Brian Biro With Brian Biro Enterprises

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Brian Biro. He is America’s breakthrough speaker with Brian Biro Enterprises. Welcome.

Brian Biro: [00:00:28] Hey. Thanks, Lee. It’s great to be with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about life as America’s breakthrough speaker. How you serving, folks?

Brian Biro: [00:00:38] Well, you know, I absolutely love what I do. That’s the starting place. I’ve been a professional speaker, speaking mainly to organizations, corporations, associations for 34 years. I can’t it seems like yesterday that I started and, you know, my whole my whole deal is about helping people break through, break through fears, obstacles, and organizations break through to a better performance or better culture, and that the keys to breakthroughs are repeatable, simple, powerful. And they apply not only in your work, but in your family and your health and your life. So I think the starting place is to love what you do. It’s not even like work. It’s really my passion.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] So now how do you move from, I would imagine, a career as a traditional business person for a period of time to a career as a speaker. How do you make that transition?

Brian Biro: [00:01:29] Well, you know, I’ve actually had three really neat careers and each was a kind of progression. My first career, I went to Stanford University a long time ago. We went much, many years, and I came out of school and knew that what I loved was what I had done to put myself through school, which was coaching swimming. I was a swimmer myself, and I loved it. And so it was really the foundation of of working with people. Had a great run as a US swimming coach, working with young athletes to rise to their potential. When I went into the corporate world after getting an MBA at UCLA, I was in a pretty large transportation company, moved up pretty fast, but our team was not a team at that time. We were really siloed as it so often in many organizations, you know, operations didn’t get along with sales. Sales didn’t get along with operations. They both hated the Home Office just a little bit more. And so I had risen quite rapidly, become vice president in charge of kind of our culture called performance planning. And I talked to my CEO. I talked him into letting me go out and start doing team building in my own company.

Brian Biro: [00:02:33] So that’s really using some of the principles I learned at the swimming coach, which people think swimming is an individual sport. It’s a team sport. We have no idea how much we impact each other. And so I started doing these programs. We were we had locations all around North America. I spoke at every one of them, and that really did the trick. And I said to my wife, at the peak of this, it led to a tremendous turnaround. Our company did extraordinarily well on the bottom line in terms of growth, but more importantly, we really started to work together. Tremendous internal support, people having fun, great service. And so I said to my wife, at the peak of that, hey, hon, we’re doing great. Let’s quit. I got to go do this. This is what I was meant on Earth to do. And so that was kind of the springboard, really, that that team building element, which really to build a team, each person has to take responsibility for their part to contribute to that team.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:27] So, um, now when you’re working with organizations, are you coming in to give a speech or are you coming in to, um, you know, kind of solve a problem that may require more than, you know, an hour, uh, talking?

Brian Biro: [00:03:42] Well, yeah. Yeah, it’s kind of both. Um, every organization is is kind of the same and different. We it’s all the same in that it’s all about people. I don’t care what business you’re in. You’re in the people business. But it’s different in terms of where they are in this particular moment in time, in terms of what are their biggest challenges. So though I am giving a talk, giving a presentation that could go either from one hour up to a full day, although these days mostly they’re shorter, they’re kind of a acceleration of of time in, within my business what used to take four hours you need to do in one. Um, but each organization is unique. So I’m, uh, the process starts with a kind of in-depth interview to find out what are your desired outcomes, what are your challenges right now? Um, what’s the state of mind of your team? Um, where are the places where you really feel that you need to break through? So it really is a combination. That’s a great question, because there is that, that massive effort to customize so that it’s not something that you’re just pulling off a shelf as a presentation. Um, and yet there are foundational elements that are so important to every breakthrough and every people organization. So it really combines both that customization and and the presentation. And today’s world. You’ve got to you’ve got to entertain, entertain as much as you educate. So it’s kind of, you know, entertain is what we need to do. Because if you can’t grab people’s engagement, you’re not going to grab their spirits, you’re not going to grab their minds, you’re not going to grab their hearts.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] So what are some symptoms that organizations are having that they might have a need for additional team building? Is there any things you see that are maybe. Happening that they’re not kind of elevating to a, hey, this this is a priority. We really have a team building issue here.

