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What if there was a way for anyone to unlock exponential growth in their lives?
In this episode with my homeboy Andy Drish, we discuss the concept of how people can find and tap into their unique genius to be happier, more productive and really connect with what they were put on this rock to do.
Andy is an awesome guy and runs one of the coolest companies around in The Foundation. He’s really directed my mindset towards exploring and implementing the concept of Unique Genius.
The concepts states there is a particular skill that we’re naturally good at, we love doing it, we become energized when we do it, and we constantly thirst to improve it. Once we’ve identified this we should build our entire life around this to unlock our greatest potential and provide the most value to the world.
We talk about lots of other interesting stuff and Andy is one of the more thoughtful, awesome guys I know. Enjoy : )
Andyism: “Take the five closest people in your life and average out their income and that’s probably about the money that you make” – Andy Drish (tweet this)
What You’ll Learn By Listening
The number one thing that you can do to increase your income and expectations for yourself
How to find a badass peer group
Some ways to re-ignite entrepreneurial burn out and re-connect with your business
One of the best ways to get inspired and amazing copywriting ideas
The concept of unique genius and how it can transform your life
How to begin discovering your unique genius
Why doing the stuff that comes naturally and easy to us is a recipe for success and happiness
Why you should you should be careful about taking Momma’s advice
Listen to the episode here:
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Thank Andy for dropping knowledge on us (tweet Andy here)
Mindshare segment at the end:
Prioritization is king in entrepreneurship. I share the current frameworks I’m using to prioritize the 150 things I could be doing in my business.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
For more on Andy check him out at: Blog, The Foundation, and on Twitter @andydrish
Other resources mentioned:
Tony Robbins - love you dawg
Book – Unique Ability: Creating the Life You Want by Dan Sullivan
Book – The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks
Ben – my roommate
*You’ll find a full searchable transcript below
Music Credit: Carousel Games & Stay Awake
Searchable Transcript of This Andy Drish Interview:
Scott: Okay, today I’m so excited to have my buddy Andy Drish on the show. If you don’t know Andy, his story is pretty inspiring; he grew up in a small town in Iowa digging ditches with his dad until he was 14 years old. He followed the typical American Dream into a corporate job that sucked the life out of him. I know that’s definitely familiar to some of us listening and after quickly realizing how important freedom is to him, he built and sold his first business at age 26 and then co-founded The Foundation dot com, an online mentoring program for entrepreneurs who want to start and scale software companies from scratch as quickly as possible.
Andy’s super-human trick is listening deeply and connecting with people to help them align with their own Unique Genius to create new, exciting possibilities for the lives that didn’t exist before. Andy, what’s up man?
Andy Drish: Dude, how’re you doing?
Scott: I am doing so good. Now, I know we talked a little bit about The Foundation in your introduction there. But for people that aren’t as familiar, can you give a little bit more sense of what exactly The Foundation is?
Andy Drish Interview: Yeah, being crystal clear, we help people bootstrap software companies and take them from no business, no idea of what business to build, no coding skills to six months later, a software product with ten paying users. That’s kind of where we are at right now but what we are really building I think at a higher level Scott, is we want to build the home for entrepreneurs who are starting from nothing.
So, when you’re starting a business and you’re starting from scratch and you don’t have an Ivy League degree and you don’t have lots of money to waste or to risk and you don’t have connections like a lot of other people might have, like where do you go? Where do you turn to? And what we want to create is the home for entrepreneurs who are feeling that way. And that is the long term vision of what we are building.
Scott: That’s absolutely inspiring, were you always set out to create this concept of a home for entrepreneurs or did that change somewhere along the way?
Andy Drish: It’s changing, it always changes I think. But I think Dane my business partner and I both viscerally experienced what it’s like — we grew up in Iowa, no real connection to business whatsoever and you go through this process or this period of just fumbling around and bouncing from idea to idea and person to person and trying to figure out — everybody is telling you what to do differently. ‘Oh, you should get into [Inaudible 00:02:51] or a logo or a website’, then somebody else is like, ‘no, you should do copywriting’, ‘no, you should do product launches’; and everybody is telling you all these different things. And so it’s like where can you go to just connect with people who have been there, who have done it and who are going through the same process that you are? So, this is where we have evolved with the vision for The Foundation. It didn’t start there.
Scott: That’s absolutely amazing and you encounter a lot of these — a lot of people are listening right now are probably very similar to people that go through your program and maybe they have never been an entrepreneur before, they’ve never started a business. What is it that holds people back from taking the actions that even those people that are in their lives that are telling them to do, aren’t doing it? What is it that is holding them back from doing the things that even the people that are giving them advice are doing?
