I’M NOT CRAZY (or Schizophrenic)
Learn How To Build Your Own “Internal”
Board-Of-Directors
EPISODE 17 of a Daily Dose of Greatness Quest with Trevor Crane
DAILY QUOTE
“Nothing great was ever achieved without a team.” – Trevor Crane
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
DAILY QUESTION
Who would you like to have on your team as a board of directors to advise you in your life and your business?
DAILY CHALLENGE
Let’s see how brave you are… ready for this? Today I challenge you to create your own “internal” board of directors. Draw a diagram. Talk to them. (And report back to me and let me know how it goes!) Oh, and you can add ANYONE you want. Mentors. Famous people. Real or fictitious.
SUMMARY
Call me crazy. (I don’t care.) What I share with you today, WORKS FOR ME.
(And I think of it as my SECRET WEAPON.)
I share how I created an “internal” board-of-directors. A “central intelligence agency” that he can take ideas and questions to so I can get their advice.
My WAR ROOM!
HERE’S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NEXT:
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ABOUT TREVOR CRANE
Trevor Crane is best known for 2 bestselling books, High Paying Clients and Big Money With Your Book… without selling a single copy.
If you want to become IRRESISTIBLE to your ideal target client, and massively grow your leads sales and revenue, Trevor can help you craft a book that becomes your most powerful marketing tool, in 90-days or less. For details visit: EpicAuthor.com
TRANSCRIPT
Hey there, today I want to talk about something a little bit crazy, a little bit nutty, but his served me massively over the years. It’s about you creating a Central Intelligence Agency, an internal board of directors, a team that you actually hold on your head to help you go ahead and create the results that you want.
Today is about how to build your team and I think you’re going to love the crazy as I’m about to share with you.
(INTRO – AUDIO)
All right, well, welcome back.
So let me take you back a few years. Uh, this is even before I had filed my bankruptcy, so I filed my bankruptcy in 2009 and it was maybe 2007, 2005, something like that. Like life was not bad at this stage of my life, but I was re, I was doing some personal development work and I was either learning from Napoleon Hill and that was listening to one of his trainings or programs or it was an Earl Nightingale Conant, a type training.
And I don’t remember exactly who it was, but they were talking about the concept of a mastermind. And a board of directors and there was a story that I heard and I think it was Napoleon hill about how he created an internal board of directors and he would oftentimes like inside of his head, inside of his imagination, he would take time to actually go and have this conversation with a board of directors that were a group of mentors and um, people that he respected and liked and he would have a conversation with them and bring different ideas to them. And, uh, the, the idea was that I could do this as well, but that was the, that was the challenge to go ahead and create my own internal board of directors that I can bring my concepts to. Now I learned this from I’m a successful guy rather than me being really fricking crazy.
But I just decided to do it. I’m crazy enough and coachable enough that I thought I can do this. And so that’d be my challenge to you, is to take what I’m sharing with you today and actually use it because this has served me over the years in really crazy ways. And I’ll tell you the way that I’ve done it. So if you want to go ahead and create your own team, you can go ahead and do so in kind of a cool way. And when you’re in a challenging circumstance situation or you have a question and you’re not sure who to call, I’ll tell you how I’ve done this and how it served me really, really well. So let’s see. Uh, so the first thing I did is I decided who I wanted on my team and what I would challenge you to do is I just decided that I wanted people that I liked, that I looked up to that where some of my mentors.
And then I threw in people at the table [inaudible] that says my table. I call it my Central Intelligence Agency, my c, I a, my central intelligence agency. And I imagined them at this, um, round table, like a King Arthur in the king Arthur’s round table. And it’s a round table because nobody really leads or whatnot. But that said, what I decided also was that I needed a chairman of group. And quite frankly, it wasn’t going to be me, I wanted it to be one of my mentors and so in my craziness, I went ahead and I put Tony Robbins at the end of one table so to speak, and me at the other side and so he became the chairman of my board of directors and then I went as far as as creating a little diagram and I drew a circle on this big, big piece of paper, like those big guys stick on paper, like the paper that you can put on the wall.
