Today's guest first joined us on Join Up Dots back on episode 721, when he shared his steps to transformation. Not only in his own life, but in the lifes of people across the globe. As he heard on the show this is a man who overcame adversity, lost nearly 100 pounds, ran a marathon, dramatically changed his diet and created an approach to help others live a better life, every day. He called it the Do a Day method and through his book which is still flying off the shelves of Amazon and other good book stores, and his thriving online business he now shows us the steps to doing this. Changing our lives by small, doable steps, leading to overcoming the impossible, instead of tackling huge challenges head on which just wear us out. How The Dots Joined Up For Bryan The key thing to this episode is the last time he was on the show he was still working a full-time job. He was struggling the spinning of the plates that so many people find too hard and give up on. But he did things differently, and in today's show we will delve into the things he did to find the time, the energy and the passion to make it happen for himself. So was taking the leap a great thing to do, or simply has lead to him realising how little he knew about creating his dream-life? And what would he do today, if he could go back and change a few of the dots around in his past? Well lets find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots with the one and only Mr Bryan Falchuk Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weight subjects with Bryan Falchuk such as: Why we tiptoe around issues nowadays as we are too frightened to share our true views on life due to the fear of upsetting anyone. How the world is losing the ability to focus and truly listen to each other on a daily basis. How Bryan realised that building a winning path was not about the fight but actually the need to find common ground. And lastly................. Bryan shares how he transitioned from a full-time corporate guy, by first entering the world of startup. A great idea to smooth the way. Interview Transcription For Bryan Falchuk Interview David Ralph 0:01 Once upon a time, there was a guy with a dream a dream. He's Jobs for himself online and have a kick ass life working when he wanted him where he wanted across the world. Little did he know that dream would lead him into a world of struggle, burnout and debt, until he found the magic ingredient and nose struggles became a thing of the past. Of course, what's bad person? And now My dream is to make things happen. BU Welcome to Join Up Dots. Intro 0:31 When we're young, we have an amazing positive outlook about how great life is going to be but somewhere along the line we forget to dream and end up settling. Join Up Dots features amazing people who refuse to give up and chose to go after their dreams. This is your blueprint for greatness. So here's your host live from the back of his garden in the UK. David Ralph. David Ralph 0:56 Yes, I'm still live from the back of the garden. I'm still We're in the same old place that I have been recording for over six years now. And I'm glad to have you here. I'm glad to have you here every single time. And I'm particularly glad to have today's guest. Because as you would have heard on Join Up Dots over the last year or so we've been connecting the dots again. And as I always say the show, please come back again when you have more dots to join up. Well, today's guest has got more dots to join up. And so he's back with us. Now. He was first with us on episode seven to about 1000 episodes ago, when he shared his steps to transformation not only in his own life, but in the lives of people across the globe. As we heard on the show, this is a man who overcame adversity lost nearly 100 pounds ran a marathon dramatically changed his diet and created an approach to help others live a better life every day. He called it but do a day method and through his book, which is still flying off the shelves of Amazon and other good bookstores is thriving online business batty now has started to show the way He wasn't at that point, changing our lives by small doable steps leading to overcoming the impossible instead of tackling huge challenges head on, which just wears out was his mantra. Now the key thing to this episode is the last time he was on the show, as I say, he was still working a full time job. He was struggling, the spinning of the place that so many people find too hard and give up on but he did things differently. And in today's show, were delve into the things he did to find the time the energy and the passion to make it happen for himself. So was taking the leap a great thing to do, or simply has it led him to realise how little he actually knew about creating his dream life. And what would he do today if he could go back and change a few of the dots around in his past? Well, let's find out as we bring on to the show to start Join Up Dots one more time with the one and only Mr. Bryan Falchuk. Good morning, Bryan. How are you man? Bryan Falchuk 2:56 Hey, David. I'm really well thanks for having me back on David Ralph 2:58 is great to have you on It's funny, I look back on certain shows, and there's certain shows where I don't remember much. But I, I talked about, you know, we have a lot of conversations. And the two when I was thinking about you coming back on was the fact that you was working for an insurance company that I used to work for, and that you had a mental breakdown about a donut. And I remember that storey really saw and that sort of gets people to go back to Episode 721. And what why did he add this? His breakdown about a donut? It was a strange story that one Bryan Falchuk 3:35 yeah. And so when I had you on my show, you called me out for it. And I was like, have no idea what you're talking about. And we had the same guy. It was a hot dog. Oh, was he a hot dog? David Ralph 3:44 Yeah, not. Bryan Falchuk 3:45 No, no, a donut would have made a lot more sense. It wasn't even my hot dog. I think that's what makes it even worse. It was my son's because I don't need hot dogs. But yeah, either