Andy Drish: You know, a lot of things, but I think at the end of the day, it probably just boils down to fear at some level. You remember Billy from mancation?
Scott: Oh yeah.
Andy Drish: So, for people listening, I hosted a little mancation, Scott came on; mancations are where we get a bunch of dudes and run to big mansions somewhere in the woods and we all go play for a weekend and talk about life and what not. And Billy was on there and I was interviewing Billy for a podcast the other day and he was a professional poker player. I don’t know if you knew this about him. He played poker professionally for like eight years or something crazy.
And when he quit his job and told his parents, ‘I’m going to become a professional poker player’, his mom, like at breakfast would like leave little ads on things, little job ads with things highlighted for him to check out. [Laughter] And then when people would talk about it, ‘oh, what’s Billy doing?’ And they would be like, ‘oh, he’s just kind of like finding his way right now’ and not really saying anything. And then he told the story of after four months in, he owed his dad 15 or 20 grand, his dad helped pay for a car at some point.
And so he took 20 grand out and wrapped it in a rubber band in cash and his dad is like sitting on a recliner and he’s like, ‘hey dad, I owe you money for that car?’ And his dad’s like, ‘yeah’, and he’s like ‘well, here you go’ and he tosses a wad of 20 grand. And at that point even his parents are like ‘oh, our son Billy, the professional poker player’, and they are so super excited about it. And so you think about it, and they are the people who care the most about you, your parents. And at the end of the day, they just want you to be safe, I think.
And I think one thing that holds people back so much is their peer group around them. So many people are actually — Eben Pagan said this at one point, he said, ‘the people who are closest to you don’t want you to change because if you change, the ways in which they used to manipulate you won’t work any longer’. And when he said that, I felt that was really interesting and so I think it is really important to be surrounded with a community of people who all value growth at some level and value pushing each other. Like holding each other a higher standard of excellence as opposed to a [Inaudible 00:06:15] common denominator and just pulling each other back down.
Scott: That’s so present with me and I know another person that has been impactful for you and that is Tony Robbins and what –
Andy Drish: Oh, yeah.
Scott: — Tony says, what really hit me like a ton of bricks was that the expectations you set for yourself are the expectations of your peer group. So, the best thing that you can do to really level up your game to almost I guess, migrate automatically to the actions that you want to take, whether that’s building a software business or giving up drinking. I mean that is super present with me because when I lived in New York City I was drinking a ton on the weekends going out and then I moved down to Brazil with a bunch of guys that don’t drink.
And now when I go out, all of a sudden, I don’t really drink that much any more. You end up simulating to this peer group in terms of expectations and it sounds like that’s something you have seen with the foundation.
Andy Drish: Yeah, and I think a huge part of our community is making sure that the right people are there but I think at the end of the day, it’s about belief structures and your identity of who you believe that you are and what you believe is right and what you believe is wrong. And I’m sure most people have heard the ‘Rule of Five’ where it’s like if you want to figure out how much money you make, take the five closest people in your life and average out their income, and that’s probably about the money that you make.
If you want to talk about how your significant relationship is, take the five closest people who are around that and that is probably in the area that your relationship is. And yeah, and what happens is that when you are surrounded by a group of people who have a different belief structure than you, you naturally begin to adopt that belief structure. So, if you hang out with people who are making 10 grand a month, like a 100 grand a year and then say you switch that peer group to a group of people that are making a million dollars a year, purely just by hanging out with that group of people, you’re going to pick up on the way that they think about things and the way that they take action on things and the way that they carry themselves which is in a very different way than the person making ten grand a month.
And like subconsciously, you just kind of pick it up and start doing it. That’s why, I think the peer group is so important and so cool when you get it right but the hard part is that it’s hard to find those communities –
Scott: I was going to ask –
Andy Drish interview: — to find the right people.
Scott: I was going to ask, how does somebody who might not necessarily have the most empowering peer group, how do they find these type of people, what advice would you give somebody who is craving this peer group to step up their game?
Andy Drish: Oh man, it’s happened to me so many times, one big way is to create it. I think the options are create it, or join it. And so for me in the past, I’ve held masterminds like here in Boulder where I ended up getting plugged in with people doing low-seven figures to mid-eight figures, like 20-30 million a year and then the mancations, I want that level of interaction with dudes. I want really cool dudes that I can hang out with so I plan the mancations. And the cool thing about planning it is that you don’t have to be — there’s no requirement to get in the door aside from the fact that you want this group of people who are cool to hang out with.
