545: Taking Your Personal Development to the Next Level with René Rodriguez

[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And I think you are really going to enjoy today’s podcast, the conversation that I just had with René Rodriguez on taking your personal development to the next level, because I really enjoyed this conversation. I think if you listen, you’ll find that René is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent, just wise human beings that you can listen to. I mean, he’s really on another level, and that’s why he was described to me when I first heard about him years ago from my friend Isaac Stegman. He described René as the best speaker he had ever seen on stage, and he compared him to all the greats that he had seen speak. He said René is one of, if not the best speaker, and he’s a speaker trainer. He trains other speakers because he is that good of a communicator. So, you are in for a treat today. This is not just a conversation with anybody. It’s with someone who is extremely articulate and brilliant and can communicate that brilliance in a way that’s really applicable to your life.

 

Now, he’s considered by many as a leading authority on leadership and influence. He’s a bestselling author, keynote speaker, leadership advisor, and transformational speaker coach. Again, he teaches other professional speakers how to take their speaking to the next level. And for the last 27 years, René has been researching and applying behavioral neuroscience to solve some of the toughest challenges in leadership, sales, and change. And he’s the author of The Wall Street Journal bestselling book, Amplify Your Influence, which happened to be selected as a best business book of 2022 by Summary.com.

 

He’s also shared the stage with Ed Mylett, Tony Robbins, Jon Gordon, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ryan Holiday, yours truly, and many more. And again, today, we’re really doing a deep dive into personal development. And I’ll tease this right now. But the last question that I asked him is what he sees as the future of personal development and how you and me and all of us can stay ahead in our journey of growth and self-improvement. And his answer, it surprised me, and I was really pleased. So, I think you’ll enjoy this entire conversation from start to finish.

 

Before we dive in, I want to take just a couple of minutes to thank our two sponsors for today’s podcast. And the first is CURED Nutrition. Now, CURED Nutrition, I wake up and I go to sleep with CURED Nutrition. The first product I take every morning for supplement is called Rise. It is a nootropic with superfoods, especially lion’s mane and CBD, which all the synergistic blend, if you will, it creates a nice subtle focus and mental cognitive performance improvement first thing in the morning. So, I start my day with Rise and then I end my day with CURED Nutrition’s product, Nighttime Oil or Night Caps. It’s in two formulas, so just depends. Sometimes the night oil, sometimes the Night Caps from traveling their capsules. But either way, it’s a blend of CBD and CBN oil which have both a sedative effect to help you fall asleep, and then a calming effect throughout the night that helps you stay asleep and wake up refreshed. So, if you want to wake up with more focus and go to bed and stay asleep and improve your sleep quality, head over to CuredNutrition.com/Hal. That is CURED, C-U-R-E-D, CuredNutrition.com/Hal, and use the discount code Hal, H-A-L, for 20% off your entire order As a listener of this podcast. They’ve got a bunch of other products other than those two, but those are my top two favorites.

 

And then last but not least, I want to thank our sponsor Organifi. And I’m going to talk about a product of Organifi. It’s actually their number one product. And I almost never talk about it because I personally don’t take it because I happen to be allergic to one of their primary ingredients of the product, and I’m talking about their Green Juice. That’s what made Organifi famous. They literally started with this Green Juice that has 11 essential superfoods that help detox the body, lower cravings to help weight management, reduce stress, and reset your morning. It contains a clinical dose of ashwagandha, which again, I’m allergic to, but it’s a very rare allergy. Most people find ashwagandha to be extremely effective because it helps support lowering cortisol levels which aid in not only lowering stress but also in weight management.

 

It contains ingredients like organic moringa, organic ashwagandha as I mentioned, organic chlorella, spirulina, beets, turmeric, mint, wheatgrass, lemon, and coconut water. All 11 superfoods work together in a symphony of incredible energy-boosting and detoxifying benefits. If you want to start your day with a boost of nutrition and lowering stress, head over to Organifi.com/Hal and check out their Green Juice. That is spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and use the discount code Hal, my name, for 20% off your order of Organifi Green Juice or their plethora of other products that I do take such as their turmeric, their Protein powder, their Red Juice, you name it. They’ve got a ton of the most potent, high quality organic ingredients to help you take your health to the next level in a fast, efficient, very easy way.

 

So, without further ado, let’s dive in to talk about how to take your personal development to the next level with my friend, Mr. René Rodriguez.

[INTERVIEW]

Hal Elrod: René, man, it’s good to finally have you on the show.

 

René Rodriguez: It’s great to be here, my friend. Truly, truly, truly excited for this conversation.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. You’ve been so supportive of me and The Miracle Morning, launch of the book, and I know we last saw each other, I think in person was in Vegas at Momentum Builder, right?

 

René Rodriguez: Yeah, it was in Vegas. You just got off stage and we had sort of met in the trade show area. And like, six people to be like, you got to meet Hal, you got to meet Hal. Of course, every one of them said he’s a really good friend of mine, as we talked about before. And you were extremely gracious and your book has been revolutionary for me because it made me rethink old things that I sort of dismissed, like affirmation and routine. And so, our initial conversation made me rethink all of it.