I use those all the time and I drew a big circle and I started putting names on the table and I started creating this relationship between the different people. Like I put Tony and sage side by side and sage is his wife and she sat to his right and then I put at the other corners of the table more of like the east and west side that’s around tables. So there weren’t corners. But then I would put different people on like those, those kind of like anchor the north, south, east and west. And Tony was like, north, I’m south, and then I put some buddies on the right or left hand side and then I would create these different relationships. This is really nuts. But I decided that, I mean, most of my group were married men and or women and they typically had their significant other sitting side by side if I knew who it was, I’ve added that Albert Einstein sitting at my table.
I’ve had fictional characters like I was. I am a real big star, Star Trek Fan and I really love the whole next generation thing. Uh, you know, when I was going to school in college, a next generation was actually a fresh season of star trek one. And when my, when I was born in 1971 when I was born, my mother’s water broke while she was watching a star trek episode. And then she decided to wait until the episode was over to go to the hospital. So I, I guess I grew up, uh, I was born almost a trekkie, but that I’m, I’m not, haven’t been to a convention yet. I think that might be pretty cool. But I’m not that far gone and I don’t speak Klingon, but that said, I put Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the enterprise and the next generation series at the table. I put, I read different novels and I would sometimes put the author of those novels or like I said, something is as nuts as even Albert Einstein at the table.
And what I’ll do is when I’m in a situation where I want to get the advice of my mentors, because I study a lot of books and I watched a lot of videos and I kind of know some of my mentors to a certain degree. I know what they believe. And they’ve talked to me a lot like I’ve chosen to call the mentors that I listened to on a regular basis. And that I talked to. I consider them to be close friends of mine. And I know this sounds a little bit, a little bit crazy, but what I will do is I’ll bring my conversation to this table. And oftentimes the way that I do that, like I’ve, I’ve tried to just pretend and sit there in silence and do this, uh, this, this meditation thing and imagine the relationships going on, but I find I found it difficult and as creative as I am, that was still just hard for me to hold the conversation.
So when I started doing is I started calling Tony Robbins and uh, I would call him up and that said I don’t have his personal cell phone number, call me at anytime, but I pretended that he is on my speed dial and actually have a three. I use a system called free conferencing.com. I think they have a new system also called freeconferencecall.com. Have a whole series of stuff. But as a free green line that I can record my phone calls on and so call in there and put in a passcode. And what I do is I pretend to have the conversation with whatever my challenges with one of my mentors. And typically I call Tony because he’s the chairman at my round table. And then I, Tru, I have both sides of the conversation and I do this out loud. So right now, like I’m walking, this is right before I do my exercise for the day.
I’m going to go for a quick jog and um, that’s when I’m recording this. But at the time I decided when I do this, I’ll oftentimes do it before I go exercise or after or whatever, when I’m having a challenging situation. And then I have both sides of the conversation. And what it does is I pretend to be Tony Robbins with one voice to pretend to be my voice with another. But I have to state my case, see if I called up Tony for real or any one of my mentors who I would have to pay a pretty penny, right? To Go ahead and get their attention to go ahead and talk to them about whatever it is that it’s concerning me at the moment or when I’m trying to make a big decision. You can imagine that it has to go ahead and be kind of intelligence about what, about what I’m going to say.
They don’t want to hear my bullshit. They don’t want to hear me whining and complaining. They want to know what’s going on and then what I want from them. And so I’m oftentimes gone to them when I have to make a decision or I’m in a situation where I feel like I did something stupid or made a mistake or I’m just scared and I don’t know who else to call. And then what I do is I have both sides of the conversation and, and I will actually then speak and pretend to be the other people at the table. And just the other day I did this and I threw out a question and an idea to Tony and to my central intelligence agency and I said, here’s what I want. Here’s the challenge I’m going through right now. And who has any, uh, who’s going to step up and say something?