And when you are the curator, you provide all the value by just bringing the right people to the door. So, I’m a huge fan of creating it, but then there’s times when you can’t. So you know, I’ve spent a significant amount of money joining high-end mastermind programs, going to different conferences, all sorts of stuff like that. So joined Dan Sullivan’s Mastermind program this year; it’s like 20 grand a year and there’s 25 people in it. But it’s like the dude who founded Singularity University or the dude from Integrated [Inaudible 00:10:11]; people running 40-50 million dollar companies and so –
Scott: I feel like there’s two types of people. There’s the people that get that investment and they get that one connection, could be worth the entire thing because it could change your life and then there’s people that just look at the couple of thousand dollar mastermind or the trip — or the couple of thousand dollar trip from Brazil to Colorado; I don’t know anybody who’s done that –
Andy Drish: Uh-huh.
Scott: — and they don’t see the value; what would you say to these people who are stuck, who don’t have this peer group yet aren’t willing — that don’t see the value in that type of investment?
Andy Drish: You know, they might not be ready for it or they might just be missing it and I think it’s one of those things that you almost have to experience for yourself first. It’s like, I grew up in the mid-west, barely ever went outside the mid-west until college when I studied about new Zealand and then when I traveled for the first time and I experienced what traveling was, I was like ‘oh my God, this is incredible’ and that was the defining moment of why I wanted to build a business online; so I could travel and play.
And I think what happens is that once you get a taste of it, once you get an experience where you are surrounded by your people, you’ll never go back. You just can’t. Once you experience that, you can’t go back to going back home with your typical friends who are just there hanging out, drinking beer or whatever it is. That was always our thing in Iowa, we’d just go out on the weekends and stuff and you just can’t go back to that and you’re forever changed. So if you are listening and you even have a ping of interest with it, try it once and see what happens. Just try it once.
Now, the thing is, it doesn’t — a one event can be really life-changing like that but really that’s just the tip of the iceberg and the fun part is — right now, I’m 27, I’ve been doing this stuff for, I don’t know, five or six year now and the really exiting part is that it spirals over time. It’s kind of like the hockey stick growth. You get to a point where the events that you can get into and the people that you get access to, it just becomes really easy and really fun. So, yeah –
Scott: But it all starts with taking that first step, right?
Andy Drish: Totally.
Scott: Now, I want to talk about — this kind of leads into another topic that I wanted to touch base on today that when I find myself — building a business is hard, entrepreneurship is not easy and there’s times when we get fatigued and I’ve noticed that when I have this type of peer group around me, those times are much easier. It’s much easier to get reconnected to my business and we were talking in Colorado a little bit about — despite the fact that the foundation seemed like they were doing amazing and you guys were in many ways, you just felt like you got a little disconnected to the business. Can you talk a little bit about your situation and maybe some things you did to reignite that spark?
Andy Drish: Yeah dude, burnout happens. I think especially for entrepreneurs and it’s really dangerous as an entrepreneur because if you get burnt out, if you are dependent on cash flow, like you producing the entire cash flow, it’s not good to be burnt out. So, what happened for us is we did this really big launch the year before. We went from having an email list of nothing to 15,000 people in three months and it was awesome. And we had this huge launch and then on the day of launch, I don’t know if I told you guys this story of mancation.
The day of the launch, we — I was in New York and I called Dane at like 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning and I was like ‘dude, we open up at 2:00 o’clock this afternoon; we don’t have to do anything else and everything is set for this launch’ which never happens with product launches by the way. And so less than 30 minutes after I tell him that, we get an email from our merchant processor telling us that they are only — we’re only approved to process $25,000 worth of transactions through their new merchant account; because we set up an account. So we had a new merchant account and I spent the last four weeks calling them and being like, ‘hey we’re doing this new product launch, just so you know’.
And that was the email they sent us four hours before the launch and that started off a chain of events that made my life hell for the next six weeks of — money getting frozen that we couldn’t get access to, having all of this stuff flowing to three different accounts and all of our software breaking — just absolute awfulness. And I went through kind of a dark period then of just complete exhaustion. And what I realized is that — somebody told me this quote once, of like the more masculine fatherly force that you have, the more drive and passion and pushing energy that you are going to put into the world needs to be matched with an equal amount of feminine, motherly, caring energy for yourself.
So the more you are going to drive and push hard, the more you actually need to kind of pamper yourself. Like get a massage or go to the chiropractor or do these things that make you feel really good and taken care of. And the more that I began to understand this, the more that I have completely gotten away from the whole mindset of ‘we need to push, we need to crush it, we need to work 80 hours a week.’ The whole start-up world feels so toxic with that stuff and I don’t resonate with that anymore.
