Transcript 

Bryan Paul Buckley 0:00
Episode 90 of the Elite Road Warrior podcast. Welcome to the Elite Road Warrior podcast where we believe you can leverage the road to transform your work, health, and home life while on business travel to ultimately master the business travel life. If you’re a road warrior, and a great chance you’re on the road right now then this podcast is for you.

Welcome to the elite road warrior podcast. I’m your host Bryan Paul Buckley, fellow Road Warrior husband of one, father of five. Yeah, five, an author. But more importantly, on a mission to helping business travelers eliminate business travel, burnout, and exceed results. I’m also committed to each and every business trip to becoming and remaining an elite road warrior. And I’d love nothing more than for you to join my master evil plan and this worthwhile road trip.

Now, I absolutely love doing the actual interviews when our subject matter has a book or extensive content, and I thoroughly enjoy the prep work for the interview. And this was definitely the case with this interview. So let’s meet today’s subject matter expert. Brant Menswar is one of the country’s top 10 motivational speakers, a critically acclaimed author, award-winning musician, podcast host, and the CEO and founder of rock star impact: a boutique agency that teaches people in organizations how to cultivate value-based leadership. His innovative work has changed what’s possible for industry-leading organizations like Netflix, Verizon, SunTrust, Microsoft, ESPN Hilton, Sony Pictures, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and dozens more. Passionate, engaging, and transformational. Brant encourages audiences to discover what he calls black sheep values, and move forward with deliberate intention. His interactive and entertaining techniques of defining what matters most compel audiences to dive deeper into their lives and start living on purpose. And man, I love his content. And in a moment, I’ll be asking Brant the following questions: What is black sheep? And why is it so important? What is the biggest lie about purpose? What was the catastrophic event in his life that forced him to discover his values? How do we program our values to appear on demand, especially on the road? And at no additional charge, so much more. Let’s do this. It’s go time.

Well, I’m live right now with Brant Menswar, how are you? And where are you?

Brant Menswar 3:07
You know, I’m doing pretty well I am in Cocoa Florida, where we you know have two seasons here we’ve got hot and hotter. And we are currently still in hotter.

Bryan Paul Buckley 3:17
Nice. Well, and you give a good line because I’m in Chicago. And we usually say we have two seasons, which is winter and construction are our two right there. So we’re off to a good start here. So let’s start and you are man, you know you say fairly well, but you are literally hours and hours after launching your book, which is doing phenomenal. And we’re gonna unpack that big time. So you just literally gave birth to a new baby book here. How you feeling about that?

Brant Menswar 3:46
Oh, man, it’s been a year-long process, right? So I come from the music business where you record a record and it’s a year before that record comes out by the time it comes out. You’re sick of the songs. Exactly. And you know, it’s the same scenario. I wrote this book, you know, finished it last year, and it’s finally here. And I’m like, I feel like it came out, you know, 12 months ago.

Bryan Paul Buckley 4:05
Exactly. Nice. Makes sense. Well, congratulations. I’ve been through the process. Man. I know. It just takes an absolute lot just to go through that whole process. But why don’t you just let me know what was the backstory of why you even wrote the book in the first place.

Brant Menswar 4:22
So the book is called Black Sheep unleashed the extraordinary, inspiring, undiscovered you. And it was born out of a couple of things. But the main thing was I was 47 years old, Bryan, when somebody finally explained to me why black sheep are not valued like the rest of the flock. And when I heard the truth, I was so blown away that I had spent 47 years without this knowledge in my brain, that it led me down this path of research. And so the truth is that the reason that farmers don’t value black sheep like the rest of the flock is because the black sheep’s wool cannot be dyed. So every black sheep is in effect 100% authentically original. And when I heard that, we’ve got a couple hundred years of demonizing black sheep in our culture, and I’m going, that’s literally my life goal is to be the 100%, authentic, original creation that I was meant to be. And so, you know, when I heard that it really sort of planted this seed of what does it mean to identify what I call your black sheep values. And that is, in the same light, these deeply held personal core values that no matter how much someone wants to twist or try to change you, they simply cannot be moved like a black sheep’s wool. And that dye can’t be changed.

Bryan Paul Buckley 5:47
I love the backstory man. And I’m some people are listening right now. Maybe they’re going through the airport. And they just had the ultimate aha moment. They’re like, dude, I’m 52. And I didn’t even know that man. So and I love, man there’s for those of you that like clever writing, and even like a little tongue in cheek on there, I mean, your chapter summaries, a big plan, word of sheep thrills, which he thought nicely, Nicely played on that, man, thank you. So well give us a 30,000-foot overview of the book, black sheep unleashed extraordinary, awe-inspiring, undiscovered you.

Brant Menswar 6:19
Yeah. So the idea here is that we all possess what I call a flock of five, black sheep values. And the book is going to sort of walk you through discovering what these are, these are your non-negotiables, these are not things that are really important. These are non-negotiables. These are deal-killers, right. So these are things that if you’re like me, so I you know, I travel 200 plus days a year easily, you know, 70 plus talks a year all over the world. And there are some deal breakers for me, you know that I go to places and if I witnessed a deal-breaker, it’s not even an option. And that’s what we’re sort of talking about these black sheep values are identifying sort of those deal-breakers, right. And so the idea is, we have to discover what they are, we have to prove that they are in fact real, and not what somebody else cares about, that has been pushed onto us for potentially decades. And then finally, we have to learn to speak these things into existence, we have to decide when and where these values appear, to have that maximum impact in our life. And that’s sort of the overview of what the book teaches you.

Bryan Paul Buckley 7:30
And that’s perfect and ideal for our audience. Obviously, you are a road warrior and discovering things late in life here. And we’ll unpack a little bit more of kind of the aha, another aha moment that you had. Yeah, you know, in your life, it was kind of catastrophic events. But even right here, you started with a different approach, which was good, because it caught me by surprise on this. You’re challenging thought leaders today. brands of you know, start with your why you’ve got to do this with your why you got to know your why first. And then everything else goes from there. So yeah, unpack for us. Why did you change the order?

Brant Menswar 8:05
Because it’s not true.