And the person who stepped up, like when I asked the question, it’s kind of crazy because I know it’s me talking to me. But what happens is I take on the inside and personality sometimes if some of my mentors and I’m able to give myself some phenomenal advice and feedback and and clarity, and they did this just the other day and the person who stood up and talked to me was Garrett j white and Garrett J. White is running the wake up warrior movement. You’ve heard me talk a lot about this lately because I’ve invested in spending some time with him and improving my life both personally and professionally and becoming a better businessman, but her husband and you name it and so I’ve been talking to Garret and he had kind of has an angry yelling. He gets really emotional and passionate oftentimes and he basically told me to shut the fuck up and he challenged me in a lot of new ways that I wouldn’t have normally done in my own tone or voice.
And nor did I, Albert Einstein or frigging anybody else. I have sitting in my tables. I’ve got a couple of. I’ve got one billionaire that I’ve met has been a friend of mine that he sits at the table, will smith, sits at my table, so I’ve got different people that are there to get their insight and then sometimes I have this inner conversation between the the, the people that I see. I’m moving them around like musical chairs sometimes to see what they have to contribute and like if I have somebody in following in social media, I might bring them to the table or something that I’m following, who’s going to give me some insight into leadership or relationship or money or whatever it is. I’ll bring them to the table and they may or may not actually contribute as in this crazy way and I may or may not.
I’m speaking in their voice, but what I have found is that by having this out loud conversation, it can go ahead and guide me and Garrett J. White was able to call me out on some things and I got myself all fired up and excited and make new decisions and the rest of the. The CIA, my CEO round table. I decided that that was the old name for this board of directors that I’ve created in my head and what I wanted to do is create a new name for this group and I now call it my war room. My just joined a mastermind. It’s actually called the war room with Ryan dice and digital marketers so that I could physically surround myself with an amazing team of people, but this is one that I’m just challenging you to do as a potentially a crazy person and put it in your head as well because that’s your growing team that you get to create and who you hang out with is who you become.
And Tony Robbins is one of my best friends. It doesn’t mean I’m one of his best friends. Tony’s going to mine and silver some of the people at this table because I have a relationship with them. Right. They may not have the best relationship with me. They hardly know me right now, but soon I plan on turning on life friendships or acquaintances or whatnot into friendships with my mentors and then I. my goal is to become a mentor with my mentors and walk with them and lead with them because that makes sense. So I’m challenging you. They think is a big challenge and that’s a crazy challenge, but I figured I would share this with you and I want to share with you a quote today and I’m going to share with you a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, but also one that I’ve turned into like my Trevor Crane quote.
OK?
So while Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Nothing great was ever achieved without, um, he said nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
And I would change that quote to saying, “Nothing great was ever achieved without a team.”
And so what you really need, I believe as a team and there’s both the internal team that you can coach yourself in this crazy way that I have or you can go ahead and invest. And that takes an investment of: time, money, energy, and resources to invest in such a way where you find your mentors and you hire them, the professionals that are really good at what the creating results that you might want and then do what they say they’re gonna do.
So here’s my question for you today here.
“Who would you like to have on your team as your board of directors to help advise you in your life and your business?”
And then my challenge to you is to create it, to have a conversation with them. I don’t care if you do it out loud, you don’t have to do it into your phone. I will record these conversations like complete but ass crazy person. And I don’t know, I’ve never, I don’t plan on ever doing anything with him. I just find that if I’m recording it, I take it more seriously and I don’t second guess myself. And so I challenge you to also potentially draw a diagram like I did. I mean, I can only share with you what has worked for me and this may or may not work for you, but try it out, see if you. If it does work for you, I’ll share with you one more thing about this. That worked really well for me and then I’m going to wrap this up.
At one stage, I think it was back in 2009. This is a year that I filed my bankruptcy was the year actually that I lost everything and I was feeling to the low of the low and this is also a year that I met my wife, my wife to be and I met her at a time when I’d lost everything and what I chose to do as soon as I found myself being attracted to her and there was maybe a mutual attraction is instead of giving you any lines of bullshit, maybe I, maybe I’d still gave her bullshit, but I, I told her authentically everything that was going on. I walked her out onto a balcony and I talked to her about how I lost everything. I told her about my two year old daughter. I told her that I had just broken up with her mom and now was not the time, the right time for me to meet a new woman or start a new relationship.
