IDL49 Season 1 Reflection: A Look Back at 2021
How do the relationships in our lives provide us with constant opportunities for learning and improving? Why should you aim to improve at least one person’s life with your work? What is the power behind “staying with it”?
In this episode, Tyler recaps the standout lessons that have been at the forefront of the Impact Driven Leader Podcast. He reflects on goal achievement, how to strengthen your sense of self, and how to foster strong relationships.
IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:
Staying with it
Do it for one
''The only one who loses is the one who quits”
Do it for the relationships
Staying with it
Stick with your goal and work at it whenever you can.
Throughout 2021, over 40 different interviews aired with various internationally recognized writers and speakers, and it was through sticking with it weekly, that The Impact Driven Leader Podcast got to where it is today.
Do it for one
“For [just] one listener out there, if I can help you be a healthier leader, spouse, parent, coach … I believe in my heart that I can spare you from some of the pain that I’ve had to endure … of going through business and making mistakes. ”
As you grow and work through your business, your creative venture, or your goals, aim to help at least one person.
If you can satisfy, teach, and encourage just one person to make a valuable change in their life, then you have succeeded.
“The only one who loses is the one who quits”
Life is long and full of trials.
There will be periods of success and periods of failure. It is important that you keep going, whether you are succeeding or struggling at that moment.
“If we can come to grips with our insecurities … and not let them overwhelm us, make us callous … we can be better leaders and serve people better. ”
Do it for the relationships
Overall, focus on people and on uplifting those around you.
Focus the heart of your work and your impact on improving the quality of life and work that you provide to the people that you serve.
You can learn something from everyone around you because every relationship in your life can teach you something.
Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:
BOOK | Carey Nieuwhof – At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor
BOOK | Peter Drucker – The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done
BOOK | Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman – The Daily Stoic Journal: 366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living
The Impact Driven Leader YouTube Channel
Join the Impact Driven Leader Community
Connect with Tyler on Instagram and LinkedIn
Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com
About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast
The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.
Rate, review and subscribe here on Apple Podcasts or subscribe on Stitcher and Spotify.
In every single place in our life, we have the opportunity to learn something.
Tyler Dickerhoof
Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Hey there. Welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. Who's your host? Tyler Dickerhoof here in live, in studio, there's a recording here on YouTube that you can watch, or you can just listen to, as you normally have through the number of episodes. This is episode 49, 49 over the last year and a few weeks. One, I just kind of want to have this recap. One is a cherry on the top of this year, but two to kind of share some information as well to invite. If you're listening into these episodes, man, I would love to have you join the Impact Driven Leader community. You can be part of the book club where once a month we dig through a book. Right now in December, we are going through Carrie Nieuwhof's book, At Your Best, talking all about burnout.
If that isn't a topic that needs to be discussed right now, I don't know what is. Then we have a special book. For those of you that are watching you get to see what this book is. I'm not saying, but so excited to interview this author. She will be up, I'll just tip my hand up in January. But this is what I want to do. It's just kind of a recap for this last episode of the year, as we're getting close to the holiday season, as we celebrate the holidays the end of December into the new year. I kind of want to take a moment and give you some backstory.
So those of you that maybe know me a little bit, know me I grew up on a farm in Ohio. I grew up on a dairy farm. I went to school in New York, made my way to California and ultimately ended up in Washington. That's been my history. As part of that is I had some career challenges. I had some challenges when I was in college and for me, it was a lot of breaking through my own personal insecurities. When I was 14, had a younger brother that died in a farming accident. What I realized a couple years ago is how I dealt with that is I just put my head down and pushed.
Now, as I look around our landscape today and leaders and why this story comes to point is I think there's a lot of leaders that are just trying to figure out how to get through so they're putting their head down and pushing. For me personally, I had to learn how to open my arms. I had to learn how to open my arms and invite people to join with me in the process because it was only then that I could shed some of the armor of my insecurities and actually interact with people.
So today I have with you, just kind of a cap of this year. There's a few of these elements that came out in some of these discussions, the 45, 40, so 44, 45 different guests that I had the opportunity to get to know and interview and spend time with. There were three things that I want to share with you. There are three things that really this year meant to me, the first one is just stay with it. I previously my wife and I had done a podcast. It was called the Impact Makers. Took me a second there, just bear with me, Impact Makers podcast. You can still go to SoundCloud. We've referenced a few of those episodes, different guests like John Gordon and Brad Lanik and Bob Berg, and Don Yaeger and so forth and Mark Cole, some great episodes there.