Bryan Paul Buckley 8:09
Kind of like a black sheep, right? He’s the bad guy, you know. So

Brant Menswar 8:13
listen, I think we are all familiar with a very popular book called Start with why by Simon Sinek. And I think Simon’s brilliant, I really do. I think he’s amazing. I think there should be an asterisk on the cover of that book. That’s it starts with why as long as you know what your why is. That’s right. If you don’t know what your why is, you have to understand a couple of things. One is that we have to start with what, right, you can’t get to why until you define your non-negotiables. And so once you know those non-negotiables, once you identify here are my five or maybe six non-negotiable values, then the activation of those values become your purpose, it becomes your why. And so if you start with the why before you define the what the question is, what are the odds that any of those things appear in your WHY? And the answer is very slim. And so the reason that people don’t experience that transformation, they don’t experience that result that they think they’re going to get is because their what and their Why are misaligned and when they are

Bryan Paul Buckley 9:19
Oh Say that again say that that’s money right there because they’re what and their why was what

Brant Menswar 9:23
misaligned, misaligned. when you’re when your what and your WHY ARE misaligned, it makes the how you’re going to live it out incredibly difficult.

Bryan Paul Buckley 9:32
Which you define is the mission. That is correct. So I love that. But for you with purpose, you define the book that there’s a big lie about purpose. Yeah. Can you define what that lie is? But then still, obviously make sure people still get the book. I mean, there’s a lot more to the book that just the biggest lie here all right.

Brant Menswar 9:52
You know, the, to me, if you’re I’m sure that there are many people out there listening right now that have been told this their whole lives that you Have to go out and find your purpose, right? Not only have they been told you have to go find your purpose, they’ve made it out like it’s some friggin Indiana Jones like quest that you are, you know, have to get to the Crystal Skull and the whip of the pistol out of the guy’s hand in order to figure out what your purpose is.

Bryan Paul Buckley 10:18
And that wasn’t part of my connection flight, you know, so it even makes it harder.

Brant Menswar 10:20
Right? Exactly right. It’s exactly right. And so I’m sitting here going all right, look, the biggest lie about purpose is that it’s something you find, you don’t find it. And if you’re looking for it, you’re on the wrong path. Purpose is something you choose. And you choose purpose, if you want to, if you want to be a conscious creator, is what I would call that. If you just choose a purpose, you have to choose a purpose in alignment with these black sheep values. And so that is where that purpose comes from. So for me, my sort of flock of five black sheep values: creativity, hope, impact, empathy, family authenticity, right?

Bryan Paul Buckley 10:59
One more time,

Brant Menswar 11:01
creativity, hope, impact, empathy, family, authenticity. Those are my black sheep values. I say there’s a flock of five, there’s six there. I know. I know, I’m a musician. But I learned how to count to six, right? I needed an extra we’re rockstars. We do everything to excess.

Bryan Paul Buckley 11:19
and you had more than six chapters to

Brant Menswar 11:22
barely the book is I tell people the book, listen, as a traveler, I want something I can digest quickly. And it was designed on purpose. This is like maybe 10 pages thicker than a Harry Krishna pamphlet that you get handed at the airport when you walk in. All right. So

Bryan Paul Buckley 11:37
Let’s… you get two copies.

Brant Menswar 11:38
That’s exactly right. And you all know they got a quota to make. So we have to make sure that’s well done. But my idea?

Bryan Paul Buckley 11:45
Yeah, that’s right.

Brant Menswar 11:47
The idea here is that those values got activated into my purpose. So my purpose is to creatively impact people’s lives by authentically providing hope. It sounds familiar, because it’s loaded with those black sheep values. And so the idea is, in order to choose that purpose, had to start with the what would those black sheep,

Bryan Paul Buckley 12:10
And then there was a lot of how you, you unpacked a lot of that, in fact, we’re going to kind of work through, how did you come to 5. But then also to help somebody make that purpose statement. There’s a lot here, guys, we get there, there, you stopped me in my tracks. When I’m reading, I got to a chapter in and you started unpacking a little bit about this catastrophic event in your life that really forced you to discover what you now know, as your black sheep values. Would you be willing to talk a little bit about that catastrophic event and how it really, really turned the tables on you to create these values?

Brant Menswar 12:43
Yeah, you bet. It was 2012. My oldest son, Theo, was coming home from a soccer game.

Bryan Paul Buckley 12:52
How old was he at the time? He was 12. Okay,

Brant Menswar 12:54
I’m sorry, he was 14, it was 2012. He was 14. And when he had taken a shower and was walking across the hall, and when I saw he had bruises, like on his back, and he had these weird places where he had bruises, and, you know, It didn’t match the soccer game that he was playing. And so I… I’m like what’s going on, and he didn’t really know. And so we set an appointment and long story short, we find out he’s got cancer, right, he’s got this rare blood cancer called Milo dysplastic syndrome, and he needs a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. And so, you know, they tell us, it’s going to be this hundred-day journey, and we’ll find a donor, he’s going to get the transplant, and then it’s, you know, several, weeks of sort of checking in, and then he’ll be back to playing soccer. And, you know, it was a crazy, it was a crazy time. And that was not the path of our journey, right. And so what ends up happening is… we find a donor, an unrelated donor fairly quickly, and he gets the transplant, it goes fine. But he ends up developing something called graft versus host disease. And this is sort of where the marrow gets inserted into the body, it doesn’t recognize the environment, so begins to attack, right? Like the way, they treat it is they super suppressed the immune system so that the body won’t fight back. And then they just hope that the cells duplicate themselves fast enough that it just sort of becomes overwhelming, and the body goes, Okay, I’m going to accept it. During that process, that’s what they did. During that process, he ends up contracting a deadly fungus that, you know, kills you in a couple of weeks. And the way that you treat the fungus is you super boost the immune system. And so they had two things that were threatening his life with opposite treatments. And so we get called into the parent’s lounge after a couple hundred days in the hospital. And they basically say, look, we’re incredibly sorry. But no matter which one we treat, the other is going to take his life and we don’t think he’s actually going to make it through the night. So you should probably go in and say your goodbyes. And so, you know, what do you do? Well, you’re in a highly emotional environment, you’ve got doctors who are experts who are telling you to go say your goodbyes. And so you know, my wife and I walk back to the room, we get his younger brother who’s three years younger than him. You know, we sit on the edge of the bed, and we try to find these words to say goodbye. It’s awful as you can possibly imagine. You know, I have to call family, I have to call friends. Now I call my younger brother who lives 1500 miles away up in New Hampshire, I’m in Orlando at this time, and tell him Look, if you are going to say your goodbyes, I’m sorry, but you’re gonna have to do it over the phone, you’re not gonna have time to make it. And so he does, he’s incredibly distraught, he hangs up the phone. And that night, he’s so upset by this feeling of not being able to do anything that he sits on his couch. And he films himself holding up these poster boards that sort of explain the scenario that we are facing my you know, my nephew is dying. This is what he has, this is what we have tried, these are the drugs This is this. He never said a word. He simply played the song fix you by Coldplay and held up these poster boards from start to finish.

