Purpose Driven Success

Episode 025: Building Success Through Relationships and Communication with Lee Jackson

• Mo Salami • Episode 25

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Purpose Driven Success with Mo Salami

Episode 025: Building Success Through Relationships and Communication with Lee Jackson

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SPEAKER_02

Ultimately, I think kindness is helpful. And when I call my brand get good and it's get good at life, it has double meaning. It's get good at life, just let's get good at life. And it's actually get good. So be a good person. There's a second part to it, I suppose. But I want to be a good person. I want to be I'm not perfect. I'll make mistakes, Mo, but getting good has two meanings as well.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Purpose Driven Success with Mo Salami, where real journeys, mindset shifts, and strategic insights meet purpose-driven success. I'm your host, Mo Salami. Every week we dive into real conversations with high-achieving founders and leaders, uncovering the mindsets, strategies, and takeaways that help you define and achieve success on your own terms. Welcome to another episode of Purpose Driven Success. I am so excited for this episode. I was just sharing with Lee just before the call that I reached out to him because of his genuinity, because of his incredible experience, and also because he has great humor as well. So that's probably not a bad combination. Buckle up, get your pens ready, your pads ready. This is going to be a great one. Lee Jackson is an award-winning motivational speaker. He's an author and he's a communication coach. His real education didn't happen in the classroom, it happened from life, working as a youth worker and even as a former hip-hop DJ before stepping onto stages for organizations such as the NHS, Barclays, and he's been on a TEDx stage as well. Lee's built his career on one simple idea, helping people get good at what actually matters. Lee is one of only 33 people in the United Kingdom and Ireland to receive the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, recognizing outstanding impact, consistency, and excellence in his field. His work focuses on simplicity, resilience, and real-world performance. Lee Jackson, welcome to Purpose-Driven Success.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you so much, Mo. It's a privilege to be here. I'm not sure I recognize all of that stuff. Maybe the hip hop bit I recognize. I'm very happy to be here. I love the idea of just sharing stuff and understanding your idea of success as well, Mo. So, yes, great. It's great. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. Only because of the hip-hop reference, I'm going to ask you for 16 bars before the uh interview's out. So Lee, tell me a little bit of a channel.

SPEAKER_02

I was a DJ. I do some scratching Mo, but I'm not going to drop any bars, I'm afraid. So uh tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got here today. Yeah, so I'm based in Yorkshire in the north of England. Live here with my family, and uh I have twin girls, grown-up twin girls, failing new granddad as well. It's a big part of my life now. I'm a speaker, trainer, coach. All of those things are connected really. What I love to do is speak on big stages, love to do like staff away days, conference days, all that kind of stuff. So I do a lot of presentational skill stuff, which is sort of motivation wrapped up. It's about confidence, it's about how you feel. Everything I do, I feel that it's kind of connected together, really, which is a lovely thing. My two main books, Get Good at Life and Get Good at Presenting. They appear to be separate subjects, but they're actually very similar because they're about people and they're about how we can grow as individuals and create the life that we want and the life that helps us and the people that we love, really.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. And I have a copy right here. If you're listening into this, I'll leave a link in the show notes actually to grab a copy of Lee's book, Get Good at Life, is the one I'm uh recommending. So, Lee, you built your brand around being practical and no nonsense. That's sort of your unique stamp, if you will. What did success look like to you before you've defined it for yourself?

SPEAKER_02

I mean, success is a really complicated thing, isn't it? If we're lazy, we think success is money, cash in the bank, or plaudits or awards. That's the easy way of looking at stuff. Or that person's successful. It's like, why are they successful? So I've been a full-time professional speaker for 18 years now, I think. Before that, I co-founded a charity working in youth work and stuff. And so when I made that transition from the voluntary sector into the private sector and started turning up at events and speaking at business events and going to networking stuff, I noticed one thing that changed, and that is the car park changed. When I suddenly got into the private sector, there was a lot of Jaguars, there was a lot of Lexus, there was some Range Rovers. That was very different to the voluntary sector. It was Ford Fiestas and Vauxhall Courses. And because people are not that bothered or they earn a different amount of money, but it didn't take me too long to understand that even in these private sector business type places, when I was at this meetings, I realized that most of those cars were actually on higher purchase deals. People didn't necessarily own those cars, they were projecting success, financial success. It just really made me stop and think, okay, this isn't about money. We need to really define that, really push really far down. And I think when you get to success, really, and you get beyond just having lots of money or a nice suit or whatever, but you actually get down to uh okay, what does that look like for me?

SPEAKER_01

Is that uh a happy marriage? Uh is that getting on with kids if I have kids?

SPEAKER_02

Is it getting on with your partner? Is it having a fulfilled life outside of work? So I think it's really difficult more to pin down exactly what it is, but uh but what I would say to you listeners is let's go beyond just thinking it's about money because that is that is the easy option. I often say in one of my talks, as I say, why do you come to work? Let's look at why you do what you do. But here's the thing: you can't say just for money. Why do you work where you are now? So I think once you look at why, it helps you to unpack what success really means for you and why you do what you do, which is one of the key motivators, of course. Sorry, that was a long answer, wasn't it? But I think it's a deep subject and it's quite nuanced more, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00

I think that was a great answer because it's all about that success according to that person's definition of success. And what does success mean to you specifically?

SPEAKER_02

For me, success is partly having choices. So it's having the choices to do what you want. For me, I am an extremely relational person. If you were to do a disc profile or something similar to that, with the green, the blue, the red, and the yellow kind of bricks, I always have little bricks around there. You have those little bricks there. I'm quite high green, which means I'm quite into relationships. There's a part of me that just wants a bit of order, there's a part of me that likes to get my ducks in order and all that kind of stuff. There's a bit of blue in my personality, as they would say. But I'm definitely a high green, which means that relationships, and I suppose as a speaker, what motivates me is I want to feed my family and I want to keep a roof over our head, but also what motivates me is making a difference. MAD, as lots of people call, like Paul McGee calls it, you know, are you mad? Made, that's what that's what drives a lot of people. And I work a lot in the public sector as well, and it's interesting talking to teachers. I love speaking to teachers because it's one of the toughest jobs in the world, right? When you speak to teachers, you realize they could probably be paid better somewhere else. They would do less hours if they did a different kind of job. But once you understand why they do what they do, you realize that they're trying to make a difference. You know, I'd say 90% of them are trying to help young people and they live for those little moments in the corridor where the young person says thank you to them through all the ups and downs, and that bit when they collect exam results and they say, Thank you, miss, thank you, sir, for getting me through it. I was a nightmare in year nine, but you stuck with me. And I think that helps me to understand. So, yeah, not everyone is wired up the same way, and there's no judgment either way, but for me it's probably making a difference. For me, it's relational stuff without being a perfectionist, because our relationships are not always perfect, but I am a highly relational person.