So my wife and I, and that was about our network marketing industry. I loved the process, my wife hated it. Let's be honest. She just didn't like to do it. So as I was thinking about this again in 2020 it's like, how can I find a way to serve people? How can I wait to sharpen myself? Man, I love these interviews. You know, two of the real I guess feathers in my cap, is when I've had guests say, wow, I've now ever had an interview like that. I've had the pleasure to interview some pretty amazing guests, some world renowned authors and leaders. Don't ask me why they just have said yes and one of the things when they say, and I go into it, it's like, I don't want to ask you the same old questions.
I know Don Yaeger shared that with me. He's like, "Tyler, I know you're always going to ask unique in different questions." I hope you, the listener is getting value out of that. I don't want you to listen to the same episode that somebody else. I want to hear it to be new and different and hopefully the way I look at things kind of makes you think a little differently. That's my hope here and part of that is my learning process, is I go through, why did I just stick with it? Man, I had 45 or so conversations, maybe 48 conversations with people that made me look at my world differently.
I'm not the same person I was like year ago, exactly, sitting here, preparing for this episode to come out, for this show to come out. At the same point, I know if you've probably listened along with all of these episodes, you're a different leader today. That's my hope and desire, is that you continue to grow and that we grow together and invite you as part of the Impact Driven Leader book club. I mentioned the round table where we go through Zoom every week, where we will probably, hopefully 2022, I'm trying to put together an event to get some of these guests, some of these friends that I've developed at a leadership event. We'll discuss that. I'm putting it out there. So I got to really hold myself to it. I'd love for that to happen.
The number two thing that I learned is, I show the number two here on the screen is do it for one. I have a little post-it note on my desk. I'm a person of face. I've hopefully shared that in some of these episodes. It says, please an audience of one, that one is God. Well, at the same point I realized part of this doing and for one is yes for Him but it's also for that you, for that one listener, for that one listener out there that if I can help you be a healthier leader, to be a healthier spouse, to be a healthier parent, to be a healthier coach, to be healthier coworker, man, I believe in my heart that I can spare you from some of the pain that I've had to endure, the black eyes proverbially going through business of just making mistakes.
I had a conversation this morning as part of our round table and we started talking about this idea of politics. I don't know if you've ever had this. You think about, do politics exist in your business? I'm going to guess you're like, yeah, duh. Because I think politics are everywhere. And politics is about this dirty ugly word in our society, is I think you can come across and especially when you think about it corporately. However, as I was talking to this person, I was sharing that, I read something here the other day. It was one of the books I read, The Daily Drucker by Peter Drucker I believe.
This was in and if not, it was maybe it was in the daily stoic. I'm going to reference some things and just, I think it was the daily stoic and it was about politics. There's politics everywhere. Now instead of looking at as politics, what if we looked at as relationships, the reason someone else got the account, got the promotion, got the, whatever was politics. Maybe they got it because of relationships. See, for me, that's something that I really vastly misunderstood for so much of my life.
If there was one thing, and I shared this in one of the newsletters that accompanies my podcast that comes out each week. I grew up a dairy farm. I shared that earlier. I knew more about cows by the time I was 25 than I did about people, plain and simple. That is a reality. In the last 20 years, almost of my life, I've spent way more getting to know about people and it has made my life so much richer and so much fuller because you can't do anything in life without people. If you try to do without people, you just are alone on a tropical deserted island, it doesn't even have to be tropical. You're just deserted in an island somewhere you're alone. It's all you. That's what it's like without relationships.
As I thought about this reading that I had and this idea that politics is just another name for relationships. Now, politics has been slanted to be dirty and heinous and backstabbing and manipulative, but it doesn't have to be. If we look at relationships are like that, but they don't have to be. They can be healthy, they can be enduring, they can be embracing, they can be supportive. If we think we got that promotion because people like to work with us, we got that contract, we got that that client because they like to work with us. We built that friendship, that all of a sudden we're working together, we're doing things together because they like to be around us.
That's relationships. Those are politics and that's doing it for one. It's just that one person to get a little bit better. There's a part of me this year that was me, me getting better, me getting better here to serve, me getting better, to just let my heart out and say, hey, let's work through this together.
The number third point that I want to share with you today, the only one who loses is the one who quits. As we come into the next year here, one of the things, I had a friend, Roy Vaden, actually previous guest shares like Tyler don't even look at the number of people that have listened. I don't know. I get to come across people go hear there, whatever they said, oh I listen to your podcast. I'm like, thank you so much. I have no idea. You could be the only person. I know my mom doesn't listen because I don't think she listens to podcasts. My dad doesn't listen. He doesn't listen to podcasts. I don't think any of my siblings do. If they do great, hey, glad you're here.
But part of that is no matter what we go through in life, it doesn't matter what you go through. The only person that loses is the one that quits. Now I can have this motivational speech from one of my three kids and we could say, hey, you know what? I don't care if you finished first or last. Just keep going. I think back about finding Nemo and what did they tell them? Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. Dory said, just keep swimming. You'll get there eventually.
