run. I’m by myself. I don’t want anybody to pass me. and no one should, depending on wave I’m in, but it’s not like I hit a bad wave or hit a bad shot and I got to recover.
[01:02:21] It’s just once I get in the zone, but the time in to get up in the morning and swim, and then at night go for a run or double up all the time. I’d so appreciate the time and the focus, but I don’t know if people can truly appreciate what you just described is, you’re standing over the 17 green.
[01:02:40] You’ve got to make this putt to win the championship or get back tied to win the championship in the 18th. I, I don’t know how people can, the mental side of it. I love the way you described about working the golf course. I’m going to show you this. I have to show you this. Yeah. Is this your journal?
[01:02:55] John Morris: I’ll put it on camera.
[01:02:56] Pete Durand: Yeah. Look at that. I am clump champion. If you can zoom in on that, is awesome. Repeatedly. That’s accountability right there. Yep. That’s accountability again. I, the, biggest thing I want my kids to, and by the way, my son had just got engaged. I’m so grateful. He said, dad, when I met Brooke, my whole faith life changed.
[01:03:23] She helped me change that. And that’s what you want. Yeah, that’s what that’s the ultimate. When your kid meets someone who impacts them in that way, in that influential way, and then, and, they both bring something to the table that makes them, the two of them together better, which is incredible, but she’s intentional about it, and he goes, when I see her reading scripture in the morning, That, that means something.
[01:03:48] If she comes to our house and visit and she gets up and reads scripture, Wow. that
[01:03:54] John Morris: made a difference. if your kids But by the way, if you’re secular, and you’re not religious, it doesn’t have to be that, but, maybe it’s getting up and writing something intentional. A meditational journal. Whatever it is.
[01:04:07] We happen to be Christians. We happen to be in our faith, but pick your faith, pick your thing. It’s just, but it’s more the discipline of having that thing that you do. And so what’s the fastest mile time wise that you’ve ever ran for 56. Okay. So four 56, imagine if you could get that to four 45. How hard is that to go from just those 56 seconds to shave off 11 seconds when that is already super fast to run a mile?
[01:04:41] I can’t imagine. It’s a lot.
[01:04:44] Pete Durand: that’s a lot. I would have to change every aspect of my life. by the way, I’m 56. I don’t think it could be done at my age. Put it this way, maybe, but I’d have to change everything. And that’s why I think about you starting with God, quitting smoking and drinking, losing the weight, but then going to hit 200 shots at night from eight to 10 and a hundred putts every day.
[01:05:10] That’s what people need to hear. It doesn’t just happen. people want to, there’s a lot of people kicking back on the grind. I’m sorry, but when you start a company, you want to be a club champion. You want to win a race. You want to get a promotion. You want to. You want to help people you want to get back in charity.
[01:05:29] None of that stuff happens from your armchair
[01:05:31] John Morris: or you’re lazy. No, it doesn’t. It just doesn’t. You want to be the top sales performer in your organization. what’s interesting. I’m just going to give you an analogy. I used to work at a consulting firm, best salespeople, I’ve ever seen. unfortunately, 10 percent of them ruined the brand for 90 percent of us that were doing amazing things, but some of the absolute best salespeople ever, there was never a salesperson there back to back years.
[01:05:57] That was number one. Wow. Because it was always somebody coming behind it because the way that they, and it was, the discipline, the activity was measured. So, aggressively, there was so much motivation. To get to that level. There was so much reward and recognition for doing it, but the, it was never about an easier, there was never talk of here’s an easier way to do it.
[01:06:21] Like we trained like how you could ask better questions to pull more out from the client to make the client more committed. but that was for the long term gain of the client buying into a partnership instead of a transaction. To get to number one, it was always talking about how can you fit more into your eight to nine hours?
[01:06:41] Sure. How can you be more productive and effective? And I think you’re right. I hear all this stuff on LinkedIn and maybe I’m just an old codger now. I don’t know, but I hear all this stuff about you don’t need to do the grind. Here’s the easy way. Now we got 47 CRMs that you got to plug information into.
[01:06:58] you got all these zoom calls. We used to talk about windshield time. And we were trying to figure out how to reduce the windshield time because it was unproductive sales time. They weren’t in front of a client. We want to figure out how to reduce that, right? Now you got people entering so much stuff into a CRM.
[01:07:14] They’re not talking to customers. They’re not talking to new clients. They’re entering in data. the data is for the managers and the CEOs to determine how effective somebody is, but you’re actually hurting the productivity of the person who’s trying to be effective.
[01:07:26] Pete Durand: Yeah, I, I call a lot of that just getting ready to get ready.
[01:07:29] Yeah, exactly. So a lot of people, for some reason seek me out to ask questions about what can I do to either advance my career or get my next job. And the most frustrating group I talked to were salespeople who are unemployed or looking for a job. And I asked them, what are you doing to find a job?
[01:07:49] And their response is, I, I applied to a hundred jobs this week. It’s not intentional. I’m like, you recognize that will never get you a job. And for the one person out there to the 16, 000 that didn’t get a job, congratulations. Yeah. I don’t like those odds. I don’t play those odds. Sales finding a job is a job.
