Hi, everybody.

I'm about to bring a guest on this show that I have so much admiration for, and you're gonna be hearing from him in a few moments.

But I wanted to start with just giving you an idea of the profound impact this person has had in my life from the moment I picked up one of his books.

See, I've always been someone that when I'm in Upton ACN organization, I want to be able to see waiters at ways that I can contribute the most possible.

I look for the white spaces, and what happened is I picked up a book from this gentleman, J.

Abraham getting everything you can out of all you've got.

And when I picked this up, I realized that there was so many ways that you can look within an industry or within other industries to get some amazing ideas that can help you grow a business in ways you never thought possible.

And what we're gonna be discussing today are gonna be these elements of critical thinking.

And it doesn't matter.

here.

If you're the person that owns the business, if you're leading a team or you're an employee within the business, you're gonna learn the tools that it takes to be the person that innovates within the company.

You're gonna think so differently than you've ever thought before.

On how are the ways that you can look outside of what you're doing and bring those ideas internally?

It's my immense pleasure and privilege to bring J.

Abraham onto the chauffeur impact to talk about critical thinking.

J thank you for being here and welcome Jason first about Wow, he put me on a pedestal Now got a performance anxiety.

I know you are going to be doing fine.

You know?

What's fascinating is when we started having a conversation about doing this together, Yes, it was so hard to find.

What should we talk about?

Because you've done so many things in so many areas and you've talked about strategic management.

You've talked about sales marketing.

You've led businesses to grow exponentially.

You've worked with the Fortune 500.

So how did we actually find ourselves getting the essence of what someone could apply was actually quite difficult.

And your pieces on critical thinking I think are the most valuable because you think so differently, and you see things that most people don't.

And I'd be curious to know.

How did you become that person that thinks so laterally?

It's a great question, and the answer is, it's It's almost laughable because it wasn't intentional was accident what the accidental tourist, the accidental critical thinker is?

I started out at age 18 got married, had two kids, no no skill set whatsoever, the need of somebody about 40 and nobody cared.

And the only people that ever gave me opportunity with crazed entrepreneurs who would stick me in a room and say, Kid, you can have a piece of whatever you create And I was very interested in lots of different industries.

And because I wasn't salary, I jumped around and I went from one not job but one industry to another, to another, to another.

And after a number of these, I looked back and thought, Wow, it's interesting that people in one industry don't have a clue how people in other industries, I think strategy business models optionality, uh, just any value creation.

And when you've gone through over, down, fast forward.

Now, at my age, many years later, I've done over 1000 industries, not businesses, industries.

We've done 7000 sub industries when you have the ability to look at those said that spectrum of nuances and all kinds of different ways of thinking doing and you work not just giving them a seminar, but you actually are working on the front lines, dealing with the problems, dealing with the issues, dealing with the challenges, dealing with the opportunities you get, a knowledge base of possibilities of options, of scenarios, of situations and of consequences that air so vast that most people, because of their limited sphere of experiences, of life, of probability outcome they don't really know.

So I've just been thrust into the vortex of so many real life issues that I had to solve embrace, uh uh manage, transcend, circumvent that it gave me after well, a day universal, sort of an understanding of not just what can happen good and how you could make it a lot better.

But what can happen bad and how to mitigate it or eliminated, or at least manager?

That makes sense.

Absolutely.

And I curious.

I mean, you've been to thousands of industries.

Yes, you've seen also, not just when it comes to the types of industries, but you've actually been around doing this for years, where you've seen changes in the market happened from the good, the bad.

I'd be curious to know what would be something that you've seen very common across the Board of Industries and time, like the kind of problems that seem to repeat themselves in every one of these industries.

Well, I think that that the biggest problem that I see that is not really address very well is that owners, managers, entrepreneurs, professionals don't recognize that all of their team members have the same kind of relative hopes and dreams.

They're hitching their wagon to that entrepreneurs star as well.

And they they're looking for that entrepreneur in that business and that commitment to produce their their success there security, their fulfillment, their economic gain.

And I think a lot of times there's a big, big gap between Mia's the owner thinking about my life, my growth, my success, my net worth, my prominence and not really recognizing that I have to be externally focused.

I think the more you can cultivate, and it's very good.

You're talking about critical thinking because it's predicated on being able to think outside yourself.

Think about all the factors that forces the elements of the scenario's going on and what the reality of it is and what probability outcome variation, uh, all kinds of things.

And you can't really do that as easily if you haven't experienced it.

But the big mistake with most people is they limit their scope of reality to what they have either experienced or observed.

And that's very limited relative to what's what's going on.

Reality, possibility, probability and also danger.

And so, for someone who's in the midst of and again, it doesn't matter If you are the entrepreneur you're working for the entrepreneur or you're within a corporation.

How does one start really expanding that beyond what they observed or date them themselves?

What are some steps that people could do to really expand on that?

Well, the first thing that I always tell people, and I don't really teach critical thinking for, say, I've done some work on it, so you're drawing out of me, Cem roar shock First time ever responses.

So hopefully it'll be reasonably lucid and concrete.

But the first thing I tell people when I talk about this sort of ad hoc is you can't be a great critical thinker or consequential thinker or reciprocal thinker until you start thinking outside yourself.

Meaning you have to think about what's the what's going on in this reality everywhere else, not just with me.

When this happens, what's the experience you're having?

What I'm talking and you're shaking your head.

Are you shaking your head just to be nice and you're thinking ahead?

Could you really understand me?

Are we having the same conversation as my intent coming across?

Are you embracing it?

Are you resenting it?

What is the action you're going to take positive or negative?

And this is the first thing is what are all the factors and forces that are being affected by whatever is happening?