Brian Biro: [00:05:36] Yeah, I think that, you know, one of the things is what I encountered in my own organization where we have different functional groups, operations, sales, sales and marketing, and then we’ve got maybe the administrative parts and and they’re separated, they’re silos. There’s a lot of silos. That’s. And until we pull together, you know, it’s when you think about it logically, operations doesn’t want to do sales. Sales does not want to do operations. And yet we’re constantly kind of internally blaming each other. So breaking through those, you know, moving from silos to synergy is a is a common one. Uh, another one that I think is really accelerated since Covid is just a feeling of connection, a feeling of are we on the same track? Um, you know, there was a lot of people switched from coming into an office or coming into a location and having that, that connection that isn’t necessarily so much even conscious as, as subconscious where you’re just collecting and, you know, passing each other chat and feeling a sense of connection. And so I find at this in the last couple of years, one of the biggest things of just holding an event is getting people in the same room, in the same space, instead of only on their computers. Doing only virtual um really creates a springboard. It creates an acceleration to becoming more of a team. Um, and I think finally, it’s just the sense of that, you know, together we may be many, you know, separately we may be many, but together we can be much. We can do so much more when we bring in and start to understand that different. I don’t want a team of people who are exactly like me, because then we’re only going to see a little bit that we need to value and honor the different approaches, different talents, different focuses, and merge them together towards a common, common goal. That’s when we can actually, uh, create the most, the most exciting results.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:34] Now, do you believe that, um. That there’s a leader within everyone at just a matter of getting it out of them. Or do you feel that some people kind of just naturally gravitate to leadership positions and other people gravitate to kind of the, um, you know, kind of worker bee, do the grind type person?

Brian Biro: [00:07:58] You know, that is a wonderful question. The foundation of everything I teach is that everyone is a leader. Um, and we can’t hide from the fact how we show up every day. That’s a big part of the way that we lead. Um, we’re all constantly teaching. How do we deal with adversity, with challenge, with change, with prosperity. That’s another another expression of our personal leadership. But probably most important of all, what kind of impact do we have on the people around us? Do we elevate them by who we are, by the choices that we make? So I believe that we’re all leaders and that we all have the capacity. Um, it may not be necessarily in terms of a hierarchical form of leadership, but we are teaching and leading and in the way that we that way we respond, the way we deal with it, with everything in our lives. So, uh, a lot of what I teach, I call breakthrough leadership because, uh, every event I speak at Lee is an event that’s held to break through. Whether it’s a breakthrough, we want to increase our sales. We want to increase our our operational productivity. Uh, we want to increase our teamwork. It’s a breakthrough from where we’ve been to where we want to get to. And so really, that what I want to help people to understand is that breakthrough personal self leadership is about controlling your controllables. Um, and there’s three that are most foundational. One is to shape your future. So that’s about vision. And I want to help people understand that what you focus on is what you create. So focus on what you want to create instead of focusing on what you don’t want. How many of us spend more time worrying about what will go wrong than focusing on what we want to create to go right? So start with shaping your future.

Brian Biro: [00:09:36] Second right is to energize and engage yourself in your team. Um, when you talk about any organization, whether it’s a business, whether it’s a sports team, whether it’s entertainment, so much of what will separate and differentiate us is our level of energy. And I want to help people understand energy is a choice. It’s a choice about the way that you move. It’s a choice about how much you focus on purpose. Whenever you’re full of purpose, you’re full of energy. So helping people understand that a controllable is your energy. And you can you can elevate your energy through choice. And finally, the third controllable is to build people, build teams and build relationships. As I said, every business ultimately is a people business. It’s it’s how much you grow and help others grow that determines how far you can go. And so by focusing on working on those three controllables, shaping your future, energized and engaging yourself and really working to build relationship by being present, by really focusing on recognition, acknowledgment, appreciation, kindness, those kinds of things will generate breakthrough results. And that’s where breakthrough leadership really grabs a hold of each person. And man, if I can get each person I ever speak to to know that they’re a leader, I mean, if you’re a mother, if you’re a father, I hope you find yourself being a leader. If you’re a student, you have a choice about what you’re going to go grow and and the study and focus on. We’re all leaders, and we have the opportunity to be breakthrough leaders.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:08] Now with a lot of young people suffering from anxiety and, um, and maybe frustrated with where they are on the planet, maybe because they’re immersed in social media and seeing other people doing better than them. Is there anything that you would recommend that’s actionable that gets this person that maybe isn’t feeling like a leader today to become the leader that they could be?

Brian Biro: [00:11:33] Yes. Great question. I would start with their self-talk. Um, when you’re feeling that kind of anxiety, you are living from a perspective that says, I have to do this or I have to not do this, or else something terrible will happen. We’ve learned that when we were children, and it was important when we were kids to protect us. You know, you need to do this or else something bad will happen. And those two words or else are fear based. So when you first thing I would do with young people, it sounds like a silly little thing, but it can be transformational. Find out in you. Start to ask yourself how often in your self-talk or even out loud, you say, I have to do this because when you get down to it, you really only have to do one thing that’s die. Everything else is a matter of choice and shift that self-talk from I have to do this, which has within it those hidden words, or else something bad will happen. Shift it to I want to, I choose to, I like to, I can’t wait to. And what happens is you begin to recognize that you have that you ultimately have a chance to live life from a place of choice. That yes, every choice will have consequences. But when you come from that place of I choose to, I want to, I. I’ve decided to you start to to start to take charge of your life.