[01:08:08] And when I tell them what they need to do, first of all, they’re like, wow, no one’s ever told me that. And I have a whole methodology I lay out for them, but it’s extremely intentional and it fills up their day. There is a two to four hour block of job finding. That I lay out in great detail and especially how to track it.
[01:08:26] Like you will do this, you will track it. You will track this result and you will track this result. And when you start, that’s that’s going to be, there’s going to be nothing on this dashboard. But by the time you find a job, you’re going to go look back at the dashboard and go, Holy cow, look what I did to get there.
[01:08:41] And then you apply the damn dashboard to how you get your first client close. Exactly. You take everything you did there and it flowed down to that job. Do the same process as it’ll flow down to that sale. But then I also give them oddlest time blocks. you can’t be home without a job and let your family see you’re home without a job.
[01:08:59] you go networking events. you’re networking events, which is part of the block job block thing. But the other thing you should do is, Go paint your daughter’s room, cut the grass, make sure the yard looks freaking perfect, clean the garage, change, redo your wife’s closet, whatever you can do every week, you find a project, so when your family comes home, they see you got sawdust on you, you got paint on you, you’re sweating, you, and by the way, there’s the workout and the meditation time, right?
[01:09:27] During this unemployment time, you. You should be in peak physical, mental, and emotional. And if you do that, if you occupy your time and you build that dashboard, you will A, find a job. You’ll become a better person, a better parent, a better spouse. But if you sit home and sulk and, honey, I applied for a job today.
[01:09:42] No one’s called me back. And then drink a beer and watch TV. You’re a fricking loser. Yes.
[01:09:47] John Morris: So I will tell you this, right? I had resigned from my previous job in between that literally without us talking. I can attest to what he just said. I painted our bedroom. We redid our closet. We redid our floors.
[01:10:04] I was out of work. I was journaling. I was reading nonstop. My kids are like, dad, why is a highlighter out? You’re just reading. I said, no, I’m not. I’m studying. It’s different. So I started studying. I started writing. I started writing plans. I was on my computer constantly writing plans at the dining room table, not in front of the TV.
[01:10:20] Yeah. Just constantly going. I was at networking events. I was doing whatever I could. And this is what I was interesting. We were talking about content creation. I was talking to a sales team. And talking about social selling, and I always have to get them to understand that I’m giving you lessons that yes, they’re going to help our brand to grow.
[01:10:40] Yes, they’re going to help us to create more attention, but I’m also giving you the toolkit to God forbid the organization decided to downsize or you just decided that you wanted to change careers. You will have a new job much faster than somebody who isn’t doing this because you’re known before you’re known, and if you’re constantly doing it It’s so funny that you bring up that model because it’s all those buckets that come together as one that create awareness and attention of your personal brand and cause you to be attractive because people go, if they did that just to find the job, then they’re going to do that when they’re in the job.
[01:11:20] How
[01:11:20] Pete Durand: many people stand out by e posting content, sharing a point of view and being consistent at it while they’re looking for jobs. Those people get my attention. Yeah. And you’re right. Once you have a brand, the reason you’re here is someone saw your previous content and said, I want that guy in my company
[01:11:37] John Morris: at a networking event.
[01:11:38] When I was unemployed, I went to a networking event, unemployed, Yep. And the person I work for now, Tim had seen my content for three years. I said, this
[01:11:47] Pete Durand: is a guy I want. And there you go. Look at who you are. So that, that happens a lot in more than people recognize it. I think one of the reasons I wanted to get on the get shit done podcast is, I love Tim’s model.
[01:12:00] I subscribe to it, right? You just, got to get shit done. And if you, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Some days are better than others, but you just got to keep the ball rolling. And the outcomes will be there.
[01:12:10] John Morris: All right. So final thought, tell us where, instrumentum is going. What’s the, next six months look like for you?
[01:12:20] And, how do people get ahold of you if they want to participate, jump in or, collaborate with you in some way? So the best way to get ahold of me is just LinkedIn. Shoot me
[01:12:29] Pete Durand: a DM. Yep. he will respond. I will, and we’re growing. So we’re, we were in Chicago looking at sites yesterday. We’re looking at sites in the West coast.
[01:12:37] we’re going to expand in Florida. And, for us, it’s just execute the business plan, service our customers really well. We got great people leading our office, the guy that, one of our people in book and moved up here to Chicago to run these facilities. He’s incredible. and he’s just got a really good moral compass, do the right thing every time as a mentality and the whole organizations like that.
[01:12:56] So for me, We’re going to knock it out of the park next two years and see what happens and see where it takes
[01:13:03] John Morris: us. I believe that wholeheartedly. Pete, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show. I know, from being, in, North Carolina, Boca Raton, now you’re up here in Chicago. The fact that you took time out of your day to come see us, I know you got to get off and run and go do more stuff.
[01:13:17] You got to get more shit done. but the fact that you, are a friend and a mentor and always make time is much appreciated. and those of you that have made it all the way through this show and have listened, I hope that we’ve taken you on a journey of a little bit of spiritual, some business, a little bit of personality.
[01:13:36] That’s the intention of this show is to move you and make you think. And I just want to remind you, Pete, you got shit done. Thanks buddy. Appreciate it. Cheers.
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