Podcast Transcription
[TYLER DICKERHOOF]
Hey there. Welcome to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. So glad you're joining me today. So glad you're here. Excited for you to watch if you're watching on YouTube, if you're listening in wherever you listen to podcasts, man, I'm glad you're here. I'm excited to kick off another month, another month in the Impact Driven Leader podcast book club. Each month, if you're not sure I will feature a book either through an author or in this case where I'm just profiling a book that I found extremely valuable. I'm excited today to talk about this book Twelve and a Half, as you can see on the camera there, if you're watching on YouTube by Gary Vaynerchuk. Man, it has been a tremendous value piece for me.
I've reflected back and I've learned a lot of the lessons that Gary shares about and it's one of the great things that I value about Gary. So I'm going to take a few moments. When I get into the episode, let me talk first about you, welcoming you to the Impact Driven Leader podcast. So glad you're here. As always I would love it if you were to rate, review this episode, this podcast, so other people can find it. If you find great value out of it, man, I'd love for you subscribe so that way each Friday, whenever I release a new episode, you are notified. You can also subscribe to YouTube channel, link is in the show notes, love for you to watch. This week you just get to see my ugly face. Some weeks you get much better looking people. It is what it is, but hopefully you enjoy that opportunity to see our faces, how we interact beyond that of just the audio.
One last thing would love for you to join the Impact Driven Leader community. We have a book club, we also have a round table where we meet each week and we talk about books like this month's book. We discuss the principles. We talk about how it affects and grows our leadership abilities. Here's what I love. I get to be a student. I'm not the facilitator that knows it all. I'm just learning as you will know, and it's a great time for me to interact with others and we all learn together. That to me is the value of the round table and I'd love for you to be a part of it as well. Please just send me a message or click on the link to join the round table. Would love to have you as part of our next cohort group starting very soon.
Let me talk about this book. Before I talk about this book, Twelve and a Half, I want to discuss a little bit about Gary V. Gary V, there's a lot of people that love the guy. He can be polarizing. He can be galvanizing. He can be all those things. This is what I've learned about Gary. You'll hear this, as you know, this is a clean episode. It's a clean show. I don't use a lot of profanity, but that's what Gary's known for but this is what I have to say about that. I admire his books because it actually he's tamed bound quite a bit. I could listen to his books with my children, my 12, my 14, my 15 year old and not cringe each time something is said. To me, that's important.
I realize the rooms that I'm in from a leadership perspective, the people that I've been around, the people that I consider my mentors, how would my language choice alter in that room compare to others? If it's different, man, I want to check myself because if they're mentors, people I want to model myself after I think about that. But here's what I admire tremendously about Gary, his heart, his compassion, his kindness towards others has never wavered. I believe this, every time I listen to him, there is this tremendous amount of empathy. We're going to talk about that in today's episode, in his book, Twelve and a Half. I admire that genuine authenticness.
Now, do I necessarily partake in every one of his videos? No, but if Sendman sends me something valuable from Gary, I am all ears. It's like a couple years ago and I'll share this book right now, for those of you watching and you see it, crushing it by Gary V, it was a follow up to his book, Crush It. I got tremendous value out of it as well. The byline of this book is how great entrepreneurs build their business influence and how you can too. It's where I really saw the parallels between marketing and leadership, the elements of what is great marketing, it's being persuasive. It's influencing people, it's in his byline. To me, that's great leadership. So it's no surprise to me when Gary's next book was this Twelve and a Half. The byline reads leveraging the emotional ingredient necessary for business success. I'd so put it in another way. Here are the 12 ingredients that are essential for healthy, modern, loving, caring leadership.
They are the 12 ingredients for emotional intelligence from the emotional point of view that if we can get our arms wrapped around, man, it's going to tremendously affect your ability to lead. Not only work, not only at home, not in your community, but with your parents, as parents, with everyone that you interact with. Here's the thing that I find so often is people are like, oh, I'm not a leader. I don't have a leadership role. But do you interact with people? If yes, these attributes of leadership will apply every single way. So let me read through this real quick. This is not going to be an exhaustive episode. I want to share some of the high points, some of the pieces that I picked out, I don't want to spoil it for you. I want you to pick up this copy of Gary's book. I want you to read it with us, because I got tremendous value out of it.
Let me read through the 12 ingredients that Gary shared in this book. He said, hey, there could be a lot more, but these are the 12 that he found essential; gratitude, self-awareness, accountability, optimism, empathy, kindness, tenacity, curiosity, patience, conviction, humility, ambition. I've had a tremendous amount of growth in a lot of those areas. They are the essential ingredients to me. As with any baking, any cake cooking, any meal, you need to put all the right ingredients for that meal in the right order, in the right amount, too much salt, eh too much pepper, eh, not enough salt, Ugh. All those elements are part of our leadership ability and it's really a lesson in development. I think that's the great difference over time. And Gary talks about this in the book and talks about his introduction.
Patience is really the foundation. It's the core. As I look at that Rome wasn't built in a day. That's the saying, that's the grand saying that the Roman empire continued to grow and grow and grow. It took time, patience. If the Roman conquers and, hey, we don't have to break apart why they were fallible but yet if we look at their ability to conquer and grow, as they did it systemically over time, to me, that's a facet of this, is that have the patience to develop your gratitude, your humility, your empathy, your kindness. It's not all going to happen. But the same point it's thinking about those that you lead, what are you doing patiently to help them each time maybe they step their toe, just like a parent would? Do you chastise your kid for running down the sidewalk without shoes on? No, you pick them up. You make sure they're taken care of and you say, go play again, go play again.