The other thing that helped me really, when I get really disconnected from what we’re doing and this is specifically with our launch this year. We did that big launch and then we were following it up with our second launch and we were like, ‘oh, we want to top it, we want to do better, we want to do more’ and it caused us to just get exhausted. And what we did at that time was that we had videos, we had 50 videos of students telling us whey they wanted to start a business and Dane and I stayed up to 2:00 in the morning one night watching these videos over and over.
And you hear people talking about ‘I want to start a business because I want my children to have a life of freedom’ or one person said, ‘I want to start a business but everyone in my family is a doctor and I’m afraid that if I fail at business, I’ll fail everyone in my family’. And when you get really connected to the experience of the customer and the pains that they are experiencing, it reminds you why you got into business the first place and that helped a lot.
Scott: And I remember you saying that it was an excellent exercise for copywriting too, for all the marketers out there as well.
Andy Drish: Totally, because really — I think marketing and copy get such a bad rap because there is so much like sketchy stuff online. But I really believe that the greatest skill a marketer can have is compassion and empathy for a person. Knowing what their experience is like and being able to dive into that experience with them. And when you do that and you see the struggles the people are going through, yeah, your copy is definitely going to get better because you can relate to them and you can go through that emotional experience with them for sure.
Scott: Yeah, I mean it’s so funny, you’re right, it gets a bad name because there is a bunch of sketch balls on the Internet but at the end of the day, it’s just about understanding people, being able to communicate with them in a way that is impactful.
Andy Drish: Totally.
Scott: Andy, so I was talking to my roommate Ben the other day and he told me you’ve discovered this thing and you are really excited about this idea of helping people discover their genius. Is that something that we can talk about today?
Andy Drish: Dude, I’m so jazzed to talk about this today.
Scott: Let’s do it.
Andy Drish: This is like — it feels like the culmination of six years of researching stuff and I’m finally getting it, I feel like. So, when I was 21, I was working in corporate America, and they sent me to the Inc. 500 Conference and the Inc. 500 is the 500 fastest growing businesses in America. So, people who were quadrupling their sales year after year, which is such a super-high energy, fast-paced environment to be around. And one morning, we actually — I was with Principle Financial Group and we were one of the core sponsors. So it was us and American Express were the two sponsors of the event, or the two main sponsors, I should say.
And one morning, I was getting coffee and I was 21 and super-talkative and wanted to meet everybody there and so I start talking with this guy in line for coffee. And I was like, ‘so what do you do?’ And he was like, ‘I help people create exponential growth in their life’. And I was like, ‘really? How do you do that?’ I was like, ‘that sounds fun’. And he explained to me, that he was like, if you’re looking at the world through a lens — the direction that you are looking, you actually have blind spots just like you would in a car. And in these blind spots, there’s spaces that you can’t actually see that are affecting you. And when you shine the light on a blind spots that you have, it’s like unleashing yourself, it’s like cutting the chain that’s been holding you back but you don’t know that it’s actually holding you back because you can’t see it.
And so, I was like, ‘this sounds awesome dude, like where do I learn more abut this?’ And he was like, ‘go to Landmark Forum, that’s the first place to start’. So I went to Landmark Forum and that was the first personal self-help thing that I ever did and since then I have been really interested in self-discovery. So, I’ve talked to — so I’ve done all the Tony Robbins stuff, all sorts of transformational self-help things; I’ve talked to an astrologer, a numerologist, a psychic intuitive — all sorts of crazy stuff.
And the thing that I discovered a few months ago is from Dan Sullivan and he talks about this idea of unique ability or your Unique Genius. And your genius or your unique ability is something that you do automatically, it’s something that gives you endless amounts of energy, you’ve been doing it almost your entire life and you are the best in the world at it or you are one of the best. You just don’t even know it. And the reason why is because you have been doing it for so long and our entire society conditions us to believe that work is supposed to be hard.
The things that are easy and effortless, you shouldn’t get paid for. You have to get paid on stuff that is actually hard for you to do. But the truth is, if you figure out what your genius is, you can build your entire life around what your genius is. And that should be the only stuff that you do because that’s the stuff that gives you energy and surprisingly — or not surprisingly, at the same time, it’s the activities that provide the most value to the world. So, my entire thing now is, I want to help people discover what their genius is and it doesn’t matter if you want to be an entrepreneur or if you want to work for somebody else.