SPEAKER_00

Now I'm just curious, and I'm kind of curious on behalf of the listener as well. You held up the bricks and there were four different colours. I wonder if you could walk us through, perhaps talk us through which each colour represents.

SPEAKER_02

Is this video as well as audio? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

It's video as well. Well, okay, we can see that. So that's so I always when you saw me speak a couple of weeks ago, you see that I gave out some Lego bricks. It's kind of what it's one of the things that I do. I do it when I'm speaking, because when I'm when I'm doing presentation skills, I say you're meant to connect with people. The whole point of a Lego brick is that it's meant to connect. So I use that thing. But these four colours are actually a disc profile D I S-C. You can get one of those free online or very cheap online. So just a nice way of doing it. A good friend of mine, Michelle Mills Porter, is an expert in using that in the stuff that she does. So green means you're highly relational, blue means that you like a bit of order, you like a spreadsheet, you like to get things in the right order. That would be someone that would love to fill in the form correctly and all of that kind of stuff. Red is like a leadership thing, it's like, look, this is where we are, people, and this is where we're going. It means you're high red, you take charge of a situation. There's a bit of me in that. And then yellow is the kind of performer, the person who loves to be on stage, the person who loves to be the centre of attention. And so we're all a mixture of these colours, and it's a nice to know what kind of percentages and what mixtures you are, because it helps you to understand how you're wired up. Which colours would you be more, do you reckon?

SPEAKER_00

I would say I'm a little bit of all of them. I like the idea of the yellow. But a reason of serving others, I would say the yellow.

SPEAKER_02

What it helps you understand is where people are coming from. If I speak to you for a while, I can probably learn to understand which colour you are in that. And so it helps me to understand you, which helps me to understand audiences as well. So, like if I'm gonna going to do a talk, I will say to my client, can you give me the demographics of who's gonna be there? I'd love to know what level of education, what the gender mix is of people there, what's their cultural backgrounds. I'd like to know who's gonna be in the room. I did a a talk many years ago to a group of programmers, computer programmers, and they spend their life just typing in ones and notes and programming code. And when I was in the room, I was it was absolutely so obvious that these people were the kind of blue kind of people. Very sort of black and white, very like, no, this is right, this is wrong, didn't laugh very much, not an enormous amount of humour, didn't want to feed back to me, they just wanted me to do the talk and then sit down and then they'll think about it, and then they'd write me an email afterwards. Do you know what I mean? So they weren't they weren't interactive. The high yellow will be laughing their heads off, they'll want to get up and join me. The red will want to ask a question that trips me up, you know, it's all of that kind of different stuff, and the green person wants to give me a hug at the end. Do you know what I mean? I love the fact that we're all wired in different ways, and whether that's Myers Briggs or Disc or Clifton Strengths or whatever the you know, Bellbin and all these other things that you do, Enugram, there's 280 of these program things, but they're all based around a similar idea that they're not all correct, so they're not all well researched, so they're not 100% accurate, but they give us an insight into us and an insight on how we are with other people. So if you clash with somebody in the workplace, the first question would be, all right, why am I clashing with that person? All right, so if I'm high yellow and I hate paperwork and they're high blue and they love paperwork, they're telling me why haven't you filled in your expenses form? That's a useful piece of information. Okay, right. I need to fill in that, otherwise they're gonna continue to be mad at me. So it's understanding ourselves, but understanding others. But I'm not a real expert in that, but uh Michelle Mills Porter, she is the real expert in that world, and she'll dazzle you for three hours on that mow, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. I had an excellent conversation with Julie French about the same topic as well.

SPEAKER_02

So of course, Julie, yeah, Julie does that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely. So I had to back up a little bit as you were speaking, and I'm just gonna redress. Is that the way you say it? Something I mentioned in the intro to you, Lee, which is this Lee Jackson is one of only 33 people in the UK and Ireland to receive the Professional Speaking Award of Excellence, recognizing outstanding impact, consistency, and excellence in his field. The reason I wanted to back up on that part is by the way, well done. The reason I wanted to back up on that is because you also mentioned that you've been a speaker for 18 years, and it had me thinking that it's so interesting. We have the likes of yourself, you're great at your craft. I've seen you live, I've seen you on video, and it's it's true, and we're hearing you right now. And we live in this snack culture where you get the accolades, five minutes to get the accolades, seven days, and you're fluent in the language, or let's go speaking, go to a couple of speaking meetings, so to speak, and then give it a couple of uh weeks. Some people think they've arrived. In the name of serving people to serve themselves to be better. What do you say to all this? The whole having to sort of graft your way to expertise versus just the snack culture.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, gosh, wow. Now there's a four-hour podcast just on that question alone, Mo, right? So as human beings, we love shortcuts to success. People want shortcuts to success. They want to scroll on TikTok and watch 10 one-minute videos on public speaking, and then they think, right, I've nailed it, and they go out there and they deliver at university, they do a talk at university, and they wonder why it didn't go so well. Because you can get so much, and I have lots of tips videos on my YouTube channel, dozens and dozens of stuff out there, and that helps, but as a presenter, you can't replace being at the front of a room. We need some stage time, and it's absolutely true. You can't replace being at the front of a room. You can read books about it, you can read my book, Get Good at Presenting, you can read lots of books about presenting, for example. You can't really learn how to do it unless you actually go through it. And there's a similar thing with life, which is why I wrote the book that you've read, Get Good at Life, where I wanted to look at some of the personal development stuff out there and say, well, what actually works? Because sometimes we have to walk through it. Without making this a serious, very dark conversation, you can't understand grief unless you've experienced grief. Until my dad died, I had some experience of grief, but I didn't really understand. But when my dad died, who I thought was great, and he was a great speaker and he was uh a good fun to be with, and you know, he was my hero in lots of ways like that. Until he actually died, I then I'd like, oh, so that's what grief feels like. Walking down the street and then randomly crying for no reason. That's what grief felt like. And so I can't if I read a book about it, it helps me a little bit. If I talk to someone else, that helps me. But actually it was something that you have to go through. So you can't prepare for a job interview unless you go and have a job interview. And if you fail a job interview and you don't get the job, but you can still learn from that interview. So sometimes success is the journey along the way and learning and then getting some markers and then writing down what we've learned and then just learning to be resilient and keep on going.