The greatest skills a leader can have are not analytical. They're really not. We have computers now that can do those things. We have algorithms. We have models that can determine the necessity of the financing of loan, devalue, all those. We talk about it. But yet the ability for a leader to put in the right amount of humility, you need a lot but it's not thinking less about me. It's thinking about you more. It's having empathy and optimism, the right places, the right times, the right amounts in those interactions. You'll learn more about that in this book but I also encourage you as part of the round table, we'll go through that ourselves because in emotional intelligence, it isn't just nice to have. It's truly a requirement. It's a requirement for business. It's a part of relationships. It is an absolute requirement.
There's a saying that only the strong in business, maybe in relationships survive. Well, the strong ones are the emotionally intelligent, the emotionally resilient, the ones that have that patiently developed those skills. For me, it was a development of those skills. It truly was the understanding of what empathy was. I've described it many, many times, most episodes, most interviews, I talk about empathy because it so imperative to me and who I am and really helping me get over my insecurities. To me, empathy is putting your arms around someone, walking with them. If we can do that, then there's a vulnerability there.
Gary talks about in his book is part of the half is understanding that maybe there's some of these ingredients, you're not dialed in it. As I've recognized and he talks about in this book is the moment that you recognize the moment you realize no matter how bad you are, but you recognize it's a problem you're already on your way to solving. If you're listening to this list, if you're listening to this podcast, maybe you've already checked out some of the book or you've read the book and now this is a refresher and you've thought about, man, I need to really check my tenacity or maybe my optimism, maybe my accountability, you're already well on your path. It's the blind spots that kill you, not what you can see.
I think that's what Gary stresses so well, is don't get down on yourself for what you do and don't have in regard to this ingredient lift, but rather work to get better, work to understand how to apply them. It's really a lesson and responsibility in my opinion, is if we can understand these attributes as a leader, man, we're going to be better in our organization. We're going to create better communities. And it's really that culture that drives people. As part of this book, Gary shared an excerpt about his dad. His dad is from the Soviet Union. He's the one that started the wine store in New York and Gary's dad always believed coming from the Soviet Union that fear and money were the greatest motivators.
In the process of writing this book, Gary shares that his dad said, no, that isn't it anymore. I can't tell you exactly what it is, but it's culture. It's that softer stuff because black and white's important. The money's important, but it's not near as important as the human skills. More in a world right now today that the greatest skill that we can extend on others is our human nature realizing everyone's different, but they're all humans. They may be down and out, they may be struggling, they may have had difficulties in business, but yet they're all human. They're not machines. They're not parts to be thrown out and replaced. They're humans with feelings and families, goals and desires.
Each person you're leading deserves to have a cake, a cake baked by you with all the love and compassion and gratitude and ambition and optimism and patience and curiosity and kindness. I mean, keep going, the list, but I think you get the idea. As I wrap up this episode today, I'm much shorter, you guys have come to realize that if it's just me babbling on, you can only handle so much. I'd like to keep it short and sweet. One of the great things that I'm going to underline here to finish up with that Gary shares in his book is the growth lit of organizations is the emotional intelligence of their leaders. How grows a leader in their ability to get into tune and or teach because I think that's a big part too, is the ability to patiently teach what emotional intelligence looks like, how to, where to apply, how to apply it, their level of accountability responsibility.
That is so imperative for the growth of an organization. To me, that is the difference between somebody just doing the job and growing to an exceptional level is their ability to take those human skills, soft skills, emotional skills, really work on them themselves and then guide others through that process. That's what grows organizations. That's what grows life.
Something I'll share as a facet to the soccer club that I'm involved in with my son, really not for my son, but he just happens to be a part of the club that I'm involved in. We teach life lessons through soccer. It's not about the sport. To the same Gary mentions it in his book. You know me, people may look at him as a business person. It's all about this business. He goes, no, I'm a person that just appreciates life. I value life. He values life and other lives over business. I encourage you as you're a leader listening as you're trying to figure out your leadership pace, how will you lead? Where is your leadership growth going? Take a moment, read this book, Twelve and a Half by Gary Vaynerchuk. I hope you enjoy it.
I'd love for you to be a part of the Impact Driven Leader community to take part in the book club, to maybe dig deeper as with this book and other books and join our round table. I'd surely love to see you there. I'd love to grow with you. My desire, my purpose is to help other leaders get healthy too. I've had to work on my emotional intelligence to get healthier. Am I perfect now? I still have moments where I get too frustrated. I get too short, I this or that, but I know there's a better way. Instead of thinking, that's the way I can humbly come back, apologize and realize I got to get better. I can't let my emotions get the best of me. I need to maintain my composure.
Those are all things that are part of my half that I'm working on. I'd love for you to learn more about that in this book. Thanks for listening and appreciate it as always. Again, love for you to subscribe to our YouTube channels. Go back, watch the previous episodes, maybe listen into some of the other episodes that we've had over the last year and a half as I think we're into the seventies now, as far as episodes. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for making this platform, an opportunity where I get to learn and grow. I hope you do the same as well. Thanks for being here until next time. Have a good one. Take care.