But this whole idea of to figure out like at a high level, what is the thing that you do better than anyone else and then what are the activities that encompass that and build a life around it. So in my life, now I have an assistant who takes care of pretty much all shopping, house-related stuff, cooking, cleaning, all of the domestic stuff that I generally hate. We’ve got a team that takes care of so much other stuff, so I can really stay in my zone which is like I talked about earlier or like you said in the beginning, I’m a ninja at connecting deeply with people and helping them align with their greatest genius or their greatest skills or whatever it is to create exciting new possibilities for their life.
So, if you and I spent time together, you are going to walk away feeling excited about possibilities that didn’t exist for you before. That’s where I’m a ninja and everywhere else, I’m sub-par. And if I can just build a life around just that skill, it’s so exciting to me.
Scott: Wow, that is amazing, that is absolutely amazing and I think you’re selling yourself short over there when you said that you were sub-par at other things as somebody who knows you. But what would you say to people that — and this is an insanely powerful idea, I’m fired up literally just thinking about this that we all have this one thing that we are more or less destined to do. What are the first steps for somebody to try to understand and find their particular Unique Genius?
Andy Drish: Dude, this is so cool, I’m glad you’re asking this. Because this is exactly where people should be going, this is the path they should be doing down in my opinion, any way. So there is a whole framework that I took myself through and it was a combination of books from Dan Sullivan’s Unique Ability book, Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap book and then I have been working with this coach who has been kind of re-wiring my mindset around working versus allowing and allowing things to happen in my life.
And so a rough frame of what I do with people is, I take them through a handful of questions; the first one being, what’s your favorite movie and what’s your favorite character? What do you love about that character and why? Actually, let’s do this with you Scott.
Scott: Let’s do it and –
Andy Drish: What’s your favorite — go ahead.
Scott: I’ve been asked this question before, I’m excited for this.
Andy Drish: Cool, what’s your favorite movie?
Scott: Favorite movie is Rudy.
Andy Drish: Rudy; and favorite character? Rudy, I assume?
Scott: It’s definitely not the jerk coach, it’s Rudy.
Andy Drish: [Laughter] Cool, how would you describe Rudy?
Scott: He is a guy that, against all odds, against all people that didn’t believe in him, went out and exceeded expectations.
Andy Drish: What characteristics do you think Rudy embodies?
Scott: Heart, persistence, confidence in his abilities and resiliency.
Andy Drish: Dude, so, for those of you who don’t know Scott, on a scale of one to ten, how much does that align with a perception of yourself?
Scott: Pretty well, very well. I think we have such a self-bias towards liking people like ourselves.
Andy Drish: Totally.
Scott: So, I think that is very much in alignment with the identity that I have for myself.
Andy Drish: Totally, so this is the first step in the process and this is more like a fun, playful thing to get people opening up and experiencing little bit. And this is becoming my new, favorite question to ask people because you learn so much about them, without them really even knowing it especially if they have ever been through the question before. So, this is the first question and the process is like the first thing is getting the data and so there is this question, I’ll ask people what were the things that they loved to do when they were a child, what are the habits that everyone can count on them for over and over — like what are the things that they always do?
We’ll have people email the top five to ten people in their life who know them most and from that they’ll get feedback on what those people think their genius is or what their unique abilities are. And then, I’ll have people go through every job that they have ever had and write down the tasks that they loved in those jobs. So this is the data process of getting all the data out there on the table and then the next phase is looking for the patterns. And so you look at all these different things what people think about you, what you think about yourself, what are the habits that you are constantly doing in your past experiences with your different jobs; what were the roles that you loved doing?
And you go through this process and then all of a sudden, you’ll start seeing patterns that emerge. You’ll see really common things that get you really excited and then you take the patterns and then you distill the patterns eventually into a one-sentence statement that describes exactly where you are a ninja. And then from this place, once we know exactly what that is, we go through a process of listing all the activities in your life in four different phases from ‘incompetent’ to ‘competent’ to ‘excellent’ to ‘genius’.
And those are the four different quadrants of activities if you will, where incompetent, you’re just terrible at, like for me, cleaning, cooking, laundry, I hate it. Competent, you can do it but it sucks all of your energy away; excellent, you can do it for a period of time and you might be actually really good at it but it’s a learned skill. It’s not something that rejuvenates you and gives you more energy when you are done and genius is the stuff that gives you energy when you do it and you can do it forever.
And there is probably a very small number of tasks; for me there is only three for the most part. And so we break down all the activities in your life and we break them into these categories and we figure out where your genius is and where you excellence is and then we try and create a plan for you to get rid of the other activities so you don’t have to do them anymore.