SPEAKER_01

Sometimes about going through that journey.

SPEAKER_00

What happens when someone loses that connection to their purpose and to people and to themselves? How does that show up in life? You know, your book's called Get Good at Life.

SPEAKER_02

So everyone's looking for a place to belong, aren't they? People are just learning, they want to belong. They want to find their tribe and they want to belong somewhere. And I've got two or three places in my life where I feel like I belong, and that means such a lot to me. And one of them is the PSA, the Professional Speaking Association, that we met, and we met there, and and I love being there because they're kind of my people, and it's great, and they understand what it's like to be a speaker. I've got to prepare for a talk on Thursday and have a talk on Sunday as well. So when people belong, they relax a little bit and they can find out they can be themselves. So I think a lot of people are just trying to work out who they belong to. You'll know from your background, in the personal development industry, we're kind of the sum of the people that we hang out with. So if you choose a better peer group, your life will be elevated. If your friends are behind you and they want you to succeed and they want to encourage you when you have a tough day, that's the sort of people we need. And I'm still shocked that people don't have a team around them that helps them because I I value that and it's something that I write about in my book and something that I think we should all aim for.

SPEAKER_00

I like this so much. It speaks to the um 90-year, probably 95-year Harvard study on happiness, and how it's you know a great idea to get into groups and and teams. And I like the twist that you've added to it to sort of remind us to get into positive groups and groups that make you think and to really pull you up or pull you across in a in a positive way. So get good at life, you know, what does that mean in real terms? Not as a slogan, but operating day-to-day. What does it mean to get good at life?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's a big one. Well, in the book, there's several themes, and I probably need to check myself what the themes were. But the first one is all about relationships. So it's about the power of connection. So I had to start my book as the first thing I ever wrote back in 1999. The first ever words I ever wrote in a book that was published, I've written 14 books, and when that was published back in those days, the first words I ever wrote is Life is about the three Rs. It's relationships, relationships. And you can probably guess the third one. It's relationships. Relationships. It is Mo, absolutely. So that's what I was all about then, and that's what I'm all about now. But it's understanding how that works. So that's like section one. I'll have to have a look for the book. I've got the book here. I'll have to have a look at the other second. I think it's in three sections, isn't it? So I'll I'll have a little look myself. But yeah, the the the power of connection. Um yeah, thank you for showing the book. It's weird when you write a book, you sometimes you don't forget what you've written, but you do think all right, yeah. So the power of connection is number one. Then I talk about the pain of disconnection. So, how do you deal with people who fall out with you? Because that's a massive life thing, isn't it? People fall out with someone and then they get bitter about that, and they spend their life talking about this relationship that fell fell apart 20 odd years ago. We need to learn to deal with that, and then thirdly, and then then there's two more, and then one is how do we how do we get motivated and stay motivated? Because that's a daily chore, right? You'll know from your work in personal development, it doesn't just happen. You rarely feel like you want to leap out of bed on a morning, you have to know why you do what you do. So, um, and then finally, it's the resilience piece, which is how do we keep on going? So that's that's the four main bits. I'm glad you reminded that. I've forgotten what those four main bits were. So, yeah. So the importance of relationships, how to deal with stuff when relationships go wrong, how to be motivated, and how to keep on going. Because being motivated is a very fleeting experience. Nobody's motivated their whole life, absolutely not. They put things into place which keep them resilient, so when you get knocked down, you get back up again. So, yeah, so that's that's what that's all about. So get good at life is is a connection of those four things, I think.

SPEAKER_00

So just being really intentional about having as great a life as you can by again being intentional by being motivated, resiliency, and uh the other two as well. Is that a fair summary?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I mean a lot of people so I saw a really funny meme on social media uh last year, which was um because a lot of them are terrible, but it was a really funny meme, and it was a picture of someone phoning their friend saying uh it was one of those memes that you swipe across and it has like eight eight different parts to it. Right, right, right. And it was like uh they're ringing their friend going, I really don't feel very motivated today. And their friend uh comes back to them and lists like seven or eight things saying, Um, have you got have you got washed and dressed today? No. Have you been outside today? No. Have you made a plan for the day?

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_02

Are you is it are you still watching TV?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Are you scrolling your phone while you're watching TV?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And then it just the meme just kind of stops and the person goes, Oh yeah, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. So it's like we s we can sit there in our pajamas in our living room on our phone going, I don't feel very motivated. It's like, yeah, but there's things you need to put into practice that get you out and motivated. So that might be just literally walking around the block. It might be doing a job at home in the morning. If you work from home, do a job that gets you going and then start your work. You know, what is it that you need to do? Uh, for me, I like to read some stuff, I like to think about some stuff, I might be contact some friends or something like that. I'll you know, I'll make some contacts. Uh, some we had a me and my wife went out for a walk just around the block last night. We'd all been working at home on the computer too long. So we said, right, we'll go, we'll go out for a walk. And do you know what? Did I want to go out for a walk, Mo? No, I didn't. I'd be what I'd be happy to sit in watching TV, but I knew it was useful for me. Do you know what I mean? Because my brain needs to see the outside world. I need to get out and I need to make those. So it's about those little steps, those little habits that you have that build into something which is more solid and then more um sustainable, I think.