Bryan Paul Buckley 16:07
And the number of hits that came out of that were how many

Brant Menswar 16:10
500,000 unbelievable. So by the time, you know, Theo made it through the night, by the time I’m literally on the edge of the bed waiting for sort of him to pass. By that next morning, I pick up my phone and that video, which I didn’t even know he made. He had uploaded it to YouTube. And it had been seen half a million times by the time I grab my phone. And so I look at my phone and I see all these names and phone numbers from people that I don’t recognize. And so one of those happened to be a doctor at MD Anderson in Houston, who said, Listen, I saw this video, I got your number, would you… there’s an experimental treatment that I don’t know that your doctor knows about, can I talk to him. And so we put them together. And then I get a call from Dr. Tim Johnson from Good Morning America. And he says you tell your doctor, give me a list of names. And I’ll try to make it happen in the next 24 hours. And so we made a list that a guy at Dana Farber in Boston, a research scientist at Cornell, and the four doctors put their heads together and came up with this crazy plan to try to save Theo’s life. And it worked. And so we went from say your goodbyes to we actually think we have a plan to tackle this and it’s working. And, you know, Theo just turned 23 years old. And awesome. You know, he’s a just was before COVID times was in the classroom, taking his first class in college, which is the first time he’s been in a classroom since the eighth grade, because of his immune system. And, you know, this book was born out of me being in a scenario that my feelings took over. And I made a bunch of horrible decisions, because I didn’t have these non-negotiables figured out for my life. And so when they told me to go, say my goodbyes, you know, I should have never had that conversation like I did with my son, I should have had a conversation filled with hope, and empathy, and impact. And all those things that I’ve discovered now are my non-negotiables. Instead, it was filled with emotion. And, you know, I went to bed for five years after he survived, I went to bed every night for five years with one thought in my head, which is I wonder if he thinks I gave up on him. And, and it sucks. But it’s a legitimate question. So I had to sit there and say, You know what, I’ve got to define these things. And then, if I can help some other people to find the same when they find themselves in this scenario, which I hope they never do, but if some big storm in their life rolls in, they’ve got to have these things established if they want to make good decisions. And if they don’t, they’re going to be at the mercy of their emotions. And that is never the place you want to be.

Bryan Paul Buckley 18:58
And your master plan, obviously, Brant is somebody who tends to find themselves in that catastrophic of events, that they could listen to a podcast like this, they can pick up your book, or they can hear you speak somewhere, they get their black sheep values created, which we’re going to walk through at least come from a remedial point of view how to do that. And obviously the book unpacks a ton of that, yeah. So that they’re not caught in that spot and live in that life of regret. So first of all, thanks for sharing that I and my emotions are just to put it on mute there for a second just as a choke up. I’ve got four boys, you know, and just those moments of that, and one of them has severely burned in the last year. And he’s doing great right now. But those fear moments we have as parents, and how easily our emotions could hijack that. Yeah, and everybody in the outside world would go understandable. But then when you go to the other side of that, of having to live with the regrets and those wonders of all that. So let’s make this very personal. So your black sheep values are even more important when you’re on the road, as you mentioned earlier in the episode of that, because we can really be put into some compromising situations on that. I actually have an episode that was talking about the dark side of business travel those downward spiral choices. If we’re put into that if we’re not making those decisions ahead of time, which are aka black sheep values, yet we’re very easily possibly going to make decisions that we’re going to regret. Yes. So with that, just quick review, and then want to unpack this, we get it looks like this. You get the what, which was the core values, correct? Yep. Yep. And then you could answer your why, which is your purpose. Yep. Which will help you to know how to do that, which is your mission. So how do we find our black sheep values that are going to guide our lives in general, but specifically when we’re on the road?

Brant Menswar 20:37
So it a couple of different things? I would say number one is that the what you’re correct are these black sheet values, though, you get to choose your purpose based on those values, your what your why, when those two things are aligned, it makes you incredibly adaptable and resilient. Right.

Bryan Paul Buckley 20:57
when you go on the road,

Brant Menswar 20:58
oh my gosh. And this is the other thing I want to say because most of the people that I know that are road warriors are overachievers in some way, shape or form, right. And they’ve learned that they’ve made some pretty big sacrifices in their life based on whatever it is they decided to choose, but they’ve made some pretty big sacrifices for the sake of their career. And, that sometimes works for you, and it sometimes works against you. Absolutely. And so what I want people to hear about this and why they need to figure this out before I tell you how to do it is that for as successful as you have been this far of your life, I am telling you that the potential for you to be even more successful is astronomical, once you figure out that you’ve been winging it your whole friggin life. And unless you can tell me specifically, what your five or six black sheep values are, how you, you know, engage them on a daily basis, then you are winging it, even if you think you’re not, and that was the hardest thing for me to learn as an alpha male, you know, overachiever, that outcomes are out of my control, the only thing I can control is honoring these black sheet values. That’s it. And so how do we find them? There’s a couple of different ways. The, you know, Maslow would call these things, peak experiences. And so you couldn’t if you wanted to, you know, get your peyote and go to the tent and 30 degrees and sweat it out until you find your vision, or whatever it is you want to do. I don’t have time for that. Nor do I want to, you know, have frog poison or anything else jammed me. So you know, for me it was I developed an online assessment that helps you sort of dip your big toe in the values pool, you can get there at findyourblacksheep.com. And there’s a little button that says find your flock. And what it does is it walks you through this very sort of simple process to try to narrow the funnel, right? So it presents you with 125 commonly held personal core values, and it says look knee jerk reaction. If the word resonates with you, if you look at it, you go I like that word. Go ahead and circle it, right. And so what we know, for two years and a couple thousand people doing this is that the average person selects at least 30 words as the ones that are really important to them.