Scott: I have a zillion questions. [Laughter]
Andy Drish: Go for it, dude.
Scott: First, what is your genius?
Andy Drish: So, my high-level genius is like I said, connecting deeply with people, listening to them and helping them align with their greatest genius or their greatest skills or what it is that they are destined to do and helping them create new possibilities for their life that didn’t exist. That’s what gets me super jazzed like I feel so excited by this. Another fun question is, when you were a kid, imagine, two or three friends are hanging out and your friends are hanging out and they are hanging out, and they you show up, how does the energy in the group shift? Like what’s different? What’s different about your presence being there?
And for me, it was always like there was a different level of excitement about life and that is what I want people to experience. I want them to feel just excited about whatever experience they are having. Whether it’s starting a job or starting a new career or getting married, whatever it is, I just want people to feel excited. So that’s at a high level the skills or the three activities that I like to stay in at all times; one is connecting with people, so going to events, hosting events, making new friends. I just really like doing that.
Scott: And you’re good at that.
Andy Drish: Thanks man. It’s fun to me like doing mancation, it’s like — it’s hilarious. I just have so much fun doing stuff like that. So, number two, coaching, teaching and training. So, generally, I don’t do — I don’t really take on any coaching clients but I do a lot of coaching for our team. We have a team of seven full-time people now, so doing a lot of coaching there and then teaching stuff like this or within the community. And then lastly, brainstorming and imagining and then creating ideas at like the 10,000 foot view. So brainstorming, ideas and strategies to getting them to like 80% of the way through, and then having somebody else come in and then implement them for me. Those are like the three things and if all I do during the week is those three things, I am as happy as can be. And it’s awesome.
Scott: I would love to learn about your process for — even if you have one, I’m not sure if you have any structure to it but your process for brainstorming big picture ideas?
Andy Drish: I don’t really — nothing really comes to mind. The first step is always like what’s the outcome that you want to have.
Scott: Uh-huh.
Andy Drish: Even if the meeting is just for brainstorming, and maybe it’s just like, I want to explore what the possibilities for this potentially be; and then we set a timer and then we do that. I don’t know, I don’t know what the process is. It comes really naturally to me. I’m generally pretty good with strategy and I don’t really have a really good process for you though, or a framework for it.
Scott: Totally cool. One question that I had about this whole Unique Genius idea is, is it possible for people to change through Unique Genius? Like let’s say somebody just happens to be a unique genius at analyzing data but they are not necessarily stoked about being an Excel-jockey as maybe being an actor or an entertainer or a sales person.
Andy Drish: Uh-huh.
Scott: Is there a way for people to change that or alter that?
Andy Drish: So, I think — I think the genius stuff, I think it’s almost like an onion where you’re constantly peeling back layers and it’s always kind of evolving but if you get a really good grasp of that initial 80%, you can kind of begin to build your life around what exactly that is. But even for me, I was talking as a friend on the phone this week and explaining to her about the genius stuff and when I explained it then, I said, my genius is around connecting people with people, listening to them and helping them create new, exciting possibilities for their life.
And she’s like, ‘yeah, but when you do it with me, I feel like you help me connect to source, you help me connect with that deepest thing within me. So it feels more than just exciting possibilities; it’s like the possibilities plus being connected to a deeper level’. And so that’s why I added that because it feels like it is constantly evolving. Now, when you talk about the idea of somebody who wants to jump from a sales person to an actor, you might think that’s a wind jump in a career aspect.
But there’s this whole concept in NLP called ‘up-chunking’ and ‘down-chunking’ and it’s a model of how to really get in touch with reality. So, if I start by saying, at the highest level there is transportation and a level under that is a vehicle and a level under that is a SUV and then a level under that is a Toyota SUV and a level under that is a Toyota SUV FJ Cruiser. And you’re getting more and more engrained in reality with the labels that we use to describe things. So, there is — if you look at a sales person and an actor, that’s like the Silver SUV in Boulder, Colorado; really engrained in reality.
But at a higher level, what is it that they are actually doing? And it might be that they love to entertain and inspire people or it might be that at a higher level, there is something there. And so I think the career path can change but I think at the core, there’s something that you love to do at a high level and it’s like an experience you want to create for people or a way you want to make people feel after they have been around you that might change a little bit but I think it doesn’t change drastically, it gets more refined, if that makes sense.