SPEAKER_00

How do we grow from someone that has these almost to-do list of things to do to stay motivated versus someone that just does them anyway? Like, what's the distinction?

SPEAKER_02

It's a great question, yeah. So yeah, so habits take a while to become normal. So you you'll have habits that you have and you don't know you have it. So when I talk about anxiety, and there's a big section on anxiety in my book, uh, I'm not qualified to talk about anxiety, but I can talk about it because I've experienced it and I teach loads of people presentation skills. So I dealing with people with anxiety all the time, and I have some experience of that in family and friends as well. And so, what I've learned through that is that when you it's kind of like there's way that we we can be naturally anxious as people, but there's things that reduce that anxiety and the habits that we get used to doing. And so if we live in the part of our brain where anxiety lives most of the time, that's the amygdala, which is the part of your brain, which is the fight or flight mechanism. So if you get really stressed and really anxious, we have that feeling of everyone's out to get me. It's like a fight or flight mechanism, right? And people live in that part of their brain, and we have it there for a reason, there's nothing wrong with it, but we're not meant to live there. We're meant to be a bit more rational, use the front part of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, to understand. Actually, okay, let's just think through. Why, why, why am I not feeling it today? Actually, I had a tough day yesterday. Oh, I stayed up too late last night. Do you know what? I watched four episodes of East Enders back to back. That made me feel really miserable. Yeah, no wonder I'm. Do you see what I mean? So it's like it's I think it's the awareness more of the habits that we have, and we have good habits and bad habits. So when I teach people presentation skills, I say to them, What's your pre-talk routine? And they go, I haven't got a pre-talk routine. I said, I bet you have. I bet you have. You've just never noticed it before. So a nervous speaker would tell their friends that they're nervous, would text their mates and say, Look, I'm feeling really nervous about a talk to do tomorrow. I'm feeling nervous. Their friend would text back saying, You know me, I hate talks as well. And then they'd tell them a nightmare story. And so what they'll do is bathe in the negativity and start a really long-winded, bad routine, which makes them feel more anxious. Instead of saying, I've got to talk tomorrow. I feel a bit nervous, but do you know what? I'm gonna give it my best shot. I've got something to offer here, I'm gonna give it my best shot. And that's what I was saying to myself 10 days ago when I was speaking in front of 130 professional speakers. I was saying, these are my friends, they they know me. I think they want to have a bit of a laugh, I think they want me to introduce them to Yorkshire and Leeds and all of its all its wackiness, which I did, and they want to learn something. So I taught them something. The 12 words in Arabic for friendship, and so I taught them something. So we had a bit of fun, we had a bit of a laugh, I taught them about my city that I love, and then I taught them something, and that was like that's what I do. But at the side of the stage mo ten minutes before it started, I could be freaking out, or I could sit quietly and go, it's alright, Lee. Just go and enjoy it. You got this, you know, they're not your enemies, you'll be fine. So it's establishing those habits and sometimes using uh a pattern interrupt to sort of push you out of some out of a bad habit. Anyway, that was probably a long answer, wasn't it? Was that helpful? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

That's really helpful. It's really helpful because it really brought to mind the fact that sometimes you'd have a conscious pre-talk routine, conscious one, but that refound. You mentioned that everyone has a pre-talk routine, it's just whether it's conscious or uh unconscious, subconscious. So that's really, really, really profound. And at this point, I have listeners from all over the globe because we get to see the stats of you know where the listeners come from. And if you could, and you did it so well a couple of weeks back, could you educate the world? Extol the virtues of the amazing city of Leeds. Tell us something about it, give us a tidbit, something.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, I love I love living in Leeds. I've lived here since the 80s, since I was uh since I was 17 years old, I think, or 18 years old, or something like that. Yeah, it's great. Third biggest city in the UK. No one ever believes me, but it's the third biggest city in the UK. Lots of great industry here, invented them invented amazing things. Um the first ever motion picture was recorded here. There was two of them recorded near Roundhay in Leeds, just two miles from where I live. And uh they were recorded. So cinema started here in Leeds. The first ever sort of steam locomotive was at Middleton Railway, which is built in 17 something or other, and it's still going now. The longest uh continuous steam railway is based in South Leeds of all places, it's bizarre, but yeah, that because steam started the whole industrial revolution, so Leeds was very much involved in that. But we also invented some really great things. Uh, carbonated water, Joseph Priestley in 1767 uh invented fizzy water. I can't stand fizzy water, my wife loves it, I can't stand it. But fizzy water gives you nice carbonated drinks, right? It gives you uh Coca-Cola and all that stuff, and that all started in Leeds, and I think it was probably an accident. Most good inventions were an accident, as were jelly tots, those amazing little sweets, those little jelly sweets that still sell really well for round trees. Jelly tots were invented in Leeds, and uh there's and you might have to Google this one, everybody, but there was a an amazing kid's toy called the Spyrograph, which is a geometric toy that teaches kids how geometrics work, and you make like squirrely patterns with a pen. It sounds very boring, but it's actually a pretty cool toy. So Spirograph was invented by a guy that lives just a few miles from my house. So Leeds is a big business city, a lot of financial institutions here. Uh, the Bank of England is here as well. We have lots of great things, and it is a wonderful thing, as well as a football team, of course, that's not doing too bad and uh has a big stadium. People don't realise how big um the stadium is, as well as yeah, so we're growing, and we have one of the best music venues in the UK. The Leeds Arena is one of the first direct arena, I think it might be called now, is one of the best music arenas. It's an arena that was made specifically for performance and music and not for ice hockey and basketball. It was made for that, which is a great thing. So there you go. So that's Leeds in a nutshell, Mo.

SPEAKER_00

There you go. And that's um, I always say that the one of the keys to success. Obviously, we said there's different definitions of success. One of the keys to success is passion. And there's a man who's extremely passionate about his city, and you know, yeah, one of the offshoots is you know, how you do everything is how you do anything, right? So extremely passionate about other areas of his life, really great success story. You are if someone feels stuck between external success and internal fulfillment, what's a get-good move that they could do?

SPEAKER_02

Explain a bit more about internal fulfillment, because that's a big term. Explain a bit more what you mean by that.