 

Hal Elrod: Similarly, your book, one of the most influential books that I had read in my lifetime was influenced by Robert Cialdini. And then when I read Amplify Your Influence, when I read your book, it was like, oh, this is everything Cialdini. Like, it’s the new, updated, improved version of that for the modern day. So, yeah.

 

René Rodriguez: Thank you. It’s a big compliment.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah, the appreciation is mutual. And I’ll tell you, similarly, Isaac Tolpin had told me about you for, I don’t even know, how long, a year, maybe more. Hal, you have to meet René Rodriguez. He’s one of the best speakers I’ve ever seen. You have to meet René Rodriguez. And it probably took a year, but, yeah, we finally, crossed paths. I know who you are, Isaac Tolpin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know.

 

René Rodriguez: Is it Tolpin or Stegman? Isaac Stegman.

 

Hal Elrod: Oh, Stegman, my bad, my bad.

 

René Rodriguez: Yeah, absolutely.

 

Hal Elrod: Thank you for clarifying that.

 

Hal Elrod: No, he raves about you as well. He’s such a good dude.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. He’s one of the biggest supporters of the Miracle Morning from 2012. When the first book came out, I think you bought 100 copies, gave it to 100 real estate leaders. And from there, it was like, I think he literally created a Miracle Morning movement in the real estate community single handedly by his effort, man. So, yeah, he’s a good human.

 

So, I mentioned to you before we started recording that when I send out surveys, which I do usually two or three times a year to the Miracle Morning community, to my listeners, and I always ask, what do you need help with right now? Sometimes I phrase it, what are you struggling with or what do you need help with? And the top three answers consistently are mindset is usually number one, my mindset, my mental health, etc. Number two is finances. I need help with money, making money. And number three is, and it always surprises me, but it’s personal development.

 

And I think I take that for granted, maybe because it’s such an ingrained part of my life and my ritual and my schedule, that it’s like, well, why would you need help with it? You just do it, right? Just do your Miracle Morning. And so, that’s something that you and I were riffing on, and I was like, I really think that’s the direction I want to take today’s conversation. And so, it also made me realize that personal development is not something that the average person has ever introduced to in their lifetime. You probably found out that people told me, like, Miracle Morning is the first personal development book I ever read because a friend recommended it, and I was fortunate that at 19 years old, I started selling Cutco cutlery. And my mentor introduced me to the concept of personal development and positive thinking. And these were totally foreign concepts. So, I’d love to start there. Can you share your introduction to personal development, your journey into this field, and what inspired you to pursue it?

 

René Rodriguez: It’s so funny you mentioned Cutco. I was 18, I got cut from the basketball team. And I asked the CEO, what’s the one thing that I needed to do to be in their shoes when I got older, because I didn’t know what to do? He looked at me and he smiled, he said, “You learn how to sell. If you learn how to sell, you’ll always be employed.” And so, literally, two weeks later, I get this letter in the mail, said, I’ve been selected because of my GPA to join this fast-paced sales and marketing company in the health and wellness industry. Well, I had a 2.3 GPA, so they somehow mixed it up, right?

 

Hal Elrod: That actually is what makes a good salesperson.

 

René Rodriguez: Exactly. So, I’m perfect.

 

Hal Elrod: That’s actually your avatar for a successful salesperson. Me too.

 

René Rodriguez: Yep. And so, I was like, “Okay.” I’m like, “Well, that’s their mistake, not mine.” It said sales and marketing. I didn’t really understand what that was at 18. And basically, it was a mass recruiting to sell cookware door to door. And Cutco made our knives, but it was Saladmaster. And the previous year, I had to get into college. I had to work in the probation program, which means I had to be a janitor for that first summer and cleaning cigarette butts and toilets and all that stuff.

 

But I realized that I’d never seen $918, and that’s what I made that summer, more money I’d ever seen in my life. And I keep it all in one. So, I did this big role of once, I smell it every once in a while. And they came out and this guy said that his first summer, this is in the introductory interview, he made $9,000. That was another zero. Everything that I felt about basketball disappeared after 15 years, and all I could see was this guy. He’s like, “What do I need to do?” And I walked up to him and I said, “I’ll do what you say when you say to do it. No questions asked.” And he looks at me, he smiles. He goes, “Okay, next.” Anyways, they hired everybody and I was the last guy to make a sale. And because my mom was out of town, she bought the sympathy set, right? He was like, “Buy your kid’s set.”

 

Hal Elrod: Of course, of course.

 

René Rodriguez: But I had been rejected my entire life, whether it been bullying or whether it been through being the overweight kid in basketball, being cut, just all that stuff that they just said do 10 presentations, sell, you then sell three. But the reason I show that is that he gave me this cassette, and I’d always seen this thing in my mom’s closet. This guy with these big, huge teeth, and it’s Personal Power. I’m like, “What is that?” Never. He just said, start for years. Never knew what it was. And this guy gave him this cassette. It had this guy named Zig Ziglar on it with his crazy southern accent. And it talked about goal setting.