way like it that doesn't make it a better storey or worse storey. It's still running. But yeah, I kind of had this a little bit of a public meltdown in a in a restaurant and was all worked out but yeah, not embarrassing it all works out nicely. David Ralph 4:10 But don't you look back on these things I look back at my my failings in my business the things that I've done so stupid the things that cost me so much money and I came to smile and they've become my storeys and I sit with people and I said oh, I tell you what I did this was that bloody stupid thing I did you know what at the time it was the worst thing in the world it stranger as far as you move away. Your worst times become entertainment. Bryan Falchuk 4:40 Yeah, you know, what's, what's interesting? Are we talking about I mean, the show specifically, that was one of the dots in YM back on the show. And I don't remember that storey generally you bring it back to mind. But yeah, now I see like that is a difficult human interaction, a difficult relationship. And that's ultimately what my Current focus with with my new book is about and that's, it's kind of funny, I wasn't even thinking about that example. But that's 100% on the, you know, the the idea that I'm focused on right now. So that is a David Ralph 5:12 professional and I professional and I sucked you in. So go on why you're here why you're plugging. Tell us about your new book. Bryan Falchuk 5:19 Yeah, so it's all about. So I mean, to put it in context, do a day was about your relationship with yourself. So how do you understand yourself? How do you grow from that and point that understanding towards the things you really wish you were doing in your life, the things you wish you could achieve and overcoming those barriers that we faced this next book with a slightly less catchy title, but it means something it's the 5075 100 solution, build better relationships is all about instead of our relationship with ourselves, now we're ready to work on our relationship with others. And so it's it's seeing the ownership we have in that relationship, whether it's a bad one, you know, a tough one or one that is But maybe you can still be better. I think everyone universally will agree like, we own our half even if that's hard, right? You know, it's like I can own me but I can't control you I can't influence you I don't have power over you. And that's the bit we get struck we get struck by we get stuck on and where it becomes painful and we start placing blame is said while you know, I'm fine have worked on me I, I can do better, but they're just they're terrible. They don't appreciate me they're doing all these things to me. Well, the point in this approach is to move beyond just seeing your half but understanding how you can influence the other person's half. And it starts to give you a sense of power is probably the wrong word. Because it's not about having power over them. It's about having power to influence a different mindset in them to move the whole relationship to better and that's, you know, I, I basically was forced to have a wake up call like I did with do a day and as I worked through that, I started to study started to learn and grow and I was like, you know, this is another one of these things that I have to share with other people and So that's where the book was born is interesting. David Ralph 7:03 Is it maturity where, you know, when you're younger, I was talking to a guy the other day and I said to him, I find it very difficult not to agree with people now, even if I know their room, I can, I can always find some common ground where when I was younger, it would be black and white, I'd absolutely be apt to argue that talks about anything. And it's a song called Shades of Grey by Billy Joe. And he says, you know, what the lyrics are some things were perfectly clear seen with the vision, vision of you know, doubts and nothing to fear. I claim the corner on truth. Now, these days, it's hard to say I know what I'm fighting for. My faith is falling away. I'm not sure that sure anymore. And what he means by that is, you know, everything's great nowadays, you know, that that person's got a point, even though it would have been in ETFs. Now, I was reflecting on the fact of RV idiots or If we become soft, should we be arguing more than we used to be? Is it now the case it was so frightened of upsetting people that everybody just kind of tiptoes around everything? Bryan Falchuk 8:12 That's a I think that's really interesting and astute and be I think that is not the path to making things. Okay. And that's, that's unfortunately, where I was at with tougher relationships where it was like, if I just kind of hold my tongue, then it'll be fine. I'll just, you know, I'll let them go off. I won't say anything. I won't share my opinion. That's just the way they're going to be. And if I say anything, it's just going to make it worse. So I'm just going to be quiet. That doesn't work. And even if it works in the sense of, you know, well, then we're not fighting. That's no way to live. Like eating your emotions, eating your thoughts and your feelings, invalidating your own position is not a sustainable, thriving way to go forward. It's how you burn yourself out. It's how you upset yourself. It's how you just add to this darkness that weighs you down and I think a lot of us end up doing that. So yeah, it works. It's a it's a strategy. But as you know, to the same extent that a band aid works for gunshot wound, it's a strategy. It will, you know, it'll contain some of that injury. But ultimately, you're going to have to do more for it. David Ralph 9:15 Now, there's a movement going on over here. And I'm not going to put my point of view on this because it would be wrong to express my point of view, I'm just going to say what it is. And people are deciding that they don't want to be classed as a woman or a man. And they said, there's 100 different ways, but you can actually be classed as what your agenda and a guy called Piers Morgan, who's over here, and he was in America for a while, he argued, but Okay, that's fair enough, but I want