SPEAKER_00

So, what I mean by that is you have the the car, the home, the job, the the accolades, you're at the top of the tree in your company, as as it were. Everyone feels that you've just done so well. Wow, you're so quote unquote lucky. Within you feel like the success that you have is on that wall, and you're wondering if it should be on the other wall, but there's the stakes are too high. You can't just randomly go to your spell house and go, Oh, by the way, I decided to become a whatever your dream was because there are the stakes are high, or you've spent years building up to that level at the success that you have, and it feels like you're going to start all over again if you're chasing that rounded fulfillment. So I guess that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I understand. It reminds me of one of my uh favorite jokes that uh guy walks into a butcher and he said, Uh, can I have that meat on the top shelf, please? He says, Oh no, you can't, the stakes are too high. So I'll just leave that with you, Mo. It's not very funny, but I'm going with it. I think it's a Tim Vine joke. It's a great thing. Yes, there you go. That's where my mind goes. It goes to comedy quite a lot more. So my apologies for that. Feel free to edit that out. I've no, um, do you know what?

SPEAKER_00

When when you told the joke, my first thought was I'm gonna edit in applause, you know, like when you watch Friends or whatever, they edit in all this applause and audience laughter, and so I'm gonna edit all that in and and hand claps and all that great stuff. We'll have AI people come across the screen for both of us, like clapping and pee and all that great stuff. Yeah, it's very good.

SPEAKER_02

So I um it's a really big, really great big question that um I'd like to address it around burnout, right? So people come. I was talking to someone else recently, someone recently who has in the world's eyes is a very successful person, but they told me that they burnt out a few years ago, and so you'd think, yeah, but they've got everything, right? So why would they burn out? Like, because they've got it all made, you know, the cars, the house, the family, the thing, the whatever. So burnout is a state of um depletion, so it's basically your body's run out, your body, your mind, everything has just run out of stuff. You've given so much that you've it's a resource depletion thing. That's what burnout is, and so that's probably because we've concentrated on one part of our life without keeping step with the other part of our life, and I think we have to be self-aware because personal development starts with two things. It starts with self-awareness, understanding who you are, what makes you tick, and what you are lacking, and what you need help with. That's why people use coaches like me and other people like that, right? That's why they invite speakers to come because they understand. So, self-awareness is a thing. The other thing that comes with is personal responsibility. So you've seen hundreds of talks, motivational type talks, you know. They don't work unless we're encouraging people to take personal responsibility for their lives. So my success, whether I is is dependent on me, whether I make a phone call today, whether I send that email, whether I sort something out and move my business forward a little bit, is down to me. I'm self-employed, right? I run my own business, so no one's pushing me to do anything. So it takes awareness and personal responsibility. And I think once you get those two things, you can then start to assess your life a little bit. And there's lots of tools out there that can help you to do that, and and just assess it. Think, well, actually, okay, so I've so give an example. You know, I've done really well financially, you know, you look at your life, think, oh, I've done pretty well financially, but actually, some of my relationships with my family and are not great. I've not spent enough time, you know, with some people that I love. So it's like, okay, well, how do we readdress the balance that? And actually, I'm making a lot of money at work, but I don't actually enjoy the work, and that's a big one, right? Because should you enjoy what you do? I think the answer is yes and no. There's parts of my job that I hate, and there's parts of my job that I love, and this is the bit that I love, right? I love speaking, I love helping people. What do I hate? Doing my expenses, doing my taxes, talking to my accountant, you know, those kind of stuff. I don't like that stuff more. So you have to understand that there's a there's a some stuff in life you'll love, some stuff you hate. Um, so you so it's you can't be in this state where you'll be happy the whole time. You've got to understand that happiness only happens on the way to somewhere else. So happiness is never a destination, it's something that happens along the way that we should celebrate. Which takes me back to if you if you didn't get the job but the end but the interview went well, celebrate a good interview. Don't have a bad on yourself that you didn't get the job. Because if you did a good interview, they might have just employed their best mate instead of you. So celebrate the little successes, these are the things. But I think sometimes if you're in a job that makes a lot of money and you hate your job, you need to make adjustments to survive and thrive in that way. So you might need to find little chinks of light at work. I know a friend of mine who was um trying not to give away the information. I had a friend of mine who's a medic, okay, and making a lot of money as a self-employed medic, shall I say. And they decided in their 20s, they decided they were never gonna work more than three and a half days a week. And it was just a decision that they stuck to. Even when they didn't have a family and everything else, he said, I'm gonna work three and a half days a week. I can earn loads of money in that time. I don't need to work five days a week. And he did stuff on a weekend, he had long weekends, he was like climbing and walking and playing sport, and he loved that part of his life. So he made the decision that you know what, my job's alright, and I'm qualified to do it, but I don't really, really enjoy it, so I'm gonna add other things into my life that brings that enjoyment. So if you get but some people want to love their job, and that might mean going for a job that has less money as well. And here's the awkward thing, Mo, that people don't want to talk about, but I'm from Yorkshire, so I've got to say it as it is, right? Sometimes we we buy things and give ourselves financial restraints that maybe we can pull back on. So if you buy a really, really big house that is a big stretch for you, mortgage-wise or financially, you know, and you can afford it, but you can just about afford it, it's like okay, well, that's great. Sometimes you just get on and do that, but maybe could you live in a slightly smaller house? That means that you didn't have to earn that kind of money every single month. Do you see what I mean? So that's an awkward one, isn't it? But that's the reality. We are, you know, if you choose to do four big holidays a year and they all cost three grand a year, then you know you're gonna have to earn that amount of money or go into debt to get those kind of holidays. So if you chose one big holiday a year and a couple of weekends away, it's more manageable. Do you see what I mean? So there is financial decisions to make sometimes, life decisions to make sometimes, which affect what we can do. Because we all, unless you're unless you have family money, we all have to work, don't we? But maybe there's a balancing act more that people can look at. And part of that is doing the um the there's a sort of circle of life thing, which is in my book, which is very common, where you can sort of assess your life within five minutes. Where are you on a scale of one to ten for work, for finance, for relationships, for whatever. And a little assessment tool like that helps you to understand, not to have a bad on yourself, but helps you to understand what you need to work on as well. So, yeah, it's that financial stuff's a bit awkward, but it's a reality, mate. It's a reality, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Right. So speaking to the coach in you, you emphasize small steps. Why does small steps work better than big leaps and dramatic changes?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So we can occasionally make some dramatic changes, some big steps, but we underestimate how far we can go with tiny little steps. You know, little incremental steps, you know, um makes a massive difference. But again, that bit that we talked about at the beginning rises up in us where we want the shortcut. Um, I still speak in schools a little bit because I love speaking to exam age children in schools, and they would that when I come that they're like, they're like, uh, all right, what's the secret to revision? How can I revise from my exams and get the best mark? And I'm like, have you made a plan? Did you do any revision yesterday? What if you revise for an hour a day at the beginning of year 11 and just did an extra hour of work a day? Would that be useful? Or do you want to wait till the last minute and then not sleep for three weeks trying to get ready for your exams and cramming it all in? So there's an element of um of little steps, you know. You know it's famously called marginal gains in the sport world, it's the tiny changes that you make. It's um, you know, I'm a big NBA fan, love basketball, right? Big New York Knicks fan. Um when you're trying when you are six foot nine or six foot ten, you're not gonna fit on a normal aeroplane. So they fly the these guys around with aeroplanes with more leg room. They fly them around the place with a better aeroplane because they can't, they don't want them cramped up for five hours and then have to go on a basketball court and play. So they make the little changes of the bigger guys get the bigger seats with the longer leg room, and they'll have private jets or whatever that will help them with that. So those for them are expensive little changes, but that's the change that they have. A lot of NBA players have a cushion, so when they're on the bench, the bench is not a bench anymore, it is in local league, but a bench is a series of seats. But the taller guys will have a cushion about this big, about six inches tall, and they'll sit on the cushion on the seat because the seat is too low. When you're when you're six foot seven, that seat is too low, and it gives you a bad back and it gives you bad hamstrings, so you sit on it. So it's those little changes that make them better basketball players. So, what are the little changes that we can make that makes us better at our job? Makes us better as parents or grandparents, as uncles, as aunts. What are those little changes that we can make that makes us better? And uh those are the things I'm always interested in. The little things, Mo, you know what I mean? So tell me a bit about you. What little changes have you have you done that's helped you over the years?