It's never about the person that comes out first or fastest or whatever. It's the person that keeps going. Now. I've had the pleasure to mentor John Maxwell for those who are watching, you see a picture of John and I from last year at a Christmas party, his house. I shared that because he shared this with me. Why is he a special person? Because he's accomplished a lot. But at the same point he said, my first book sucked. I don't know why anyone read it. It was horrible and yet he kept with it and he kept with it because he knew he had a message that he needed to share.
Maybe that's, part of this podcast is there's a message out here that I'm just trying to refine and figure out it is to share, that if we can kind of come to grips with our insecurities, guess what, yes, we all have them. But if we can come to grips with them and not let them overwhelm us, not let them make us callous, not let them just kind of make us become a doormat, we can be a better leader. We can serve people better. That's number three.
I guess there's a four. This kind of ties into what I shared earlier, is do it for the relationships. I look back at the year and I look back and there's a lot of, not as much travel as it was in the previous years. I mean, we're still dealing with COVID and there hasn't been as many in-person events and I've thought about that times that I've gotten to have conversations either part of our round table, the Impact Driven Leader or part of these podcasts and the relationships and just learning about people. One of the very first episodes with Paula Feras and unfortunately having to endure the loss, Ohio state had to Michigan, Paula, good luck to Michigan.
We'll see it happen in another 10 years, but that's not out of spite, but that relationship, that was fun. To different guests like Jason Dorsey and people like, I had no idea who were, Amy Downs, Richard Louis. I think about these individuals and I think about how they've impacted my life. They've steered me into a different way that I would've never guessed, that I'd have those relationships today and what's blossomed out of it. Colin Henderson, Jordan Montgomery, recent guest, David Nurse, some of these characters and people actually, what was your favorite one? It's like, everyone's a favorite one.
I mean, I should list off every single episode because I took something away from it. I share that with you because in every single relationship you have, you can always learn something. I saw this and I think it was from a friend, but I'm not going to misquote it. They said, always have your notebook ready? Every single relationship, being held, even wise people, they have their notebook ready because in every single relationship there may be something they can learn. Sometimes I have my notebook. Sometimes I have the note section in my phone.
I remember being in an event a couple years ago that I got invited to speak and I was asked to be on a panel on stage and I take out my phone and the guy who's the MCs, like what are you doing? I'm like, well, that was really good. I'm taking notes. It was from one of the other panelists and I think back and it's because it was really good and I could pick that up and I can look back here and I could find it. It was in January of 2020 and what did I write down there and it's here for me. Why I say that is every single place in our life we have the opportunity to learn something and it's through relationships.
It's through relationships that we learn and we gather and we collect. And it's only then can we actually make an impact on others because it's those relationships. If you're watching in, you see me, I'm still scrolling on my phone for that moment. Back in February of 2020, I was in Montreal of all places speaking. It was right before the world shut down and as I sat there, the lady's name was Jeanie, and as she shared something I really just kind of like, wow, that was good because it made an impact on my life. It made an impact on other people's lives because of that.
I think that's where we can get so caught up in what we don't know that we're afraid to share what we do. When we are afraid to share what we do know here are the people that lose, everyone around us. So part of that is all the relationships. So that's my recap of 2021. I thank you for joining. Thank you for tuning in. This is what I'd love. If you got value out of today, share it with someone. If at the same point, you're not a subscriber, you just found this episode, please subscribe. Trust me, they'll get better. Today, if this is the low watermark, I hope it is and we can get better and have better guests, better conversation. You don't want to hear just me on. It gets, who does monologues, really?
Monologues are okay, but it's ranting. It's talking into a dead screen. I'd rather interact. I hope you do the same too, because one of the things that I've learned in leadership and all of life, and I mentioned it here today, it's about the relationships. So as we go into this holiday season, as you're listening or maybe you're floating back, it doesn't matter, holiday season or not really take time to value those relationships and see what you can learn for every single person you interact with because I can guarantee you learn something.
Lastly, if you can leave me me a review, let me know how I'm doing. I'd love it. Give it a rating. If it's a one star, hey, that's better than nothing. It's better than zero. Give a five star if I've earned it. That would be spectacular. Either way thank you for listening. I would love for you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes and as well, gear up, get ready for an amazing 2022. I'm excited.
There's also a place for you to engage in the Impact Driven Leader community through the book club or through the round table. Would love to have you there. You can go to tylerdickerhoof.com, go to podcast, go to round table, go to book club. You can access all that stuff there or the impactdrivenleader.com. Go to all the show notes. Thanks for joining. Have a great rest to your day and we'll see you next time.