You talk about activity, a decision on event I mean any of a number of things, and then you got to say, what is the positive, the absolute maximum positive that I can I can mine that I can extract that Aiken lever out of it.

And what's the maximum negative that could have.

What's probably what should I expect?

That what is everything we do implicitly, explicitly, consciously, subconsciously knowing that knowing we were expecting certain outcomes were expecting certain responses.

Results.

So when that doesn't happen, we're shocked.

This is sort of the hilarity.

I'll give you the simplest critical thinking.

So when anybody in any capacity is making a phone call designed to effect a result that benefits their agenda, I don't care if your business your sales person trying to get a meeting, trying to get any enemy number of of outcomes to believe that the logical result is gonna be to get a live person on the phone when you call is ludicrous.

About a 3% probability you're gonna get a voicemail.

Maybe you'll get the gatekeeper, but probably a voicemail, don't you think so, If you're shocked when you get a voicemail and that's probability not not, not a an aberration, and you haven't prepared for voicemail.

That's not critical thinking what you go about this is Jay, and I'm coming back and the odds of getting called back unless you're very, very important or about zero.

But if you say I'm calling to remind you that, uh, we've got a wayto triple your your sales and reduce your expenses 20% and we can do it tomorrow with no investment.

But I need your approval or something that at least is designed to evoke a response.

But this is a bad example.

But maybe, you know, everyone calls and goes there shocked when they get a voicemail.

I laughed.

My, my, my you know what off?

I think it's hilariously illogical.

You're going to get a voice mail.

Yeah, plan for it.

So that's that's interesting because, in essence, what comes to mind when you say this is There's a lot of school of thought that says, you know, positive thinking only, and it seems like it's actually a compromise of critical thinking because I think critical is positive.

What do you positive Indo is most probable toe happen?

What do you positively?

No could also happen.

What do you positively?

No, uh, is the difference between being reactive and proactive?

Explain the idea of selling a masterful, qualitative, ethical, authentic sales matter.

Woman knows how to preempt what are probable questions, resistance, negatives, objections in the mind before they're even verbalize.

That's critical thinking, isn't it?

If you don't and somebody just says, Okay, okay.

And you know, you should know.

But if you don't expect them to have thoughts while you're talking, if you don't engage them and get feedback If you don't learn how to listen instead of just talk, then you are deluding the potential outcome that you theoretically expect.

So I just wanted I've gotten very, very fanatical about trying to understand what the reality of the situation is, what the probable, Not just outcome, but what's really happening here with everybody involved.

You know, when I do something, when I when I counsel somebody accounts a lot of people because I've been through so many scenarios, I can say, Okay, you're negotiating This first thing you have to know is this If you bring somebody and you better make sure that you, uh you make sure that all the transactions are yours, not theirs, you got to make sure that, you know, and I think about everything that can go wrong with this picture, not just what goes right.

And perhaps some of it is that I've been married my third marriage, and I've you know, I've had to have, Uh uh uh, I've had, you know, we've had when we got started in our relationships, uh, marital contracts when you think about not just the glory of what goes right, but what goes wrong.

You get into a business partnership.

Do you think that every partnership last statistically, I don't know.

Divorce rates and our country, or about 50 55%.

I think they're actually exceed the ones that stay married.

But it's probably not too similar into business and business partnerships.

If you think about employment, what are the odds today view?

Look, att and MacMillan is having a lot of work of millennials.

I'm shifting, but it's not an a d d moment gonna bring it back to you.

So if you look at most employers today, they have no idea how to recruit, how to maximize, manage, uh, and and really multiply the capacity of performance and, um, duration of a millennium.

Biggest problem is millennials are driven by something totally different than just hard work.

They're driven by lifestyle.

They're driven by feeling purposeful.

They need to be dealt with totally different.

If you think they're going to be motivated by what motivated people 15 20 years ago.

You're gonna get a bad outcome.

Also, if you think they're here to stay for a career, you're making a delusional.

I mean, they're not.

Their whole lifestyle is Basically, I'm gonna go here for a while and then I'm gonna move on.

I'm gonna move on.

I'm gonna either either progress or find better environments for what gives me joy.

And if you're unemployed, you say, Hey, Jason, we're gonna do this for the rest of our lives.

And you really believe that?

You're deluded.

You're intoxicated, your erroneous in your assumption, I just want a deal.

Critical thinking is reality.

Thinking critical thinking is learning and recognizing What are the probable consequences?

Oven action and activity.

A decision and indecision.

Something you say something you don't say.

It doesn't matter whether you acknowledge it or not.

It the reality is not gonna care about what you think and what you understand.

It's gonna do what it's going to do it if you're aware of it.

And you are You've identified prepared and let's call it acknowledged and hedge acknowledge what should happen.

I figured out how all of the whatever caught all of the layers of impact.

Because we're doing this, Your hope is you could draw out of me content, ideas, realities, realizations, epiphanies that your viewers well, not just enjoy, but will be impacted by not just entertainment but movement.

If you don't get that out of me, then not only has my value been diminished, but you don't look like you've done well.

I may not make it off the cutting room floor.

So you have to think Okay, if j goes rogue on me, how can I bring him back?

What am I going to do?

How am I going to make sure that I advocate and draw out of him the best outcome I can?

Hopefully he's loose.

If he's not, what do I what can I softball lob him?

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

Just giving a few response.

I love it because actually, I was just thinking in the process of like, I'm listening and I tried always structure because during our interviews we always have a structure which is based on what we call consciousness engineer.

And you can't structure how Well, actually, what we look at is what are the bullshit rules that people believe in the world.

And what is a new way of looking at?

Okay, I like that.

I want to position this because what we've talked about here is that a lot of people always do things the way they're done, and they'll continue doing their work without, necessarily.