Bryan Paul Buckley 23:30
I did 31 being the overachiever.

Brant Menswar 23:31
Yeah, yes. Well, I had somebody last week pick 100. And I’m like, I just, I told him that. I don’t know that I was qualified. Exactly. I think they need professional help. See,

Bryan Paul Buckley 23:43
I would have gone Come on man, you know, tell me the two you did not answer you know.

Brant Menswar 23:47
And so the idea here is we have to sort of take a look at all these things that are really incredibly important to you, and that subset of words. And we have to break them into five different groups. And so we break them based on likeness. So things like sympathy and empathy and care for others go in one bucket and things like achievement and success and respect go in another bucket, right? And then you sort of take all those words, and you group them together, and then you get to pick what’s the one word from each bucket? What’s the one non-negotiable, what’s the one you can’t live without? And it’s difficult, it is a difficult task, right? Because when you have 30 things that are important to you. We all know when everything’s important, nothing’s on board. It’s right. And so the idea here is we’re going to force you to choose now what I know that that is sort of the data has shown us over the last couple of years, is that out of those five those initial flock of five black sheep values that you proclaim as the things that are your non-negotiables we know that two or three of them are real, and two or three of them are complete fabricated bullshit. They are absolutely either who you want to be or who someone told you you should be, but they are not your sheep. Okay, very good.

Bryan Paul Buckley 25:03
That’s really important. You said that, right? So what are the two reasons why that they’re fabricated? Make sure we’ve got to be very clear on this.

Brant Menswar 25:10
So they are either who you want to be who you know, that’s who I want. That’s our aspirational sheep, or they are what somebody else has told you, you should be. And you’ve just…

Bryan Paul Buckley 25:22
And how important is that man, that you have been told that your entire life that you need to be this, you need to be this. And yet it’s it works this way into a worksheet with you where quickly you can go through 120. And you can knock that out in mere moments. Yeah, but then all of a sudden, you start getting to these clusters, as you mentioned, which is a little harder, you know, the like-mindedness and then to find out, find out what that one word and then at the end of that, you’re saying that Wait, come on now, two, or three of the five or six could actually not be accurate. So then what do you do, then?

Brant Menswar 25:52
Well, you got to, you got to prove that they’re real, right. So we have to go into this proving sort of stage. And that is where things really get real. And so if you say, here are the five, right, and what happens next is you get this workbook. And every night before you go to bed, for two weeks, you are going to sit there and you’re going to at the end of each day, you’re going to sort of go back through your day in your head, and you’re going to try to find evidence that these things appeared organically in your life that day. And what you’re going to find is that two or three of them appear all the time, and there’s a million different examples, and two or three of them, then they’re not really showing up as much as you thought they would. And so then we have to look at why that is right. And so there’s a couple of reasons why it could be because you drill down a little too far to a value that is too specific. And it actually is stopping you from identifying the real value. So something like that would look like if you told me Look, family, community, faith and friendship are four of my black sheep values, I would tell you that none of those are your black sheep value, the value is connection. And you just gave me four examples of how you experience connection through your God through your community, through your family and through your friends, right. And so that we have to I call it leveling up. So you got to level up to a word that actually encompasses what you selected, and then a whole bunch of other things, too, that’s how you’re going to find the evidence, right? If you only said that I only, that’s let’s say, community is one of my black sheep values. And you’ve been stuck in quarantine for six months, does that mean that your value doesn’t get fed? Or that it doesn’t work that way, right. And so you’ve drilled down a little too far, so we have to level up. The other thing that could happen is that you could be sabotaging yourself, right? So there could be some reason and this is often we see this with the aspirational sheep, right. And so the idea here is sometimes the things that have driven us to the success that we’ve had, actually are hurting us from discovering what really matters to us, right. And so the idea here is, you know, I had somebody recently who I’ve known for several months, we’ve had this conversation, it was actually on a podcast that we were going back and forth. And, you know, I noticed that he didn’t have the word impact as one of his black sheep. And I’m like, I listen, I’ve known you long enough to know that this should be one of your words. And not only did you not pick it as one of your five, you didn’t even select it as one of your 30 or 40 would have selected.

So this is the this is where the reality is he, in his words used to be an asshole. And he thought that if he picked that word, anybody that knew him five years ago would call bullshit and go well that’s not true.

That’s right. That’s not true… I don’t believe it. And I know because you treated me horribly, right?

Bryan Paul Buckley 28:59
Yeah.

Brant Menswar 29:01
Yeah. And so you know, I’m like, Well, here’s the deal, man. Are you that person today that you were four years ago, five years ago? Well, no. Okay. So why does that exclude this one thing that has been the center of every conversation we’ve had for months.

Bryan Paul Buckley 29:18
So you became the grace to him in that moment to be able to just almost kind of forgive himself and you talked about in the book

Brant Menswar 29:22
I do

Bryan Paul Buckley 29:23
you know, where sometimes you need to have that in whether it’s forgiving yourself. Sometimes you’ve got to forgive somebody else before you forgive yourself. Now, whether you’re talking about spirituality, we’re just talking about life in general on that I really did appreciate that on there. So into your points. Brant, I went through your process of this even though kind of living a life of values on there. And I completely agree on like the connection with faith and family on there. But ultimately, I want to be connected to God but I also am indebted to my family on there. And how am I doing those within the day? And it’s kind of hard man at the end of the night You know, you want to look through the wins of our day you know being overachievers, especially on the road.

Yes, you know, and it’s a little hard to even the bar, you know, late that evening, entertaining clients or whatever going back to that process, but even when you do you start to realize this is in my day, this is manifesting in my day. So I just want to say mad kudos, it was very revealing, but it was worth the work to go through that process of choosing those black sheep values those five you know, the what? Yeah, of those black sheep. So then we move into at that point, how to define or choose our purpose and I love one line you had in the book. I just got to say it, man. Yeah, it was an aimless ‘how’ can make an aimless? How can keep you busier than a mosquito at a nudist colony? Did I get that right? Yes, you did. moneyline. I’m just saying. money line right there. So how does somebody now we got these five or six if you will, we’ve broken them down to that. What do we do now?