 

And I put it in the cassette tape in my car, and I was like, “God, his voice is hard to listen to.” Five minutes into, I get used to it and I’m like, “These are incredible ideas.” I could set a goal and accomplish it. And I devoured it. I listened to it five times. Give it back to him. “Do you have another one?” And he goes, “Yeah. Here’s this guy, Jim Rohn.” I’m like, “Okay, Take Charge of Your Life.”

 

Hal Elrod: And how old were you, 18?

 

René Rodriguez: 18.

 

Hal Elrod: Amen. All right.

 

René Rodriguez: Right. And I listen to Take Charge of Your Life, that series. I still have it to this day. I’ve probably listened to it 300 times minimum.

 

Hal Elrod: Wow.

 

René Rodriguez: And then he hands me this box set. I’m like, “My mom has this.” And it was Tony Robbins’ Personal Power, right? And that 30-day program where you listen to, it’s like 20 minutes a day, and he’s making one minor change at a time. And it was genius. But it was like one of those things, I was just hooked. Tony Robbins, Tom Hopkins too, I think. But as I got older because I asked the same question, like, why? Why do we gravitate towards that?

 

And whether you’re in sales or whether you’re a stay-at-home parent, whether you’re in leadership or whether you’re an author, whatever it is, life throws adversity at you. And if you’re in a job that requires you to deal with any level of suffering, rejection, whatever it is, or if you have any level of ambition to grow in your career, the idea of personal development is amazing. It’s like I can learn something. And it’s interesting and this is a new sort of concept that I came across in this, and I’d love your take on this because it was the idea of money versus wealth. And a lot of people confuse wealth with money. And money would be a quantitative sort of measure of it. I can measure the pile of it, how much I have net worth.

 

But wealth is this qualitative thing of like, okay, the best example would be I’ve got a beat-up car. It’s not worth much money, but I have a skill set of refurbishing and I refurbish that car. Now, it’s worth a lot more. And the cool part is I created more wealth, but no one lost money because I got wealthier. And so, it wasn’t a finite game. It wasn’t a zero-sum game. And so, moving my thoughts to how do I build wealth. And the easiest way to build wealth is to stop thinking about money and think about value in personal development is the way to refurbish, we’re the vehicle. We can increase our wealth through this personal development process. And no one loses, by the way. And in fact, everyone gains. The more valuable my friends are, the more value they offer me, and vice versa. So, anyways, long answer to that, but I think that’s an interesting way of looking at it.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No, I love that and I think, for me, introduced to personal development at 19 when I started selling Cutco, but I don’t think I fully understood the value of it until I heard Jim Rohn in 2007, 2008, say, your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. And to me, that’s in every area, if you want a better marriage, become a better spouse, right? If you ask the average person that’s getting a divorce, how many books did you all read on how to be a phenomenal spouse and improve your communication and learn each other’s love languages. And the average person getting a divorce would say, “What are you talking about?” None. Zero. I didn’t read any. We didn’t read any book, right.

 

Well, what if you had? What if you had increased your level of personal development as it relates to co-creating a thriving marriage, might you end up with a different result? And you can apply personal development to your health, your happiness, your financial wealth, and in every area of life. And so, for me, it’s like, oh, that became not just an idea, but the foundational idea which I shall build my life on. And not just success like outer success, but inner fulfillment, you name it. Literally, this morning, I’m reading. I read, if I have any fault, I read too many books at once. We’re like…

 

René Rodriguez: I’m the same way.

 

Hal Elrod: This morning, I read Boundaries because I’m terrible at saying no and creating boundaries and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings and disappoint my friend, whatever. So, I’m terrible at setting boundaries. That’s a challenge, although I shouldn’t be affirming it. I’m getting better at setting boundaries. And then I read Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World. I read a little bit of Power of Now. So, I read three or four books this morning, but the idea is I want to be a better parent. I’m committed to being a better parent. I’m committed to being a better spouse. I’m committed to being happier, healthier, more connected to God. Oh, Lead Like Jesus is the other book that I’m reading right now, which is phenomenal. So, yeah, and it’s like, so my whole world revolves around or is centered on personal development. There’s very little that’s more important than that.

 

René Rodriguez: I’m writing down the Raising Grateful Kids and then tell our world. That sounds like a such a perfect topic. And I think, what’s interesting is the hardest part about personal development, too, is that it can become cliched so quickly. It can be something that we build a callus to because we hear about it and we hear motivation. And I was going to write an article that the motivational speaker killed good parenting. And like, why? I was like, well, because I think some of us that grew up without it, we started going to it. Maybe we just need to give our kids all the things we learned, and then we start desensitizing our kids to those new ideas.