Scott: I love it. It is so interesting that we put so much focus on progress in our lives but yet, very rarely have I met people that are so intentional about trying to make sure that the way that they are sprinting is to the correct end-game –
Andy Drish: What do you mean –
Scott: — in terms of their true purpose. I feel like a lot of us are running this race in our lives to be more successful, impact more people, build bigger things or whatever it is. Yet, so few people are taking a step back and trying to understand that function, that role that they are running in and that thing they are running towards, whether that is the best fit for their lives; whether that is going to make them the happiest, whether that is going to unlock their true potential, like this type of work sounds like it has a possibility to do.
Andy Drish: Oh man, this is some of the best — it is just so much fun to do this type of work, because when you do this, you actually have a completely different level or a reason for existing. We did this — I went to this program with these people who are Why Experts that help you discover your [Inaudible 00:34:21] and what’s fun is you can see — once you figure out what your genius is, and why it is that you want it, you see it all kind of plays together. And so for me, I want people to experience their own greatness.
I want people to experience what it’s like seeing how great and powerful and remarkable they are as humans. And I think that’s why the genius piece of helping people create new, exciting possibilities for life that are tied to what their greatest purpose is. It is so exciting for me. But that is just me, I think — I don’t know, ever since discovering –
Scott: What stage genius? Just so people have another example of –
Andy Drish: Good question. So with the team stuff that we are working on, we’re about halfway through the process with the team, we’ve been doing it — so I told Ben, I’m taking my entire team through this process but we have been doing it a bit slower and spending a little more intentional time like bringing the team together collectively. Dane’s really incredible at simplifying things and taking the complex stuff into really simple things and making it a simple way of understanding something that is really complex. I think that is one of his –
Scott: That’s a good one.
Andy Drish: And then the why that we have been working on for him has changed. It’s kind of flipped up more over the past few months because he’s going through some crazy, personal stuff right now, so I think that’s part of it as well. –
Scott: So once –
Andy Drish: But –
Scott: Go ahead –
Andy Drish: No, I was just saying like for me discovering my why and my genius has just given me this whole different level of passion and excitement for life. And when you talk purpose, I always thought purpose — a year ago, I thought purpose was what I did in the world and now I’m understanding that it is actually a way of being and has nothing to do with what you are doing because you can be that way throughout everything that you are doing. If that makes sense.
Scott: It reminds me a lot of Tony Robbins’ idea of state.
Andy Drish: Yeah. Very much.
Scott: So, when somebody does this work, they find what their Unique Genius is, or they think they have a hypothesis of what that might be; what’s the next step for them to actually actualize this?
Andy Drish: Well, I don’t know, all I can really speak to at this point is my experience. Because I have only really taken a handful of people through this and did it myself. So for me, understanding — when you understand what you’re really good at, you actually feel more compassionate about the stuff that you are bad at and you respect people at lot more who — you respect the differences a lot more, if that makes sense. So it’s like I’m really good at this and I’m terrible at all of these other things but I love people the who — so a real tangible example – I’m awful with data and numbers and putting together our financial reports and doing bookkeeping.
I’m so terrible with that stuff but in January, I hired Lauren full time and she loves it. She geeks out on knowing numbers and going through spreadsheets and figuring all that stuff out. And she absolutely loves it and I hate it. And we work together so well and I have a such deep love and respect for what she does because I know where I am really good and I know where other people are really good and there’s no more pressure to have it all figured out or to be perfect or to be able to handle everything. All you have to do is do what you love doing and let other people take care of the rest and it’s really liberating and freeing.
Scott: It also sounds like, once you discover this, you actually become a better leader and manager.
Andy Drish: I think so. At some level, that’s my entire purpose. So, I’m running the foundation and that is my entire purpose and in that role at some level is to get people in their zone of genius and align their genius with the vision of the company and the mission of the company and knowing of where we are going as a whole and where does their genius plug in and making these so people just play in those zones. Because when you are doing that, it’s not work anymore; because you’re so aligned with what you are born to do, it’s fun, it’s play, it’s exciting. You get to do it, you don’t have to do it, it’s a choice. And that’s the culture I want to build, that’s the company that I would want to work for, for sure.
Scott: Just thinking about the possibility, if everyone in the world was in that state, where they were in their zone, where they were doing the things they loved, what would be possible for the world? It’s just such an amazing prospect to think about.
Andy Drish: Dude, I know, right? Like when I –
Scott: Oh my gosh, I’m getting fired up.
Andy Drish: — think about that, how cool would that be and it is — it comes back like I feel that the world is insane, like what is wrong with this idea that we have to work hard and then we have to do this stuff that doesn’t come naturally and easy to us because we have to build character and pay our dues and do all of this, like the things that we hate doing for some unknown reason. Why not just do the things that feel really natural, that we love doing and create a culture or a business where that is the frame for every body working in the company.