Brant Menswar 30:53
So you know, it’s funny and so the aimless How is when your what and your why misaligned, right? If the product is an aimless how that comes out of that. And so, you know, the example I give all the time, my father was an high school English teacher for 35, almost 35 years. And, you know, he sort of fulfilled and fed his sheep in one way for 35 years. And then he retired. And I can’t take him to be 78 years old, and I can’t take him to the grocery store without him having a friggin 15-minute conversation with the guy bagging my groceries. And that is a nameless how that is trying to feed the sheep. And the only way he knew how to do that. And so that’s why when we see these aimless how, yeah, and that is, you know, we see people who have recently retired, and they’re busier now that they’re retired than when they were working. And it’s because of an aimless how they are trying to discover how to feed their sheep, that they only fed for one way for decades of that, at least, at least, the generation before us, right? They, they sort of come from that I was born in this town, I’m gonna marry in this town, I had one job in this town, and I’m going to retire in this town. And that’s just sort of what it was, you know, and the boomers are sort of, you know, part of that generation and even before them even more so. And so, you know, the idea here is we’ve got to choose a purpose that’s in alignment, so that the adaptability for the how becomes much easier for us to figure it out. And so we have to take those words that we have proven now to be true. And we have to include them in our purpose. And so we start to work, the way that I teach people to do this is, you know, our values exist in a hierarchy. And you have to understand that, and so there are going to be one or two of those that are truly non-negotiable. That I mean, if they get violated, it doesn’t matter if all the rest of them got fed. It’s still a no go, right? And so you have to sort of start so I tell them to start with, what are your two most if you looked at those five, your flock of five, what are the two that are at the very top for you? And we look in those? And so we’re putting

Bryan Paul Buckley 33:09
us into the context of a sentence, which was granted earlier that because that’s the goal, if you’ve got one compact mission statement, if you will, but it is that one-liner is a purpose statement. It’s exactly it’s your purpose statement. Okay, so you’re getting your one or two upfront in that statement?

Brant Menswar 33:25
And then that is correct. So what you’re going to do is you sort of bookend them by the things that matter most so for so if you look at mine, right? So again, my values creativity, hope, impact, empathy, family authenticity, right? My purpose statement is to creatively impact there’s impact, which is one of my top ones to creatively impact people’s lives by authentically providing hope, hope is my number one, right? Hope is my number one. So I ended on it, because it’s what’s most important to me. So you either start with that, or you end on that, but you don’t bury that in the middle because it means too much to you. And so when you craft this purpose statement, you have to sort of work for a little bit, it’s sort of like your own personal hit song, right? So you’ve got to write this purpose statement so that it resonates with you, it connects your head in your heart. And when it connects your head in your heart, it engages that limbic brain, which is where all of your emotional long term memory is stored. It’s why you remember song lyrics. It’s why you remember quotes for movies. It’s why you remember all those things that are your favorites. And what we need, excuse me is for this purpose statement to become one of your favorite things, right? And so that’s why we need to connect the head in the heart and so we activate those values into this statement so that you can remember it, and it’s used to keep you committed to those things that you are saying matter most. That’s how we do it.

Bryan Paul Buckley 34:47
We’ll be back for the remainder of this interview after the short break.

When I’m on the road, I want to be as effective as I can be possibly at all times. As well as not being weighed down by extra stuff. Man, let’s face it. On the road, every item we bring must be compact and worth bringing with such limited space on a road trip. Everything must have a purpose and being an elite road warrior every purpose must support one or more of the six energy habits. As a result, you can now find many valuable tools that fit this criteria at eliteroadwarrior.com/store. Here are just a few. The Elite Road Warrior waterbottle. this black 16.9-ounce aluminum branded water bottle was designed with a road warrior in mind having a handle the top of a one-inch mouth area for easy carrying, whether by hand or clipping onto another bag. Or how about the elite warrior road life journal. This is the black branded original artist and soft and thin leather. So it’s easy to carry on the road with proceeds that support a nonprofit. And there are two sections to the journal. There’s a thinkspace journal insert and there’s a roadway, journal insert. Connect cards. Each card was made by a kid for a kid and connected at the heart of elite road warrior with proceeds as well supporting a nonprofit. And there are five card choices. Thinking of you, miss you, proud of you, love you, and grateful for you. The not forgotten journal. This is a beautiful tan hardcover branded journal designed for you to write just two minutes a day to someone that matters back home designed to one day get to that loved one to prove to them they were not forgotten. And lastly, the flat kiddos. What if you could theoretically take your kids with you in a creative way you can now do so with flat kiddos. They’re nine by six-inch characters, they’re on thick poster board for durability. Flat kiddos come in four different options. An elementary boy or an elementary girl, a toddler boy or toddler girl. The only thing you’ll need upon purchase is having your kids color their own flat kiddo to personalize it for you. You can purchase any and all of these road products today at eliteroadwarrior.com/store

If you have kids, you know they absolutely love mail. Especially if it’s from you. Now with my kids, the cards they enjoy the most were the ones that were designed for kids. And I found that when I took just a minute or two and wrote meaningful words breathing encouragement and truth into the life of my children, it made a huge difference. And as a result, elite road warrior group created a Connect cards product line help you invest into the lives of those you love back home. each card was made by a kid for a kid. And connect is at the heart of elite roadwarrior. And his energy habit number six. The cool part is the purchase of this card directly supports warrior wagons, a nonprofit organization who delivers warrior wagons filled with essential oils to brave children, their families battling all forms of pediatric cancer. And there are five Connect card choices. Thinking of you, miss you, proud of you, love you, and grateful for you go to eliteroadwarrior.com/store today to pick up your very own cards.

And why that matters so much. And I love that brands. Because we’re taking the what our core values in this case, obviously our five or six black sheep, And we’re defining them upfront. Now we know the process. And then we’re taking them into the why, which is that purpose, which is our purpose statement. And so we’re bookending the one or two the most important and we’re putting the other three in there, we’re not burying him in the subtitle, right? You should that’s a stigma to that obviously, it’s got a flow, you know, kind of like a song lyric as you’re mentioning there’s so that we can obviously especially on the road, we got something that we’ve got to constantly put into our mind over and over and over. But then we don’t stop there, you’re moving into the how which is the mission, which obviously can change within any given day. So how as we as road warriors, we take what we talked about these black sheep and this purpose statements, what do we do with it from that point on to really make a difference in the day on the road?