 

But then there’s the thought that maybe, what you said earlier, maybe that they’re still listening, they just don’t know how to respond, and we’re still helping programming them. And so, I think that I love what you said earlier and I think you should resay that because sending your kids something, they don’t respond, they don’t respond. You’re thinking, oh, it’s deaf ears. But maybe, they’re processing it differently. And maybe, they just need to hear that over in that narrative and that voice and that tape being played. But I love that story you shared.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. And really, I owe it to a friend of mine, Jon Vroman, the founder of Front Row Dads, one of my best friends, and he and I are in a Front Row Dads, what’s called a band. So, there’s four guys, and we get together once a month, minimally, and then we communicate via a text group where we’re helping each other every day, sharing our highs or lows, what we need help with, and all-around parenting and family. So, we rarely, if ever, talk about business. And Jon Vroman actually called me the other day and it was probably a month ago, and he said, “Hey, I wanted to share a parenting win with you. And I think it’ll be helpful,” because he knows me really well and how I struggle with connecting with my teenage daughter. It’s a challenge. The older she gets, the more I’m like, it’s not as easy to just read her a story at night. She doesn’t want that anymore.

 

And here’s what he said. He said, “I send meaningful text messages to my son.” His son is 14, maybe 15 now, 14 years old, I think 15. And his name is Tiger. And he said, “I send meaningful messages, text to my son at least a few times a week.” And he said, “And he rarely, if ever, responds.” And he said, “And it’s discouraging for me. I keep sending him and I’m attached to his response and I think he’s not responding. So, he’s not getting on me. He’s not reading them, they’re not landing.” And then he goes, “Let me read you a text message that I wrote.” Then he read this, “Tiger, the man you’re becoming is amazing. And I’m so proud of you.” And he gave these specific examples and he goes, “You want to know what he said?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Nothing. Not a like, not a heart, not a thumbs up, nothing.”

 

And then he said, “Let me read you the next one.” He reads another beautiful text message a few days later, no response. And then he reads another one, no response. And he says, “Tiger came to me the other day and said, hey, dad, I know I never respond to your text messages, but I want you to know I read every single one and they really mean a lot to me. Thank you for sending them.” And he said, “I had no idea. I thought he’s all right.” And he said, “And I realized that it’s about pouring into people and not being attached to their response, not being attached to the outcome.” And I heard that I was like, wow. And so, since then, that was probably a month ago, at least a few days a week, if not, almost every day, I text my daughter and my son something meaningful. Sometimes it’s quick and short. I acknowledge them for something that I did. I catch when everything’s right. I learned how much I love and appreciate them.

 

And my daughter on my birthday, yeah, it’s a month or so ago. We were at dinner and my wife said, “Hey, let’s tell dad what we love and appreciate about him.” And she said, “Hey, dad, two things. Number one is, you send me these text messages and I know I don’t really–” literally, it was like the exact script that my friend Jon’s son said, right? But she said, “Number two, you come in the morning, you wake every morning, and I’m always grumpy and I tell you to get out of my room.” And I said, “Yeah.” She goes, “Well, you always are so positive. And you say something nice to me and you ask if you can get me anything or do anything for me. And even though I’m grumpy,” she’s like, “I want you to know it means a lot to me and I really appreciate you doing that and more.” And it was like, so, yeah, to your point, what you just said, like, our kids may not respond, but it’s landing. And so, our job is to not keep score or be attached to their response. It’s just to keep pouring in. And you can apply that to every relationship in your life.

 

René Rodriguez: Yeah. And I think there’s that piece of, one, not being attached to the outcome. But then I think the second piece is, is how do we continually just be that voice there? Somebody once said, be careful of yelling and screaming at your kids because the voice that you use to your kids becomes the voice in their head as an adult. And I was like, “Oh, man, so many things I wish I wouldn’t have said.” Then going, okay, what am I saying now, right? We can’t fix that, but I can go back and I have gone back and I tell both my kids, I go, we need to normalize something. Like, what do you mean? I go, I know you want to be like dad. And there’s a lot of things you want to be like dad. I go, but that’s the easy part. Being like dad is going to be easy. The challenges, you’re going to be just like dad, the good and the bad. And I go, what we need to normalize is let’s figure out the bad stuff about dad, stuff that I messed up on, the things you don’t want to be anything like, I’m a lighthouse in certain areas, I’ll guide you, but there’s some areas of my life that are foghorns that you need to be warned by. And I go, and I want you to be okay saying and noticing I don’t want to be anything like you, like this dad. And I’m going to go high five my son and I go, and that needs to be an okay conversation.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. That’s beautiful. Yeah, creating that space for them to say stuff that they’re afraid, they’re afraid to criticize their parents. And actually, what’s similar, I saw my daughter, I’m just having a peek over her shoulder at the airport the other day. We come back from California. And I saw her texting one of her friends about me, and it was not positive. And I couldn’t help but read because I see dad in the text message, I’m reading it. And so, then I talk to her about it and I just said, “Hey, I want you to know,” and at first, I took it personally. I was kind of like, “Hey, geez, I didn’t know you felt that way about me.” And so, it started off as not a good win. I didn’t handle it well at first, right? And she was upset. And then we went home and I went and I said, “Hey, I want you to know you did nothing wrong. You are absolutely allowed to vent to your friends about me. If you can’t vent to your friends about your parents, who can vent to you?” And I said, that is absolutely okay. You did nothing wrong. And I said, but I also want you, you can tell me that stuff like, if you want. I want to know when I’m doing something that doesn’t feel good for you so that I can correct the behavior. And so, yeah, brother.

 

René Rodriguez: Absolutely.

 

Hal Elrod: Back to the topic of personal development. What does that look like for you? I always say personal development is a very vague trait. Like, it’s a very unspecified phrase. So, what are the key principles of personal development for you? Those that are made the biggest impact on your life, what’s the ritual? What’s the routine like? What is personal development? How do you integrate it and implement it in your life?

 

René Rodriguez: I’m glad you said that because it is such a broad, vague topic. And people say, René, can you give me a book you recommend? And I’m like looking at 600 books. And I’m like, well, what problem are you trying to solve, right? And there’s so many, I mean, is it financial? Is it relationship? Is it spiritual? Is it health? Is it career? Is it presentation? Is it rejection? I mean, they may go on and on. There’s an endless topic of that.

 

And so, I think that, for me, and I’ve been reading a lot of and it’s funny, I read a lot of these books when I was in college, eastern philosophy, the Yogi’s, Autobiography of a Yogi, and then recently, I was given another book by someone that came to one of my courses who was a monk, former monk. And that is a story that I should share at some point, but…

 

Hal Elrod: It wasn’t Jay Shetty, was it? Sorry, keep going.

 

René Rodriguez: No. Bottom line, this story was this kid came up to me after I spoke at an event in New York, and he had this sort of soft smile, sort of loving, beautiful energy to him. And he said, “René, I was very moved by what you said. And I want you to mentor me and I want to be in one of your classes.” I said, “Great, what’s still holding you back?” He goes, “Well, I haven’t had a bank account in eight years.” Like, he was, “I’m a monk. I live in a monastery.” He’s wearing a suit. And I’m like, “Oh, my God.” I go, “That’s fantastic.” He goes, “But I’ll get there. I just started real estate and you’ll see me.” And I go, “No need to wait, let’s just go. Why don’t you give me a call?” And connected him with my wife? And we’re assuming that I just give a discount or figure out how to get a man, put him up, pay, whatever, whatever he wants.

 

And it’s a $6,000 investment to this course. And he says as much, he says, thank you so much. Looking forward to it. I just got two leads in my real estate. I’ll let you know how they go. Three weeks later, I just signed them under contract. And to celebrate, I’m sending you a case of sparkling water because I saw it in one of your podcasts that that was good for the brain, since it’s a case of sparkling water. And he goes back and then he comes back. Probably, two months later, he said, I closed my first deal and I got $750. To celebrate, I’m sending you 500 put towards my bill. And to my wife. I’m like, well, who is this guy? And I’m like, we should just let him in. She’s like, nope, just let him keep doing his thing.

 

And two months later, he sends us another 500, and I finally just call him. And I said, book your time. We’ll figure out the money later. Anyways, he comes. He’s there, always 45 minutes early. He’s sitting in my living room and he’s just quiet. And he pulls out his book and he just starts reading. He’s got sort of peace to him and kind of this guy spends most of the time in silence, so he’s very comfortable in that position. And he gives me this book of the four questions. And I was like, okay, cool, whatever, and decided one night to start reading it. And oh my god, like, just hit me like a ton of bricks. Bottom line at the end, he goes to the course, we hand him $1,500 back. We said, look, this is for your travel and the course. The book you gave me has completely changed my life. And it was a perfect timing as this really cool thing. But the questions were so simple. And then he literally, this just showed up in the mail. I told him it changed my life and he sent me all these now.

 

Hal Elrod: Oh, wow.

 

René Rodriguez: These are a little bit deeper than I’m ready for, but maybe it’s exactly what I need. Who knows? But I think the answer to your question is, and you said it, and I’m always very cautious because I wrote in my book that the answers to life are found in cliches. And why? Because at the first time they were said they weren’t cliché, they were found.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. That’s profound. I love that.

 

René Rodriguez: Yeah. And cliches were in essence the first of viral content. I said something really good and someone goes, man, that explains a lot. Let me tell. And then they tell somebody and they tell somebody and they tell 5, 10, 20, and this goes viral. And then it loses its luster, because we build a callus to it. And so, part of the communication process we teach is called qualify the cliche. We have to change the pathway because if it’s lost its luster, that means that we’ve desensitized or we’ve habituated to the idea. It’s like driving home. You don’t know you’re driving. I’ve done this path so many times, so it doesn’t take any mental energy to process, release the attachment to the outcome, right? Just because in one thing, I’ve heard that before. Okay, keep going. What’s next? No, like, actually release it. What happens?

 

And so, affirmation, same thing happened like affirmation is so cliched. But then when you and I talk, they go help me understand this. And you said no, René, affirm the behaviors it takes to reach the goal, not the goal as if you magically have. And I was like. Oh, he qualified it and he just gave a totally different spin, which new pathway. And I’m like, that shifted so much of my 30 years of understanding of that because you took a spin, it changed it a little bit. And so, I think when it comes to personal development, we know the answers. We’ve heard them. They are in the things that we dismiss. Like, girls will tell me, hey, we’re the good guys out there. I go, I know exactly where they are. They’re in the friend zone where you put them. Where is the good wisdom? It’s in the cliche pile that you left it and go back and revisit. And if you’re speaker, if you’re a teacher, if you’re a parent, I invite you to say something ahead of the cliche, even as simple as say, I know this sounds cliche, but this. And if you just do that, it just kind of triggers it. Okay, at least I know that. And then you follow it. But this is what this means to me. And then you give your spin, your twist, and then maybe I’ll hear it differently because your twist on affirmations changed everything for me.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. That’s powerful. I think I said this in Miracle Morning, but I know and I think I learned this from a friend or a mentor, but it was that four of the most dangerous words in the English language are, “I already know that,” right? And what does that mean? It means that you heard something cliché over and over and over again, and I say replace those four words with four words that are a question, “Am I living that?”

 

René Rodriguez: Yes.

 

Hal Elrod: And it’s usually, no. And like you said, if we’ve heard it over and over and over, we dismiss it. But I love– go back. What did you say the wisdom in the cliches? What was that quote from your book?

 

René Rodriguez: So, the answers to life are found in cliches.

 

Hal Elrod: The answers to life are found in the cliches. Yeah, so true, right? And go back to biblical wisdom or even before that.

 

René Rodriguez: Yeah, I mean, there’s no new fundamental. I mean, you look at everything Tony Robbins says, I can find it all in Jim Rohn. And then you look at Jim Rohn, you can find most of that in some parable in the Bible. It’s some way, shape, or form in there. And it’s these things are not new in which is okay, it’s like going to the personal trainer and saying, I want to lose weight. He’s going to say two things. I want to see a log of what you’re eating and I want to see a log of your exercise. And you go, okay, no, I want something new and fresh.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah, that’s it.

 

René Rodriguez: There is no new and fresh to the fundamentals.

 

Hal Elrod: No, I’m going to go on. I’m going to stay up till two in the morning binge eating and watching infomercial. And then I’m going to get the new diet thing that is fast and easy. And I only have to take one pill per day. Yeah, that’s it.

 

René Rodriguez: It’s all I got to do.

 

Hal Elrod: I love that.

 

René Rodriguez: It’s interesting too. And that’s the caution too for personal development is, and this is where I think it’s got a bad rap is there’s a concept called aspirational appeal. It’s part of the marketing manipulator category. So, marketing manipulators are things like lowering price to get a deal, two for one. pure pressure, 5 out of 10 doctors recommend, those are marketing manipulators. But the other one is aspirational appeal, which to me is one of the most unethical. And a lot of people in personal development space, the new guru space, fall into that. They make promises to, for example, six-minute apps, 30 days to financial freedom. Sorry, Tim, 4-Hour workweek.

 

And so, the aspiration is holistic. So, I ask a personal trainer or somebody who’s got six-pack, would you ever buy six-minute abs? And they go, “No.” I ask a millionaire, “Would you do 30 days financial freedom?” They go, “No.” I go, “Why?” They go, “Because it’s not done in six minutes. It’s done in the kitchen over years. And wealth is built through years.” But so, who does it appeal to? Well, aspirational appeals to the insecure of the one who’s insecure about doing the behavior it takes to get the abs. And so, if I have an insecurity or fear that I can’t do that, but I can do six minutes. And so, it appeals to that aspirational side of us, and then we make an impulsive decision to do it.

 

And of course, there’s so much more to it. And so, when we look at that and say, okay, so then why do the people who sell to the masses always sound aspirational? Well, are the masses secure or more insecure? What would you say that is? Insecure, easily. And so, it appeals to the mass. And so, people make millions and millions and millions on this. And so, the only caution is, it’s just like clickbait. It’s the things that trigger that first piece of attention. And ask yourself, is there really a shortcut to things that take a long-term success? And I can’t think of any successful thing that is shortcut because part of the value is the time and effort and suffering that it goes into creating it. Remove time, effort, suffering. There’s no value because then everybody can get it.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. No, that’s very well said. I love the cliché. It takes 10 years to become an overnight success. I don’t know who first said that, but I’ve lived it, right? And I’ve repeated it. And we hear about somebody, we see somebody. I think it was actually– who was it that said that? There was some famous person on the Ellen DeGeneres show decades ago. And they go, “You’re an overnight success. Yesterday, nobody knew who you are. Now, you have the number one movie in the country.” And that person said, “Overnight success my butt. I’ve been at this game, I’ve been in Hollywood for 10 years. I’ve been working in kitchens and sleeping in my car, and I finally, finally, finally, all that hard years of hard work, a decade of hard work paid off.” And I was sharing that in a podcast I was doing with Mike Koenigs. And it was a beautiful response. He said, “Hal, that begs the question, what are you willing to commit 10 years to so that you can become an overnight success?” What do you believe in enough? What do you believe in enough? What do you love doing enough? Where do you see your value that you’re willing to commit 10 years to that?

 

I’m reading a book right now called Lead Like Jesus. And it’s phenomenal. It’s by Ken Blanchard, author of One Minute Manager. And it makes a really empowering case. It says, leaders, a good leader is someone that is still a leader even when they’re not in your presence, right? Meaning that the people that follow that leader learn from that leader are still doing the things that leader taught or suggested, even when the leader is not around. And he said, there’s no other leader on the planet that has 2.1 billion people still following their influence. And I was like, dang, that’s empowering.

 

So, I just started reading the book. And I want to ask you because your expertise is an influence, your book amplify your influence, your expertise is in leadership which influence and leadership are very much thought to be to go hand in hand. And so, here’s what I want to ask you. So, let me start with this. The quote in the book that I wrote down is leadership happens anytime we influence the thinking, behavior, or development of another person, so, a parent is a leader, a friend is a leader, a son is a leader, a daughter is a leader, right? Any time one human being influences the thinking behavior, development of another human being, right? So, from your perspective, how do leadership skills intersect with personal development?

 

René Rodriguez: It’s so ironic, you brought up Ken Blanchard. I interviewed him in 2006, and I asked him the difference between a leader and a manager, and he said, “A leader is anybody who influences someone.” Same thing you just said. And that was one of my first, and I’d already been involved in influence training from a speaking perspective. I interchanged speaking and leadership and influence synonymous. Like, John Maxwell says that the only measure of leadership is influence. No more, no less. And it’s the only thing that measures influence, leadership. But when Blanchard said that everyone’s a leader, if you’re influencing somebody, so again, we’re all there. So it kind of puts us all there. But I love this. That’s also a nice difference between leader and managers. Leader’s impact is felt even when not around. A manager has to be around.

 

Hal Elrod: They got to be managing.

 

René Rodriguez: Yeah, they’re managing. But the manager goes away, the mice will play kind of thing. And so, that the leader, they’re probably are haunting you in there. And so, you trigger me so much on that. I want you to repeat your question because I want to make sure that I answered it correctly because you just got me thinking about kind of and I wanted to say that. I apologize.

 

Hal Elrod: So, I wanted to know from your perspective how leadership skills intersect with personal development. And why is it important for leaders, which in this context, all of us, to focus on their own growth?

 

René Rodriguez: So, I love that question because think about it, I think people also misunderstand what leadership truly is or influence is about. So, I take a very philosophical approach. Let’s remove influence from your life and let’s take a look at it. You walk in a room and no one notices. You tell a joke, no one laughs. You sell a product, no one buys. You share an idea. No one cares. You cast a vision, no one follows. How are you feeling?

 

Hal Elrod: Feeling helpless.

 

René Rodriguez: Helpless, right? So, people say invisible. The word I use is insignificant. I don’t know if any smaller word, by the way. I try to come up with a smaller word. Hated is bigger than insignificant. There’s no impact with insignificance. And so, if I was in a meeting and I felt insignificant, I’d probably ask myself, why am I in this meeting? If I was in a relationship and I felt insignificant, I’d probably ask myself, why am I in this relationship? If I was at work and I felt insignificant, I’d say, why do I work here? Unfortunately, far too many people walk around life feeling insignificant, asking themselves, why am I here? So, the answer to that, let’s try adding influence back. You walk in a room, people notice. You tell a joke, people laugh. You sell the product, people buy. You share an idea, people love it. You cast a vision and you watch people mobilize and take action. How do you feel now?

 

Hal Elrod: Powerful, empowered.

 

René Rodriguez: I might say, significant, because why? I do something and the world responds. So, I have impact. And so, there’s a sense of I can affect change in the world. And so, if I’m in a meeting and I feel significant, I know exactly why I’m there. If I’m in a relationship and I feel significant, I know exactly why I’m there. If I’m at work and I feel significant, I know exactly why I’m there. I’m walking around life feeling significant, I know why I’m here. So, to me, influence, so much more than sales and marketing. It is truly about your fingerprint in the world, the impact, the legacy, the mark that you leave on this planet. And so, when you want to empower people, personal development is around controlling your environment. And so, you can’t have personal development without influencing your surroundings, your mindset, your thought process, who you spend time with, the behaviors of those around you, setting a boundary. Are you able to influence people to listen to the boundaries, like you said? Is it asking for a raise? Are you able to negotiate that and be a little less agreeable in that moment of truth?

 

And so, influence will appeal and hit so many different areas. And I tell people when they go through my course, at the end, they realize like, why do I have lighthouses all around? The stories that we teach them to tell that create the influence, the stories show up for people when maybe the person couldn’t. I can tell you stories that I told my kids that showed up for my kids. One might have saved his life, that thank God, I told him that story because it showed up when I couldn’t be there that night and he remembered it and it got him to make a different decision.

 

And so, the word influence, personal development, all of these things are so interlaced and interconnected. And I think that’s why Miracle Morning is so powerful because it gave me a tangible touch to my life to impact. It showed me some levers that I can move to see impact. I didn’t feel like I had any control in my life. I’m going to do this. Oh, hold on a second. And you laid it out so simply in the morning first thing. So, I start the trajectory of my life this way. And you wonder why millions of people wanted it because you gave me a way to impact my life, to become more significant, therefore, know my purpose. It’s pretty profound.

 

Hal Elrod: That’s a profound perspective and significance, right? Well, significance, one of the six human needs, fundamental foundational human needs. And if we don’t have it, we feel incomplete. I think that how many people take their own life because they feel insignificant. And the way that you framed it on, if you feel insignificant in your work, why are you here? What’s your purpose in your marriage? What’s your purpose as a parent? What’s the point? It’s so important. And I think that, when I read your book, Amplify Your Influence, it was realizing the context is not this– I thought, this is a business book. And then I was like, oh, no, this is a personal development book, right? Like, this is a personal development book. This is about you becoming…

 

René Rodriguez: Don’t tell people that. That’s my secret.

 

Hal Elrod: So that you can influence your kids and your spouse and people at work. And if you are in sales, I mean, that’s absolutely crucial. What do you see as the future of personal development? Any peek into the future and how individuals can stay ahead in their journey of growth, self-improvement, personal development, influence, all of the above?

 

René Rodriguez: Well, back in the day, we had to go purchase a cassette, find a player to play that. Now, we have phones that in YouTube, that literally any question we want to answer, there is an answer at the fingertips. So, really, the limit is your own creativity. What I’ve come to find out that one of my best personal development coaches is ChatGPT. And I’ll say, hey, I’m trying to figure this out. Can you act as my coach in this arena? And he will say, “Sure.” I go, “But I want you to ask me any amount of questions that you need to really understand what I’m trying to solve before you give me advice.” And this is very important to me. And I say, the stress, the importance of it. That does something to the algorithm or whatever it is it does to really dig a little deeper.

 

So, I just do the surface piece. And it’ll dig deeper on questions. And it is so profound to find that, and I believe that the answers already exist. I just need to figure out the right question. And if I can ask the right question, the right answers will be there. And so, the questions are the answer in a lot of ways. By the way, that’s an idea I’ve heard for years. We came out in the book The Four Questions, but if I can ask the right questions, I can really get an answer to anything I want. If I can ask the right questions of Hal Elrod, I can get answers I never thought. If I can get answers from, like, imagine, I want to upload the 30,000 documents my mother wrote, she died two years ago, and I want to upload that and create a bot and have conversations with him. How would she have thought about this?

 

And getting creative around the future of it, we can create those things. And I’ve trained ChatGPT to read every single thing that I’ve written and I keep uploading it. And we’re in the process of creating a bot where we can just ask me questions, and it’s not to replace me or to make a million bucks on it. It’s just to give me another avenue for people to have a conversation around something and maybe, my philosophy or take on it might be the answer that they need because they asked a question.

 

Hal Elrod: That’s profound. I wasn’t expecting that answer, but that makes sense, that you went there and that resonates as true. Hey, man, we could talk all day. I know we both have other appointments. Where can people get your book, Amplify Your Influence? Where can they follow you, keep learning from you? René, obviously, I think anyone that listen to this gets that you (a) that you care, (b) that you are a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. And so, yeah, where can people keep the journey going?

 

René Rodriguez: Well, you follow me on Instagram. It’s LearnwithRené, R-E-N-E, and TikTok’s the same way, YouTube’s the same, LearnwithRené. My website is Meet René, M-E-E-T René.com, R-E-N-E. And either one of those, you can find me there. Send me a message. We do a video a day. It’s all microlearning based. Nothing being sold. Then we also have an event coming up August 16th in Dallas, Texas, called AMPCON, Amplify Conference. Love to have anybody there. Send us a message. And if you’re listening to this, I would be happy to give you a discount to attend that, 50% if you want it, because you know Hal Elrod. And we want to help his community.

 

Hal Elrod: Awesome, brother. And the book is available on Amazon, wherever books are sold.

 

René Rodriguez: Everywhere. Yep, Amazon. Please go buy the book.

 

Hal Elrod: René, well, this was a long due conversation. It exceeded my expectations, man. So, just thank you for who you are and how you show up for people. And yeah, I appreciate you.

 

René Rodriguez: Well, the honor is all mine, my friend. And you’ve impacted millions of lives. You’ve impacted me. And it’s an honor to be a part of what you’re doing. And like I said, anything that I’m doing, there’s always a seat for you there, conversation there, and truly enjoyed today. Hopefully, we can do it again.

 

Hal Elrod: Yeah. So, this is the first of many conversations to come, brother. So, goal achievers, thanks for listening today. I love you. I appreciate you. Go check out René Rodriguez. Follow him on social media at LearnwithfromRené, or learn…

 

René Rodriguez: LearnwithRené.

 

Hal Elrod: LearnwithRené, R-E-N-E, and check out the book Amplify Your Influence to amplify your influence in your life. I love you. And I will talk to you next week.

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