SPEAKER_00

I would say that I'm such a big component of this, like showing up constantly. And I guess one one example I'd give is that I've been speaking for a long time, you know, from the stage, so over a decade. And you know, we met at the PSA and I I give talks and I still practice my craft, and I still practice my craft on a constant basis. Just I remember I had a fascinating question, and I was gonna ask you, and now that you've you put the spotlight on me, I'll ask you the question. So I was practicing my craft and I had four. Different people asked me the question, why are you practicing? And at the time I couldn't understand because obviously I come from, you know, personal development background, Tony Robbins world, you know, great speakers such as yourself. And at first I couldn't understand the question. Then I understood the question to mean, oh, they think I'm they must think I'm not not so bad, right? Because they're asking, why are you practicing your craft? So I have the question for yourself. It's a it's a double entendre, if that's how we say it. Where after 18 years as a speaker, do you still find out things about yourself on the stage? And then the second part of that question is, do you still practice your craft? And if so, why are you still practicing your craft?

SPEAKER_02

Um I I still go out of my way to do talks in situations that stretch me. So that's one of the ways that I practice. So I go out of my way. So so uh in the next couple of days, I'm going into a school. I haven't been into a school for a few months, and I'm going, my friend's a teacher, he's asked me to go and help him. I mean, you know, it's a booking and everything else. But uh it's he he said, Can you do 30 minutes to help them with their preparing for their exams? And I'm like, Well, I usually do an hour, I sometimes do two hours. Okay, but you've g I've only got 30 minutes. Okay, I'll do it. Without thinking about it, I said, Yeah, I'll do it. It's fine. So I've got a drive an hour for my house. I got a rock up with technology that I don't know how what it's gonna be like in the school, because sometimes it breaks down, and I've got uh you know 230 uh 15 and 16-year-olds sat in front of me, they're taking their exams, they start in less than a month's time. So what can I do in 30 minutes? So that pushes me more to shorten what I'm gonna do, to get rid of the stuff that's just the fluff, and to do some of the meaty stuff. So, yeah, so that's that's how that's one reason how I practice is I literally put myself in difficult situations to um struggle. So that that talk you saw me do a couple of weeks ago. I turned up and I asked for my laptop to be on the stage. I turned up early and I sorted that out. It's usually not a problem, it wouldn't work. The lead that they had wouldn't reach the back of the room. So it was a biggish room, you know, sort of medium-sized, large room, 130 people, theatre style seating. The lead that they had wouldn't push the signal to the back of the room. So basically, after 25 minutes of trying, the laptop with my notes and my comfort blanket was taken off the stage and put at the back of the room where the PA people are and the A V team is. So all of a sudden, I was there with no notes, not knowing what the next slide was going to be. But I thought, okay, Leo, you got a decision to make now. You can either be moaning about that, you can panic about that, or you can just say, Do you know what? Let's just do it. So the talk you saw me do, which has lots of mistakes in it and lots of other stuff, but there is what you saw there was a talk that wasn't exactly planned the way it was. I didn't get the stuff I wanted to get. I didn't have my comfort blanket and all of that stuff. That all disappeared. So you just it's a choice you've got to make sometimes put yourself in those situations. So yeah, I do practice, I do rehearse. I don't rehearse whole talks though. That's not what I do because I don't think that's helpful because that can bring anxiety. But what I do is I learn bits. So comedians talk about you learn a bit, or I call them a chunk. So I learned a chunk of my talk, and then I can then I know what that chunk is, and then I had a few slides, and then when I click up one with carbonated water on it, I can tell the carbonated water thing, right? And I click the jelly tots slide, and I know about jelly tots, so that's a bit, it's a 30-second thing, it's a bit.