Brian Biro: [00:12:52] You start to take charge of your choices. And ultimately, that’s really where you have an opportunity to to be a self leader. Um, so that’s really a foundational key. And once you do that, you recognize you do have a choice. You know, when I shifted from being a swimming coach to going into business. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I had really lived my life with the decision, I’m going to do the things I love and and as you do that, you start to become more alert for opportunities. I call it seizing the Wu, seizing the window of opportunity. So as you use that, that forward momentum choice of self-talk, I choose to, I want to I can’t wait to you’ll open your eyes to and become alert to all the resources that were already there, but you had previously missed because you were coming from a place of fear. Every breakthrough ultimately comes down to breaking through, from fear to love and faith. And that really is the message for young people, is that you do have choices, and you can choose to live your life in a forward motion. You live your life driving in the rear view mirror means you’re going where you don’t want to get to. You know, start focusing on where you’re going you want to get to.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:03] Now, you mentioned that in your career, there were you’ve kind of had three major transitions and that, um, at the time making those changes, I’m sure there was um, it wasn’t obvious, but maybe now looking back, the all these, uh, these dots are connected in a, in a logical manner. Um, is there anything you can share about when you are contemplating making a change or a shift, maybe some clues that you’re that this is the right move to make, that you should kind of lean into it rather than, um, maybe feel like any apprehension in pursuing this.

Brian Biro: [00:14:46] Yes. And I think it kind of relates to your previous question as well. Many of us are frozen and terrified because we have such a need for comparison and approval. And when you are driven by, uh, the need for approval, you’ll never get enough. And so, uh, my mentor, the man who wrote the foreword to my first book, the man, one of the two legends I write about in my newest book called lessons from the legends, was John Wooden, who was, uh, you probably know Lee. Uh, but a lot of young people don’t know who he was. Uh, John Wooden, unless they watched, uh, Ted Lasso. Then they know, uh, John Wooden was the greatest men’s college basketball coach of all time. And Coach Wooden was an even better person teacher than he was a coach. And he was the greatest there ever was. Ten national championships. And Coach Wooden taught that success is peace of mind, and it comes from knowing that you’ve given the best of what you’re capable. And in that definition, there is no comparison to other people. There’s only only a focus on am I doing the best of which I’m capable and and the only one who can know that is yourself. And so when you get right down to it, when you focus on the things you do control your effort, your energy, your attitude, you’re going to move.

Brian Biro: [00:16:03] You’re going to get the closest to creating the results you want. So when it comes to making that shift in your life where something is, when you start to get that bug that says, I really need to do this when I would. I have loved being a swimming coach, but in the last year or two that I was coaching, I knew that I wanted something more in my life, something different. I wanted to because I only knew myself as a coach. I wanted to know myself as a person. I had no family, no prospects for family. And I listened to that inner voice that was saying, you know what? It’s time for you. It’s time for you to break through. It’s time for you to go to the next, the next level. Same thing happened when I left the corporate world to go into doing what I’ve been doing for 34 years. I knew inside, after teaching those team building events that this is who I am. This is this is not only what I want to do, this is who I am. But when I went forward, I wasn’t doing it to compare myself to others. I was seeking to be my best and pursue my passion. Um, the biggest change in my life really came down to one word.

Brian Biro: [00:17:07] Uh, as a young person, I always was, was hunting and and striving and driving myself crazy to be the best. Because like a lot of people my age, I had a dad who was had a hard time ever saying, I’m proud of you. And I was starving for approval and I was no fun. And I put incredible pressure on myself because I felt like I. I had to beat you at everything. I had to be the best. I was totally driven by comparison. One day, in the lowest point of my life, I realized that I realized that I had lived my whole life chasing something that was out of my control, and instead I. I made the switch to becoming my best, which was only about looking in myself. Did I give my best effort? Did I seek to be the best that I could be? And it transformed my life? Um. I’ve lived my life ever since I was 21 years old, and since that time it has been just an incredible transformation so that each of those changes wasn’t because of comparison or worrying about what other people think. It was about following my passion and really pursuing that which my heart said was the right thing to pursue. We can all do that.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:15] Now, you mentioned your book lessons from the legend. This is, I believe, your 16th book. Is that correct?

Brian Biro: [00:18:23] That’s correct, that’s correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:25] Yes. Now how important. Obviously it’s it’s part of your repertoire is writing books. But, um, was this something early on you discovered that I’m going to get into a rhythm of writing books regularly as just part of, uh, me sharing the knowledge as I’m getting it. Like, like how did, uh, book writing become part of kind of the, the mix that you offer to people and, and to why did you include them?