Brant Menswar 39:44
This is the big difference, right? So this is what I refer to as deliberate intention. And so it’s one thing to know what matters most. It’s another thing to craft this purpose statement to know why you exist or why you think you need to exist on this planet. It’s something completely different to manifest these things to speak them into existence, right? To program them into your day. And so, you know, I look at this, and especially for the road warriors that they’ll know what I mean. So when you get into your rental car, and you’re gonna go to wherever it is you need to go to that day. You get your phone, and you set your GPS, right? And you say, here’s the destination that I need to get to my hotel and get to my client’s place, whatever it is, you set that in there, and you’re off. Well, our black sheep values sort of function the same way, right. And so this idea is if you set that destination in your GPS, and you decide to veer off the path, what happens, what does your GPS do to you?

Bryan Paul Buckley 40:41
Oh, it’s telling you to get back on.

That’s exactly right. and mine will even say, hey, idiot, that’s the third left you’ve made man.

Brant Menswar 40:49
That’s right. If you’ve got Sam Jackson’s voice on there yelling at you? Yes, exactly. The idea is that it starts to say, wait a minute, timeout, you said that you wanted to go there. But now you’re going this way? Do you want us to reroute you? Or are you just saying it’s a free for all, right? And so what it does is it starts pointing you back to the direction you said you wanted to go, Well, this is sort of how our black sheep values work. They are that the idea is if you say, here’s my goal, this is what I want to accomplish, right? That’s the destination, you set that destination in there. If you don’t, if you just set it there, and you just try to get there, that is not going to get it done, you have to use deliberate intention, which is I need to know every turn I’m going to make between where I am and where I want to go. That deliberate intention is speaking these things into existence. So for me, I literally pull out my calendar, I look at the… I’m still a guy who uses a… even though I’m Mr. Technology, I still like to write things down, I have both, right. So like I have a planner. And so I literally will write what black sheep values I want to appear in that meeting. And I’m going to speak them into existence, I am going to choose when and where they appear, I’m not going to rely on an accident, or the perfect timing, or maybe something happens with luck. And I have an opportunity to share none of that.

Bryan Paul Buckley 42:08
Okay, so I’m gonna interrupt you because you are back to your deliberate attention. Yep, we’re getting in the car, we’re heading to where we need to go. Even if it’s rideshare, whatever game we get to our first meeting, instead of just showing up and we’re giving our presentation, we’re giving our talk. We’re actually doing far more than that of what our highest values are. And so what you’re saying is your pre-thinking, I’m going to walk into this meeting, and I’m going to activate as many of these black sheep values as possible. Is that correct?

Brant Menswar 42:35
Right. I’m looking at like, when I came into this, even this, let’s use this as an example. Right? So I know I was going to do this interview with you today, I have to look at creativity, hope, impact, empathy, family authenticity, which of these need to show up in this interview for me to maximize my time with you, right? So I knew I needed to be creative, right? You’ve got people who are listening to this that are forced into creativity, because they get find themselves in crazy situations when you’re on the road all the time, right? That’s just I know that creativity has to show up. I know that impact has to show up because I want to have a positive impact everybody listening, right, I want to give them some nuggets that they can use to make their lives a little bit better. I empathize because I am one of those people who are on the road all the time. So I get that that’s going to show up naturally. But then for me, it’s all about hope. Right? I told you, that’s my number one. So when I finish this conversation with you, I promise you the last thing out of my mouth is going to be filled with hope. Because that to me is what I need to speak into existence, to be able to sleep well at night, knowing that I can’t control what happens after this. I can only control what happens in this moment.

Bryan Paul Buckley 42:40
And I love that and I and obviously as a podcast hosts and you who have your own podcast, we’ll talk about that in a few minutes. That means a ton that there’s that much pre-thought in there of actual listener, which is obviously our goal. But what about Brant, just to be devil’s advocate here. Yeah, you know, Jerry’s gonna walk into this meeting right in here, and he’s got 15 sales guys or whatever, and they don’t really care. And then he’s got to check off you know, his visit that he’s got to do quarterly in his territory. How do I take these black sheep? And do anything with that walking into these guys?

Brant Menswar 44:17
Yeah, you can. So first of all, you have to believe that there’s something more you have to believe there’s something better for whatever right and that it starts with that I believe that most of us never reach our full potential. And, that is because we’re not deliberate with our intention. So the truth is, most of us are successful as we are at this very moment. And we’ve been winging it the whole time. So if we’re this successful, and we’re winging it, what’s the incentive to try though, cuz I’m like, I’m pretty comfortable. I make a good living. I even take care of my family. I get to see all these incredible places and travel the world. The difference is in fulfillment, the difference is being able to say can you change what’s special possible, are you leaving a life behind that creates a legacy, right? That, to me is what I care about the most I don’t care about the awards, I don’t care about, you know, the books that I might write what I care about is, am I leaving a legacy worth remembering, and that to me, only happens with deliberate intention. And so you have to get to that. So if I, I could absolutely walk into that meeting and be like, whatever I’m gonna wing it, you know, I’ve been doing this for… Or I could go, you know, what, let me think about this for five minutes before I put myself in this scenario because that’s all it takes. It doesn’t take you have to sit there and come up with a master, you know, business plan to walk into the meeting, you have to go, what are my non-negotiables? Oh, here are the five things. Okay. Which of these five things would best serve me in this moment? Well, it’s this Okay, great, then I’m going to go in, and I’m going to lead with that. And what ends up happening. And this is sort of the big sort of Aha, that we come back to with regards to the farmer story, right. And I think this is going to resonate so much, especially with the amount of people that are a lot of people on the road are in sales in some way, shape, or form, right, we just, it’s the nature of the business. So while farmers don’t value black sheep, like the rest of the flock, they certainly do value them, they just value them in a very different way. Right. So farmers keep one black sheep for every hundred white sheep in their care, and they keep them as a marker. And so every morning, the sheep farmer wakes up, they look out over their flock, and if they’ve got 500 sheep in their care, they should see five black sheep, if they don’t see five black sheep, they know something is wrong, right? It could be family, it could be wolves, it could be disease, whatever it is. But it’s the black sheep’s ability to stand out from the crowd that gets the farmers first look. And what I say to people all the time, especially in this business, when you’re on the road, it is your job to get your clients’ first look, it is what you are designed to be trying to do. So how do you do that? You do that by leading with those black sheep values that make you that 100% authentic original and separate you from the 495 other people waiting to make that next call on your client for the exact same thing in mind. So how are you going to stand out? You stand out by leaving with these black sheep values. And when you do, what you realize is that people start to go, you know what, I think I value some of the same things that that person does. And all of a sudden that relationship starts to shift and change. And before you start to resonate between two people, you become the trusted adviser because all of a sudden they believe you. Right. And that is how we do it. And if you don’t do it that way, the best shot you’ve got is winging it enough that you sort of hit that Crossfire every now and then every now and then the two things cross and you go ope that moment right there, I was able to connect ope that moment right there, I was able to connect, as opposed to just going, Hey, these are the things that matter most to me, it’s really important for you to know that because if you want the best from me, this is how you need to frame it if you want everything that I’ve got to offer. And when you start to do that, you start to see people change their behavior around you, they change the words they choose around you and they see, the more that they do that they start to communicate better with you. So all of a sudden, doing business with you becomes very easy. And also really powerful. You walk away from these things feeling like you were fed. And that’s because that person just fed your sheep. That’s how it works. Mike drop