SPEAKER_00

So that's kind of uh So the Roundup Um for the listener is just preparation, prepare in uncomfortable situations. There's always a next level of learning, and then the next as as as much preparation as you can do means that whatever you're faced with, you can pretty much handle because you've you've been prepared and you're always honing in your craft. Is that a good summary-ish of what you've just mentioned?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so preparation is important. So we all we all we're all we all live on a scale of you know, where do we sit between very well prepared and winging it, winging it a bit and making it up on the spot. We need to find out where we sit on that scale. If you're winging it, you'll make mistakes, so be careful. If you're over prepared, you'll be too anxious. So you have to prepare. Do your preparation, and then like I did when you saw me, I had to abandon my preparation and trust myself in the moment. So prepare, but trust yourself in the moment. Those are two things that are almost the opposite of each other.

SPEAKER_00

And it's so and it's so interesting. You mentioned about your talk, and it hadn't gone 100% how you wanted it. And it's so interesting because I was there, I saw the talk, I heard the uh claps and the applause, and and I literally mentioned you it was really, really enjoyable. It's very enjoy, it was a very enjoyable start to the to the conference. So let's talk about um instant feedback. So I listened to your talk from a few years back. It was you know 10 tips for for speakers. Um, and you mentioned about speaking to kids or to schools or to school school age kids and how they give you instant feedback. So we we're geeking out a little bit. Well, here's the thing we're all speakers on on this on this call, right? Because we we we speak in some capacity um to if it's our family or if it's professionally or if it's to someone or to inspire someone or or to friends. So let's let's do that. But um, so what I want to ask is if you're giving a talk to an audience where there's instant feedback, you know, the kids from the school, for example, how do you do the uh building the rapport initially and how do you adjust the thermostat according to the feedback? You know, what's the experience there?

SPEAKER_02

So part of that is experience, that you learn how to how to read a room, you learn that over time. And uh what you prepare at home might not necessarily work. So I like the idea that when whenever you go and do a talk, you take a toolbox with you. And you take a toolbox and you open you put a toolbox on the table and you open up that toolbox, and in there is all the things that make up you being a good presenter or a good speaker. And some sometimes you use this tool, and sometimes you use this tool, and whatever else. So you generally use, you know, you use your voice, you might use some slides, but what if this what if the projector's broken, right? So you pull out all of this different stuff and you use the tools that are in your toolbox, and the main thing is reading the room, one of the main things. So it's doing that research, understanding who people are, and then reading the room a little bit is important. But I think that asking good questions really helps. So asking good questions of the audience does make a massive difference, but when you're there, fundamentally, you're there, it's the weirdest speak being speaking is the weirdest job in the world, right? Because my job is not about me. So my marketing is a bit about me, and it's a bit about this. And I was a bit embarrassed when you read out all that stuff at the beginning, because okay, that stuff's all true. You know, it's like it's not about me, it's about what does the audience audience want. So actually, even if we're anxious, we can reframe our presentation anxiety because it's like, well, why are you anxious? That's all about you. That anxiety is all about you. I'm here to serve the audience. So when I go there in a couple of days' time with these year 11s, I'm thinking, what do they need? Some of them haven't started revision, some of them have done too much work and they're all stressed out. So I'm gonna tackle those two things and those two sorts of people in that room there again. I'm gonna help them to be a bit less stressed, and for some of them, I'm gonna put a bit of a bit of a motivation thing which says, look, let's make a plan. Start today. Don't start tomorrow, just start today. Ask your teacher for a revision plan. What are you gonna do about it? So it's about that the audience is always asking you what's in it for me. So our job as a speaker is to answer that really quickly. So sometimes we can be so wrapped up in ourselves that we forget that we're there to help people, and uh, for me, that helps me to to ground what I do and to make it relevant and not about my plaudits or whatever. Because like the funny thing about being in schools more is if you if you if they if the teacher read out what you read out at the beginning today, teenagers will be like, Oh, I don't care. Like, I've not seen him on TikTok. I don't I don't know, he's not Mr. Beast, I'm not bothered. It was this guy. So then they're not interested in what I've done, they just want to know how will he help me? So in the first couple of minutes I'll say to them, who'd like to be less stressed out on the way to their exams in three weeks' time? Who'd like to get a slightly better grade than the one that your teacher said you're gonna get? Listen to me for the next 25 minutes, I'll give you some tips that'll help you. So I start with something like that, and then all of a sudden they're going, Oh, all right, this guy might help this this guy might be quite useful. So, yeah, so I hope that's answered your question.

SPEAKER_00

Love it, love it, love it. I always say that myself, if I'm on a stage, I'm not well, for number one, you're there to serve. Um, that's number one, and also I'm never there to serve 90% of the room or 95% of the room. I want to tap into how can I serve 100% of the room? And is it possible? Who knows? But if you put the intention out there, all of a sudden, it it just increases the impact that you can have uh for that audience. Lee, communication is a huge part of your work, and yeah, how much of success comes down to how clearly we communicate?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, it's it's a massive part. You can't you can't be a leader if you don't communicate with your team. You can't start your own business if you're not able to pitch. You need to be able to work on camera, you need to be able to work in person, you need to work on a one-to-one basis. I um very concerned sometimes when people, well, it can be of all ages, but particularly younger people are sometimes thinking that they they can sort of survive without good relationships, without good communication. Communication is absolutely, absolutely at the heart of everything that we do. You know, if I start if I started this podcast with you really awkwardly, and I was really like a diva, and I was awkward, and I turned up, you know, late and whatever else, that's gonna get your back up. It's gonna be a really odd conversation, you know. You've got to, it's gotta be about communicating with other people, it's gotta be about communicating with teams, even just communicating your message, you know. Um, I was there the other day in a we were there in the park, walking with my wife in the park, and we thought, oh, let's grab a coffee. And there was one of those little coffee vans that was there for a special event. But the woman didn't look very interested. I said, Oh, I'm sorry, are you still open? And she went, Oh yes, sorry, it's been a long day. Yeah, absolutely. What would you like? And she was lovely, and we got a really nice coffee. But if she wasn't able to explain to me that, you know, when I said, Are you are you still open? If she'd been offended by that, she would have been like, Yeah, yeah, of course I am. What's your problem? It's like, no, she was there to serve me coffee, and she made£10 out of me because she served, right? So little interactions happen, whether it's at the coffee shop with your mates, or whether it's on a big stage pitching for work or all that kind of stuff, you know. I was on a client call yesterday. Um, one of my good clients wanted to book me for some work, and honestly, if I hadn't listened to her, if I hadn't, you know, reflected back and and built that communication with her, I would not have got that piece of work, you know, and that piece of work is going to feed my family. Do you know what I mean? So that's it's all about communication, not just texting, but face-to-face communication with an audience all one-to-one.