Brian Biro: [00:18:50] Great question. Nobody’s ever asked me before. Thank you. Well, I always love to write. Uh, I love stories. To me, stories are are the essence and the heart of what really connects, uh, presentations and books. You know, we read books for the story. Um, and, um, I’ve always been a storyteller, and I’ve really researched studies, stories. Stories like this will blow you away. The stories are 2200 times more powerful than simply giving people information. In other words, when you want to deliver a lesson, do it through a story. And so I’ve always loved to write stories, um, and write about my real stories, the things that I’ve learned in my life. And so, uh, my book writing started with my, my favorite story that I’ve told in many, many events over these years. I’ve done 1900 events, was a story about one of the swimmers that I coached who had a, uh, incredible breakthrough, transformation, um, and that I wrote that story. And then it was a springboard to man, I want to I want to take these, these key concepts in the story and turn it into a whole book. And so, uh, that was my first one that was called Beyond Success. Uh, the foreword was written by John Wooden, um, the great coach. And I used his what he called Pyramid of Success, um, which was the structure that he taught life to his athletes. Um, as the, as the structure for the stories I wanted to tell. Um, that first book took me 18 months to write, and, uh, I worked at it every day. Um, and some days I would spend ten hours to write -22 words. I would actually make no forward progression. But, um, it taught me that writing a book is is just like building a house.

Brian Biro: [00:20:36] If you you just got to do it piece by piece, inch by inch, sometimes you’re going to have to pull out some nails because you nailed it and wrong. Put it back in. Each of the books that I’ve written since then has taken progressively less time, because I kind of have figured out how my how I work to write a book. Everyone’s different, and, um, I really write books when I have something that I really feel driven, uh, to bring to people. Uh, this last book, lessons from the legend I Wrote, because it’s a book about character that your characters, who you are, your reputation, only what others think you are. So I wrote this book about two of the greatest coaches and teachers and people of of my life, uh, John Wooden and Pat Summitt. Pat Summitt was the greatest, uh, was what to to women’s basketball, what John Wooden was to men’s basketball. But more than anything, they were people of extraordinary character. They were humble. They were, um, they gave credit and took responsibility. Um, they were always seeking to learn. They never felt. They knew it all. Knew it all. Um, they were driven by hard work, but also balanced work. They were family oriented. And so this book was written because I feel that in the last few years, we haven’t focused on character in the way we should, um, the last seven, eight years. And, and I want I wanted to help people get back to how important it is, um, to live with dignity and respect, to be humble, to give others credit. And because it’s amazing what’s accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:13] Now, do you feel that character is kind of in the eye of the beholder, or is there some universal kind of tenants of good character nowadays?

Brian Biro: [00:22:24] Oh, I really believe that there are some very foundational keys to character. Um, and, and they are exemplified by Coach Wooden and and Coach Summitt. Um, starting with the one that’s never talked about, in fact, which in some circles these days almost has a bad rep. And that is humility. Um, many people can confuse they think that if you’re humble, you’re not really confident that that and that in business, humility is somehow soft or weak. It could not be further from the truth. Uh, because being humble, you can be very humble and very confident, because being humble doesn’t mean you think less of yourself. It means you think of yourself less. But the reason why humility is so crucial to your character, to your personal leadership, if you think about it, only those who are humble are actually lifelong learners, because only those who are humble would rather make a mistake and learn from it than pretend they’re always right. Um, so I think that that, that, that being a person of character starts with that, that hunger to learn. Um, next it’s about we go, not ego. Um, when we shift from me to we, we, we bring out the best thing about human beings. What’s the best thing about people? That that will will do more for others than we’ll do for ourselves. The service is love and action. And so one of the things I love about John Wooden and about Pat Summitt, about this book is it gets us back to stop talking about how wonderful we are individually, instead, to really look for the best in others, because what you focus on is what you create. So I believe that that there is there are foundational keys doing the right thing when nobody’s around. Um, giving credit and taking responsibility. These are foundational keys character. Um, being being a person who is is eager to tell the truth, even when it’s difficult. Um, those kinds of things are very powerful and more important than they’ve ever been before. Um, and so, um, I think that, yes, character is universal in its foundation.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:35] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about what Trap Tube may be, book you, or just get a hold of one or all of your books, is there a website? Is there kind of a place to connect with you?

Brian Biro: [00:24:46] Absolutely. My website is just my name. It’s Brian biro.com and it’s Brian Biro. I would love to come and speak to your organization. It’s as I say, it’s what I was put on earth to do. Uh, I, you know, I joke about it when I’m. When I’m on stage. Lee, I’m 25 years old again. I get off stage. I’m still 69, but I truly feel 25 up there. My energy shines. And that’s really a universal key when you’re when you’re doing what you love to do and you’re doing what you’re put here to do, uh, your energy is just fluid, authentic, joyful and contagious.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:26] Well, Brian, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Brian Biro: [00:25:32] I appreciate you. You do, you do the same. You really bring out the best in and help people through all your shows. It’s an honor to be with your show. Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:40] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.