Bryan Paul Buckley 48:37
Exactly. I’m out. I’ve got a really expensive mic, so let’s just pretend

Brant Menswar 48:42
kind of place it gently

Bryan Paul Buckley 48:43
Oh, big time. But you know, it really gets down to your two words, deliberate intention, you know, and I would challenge you can agree or disagree because obviously, this is your whole theory, that the road, the road warrior has the highest or at least one of the highest chances to activate their values on a missional day, because of all the variety that they have. We’re not talking to you know, Charlie cube yet I’m saying the guy who said it’s getting to know nothing. I’m Charlie, we’re going to visit Charlie. And we’re going to see different Charlie’s every single day and have this so many opportunities where I’m sitting on the rental car bus to go to national car, or I’m sitting on a flight dealing with another guy who’s having you know, because Murphy got on the plane and all of a sudden flights can be delayed because of Murphy’s Law, him saying the trip and I have all these opportunities. I’m talking to the person I’m checking in at the courtyard Marriott, or the restaurant that I’m going out for the dinner the clients that I’m going to entertain, being on a stage we have so many unique opportunities. you activate that and I really truly think Brant. That’s where I got and that was probably the surprise in the book for me of how do I intentionally loop through those in my day, how do I connect with somebody that I would normally have a hard time with, and maybe because I didn’t really treat him as a person. Maybe I just went to the Alpha Dog in the room. Maybe I didn’t realize who they were and find an area to find similarities in resonance. Like you said, we’re all of a sudden, the sheep are getting fed. So I absolutely love that agree or disagree that the road can provide one of the best chances to, to actually have your mission.

Brant Menswar 50:16
I agree. I agree. 100%. And it’s why you need to be adaptable and resilient. It’s because you never know what’s around that next corner. And, you know, I laugh all the time, you know, so I’m a Coca Cola guy. I’m not a Pepsi guy. And so, you know, for me, you’re at that restaurant and they you ask for a coke and they bring you this, they bring you what is obviously not Diet Coke. And I take one sip, and I’m like, Whoa, what are you trying to pull here? Come on, and they’re like, oh, is Pepsi, okay? I’m like, Pepsi is never okay. It is never Okay, ever, right? And so but the idea is, how you’re going to adapt and be resilient in that moment? Because if you are so rigid, you know, get up and walk out of that restaurant. Wait a man, this is a non-negotiable? I’m not have I’m no, bam, that’s exactly right. So you have to have these things defined because as much as I prefer diet Coke, over diet Pepsi, it is not something he’ll never die on. Right? It’s just it’s not going to be that case. And so when you define these, these black sheep values, it really helps you be adaptable and resilient. So you just go into this knowing Hey, you know, what, if it mattered that much to you, you know what you should do? You should call beforehand and maybe suggest a different place. And that’s, that’s deliberate intention. Right? That’s how I do it.

Bryan Paul Buckley 51:33
Exactly the difference. Well, I love that man. And I’ll even the levity of that there is truth. I mean, there’s so much ability to adapt. And the guys that don’t Well, we know, they’re usually sitting in the middle seat right next to me on a flight. But that’s a different, that’s a different podcast, on how to handle situations like that. So as we’re wrapping this up, Brant, anything from the book that we didn’t discuss, you want to highlight or emphasize or just kind of sum it all together.

Brant Menswar 51:59
So what I’m going to say just, I’m a control freak, and most road warriors that I know are also control freaks, right? And, and if you don’t feel like you’re a control freak, I think you need to do this work because you are lying to yourself. It’s what I’m gonna say. And I’m at that level, where if you invited me to dinner, I’m driving your car, right? Like that is the level of control that I want to have. And it’s this idea that you know, by defining these things in our lives by finding these black sheep values, it really allows us to control the narrative of our lives. It’s the only thing I can control, right? I can’t control outcomes. That is something called outcome bias. Look it up. It is, if you are, it’s a thing. It is a thing. It’s science, right. And the science does not support you thinking that you control outcome. So unless your name is Gandalf, for Glinda, you don’t have that type of power, right? So you need to let that go. And know that those outcomes are out of your control. So what you can do is craft the narrative of your life by defining these things. So that pen is in your hand and nobody else’s. And so that to me, especially when you are living a life that is filled with a different how around every corner with a different challenge, no matter where it’s whether it’s just the travel, forget about who you’re going to talk to, it’s the logistics of the travel itself is enough to push some people over the edge, big time. So when you figure this stuff out, it really allows you to craft a better narrative for you in your life. So that at the end, when you are done, when you come home from that trip, you actually feel like it was a successful trip, regardless of the outcome. Right.

Bryan Paul Buckley 53:40
And I love that and that that actually could be the energy even though we may come back tired, where it is, we feel a sense of fulfillment, which a lot of guys we just don’t, you know, on the road, you just do our deal, and come home. And I also just want to say to all of us, we can do this, I mean this process is not difficult, but it is a little bit challenging because you need to do the exercises. So all the links in the show notes here to go ahead and go through, you know, defining what your black sheep are and then getting into the five different boxes right there defining those specific words. And then moving into the purpose statement, and then putting those into your day. So Brant, absolutely love that before we close up. Road warrior live lightning round. Are you ready for this? I’m ready.