I freaking love it, dude. I think the world will be such a better place in this if everybody knew what their genius was. That’s why I am so excited. I felt like this is something I could dedicate my life to helping people discover.
Scott: It’s certainly a worthy pursuit; that is for sure. I think one of the reasons of why we potentially might feel these external pressures, to do crap that we don’t like, all comes back to where we originally started talking about which was the whole peer group and the people that influence us.
Andy Drish: Yeah.
Scott: Whether that’s our parents or our friends or our teachers or our coaches or whatever it is that are instilling these expectations in our lives to do these things that we don’t actually want to do.
Andy Drish: Yeah, totally. How many times your parents are like, ‘oh you just have to do it for a little while’ or ‘just pay your dues now’ or ‘go work that corporate job because being an entrepreneur is too risky’. Like all of these different things, it’s crazy.
Scott: Yeah, man, I feel that; I feel that in my own life today and I love my parents to death.
Andy Drish: Me too.
Scott: But my path is insanely different from theirs.
Andy Drish: Yeah.
Scott: And it’s so hard to tread the balance of wanting to do the things that you want to do with your life that you know energize you and make you happy but also at the same time, make the people that you care about most happy who might have a different world view.
Andy Drish: Uh-huh. And somebody gave me this advice, where they are like, never listen to your mom, because all she wants to do is make you safe. And feeling safe is the complete opposite experience of feeling alive, which is what we really crave. So, with all respect to all moms out there, because moms are awesome; but it’s so true. I think we crave the experience of being alive and doing stuff that we haven’t done before and playing on that edge. And our parents, they want to keep us safe, they don’t want us — it’s not that they don’t want us to have that experience, they just want to know that we are safe.
Scott: It’s a really powerful thought. Andy, so if people want to get started down this path of discovering themselves, there’s books that you mentioned. Can we make sure we link those up in the show notes, or maybe send them my way? I think this is just an insanely powerful conversation and I really want to try to encourage as many people as possible who are listening to this to start at least taking a step in the direction to discovering these important things about themselves.
Andy Drish: Dude, I think this is the greatest thing you could possibly understand about yourself, is what your genius is. Because when you know this, so many other things are going to fall into place and it doesn’t matter if you want to start a company, if you want a different career, like whatever it is so that you can live a life of abundance and happiness and flow where you are in that zone where things just — like time disappears because you’re having fun with stuff. So, the books, Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan, this is like the cornerstone of a lot of it and Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap.
And the reason The Big Leap is so important is because what happens is that when you start living in your zone of genius, things become easy and they become more effortless and then your unconscious is like ‘whoa, something’s wrong here, it can’t really be this easy, it can’t really be this effortless, it can’t really be this good.’ And what happens is you unconsciously sabotage the process that you’re making. Like this has happened to me in business, where we launched a business one — years ago, I launched a membership site and in six weeks we went from having no idea to launching a membership site that was doing six or seven grand a month in revenue which was more than what I was making in corporate America at that time.
And so, all of a sudden, the possibility of quitting my job became real and it freaked me out. I was like, ‘oh my God, this can’t actually be happening. What if I have to do this now, I’ll have to get health insurance, I’ll have to quit my job and I’ll have to ‘– and so I ended up — six months later, the site crashed and we stopped marketing it and everything fell apart. And it was total big leap stuff. So, those are the two most important books that you can read on this right now. Unique Ability by Dan Sullivan and The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks.
Scott: Absolutely love it. Andy, one of the questions that I always like to finish with, and I think I might already know the answer here, but I’m going to ask the question anyways just so we can remind people. If you were to give people listening one piece of advice to get an edge in their business or their life, what would it be?
Andy Drish: Oh, totally dude, you know, just figure this stuff out, figure out what your genius is. It took me — well, if you only count like the last four months, it took about four months to do it and if you count all of the stuff that I have done before that, then it’s taken a long time. But I think — so I don’t know if Ben shared this with you, I’m going to be doing a handful of little, group-coaching sessions with this. So if any one is interested, if enough people email me, we might throw one together for it. I think I can get people 80% of the way there in about three hours.
By going through this process and then if you go through this process with a friend, it amplifies everything because they know you really well and you know them. So, if you guys are interested, email me Andy at The Foundation dot com; if enough people — like 10 people or 20 people email me, we’ll throw something together and do a little session or something.
Scott: Well, you got one more already in myself –
Andy Drish: Sweet, dude.
Scott: — hearing about this so –
Andy Drish: We’re going to do a mancation one.
Scott: Oh, man –
Andy Drish: