MMM 036: Mindset and Myths About Identity with Gene Hammett

Identity is way beyond “Who am I?” Apparently, it’s more about who you really need to be. In this episode, Arlene and Leading Growth Expert, Gene Hammett debunk the common mindsets and misconceptions about identity. Gene talks about what core identity is, how to own that identity, and adapt as you go through identity shifts. He also emphasizes must-have values that build your identity so you can magnify your impact and influence. If you’re still wondering what your identity has to do with success, this conversation is for you! Tune in and discover how to find and strengthen your identity. Get over fear and build confidence as you move towards becoming more you!

“A part of your core identity is to create your value. You can’t blame someone else for this.” -Gene Hammett

Highlights:

00:27 Identity and Success
02:35 Identity Identified
07:05 Identity and Failures
13:33 Identity and Your Impact
19:08 Own Your Identity
25:06 Be Unlimited
29:47 Visualize Your Identity

Resources:

Debunk common mindsets and myths about identity. Identity crisis in entrepreneurs is complicated. Tune in @arlene_gale and @genehammett talk about building core identity to increase desired outcomes! #BookWritingBusiness #BusinessBuildingBooks… Click To Tweet

Quotes:

09:23 “You can do it just by deciding that you’re going to start playing a bigger game.” -Gene Hammett

12:05 “A part of your core identity is to create your value. You can’t blame someone else for this.” -Gene Hammett

21:31 “When you’re successful, it can become dangerous, it can become complacency. You can drift along and just let life take you where it’s going to go.” -Gene Hammett

21:49 “We create our destiny intentionally. We don’t react to it.” -Gene Hammett

25:28 “You don’t get to a place of mastery unless you’re really intentional about it.” -Gene Hammett

31:47 “When you can visualize your core identity, then you can actually create that around you.” -Gene Hammett

34:16 “You don’t have to be successful to get the value out of it.” -Gene Hammett

Connect with Gene:

Gene Hammett is a leading expert on high growth company culture and leadership. He has decades of experience with more than $40 million in revenue for the companies that he has led and owned. Gene has interviewed more than 530 CEOs of high-growth companies to understand the core principles of fast growth. He consults companies to activate new growth and reduce the high cost of influence leadership. After 15 years of being a serial entrepreneur, Gene has built teams and taken many companies to two times and three times their growth. He has worked with more than two dozen companies on the INC 5000 List. Recently, he realized the biggest drive to faster growth was the ability for companies to create growth culture and leadership that inspires ownership.

Transcription:

Arlene Gale: Hi, everybody, welcome to Mindset Meets Mastery. Wow, have you heard the word identity? What does that mean, anyway? You know, identity can be both personal and professional, and until we really truly understand who we are and can define that in terms that are tangible and measurable, it’s really hard to become a master of whatever it is that we have that we see is heading us in a positive direction towards success. So who do you say you are? Who do you say your business is? And sometimes it’s hard for us to put that identity into words so maybe ask clients or maybe ask an expert. So that’s what we’re here today to do is we’re here to talk to an expert. His name is Gene Hammett. Gene Hammett is a leading expert on high growth company, culture and leadership. He has decades of experience with more than $40 million in revenue for the companies that he has led and owned. Gene has interviewed more than 530 CEO’s of high growth companies to understand the core principles of fast growth. He consults companies to activate new growth and reduce the high cost of influence leadership. After 15 years of being a serial entrepreneur, Gene has built teams and taken many companies to two times and three times their growth. He has worked with more than two dozen companies on the Inc. 5,000 list. Recently, he realized the biggest drive to fast growth was the ability for companies to create a growth culture and leadership that inspires ownership.

Gene, welcome to Mindset Meets Mastery. Who wouldn’t want part of what you’re offering? I mean, really.

Gene Hammett: Well, it’s not for everybody because some people don’t want to change.

Arlene Gale: Ooh, ouch. That’s a good one. Ouch. Okay. Well, let’s talk a little bit about identity. What do you have to say about identity? First, define identity for my audience.

Gene Hammett: The simple version and kind of layman’s terms, it’s how we see ourselves. And really specifically how we label ourselves. And I know some people may say labels are bad, but you know what? I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a son, I’m a friend, that’s part of my identity. And it strikes to the core of who I am. Because if you try to say, I’m not a dad or a husband, obviously, that’s in conflict with me. And so it’s deeply ingrained in how I am seen in the world, how I view myself, that’s how I use this term identity.

Arlene Gale: Well. And so, all of the things that you labeled yourself as I think are great labels, and I’m the same way. I’m a mom, I’m a wife, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a woman, all of those things are great labels, but you know, under the circumstances in which I grew up, I also have those labels that say, you can’t do it, why bother? Why try? You’re worthless? So people do struggle with those internal labels too. So what do you say about that, as far as trying to overcome those labels?

Gene Hammett: There is a difference between the label of I’m not worthy, or I’m not good enough, and how we see our core identity. I’m not discounting the fact that there’s been times in my life where I felt like I was less than human, that I didn’t have the confidence to move forward. We can go into some of my backstory around that, but I know that, when I am playing at my highest levels, I’m very clear in who I am and what I stand for and let labels define the actions and the beliefs that I take moving forward.

Arlene Gale: Okay. So that makes a big difference. So your identity is it’s really your core identity. It’s not the myths or the negative mindsets that are sometimes easier to latch onto. Is that what you’re saying?

Gene Hammett: Yep.

Arlene Gale: So tell us a little bit about you, Gene. How did you get to where you are? What are some of those myths or mindsets that you had to overcome to get to the identity that you have at your core now.

Gene Hammett: In a professional world, I spent 10 years in corporate America, really honing my skills, getting prepared to launch my business. Didn’t have the idea so I just kept working and gathering up the skills of marketing, and sales, and strategy, and even technology. 2001 came along, and 9/11 sent me into a layoff and I ended up saying, “This is the time. No one’s hiring, I’ll start a business.” And I spent nine years building out a business. As you mentioned, we did over 40 million in revenue. I had built a team up, sometimes as high as 15 people. And it was a big part of my identity as the founder of that company. Now, I will tell you to get to where I am today. That had to go away, and it went away in a very horrible kind of fashion. But about 10 years ago, I had a deal with my best friend for $3 million. And that was January 15th, 2010. And I lost everything. The deal never came through. I had 10,000 customers that were depending on me because of promises I made and the inventory that I paid for never came in. And that is just a horrible feeling. I mentioned earlier about my own set of confidence in struggling to be human. I went that period as my identity, as a founder of a company was stripped away. And I had to look at my life and try to figure out how I’m going to get back to some sense of normal. You know, unlike today with the coronavirus, I was not dealing with this with everyone around me, it was just me, and my family, and the close family and friends. So I was alone, a lot of it. That’s the big move that happened, that allowed me to look back and see some things that were missing in my journey of leadership. And so my next role or identity becomes a coach, and I’ve spent the last 10 years honing my skills to help leaders that are already successful go beyond where they are today, to help them really with those defining moments. And that’s a big part of who I am.

Arlene Gale: So I want to step back just a little bit to something that you said. We all experience these failures, or setbacks, or I like to say lessons learned, how does something like that impact the labels you wear, the identity that you put on yourself,

Gene Hammett: They stripped everything away from me. Because I was running along and I had done big deals before I’ve done lots of work over nine years. I had this team, this sense of a founder mentality, and even CEO as I was building out the team. And the day that it happened, I just came crashing down. Like I felt my confidence was ripped away, I lost all my money, lost my house, I eventually lost my business and I had to do bankruptcy. All of that combined together was a horrible kind of experience for me. But my wife had said something to me very early on when this was happening, and she said: “You’ll look back at this as a gift someday.” And at the time, it was so fresh and so painful that I was like, woman, you don’t know what you’re talking about. But she was a smart woman because it was definitely a gift, it was a long time ago so I’ve done a lot of healing in that process, but that was a big part of who I am, going through something like that. And we all did this, right? It’s not just me. We’ve all had moments of this. And here’s what I will tell you in that is because I’m an entrepreneur, one of the things that I really attach myself to is I really can’t blame others. It’s easy to blame others. And in fact, it may feel good to blame someone else. But I have someone that stole $3 million for me, and it’s very easy for me to blame that person, right?

Arlene Gale: Right. Absolutely, yeah.

Gene Hammett: But I’m giving him the power if I blame him, because he could correct it by returning my money, which he didn’t. But he could correct that, and I decided that I needed to look at myself and maybe blame myself. And so what part of the journey back was really about forgiveness, and it wasn’t forgiveness for the person who took the money, it was finding forgiveness in myself. There’s a lot of details, I haven’t filled in the gaps, I ended up writing a book around this called The Trap of Success. I’m not saying go buy the book, but this is the book that I kind of talk about losing everything and rebuilding my life, and rebuilding that identity because that was what was necessary for me to be able to navigate that time in my life. It was extremely hard. And hopefully you don’t have to have a crisis like this. Maybe you could do it, it’s hard.

Arlene Gale: Yeah.

Gene Hammett: Maybe you can do it just by deciding that you’re going to start playing a bigger game.

“You can do it just by deciding that you're going to start playing a bigger game.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Arlene Gale: I like that, because you’re absolutely right. I think everybody has their crisis, their tipping point, whatever they want to call it. But what everybody doesn’t do is get up, and take on, or challenge their core identity, or not let this quote failure, or stumbling, or someone did this to me, they don’t take that and figure out what part do I own? How do I do it differently? And how do I move on to the next step that’s true to who I am at the core. And that’s where I see the difference.

Gene Hammett: So true.

Arlene Gale: And I have a lot of clients who are similar to you, that they have great experience that they worked for someone else and then they get downsized, or lay off, or whatever you want to call it, or they take the golden parachute. And they’re too young, they don’t want to just sit at home eating bon bons, watching reruns, they want to do something and they want to go into business. But you know, having the expertise in this area doesn’t quite ease as easily as some people think translate into creating your own business. And some people will get back up after they fall, and some people just quit. And that’s the difference in whether or not I think they are in touch with their core identity. What say you?

Gene Hammett: Yeah. The core identity when you’re making that shift from, say a corporate job, I did it. And I did it not because I wanted to, per se, I had to. And it was sort of a crisis there, but I was on good footing. As I remember, it was about $20,000 I had in savings that I was able to roll into this next business, which is not a lot of money, especially when it’s all you had. I actually had 35,000. I took some of it to actually buy a ring for my wife, she was my fiance at the time, and I put the rest of it into the business. The business got more, I guess. But I will say that the big part of making that shift, whether it be from corporate America or really just the shift to being an entrepreneur is you have to do it with a lot of intention. You have to really look at yourself and say, I’m going to change my core identity. Because here’s the thing I know, anybody who’s gotten a paycheck expects to get the paycheck every week regardless of what they do. As an entrepreneur, you no longer expect to get any paychecks. It is completely based on what you create, the value that you add to the world is what you get paid back. And so when you step into this world of entrepreneurs, and frankly, it’s not for everyone, but you realize that a part of your core identity is you create your value. And you can’t blame someone else for this, I lost millions of dollars, I don’t blame this other person. It was painful as it was, I looked at myself and said, how do I step up? How do I shift? What do I need to let go of? And all of that was a part of the journey to being the entrepreneur that I am today, to being able to work with the people I work with, with the leaders that want to go beyond where they are right now to build a business that really does provide more than just success, but more significance in who they are.

“A part of your core identity is to create your value. You can't blame someone else for this.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Arlene Gale: That both of them are moving together in a positive direction. Can we do that?

Gene Hammett: Yes.

Arlene Gale: All right. Stay right there, we’ll be right back with Mindset Meets Mastery.

Today, we are talking to my guest expert, Gene Hammett. He works with high growth companies on culture and leadership. And before we left the break, I asked you to give us some examples of what you teach, and what do you talk to people about as far as identity?

Gene Hammett: So I worked with a lot of people that are very successful. They already reached some level of success and they know that there’s more to do in the world. Maybe it’s not more money, maybe it’s more impact. And no matter what happens, no matter how successful you are, or even if you haven’t made this journey yet, you’ve got to really look at how you’re going to level up to the next version of you. Every new level requires a new version of you. Is that fair?

Arlene Gale: Yeah. That’s part of the stretching that goes on in business. I tell people, sometimes, I’ve been stretched so much, even just in the last six months, I should be six and a half feet tall and I’m nowhere near that. So yeah, I get that. That makes a lot of sense.

Gene Hammett: So when you think about this, the shift that you have to make, one of the core elements is what do you stand for? So that there’s a couple of levels that I actually walk my clients through. One of them is, you know how a company will have core values that run their life? I think people should have values as well. And I help my clients discover what those core values are, and how they actually live by them. One of mine is, I’m leaning into it, is this, does that sound familiar?

Arlene Gale: Ooh. Mastery. Yes, because we’ve been talking about mindsets and now we’re going to talk about mastery, and that’s where I really want people to go is mastery. Please, lay some wisdom on us.

Gene Hammett: Yeah. So I have done a lot of work with myself, but also with my clients. They’re already successful so I have to get them to clearly see the core values of that next level person. Beyond where they are today, what is that next level? I have clients that know that they’ve run $10 million businesses, and they realize that they have to be even more confident and decisive in this new version of themselves. So wherever you are, there’s always a new version. And one thing that you have to put with those core values is you have to understand the identity of the person you’re moving into. The identity, as we discussed, opening up to this is the core label of how we actually see ourselves at the deepest elements of our soul. And so I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m an entrepreneur, and one of the examples I give, and I do this from stage, and I want everyone to kind of play around with me is, some people are dancers and some people aren’t. Fair to say?

Arlene Gale: Oh, amen. Yeah. You know what? A hundred years ago when I was young and dating, I said: “I will not marry a man who will not dance.” They didn’t have to be good, they just had to try. So yeah, I’m all with you. I’m all about the dance. So how does that relate to identity?

Gene Hammett: It does. Because you have labeled yourself as a dancer, and it is part of who you are now. I’m not saying that you have to be a dancer in order to be successful in business, but here’s the analogy I’m sharing with you. There are people out there that are dancers and there are people that aren’t dancers, they’ve really stepped away from this, they feel anguish. My son is 13, hates music. It’s just kind of weird for me because I love music, my wife loves music, but I grew up not being a dancer, if you will. I didn’t know how to chat with women, I did not go to the dances in my high school, I didn’t go to my proms, I worked instead. It was safe, it was comfortable for me. And I went through college not dancing, so it was just something that became a part of who I was. But I remember when I was 26 years old, so I was a little bit of an older adult or young adult, if you will. It was 1996, it’ll tell you how old I am, I was on the dance floor, a beautiful girl asked me to dance, and I was at a wedding, and by beautiful girl, I mean my cousin. And so she’s like: “Do you know how to jitterbug or jive?” And I go: “I don’t even know if you’re speaking English.” And she’s like: “Well, what do you know how to do?” And the only thing I knew how to do, and it’s kind of embarrassing, is the sway. You know about the sway, just go back and forth, back and forth, and that’s all I have. Now, what I ended up doing from there is deciding I would learn how to dance, it was by time. And this was the time when the movie Swingers was coming out, one of my favorite movies, and it was all the rage, and all the bars had local free lessons. I share this story with you because I learned something, my own core identity says, I’m going to change this. I’m going to level up in my own view of the world. And I started taking dance lessons. Now I traveled internationally as a consultant during those days, and I was going back and forth to Canada every week. And so I could only go to like three or four of those classes, and then I was just busy with work. I decided to make this change so I actually rented old movies. So this is how big of a nerd I am. I rented them on a VHS tape, I looked at them and I took notes about the moves. So these were like unique moves, and I would come back to the floors, and I would bring those moves back to the dance. And eventually after about three months, I became a dancer. It became who I was. I was able to talk to women, my competence level shot up, everything shifted for me through that move and my identity shifted to being a dancer. Does that make sense?

Arlene Gale: So let me say this back to make sure I’m understanding. So you were comfortable where you were, but you wanted to stretch and become a dancer based on this event that happened in your life. And so you went from A to B, and now you can take ownership of the label being a dancer.

Gene Hammett: Absolutely. And it happened from there, everything changed. I had the confidence to ask girls on dates, I had the confidence to do other things in life. My wife is beautiful, we’ve been married almost 20 years.

Arlene Gale: Congratulations.

Gene Hammett: It’s like 18, 19 right now. So it is something that changed me forever. My core identity shifts. Now, how does this relate to business? Well, if you think about some people are not dancers, and some people are dancers, it’s because of their core identity. Some people are entrepreneurs, some people aren’t. Some people can sell, and some people say that they can’t. Some people can lead and some people can’t. And so whatever you step into, the core identity of that next role, and if you really do it and completely commit to who you are and own it, you’ve said those words a few times, it’s one of the key things in my work and research of fast growth companies is you’ve got to own it. But you’ve also, as a leader, have to inspire people to own their role, own their work. We all want employees that when they say they’ve got it, we don’t have to worry about it anymore. We know they own it. The way this kind of all works together is when you decide to level up to a new identity, when you decide that you’re going to step into this. You do it from the inside out and everything starts to fall in line. There’s a reason why a lot of people don’t make it in this world of entrepreneurs is because they never shift that core identity.

Arlene Gale: Well, and you’re talking about from the inside out. What I’m thinking is, I’m hearing my listeners screaming that their insides are scared. You know, they’re terrified. Some go from scared to terrified to take that next step to, you know, they’re benchwarmers, or they’re successful, and they’re kind of comfortable in their little zone right now. They see what they might want to become, but that’s scary. How do you overcome that fear and that risk taking mindset to become a dancer?

“We create our destiny intentionally. We don't react to it.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Gene Hammett: So I wrote this book that I mentioned earlier, The Trap of Success, and what’s inside here is kind of my journey. And I share with you through my own ups and downs, but also a few of my clients and stories were in there, and all the interviews I’ve done on my podcast. And I say this to answer your question that when you’re successful, when you’re comfortable, it can become dangerous, it can become complacency. You can drip the long and just let life take you where it’s going to go. But what I do know as an entrepreneur is that’s not the way most of us live. In fact, entrepreneurs truly believe we create our destiny. We create the opportunities for new business. We create this intentionally, we don’t react to it. And when you understand that part of that fear is a signal that you’ve got to look and lean into it. Maybe it’s just taking one small step. Maybe it’s picking up the phone, or sending one email, or making one sales call. I took a lot of people who have this fear of sales. If you want to start a business, you have to sell some stuff. But I ask them key questions, like, tell me a story about the value you’ve created for someone in the work you do. And if they can tell me one, or two, or three stories, it’s like, remember those stories and all those people that you aren’t serving, that you aren’t connecting with, they don’t get to experience that value. Or worse, they get to go to someone else who is not as good as you because you have a fear of not putting yourself out there.

“When you're successful, it can become dangerous, it can become complacency. You can drift along and just let life take you where it's going to go.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Arlene Gale: So would you say it’s about risk taking, or would you label that as something else?

Gene Hammett: I do, I mean, I have the courage gene, I think inside of me. Not just my name, but also just the fact that I look for places that allow me to stretch. Is it scary? Yes. We work on some big projects here, we work with some big clients. I have clients now that have 10 employees, I have clients that have 300 employees, every day, I’m being stretched by my own clients. And did I take a risk in serving them and promising to be able to serve them? Absolutely. But I know that by stepping into it, by having the courage to look at the fear and keep moving, that I have grown and expanded, and my identity has really shifted along with me. I’m also in a new process of leveling up in my own life, my own world. And we all are in a continuous process. If we really understand that we have to continuously evolve and not just accept, we are where we are today. Identity, or skills, or opportunities, we can create that for ourselves.

Arlene Gale: And something that just comes to mind is, of course we’re going through stuff right now, but there have been technology changes. Technology changes all the time and the businesses that survive are the businesses that are willing to take on that new identity and take those risks then to go into the next level, basically, right?

Gene Hammett: Every time, every moment that we’ve had that’s had a big shift. There’s been dozens of them over my professional life. But those that have been afraid to adapt have probably suffered the consequences and played catch up. Those that have leaned in, have gotten the bruises probably, remember those moments, but they’ve moved forward with being agile and they’ve moved forward with new levels of confidence. And every time you overcome this, you actually build a little bit of trust with yourself. And that’s one of the things that I’ve seen on people’s journey to mastery is, do they truly trust themselves? I ask my clients all the time. And again, I know that a lot of listeners here are newer into the business world, but what if you trusted yourself 10 times more than you do right now, what would you be able to do?

Arlene Gale: Wow,

Gene Hammett: I’ve never had someone say that they would be limited, they would be unlimited. And so what’s the journey? How do we move you toward 10 times the level of trust in yourself as you do today? And that’s part of my work, part of it is that mastery. Like you don’t get to a place of mastery unless you’re really intentional about it. I didn’t explain why I had this card on my desk, it wasn’t because of you. This was actually a part of my identity because I leaned into dancing and I became a master at dancing. Like I wasn’t the best in the world, I didn’t go win the fancy contest that was on TV, but it changed who I was. I did kind of coach people.,I did some semi-pro dancing where I was hired to go to big corporate parties and do this acrobatic stuff and swing dancing. But I was very good at golf when I played golf, I don’t play anymore because I’m an entrepreneur. I am very good at Brazilian jiu jitsu so I’m very tuned into the mastery. Right now, my focus on mastery is building my business and really helping the companies move forward and grow, and I’m really mastering that right now so I have a reminder on my desk I look at every day about I’m moving toward mastery. That doesn’t mean that I’m there yet, it just means I’m continuously moving it. And I have my own stumbles that I have to overcome, just as we all do. But I share all this with you because we all have areas in life where we’re looking for mastery. The key is, are you intentional about that? Have you made it a part of your core value? And have you translated the work into, how do you make it a part of your identity?

“You don't get to a place of mastery unless you're really intentional about it.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Arlene Gale: Let me officially put you on the hot seat first.

Gene Hammett: Sure.

Arlene Gale: But remember that because that’s one of the answers. So the first question is, when you think back to when you were first starting and you’re making that transition from working for someone else to taking the expertise, the identity you had around your expertise, into your own business, pick one mindset that could have stopped you in your tracks but didn’t.

Gene Hammett: And it’s something that we all have to wrestle with, but you can’t be all things to all people.

Arlene Gale: Oh, Oh, you just pushed my button because that’s a biggie for me. As a marketing expert, yeah, you can’t. It’s exhausting, it’s deadly.

Gene Hammett: And ineffective and costly. And so the right mindset behind that is to focus on this, and I just had two questions for a client. One of them was, who do you want to be known as? So that’s one of them that helps you understand how to answer that question. And the second one is, if you only got paid for results, who would you work with?

Arlene Gale: Good questions, good questions. So listeners write that down. Those are great questions to help solidify identity. So the second hot seat question is, is there some words of wisdom that somebody gave you that helps you get back up and head back into your business and try again?

Gene Hammett: This has been said a lot and I use it with my clients, but you get what you tolerate. So if you tolerate a low number in your bank account, then you can’t blame anyone else but you, because you’ve tolerated it. You could have a zero balance in your account and be managing around zero, or you could have $4,000 as a minimum. It just really depends on what your standard is, but it happens also in the kind of clients you bring in. If you have clients that you absolutely love, and then you take on someone else because you feel like you need the money, or you just want the money or whatever it is, I’ve learned that you gotta trust that decision. It’s dangerous, but you get what you tolerate. If you really need to have a high standard of clients, I really do believe this concept of we should be so good at what we’re doing, that we are interviewing our clients–

Arlene Gale: Absolutely.

Gene Hammett: –or them interviewing us.

Arlene Gale: Yes, absolutely. I agree 100%. You get what you tolerate. I like that. And I agree. I think as an entrepreneur who has an expertise to share with the people who appreciate and are coachable, in my opinion, that’s where we do the most good. And I know from my personal experience that when you’re only chasing the bank account, people can, I don’t know, smell fear. Is that a good way to put it? I like that a lot. So now we’re back to my third final hot seat question, and that is a golden nugget, an action step that people can use today to move forward in a mindset towards mastery.

Gene Hammett: I think one of the biggest things that has happened in my own life, and I remind my clients of this all the time, many of them understand the power of it, which is, when you start your day, what do you do in terms of visualization of that day? The visualization that I do is, before my feet hit the floor, before I get up to do anything else, before I touch my phone, I stay there in bed visualizing what I’m going to accomplish that day, who I’m going to be, and sometimes I look into the future of what I’m creating. And the more I feel the sense of who I am, and what I’m doing, and where I’m going, the more likely I get up with a sense of energy and clarity for this. For me, it’s just that the epitome of starting out intentionally and really going after what you really want. So if you really had time, I would probably spend four or five minutes sometimes, maybe more, but it’s not necessarily meditation. I just sit there and I let my mind play through and visualize. Part of this comes from Olympic athletes can visualize what they’re going to do when they get to that moment.. And I think there’s a basketball study in Chicago where people who visualize shooting the free-throws did almost as well as those who shot free throws for 30 days. So if you can really take a moment to visualize yourself, that identity, visualize the actions you’re taking and actually feel what you’re creating in this world, feel yourself completing that project, the more likely you are to start the day to actually get that project done, if you will.

Arlene Gale: Wow. That’s great. So I want to give you a minute to kind of wrap it up. Is there anything else you’d like to add about the mindsets or myths about identity?

Gene Hammett: You know, a lot of people don’t really understand this identity, I’m glad you have given me a chance to talk about it today, it’s one of the highest levels of clarity in who you are. I talked about this whole concept of dad, and husband, and even entrepreneur. But when you can visualize, with clarity and confidence, who you are at your core identity, then you can actually create that around you. When you take the moment to prime yourself through visualizations, when you take a moment to really live out the values, I’ve got this on my postcard, MASTERY, I’m living it out every day, I’m not going through the motions. So when I really think about one to leave your audience with something that you can do is, be really clear about who you are, who do you want to be? A big coaching question I ask is, who do you need to be to have the success you want? And it’s a hard question because we don’t have that. We usually have the question, we know what we need to do, we need to sell more. But who do you need to be to sell more?

“When you can visualize your core identity, then you can actually create that around you.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Arlene Gale: Great question. That’s going to take the rest of my day. So who do you need to be to sell more? Or to blank, whatever, more to really get to your core identity. Where you are today, because you’ve got to start with today to be able to figure out what comes next. Right?

Gene Hammett: Yup.

Arlene Gale: So awesome. What a great conversation. Very inspiring, and there’s so much good tangible wisdom here. And I appreciate your time so much. But Gene, before we leave, will you tell people, you told them about the book, tell them where they can connect with you on social media, your website, all those kinds of things because I know they’re going to want to see you dance for example.

Gene Hammett: Well, the only place you can really see me dance is come to, either a wedding that I’m at, or when we get back on stage, I typically put in a moment. And I will tell you, it really challenged who I was because I didn’t think I could pull someone out of the audience. I didn’t have the courage to just pull up a stranger to dance, but I watched one of my friends juggling balls and they pulled up a stranger to juggle. And I’m like, you know what? If you can take someone who can’t juggle and get them to juggle, I can take anyone, even you, Arlene, and make you look amazing and feel amazing on the dance floor, I can do that. It only lasts about 22 seconds in my speech, but that’s all we need to get a taste for it. So that’s where you see the dancing. I will give you two things, I know it’s dangerous to say two things, but I’ve been mentioning my book. I have started doing this because I wrote this book about three years ago, it’s still something I use today with my clients, you don’t have to be successful to get the value out of it. If you want to level up, if you want to create more significance, just go to genehammett.com/freebook. And it’s a way that you can kind of tune into who it is, you don’t have to spend money with me, I’m going to give you the book for free. If you want some other free resources I have, I don’t give away this too much but absolutely free resources, I put everything, most everything has no opt in on this page, but just go to genehammett.com/free, and you will see little elements of time management mastery, and you will see little elements of how I manage the business, the podcast, the finances of this, all of it completely free, no opt in, I just want to give it to people. You do have to opt in to get the book because we gotta send it to you. So if you want that, it’s genehammett.com/freebook. And if you want the free stuff, it’s just genehammett.com/free.

“You don't have to be successful to get the value out of it.” -Gene Hammett Click To Tweet

Arlene Gale: Again, Gene, thank you so much for being here today, being my guest and spending your valuable time with us. I appreciate it.

Gene Hammett: Absolutely.

Arlene Gale: And listeners, I’m going to leave you with this. Remember, do not let anybody else tell you what is or is not possible for you. You get to live your story and write your story, your way, every day.