All right. What is your preferred airlines?

Brant Menswar 54:29
Delta 100%

Bryan Paul Buckley 54:30
window or aisle guy?

Brant Menswar 54:32
Aisle only.

Bryan Paul Buckley 54:34
Why?

Brant Menswar 54:35
I need to get up and pee. And I hate asking anybody to move.

Bryan Paul Buckley 54:41
I’m a chronic urinator because there’s so much water and we’d have to sit across aisle we would not be in the same row. Exactly. Those guys right there chatting like girls, right. One thing you always do when you’re on a flight?

Brant Menswar 54:54
Headphones, always

Bryan Paul Buckley 54:57
and apparently pee.

Brant Menswar 54:58
Yes, that too.

Bryan Paul Buckley 55:00
Yes, preferred hotel chain.

Brant Menswar 55:04
This is gonna sound so pretentious, man. But I’m a Ritz Carlton guy, and I just know that I know what I’m gonna get no matter where I am on the planet. I know what I’m walking into when I go into a Ritz. I am that guy. I camp as long as there’s air conditioning and Wi-Fi

Bryan Paul Buckley 55:24
and room service that sort of besides that, I’m willing to camp Absolutely. Nicely played. Alright. Rental Car or rideshare?

Brant Menswar 55:36
I prefer rental car, I prefer national is actually my preferred brand.

Bryan Paul Buckley 55:40
Yeah, me too. I’m an executive kind of guy. I love that. Yes. All right. Least favorite airport in the world,

Brant Menswar 55:46
Atlanta, Atlanta. And I’m going to say one more time, Atlanta. All right.

Bryan Paul Buckley 55:52
All right. Here’s a lot of thought put into that. A little hesitation. But I think he’s going to go.

Brant Menswar 55:56
I know why. Let me tell you why. Because so as a musician, Atlanta has adopted a process of checking your bags that have to fit in a bin. And if your bag doesn’t fit in a bin, they have to walk you halfway across the airport to check something larger than the bin.

Bryan Paul Buckley 56:14
feels like they’re actually going into Ohio. I mean, we’re walking in Atlanta airport.

Brant Menswar 56:18
So I can’t walk into Atlanta with a guitar and have them scan it without them you know, going on a half marathon, I got to run a five K to get to where I need to get to in that airport. It’s awful.

Bryan Paul Buckley 56:29
And unless health is one of your top five, I just don’t see the benefit of a right. Musician bias. That’s what that’s all about it is and everybody Atlanta’s their favorite airport right now. It’s just it’s having some issues. Right? Yeah, I’ll show you your black sheep. Alright, let’s wrap this up here. favorite city to frequent?

Brant Menswar 56:48
Greenville, South Carolina.

Bryan Paul Buckley 56:50
What?

Brant Menswar 56:51
I love that little town. And it’s got great restaurants. It’s got a great place to walk to some great coffee there. You know, it’s right on the river. It’s just it’s like this hidden little jewel that people think it’s a college and it is a college town. But like it is such an engaging, like artistic community there. I just love it.

Bryan Paul Buckley 57:13
I love that question. Because we get a variety of different answers. The last one biggest road pet peeve.

Brant Menswar 57:18
All right, people, people who talk on their phone, on speakerphone, I want to choke their throats. Especially on an airplane, I want to slam that phone down. I want to throw it as far as I can. Because nobody needs I don’t want to know what you’re talking about. Nobody cares that much. And I, to me, it is the biggest pet peeve and it happens all the time. And I don’t even understand. If you can’t hear well enough with your phone up to your ear, then invest in some hearing aids because you’ve got larger problems, then putting them on speaker is going to fix

Bryan Paul Buckley 57:53
I love it. And even if they are not on speaker and you’re walking down to the jetway, and then you’re actually in the plane. And you’re actually the person who’s giving the announcements on there. And you are that important. I love that and I love when the amount of Southwest flight and they like you know if you’re that guy or you’re that important, you can’t put the phone on. Your option is on the wing right there. You can talk as long as you want it out there. So it’s like come on man like me.

Grant this has been awesome. So how can we find out more about you, about the book, hire to speak anything else your podcasts, bring it on.

Brant Menswar 58:28
Best Place to get me at findyourblacksheep.com. That’s gonna take you to the book site, it’s got the assessment there, it’s going to link to my personal speaking site as well. That’s the best thing on social media everywhere. I’m just @Brandmenswar. It is b r a n t  m e n s w a r do not put an E in my last name. It’s not men’s wear. It’s Menswar or as we say in New England men’s wear. And that is I’m very active on social and that’s probably the best way to DM me and connect on one of those channels.

Bryan Paul Buckley                                                                                                                                                  Excellent and roadwarriors can be a little bit lazy sometimes, we’ll make sure the links are in the show notes along with the entire transcript. So anything about there you want to kind of break down, It’ll be right there for your reading, pleasure, and linking pleasure. Well, Brant,, thanks again for just spending some time with us as road warriors. And more than just kind of little tweaks or tricks in and I can say it right there. Just the What am I saying the tricks of the trade here. We’re really getting into some real truth in some real meaning. And I love that. So thanks for taking time with us today on that.

Brant Menswar                                                                                                                                                              Thanks for having me, brother. I appreciate it.

Bryan Paul Buckley 59:46
I’d like to thank Brant Menswar for his time, his challenges and insights for us to become elite road warriors and to think differently about how we do the road and making an impact. You can find the transcripts and all the links we reference in this episode in the show notes at eliteroadwarrior.com/090. Along with the early warning signs for companies to avoid business travel burnout, and you can pick up that resource absolutely free. I’d love to hear from you. So you can reach me on LinkedIn and Bryan Paul Buckley, the LinkedIn company page elite Road Warrior on Instagram @eliteroadwarrior as well. So wherever you’re on the road, do something anything just not nothing to master the business travel life. Leverage finding and living your black sheep to help you become and remain an elite rotor today to eliminate burnout and exceed results. You got this

Love me some black sheep values!

Resources

Guest Brant Menswar Resources:

LinkedIn Profile

Website: findyourblacksheep.com

Guides by Bryan Buckley at Elite Road Warrior:

7 Early Warning Signs for Companies to Avoid Business Travel Burnout

Top Ten Business Travel Hacks Guide