SPEAKER_00

So should we there's there's one school of thought that says, stay authentic and just be who you are, and there's another school of thought that says, How about I go out there and learn how to be an even better communicator? Yeah, where do you sit in in those two schools?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So sometimes people use the they use the authentic word as an excuse to be rude. I'm just being my authentic self. Well, actually, you come across as a bit of an idiot, to be honest, and you were quite rude then to that waiter, and you were rude to the person serving you the burger. So what what's going on here? Like, that's a red flag for me. So authenticity is not an excuse to be horrible, to be rude, to be, you know, it's it takes time to find out who you are, and true authenticity, I think, is when you've worked on yourself and you're comfortable in your own skin, and then you're able to be authentic. So, yeah, we have to be really careful. So, whenever I hear words like, I'm just speaking my truth, that's a red flag for me. What your truth? So you haven't talked to anyone else about it? Okay, right, let's talk about this, shall we? It's like, okay, just be you know, I'm just being my authentic self. Well, okay, tell me about the work that you've done on yourself. When was the last what was the last book that you read? When did you last go on a course to develop you and help help you, you know? You know what I mean? So so I get the authenticity thing, I get the my truth thing, although not all truth is relative, so it's complicated. But we have to be careful that we don't use those as excuses just to be horrible. So, yeah, yeah. Ultimately, I think kindness is helpful, and when I call my brand get good, and it's get good at life, it has double meaning. It's get good at life, just let's get good at life, and it's actually get good, so be a good person. There's a second sort of part to it, I suppose. You know, to be a good I want to be a good person. I want to be, I'm not perfect, I'll make mistakes, Mo. But you know, getting good has two meanings as well. So, yeah, let's not be careful, let's not let's not use the cover of authenticity to be rude and horrible to people, even if they're horrible to you.

SPEAKER_00

I agree. I agree 100%. The reason I had the wide grin is because when we were talking about authenticity, in my mind, I was thinking, oh my god, that's the sibling of um, so let's be clear, not all authenticity, but authenticity in the context we were speaking about it, I was thinking that's the sibling of um my truth. And you you meant you read my mind and and you you mentioned it. Um Lee, we're gonna look to wrap up shortly, but I just wanted to ask a couple more questions.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, go for it.

SPEAKER_00

How have you because my listeners are so interested in this sustained success, you know, the podcast is literally called purpose-driven success. How have you simplified your life and your approach to stay consistent? Because if you hear the name Billy Jackson, you know that you're going to get a certain level of brilliance, a certain level of consistency. How has that come about over the the time?

SPEAKER_02

I I when I first started, I mean, I mean, 18 years doing this job, but 14 years was running this charity, and that job was all about speaking, actually. So I was I just get used to getting feedback, and I still have a little card somewhere from the first professional talk that I did, I think, a first or second talk I ever did. And someone, it was a teacher, and they wrote a little cartoon on this card, and they wrote on their feedback form two words, consistent performer. And I kept that card, and I thought, am I, am I, yeah. And so basically, he'd seen me speak a few times, you know, as a youth worker, actually, and then as a professional speaker, as I made that transition. And he was like, You're consistently good at what you do. And I was like, Really? Am I? And I and that's a lovely thing to know. And so that, but that comes from so that is both something that I want to be in my character. So yeah, I'll do good talks and then maybe I'll do some great talks, and then some of them will be alright. I don't really do bad talks now, I suppose, because I shouldn't do because I can read the room, right? But the consistent performance is something that I want to do, not performing as in you know, pretending, but just wanting to turn up. So it's part of what you said, you know, turn up, you know, do your work, do your due diligence, read the room, make it relevant. It's those kind of stuff, you know. It's that it's getting that toolbox. So when you bring that toolbox with you, you have the extra things in the toolbox, which is kindness, you know, connection, listening to people, eye contact, smiling, all of that stuff, yeah, yeah. So yeah, consistent performer is something that I aim to do. Um, I'm not sure I always make it, but I'll give I'll give that a go. So yeah, that's one of my big things, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that is that is so outstanding. And just to just to wrap up, when we strip away the noise, the pressure, the expectations, all of the above. What would getting good at life look like? Lady Jackson, I'm so honored that you've been on the podcast, and uh I'm sure this is an episode that would go down amazingly for our listeners. So thanks again for your time. I always say that the best gift one person can give to another is a gift of their time. So thank you so much and uh for honoring us with your time today.

SPEAKER_02

It's a pleasure. Let me add a fourth thing to that list um that I just said. Have fun along the way. There you go.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, absolutely. So if someone were wanting to get in contact with you, what's the best way they would do that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so you'll find me on LinkedIn, you find me on my website. My website has everything. It's leadjackson.org, leadjackson.org forward slash links, which will take you to all my books, all my talks, everything you need to know. So that would work. Leadjackson.org forward slash links would work. Awesome, Lee. Have a great one. So amazing having you on the podcast today. It's absolutely my pleasure, and uh, it's just great. What a nice, relaxed chat. Thank you, Mo. I wish you well with the podcast, mate. Cheers.

SPEAKER_00

You're welcome. Thank you for listening to Purpose Driven Success with Most Salami. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It's one of the best ways to help others discover the show. You can find links and resources and show notes at our website. And if today's episode inspired you, check out one of our other insight-filled, value-packed episodes. Next week we'll have another amazing guest, so stay tuned for even more real stories and actionable insights. Work on your mindset, work on your skill set, and always move in the direction of the result you want before you see the result you want. And until next time, do the best you can consistently. Ciao.