And we talked on the phone and we, we, we flirted while we were together at that event. I actually met her at a Tony Robbins event. We were both volunteering and um, we never kissed at that event. Uh, we, we stayed in touch and we had a phone conversation for two months until we had our first date and see I had gone through a series of different relationships and I just have been in love with a woman and we had a baby together. And when I lost that relationship and I lost all my money and I lost my self confidence and lost my sense of self worth. And I had been bouncing from relationship to relationship. I called myself a serial monogamist. Like I go from one amazing girlfriend relationship to the next amazing girlfriend relationship. And then I stay in the relationship too fucking long.
And uh, and, and like it would eventually collapse and when I started dating Robin, I didn’t want to be the same thing. I didn’t want to date another amazing, beautiful, intelligent woman. That’s not what I wanted. I wanted to find a woman doesn’t have to be with, for the rest of my life. And I didn’t. And I also had this vision of me being a little bit an a player and it was time for me to play the field with bullshit as if I was going to be a player. But at any rate I was a little bit self conscious. I was definitely scared. I didn’t want to try another relationship that failed. And so the truth is she was wanting me to commit in our relationship. We just started dating, or maybe we were a few months and under six months in or whatever it was.
And we had a conversation that was going to break this out. I was pissed off. She was thinking of going on another date with another dude. Maybe she even went on a date with a guy and I was pissed that I was gonna. Call it off. I was going to break up with her as I was really emotional about it. What I did is I had this conversation and then took it to Tony, sits in my chair. Mike brought it to my board of directors. On this day, the only person that talked to me was Tony, and instead of bitching and whining and complaining and calling my friend or call him about you’re calling my mom and talking to her about what’s going on. I talked to Tony and I had to frame the question and the problem in such a way that actually made sense and actually had a real conversation with Joan and I don’t remember exactly what he said to me on this day.
By the way, if I talk to, if I still had these conversations with Tony or my, um, my new war room board of directors and on a regular basis I’ll talk to robin and my friends and stuff. And I will talk as though I just had a conversation with Tony Robbins or anybody else that lives on my, on my board directors team, and so they oftentimes they figured out this crazy person and that’s what he thinks, but I have the conversation on both sides, depending on mentor. And in this case Tony just asked me questions and they asked me questions about basically what I was scared of most and long story short is he told me what a fucking dip shit I was being about leaving or potentially losing the best thing that I had going for me. And he challenged me to go look at the journal entry that I had made years before while I was traveling and homeless.
I was homeless at this time. I had no place to live on standard buddy’s house on his couch. And apparently I brought my journals with me. I didn’t even remember this at the time. But, uh, he, Tony brought it up. He goes, go read in your journals. And I, and he said, go for who was the man that you said you wanted to become so you could attract the woman that you could go ahead and be with for the rest of your life and describe her. So I went and I looked in my journal and I read my own words that I had written years before that basically described my wife to a t. and so this board of directors, this internal Central Intelligence Agency, I’m now choosing to call it my war room and board of directors has saved my ass and basically saved my relationship with my wife and I couldn’t be happier with the woman that I’m with today and the life that we have together.
And I just count myself lucky as hell that I had a created this complete crazy internal central intelligence agency to serve me. So my challenge to you today is to actually do this shit. To take some version of it and take some application. You don’t have to go completely nuts with it, but do this take the part that you can implement and do it right away. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to get started. Who Do you want to be on your team? It can be anybody can be anybody that you want on your team and put them at your own board of directors table and try to have a conversation with him. If you want to quietly meditate, if you want to talk out loud, if you want to get a free account over entry conferencing or free conference call or whatever [inaudible] you can.
But then if you would do one more thing for me? Because I think this is kind of nuts. I’d be very curious to hear if this is has any kind of positive effect for you. I’ve shared this with a few people on a few different, um, in a few different places. I’ve never really shared this publicly and done it in a public broadcast like this one is the main focus of the podcast and this is a long one, but it’s something that, uh, has helped me a lot and I hope that it helps you to alright with that.
I apologize for the longer podcast today, but hopefully you got some value out of it and you don’t write me off as could be a complete psychopath.
Make today and magnificent and I’ll talk to you tomorrow!