to be called a two spirited penguin. And they had a big argument and he said, Why am I supposed to accept 100 of your ideas, but you won't accept one of mine? You know, why a space and It was it was a really good argument. But it makes me wonder because Sam Smith, the singer, has said he doesn't want to be called male or female. And so the Music Awards over here have gone Oh, we can't offend anyone. We will stop having female artists and male artists and have you know, a combined it's everything's losing its identity, I struggle with understanding where this way of thinking of not being able to say to somebody you're wrong, or I don't agree with you actually is heading Bryan Falchuk 10:35 huh? Yeah. So I think that that is a really thorny subject. I agree with you. I'm not I'm not going to push my view one way or the other. And I'm not sure I've totally sorted out exactly how I feel about it or thought through what the implications are aren't for me or for someone who doesn't necessarily identify with a particular gender or number of Spirits Within a penguin I, but I think losing the debate, and the discussion is a cost we should be careful about. The problem right now is often when we have these discussions, they're really nasty. And that's the way politics is now. It's, there's nothing around what your actual views are. It's around how terrible someone else's. And if someone accuses you of you know, you did this thing, the answer is never Oh, yeah, I did. And that was a mistake. And here's how I've grown and I'm sorry for the cost of that. It's Yeah, but look at that. And they did Morse. And that's not serving us. So you know, if I killed there's a lot of like, gunshot and murder and my storeys today, but if I killed six people and you killed seven, if you call me a murderer, that doesn't mean I'm not just because you killed more. It just means we both did. You just happen to do more, but I still need to be responsible for my piece of that. And that's, I think there's a general theme and how we're going about discourse and debate. That's its kind The two extremes. It's either like, Oh, we can't offend anyone, we can't talk about it. So everyone just be quiet and accept without challenging. And on the flip side is we're going to challenge everything, but not actually challenge it just kind of rag on each other. And that's neither of those is going to move us forward. Because we're never going to come to actual understanding, we may outwardly agree in the first case. But inside people are quite divided and just not speaking about it. So we haven't actually moved anything forward. No one is any more accepting. They're just not talking about it. And in the other case, we haven't grown, we haven't corrected, we haven't gotten better. We've actually just gotten a lot worse by attacking each other as our response to any mistakes we make. David Ralph 12:38 And that's not serving us either. Is I was in a pub the other day and I was having a conversation with a guy and I actually said to him, Look, I'm never going to agree with you here. I just know we're so opposite in our viewpoints. But that's all right. You know, you tell me your viewpoint and I will listen to it. And maybe you can knock a bit off maybe at the moment. I'm 100%. And I might go down to 95%. But I still I'm not going to agree with you. And he said, Well, there's no point in discussing it. And I said, that's the point of discussing. You know, you're putting your point of view across and I'm putting my point of view across, and we listen. Now, I think one of the problems in the world today is the fact that and I imagine it ties up to your book as well, is we don't listen to the other person. We don't listen to how they're feeling. We don't listen. And it's a it's a problem in relationships. I know where so many people are sitting at home on their mobile phones picking up and down half listening, not really connecting and stuff. And we're surrounded by politicians. You know, you've got a guy in power at the moment, but if anybody says anything he doesn't agree with. It's either fake news or you're wrong, you know? Bryan Falchuk 13:50 Yeah, and you're wrong and terrible. David Ralph 13:52 Yeah, I just think why don't you just once go, Okay, I hadn't seen that point of view. Okay. Yeah, it's not my point. interview but it's a new one on me. Did you see that as well tying into your book again applying to play a plug, Brian. We need to listen better. Bryan Falchuk 14:11 Yeah, I mean completely, that the the distracted missing conversations actually just wrote a draught of a blog post last night about the Apple Watch conversations, where I'm finding this more and more and it's not meant to hit on Apple, but you're having a conversation with someone. And as if there's nothing disruptive or rude or distracting about it, they just look down and click away and notification. And, you know, you have it in actually quite intimate conversations or in business settings where, like, someone came in to sell something to us, and they were doing that and it's like, he doesn't care about being here is looking and yeah, he's just flicking it away. But still, it's like, clearly that was important enough to him. You wouldn't see someone do that, hopefully, pulling out their phone in the middle of the meeting to do that that would be far more disruptive, but for some reason me looking down and paying attention to something else mid sentence is acceptable actually saw speaker on stage do it in the middle of a talk. And and What I don't know is and this is the second piece that's really important is understanding each other. I don't know what they're going through. I don't know if they have you know, a child was just in a car accident or you know their parent is sick some major situation going on that actually. David Ralph 15:24 Yeah, but everyone does it that being being professional, even if I had a kid who is in some kind of, you know, terrible situation. I would either have cancelled that appearance, or let you can't do anything while you want to study. Yeah, you should see that. Bryan Falchuk 15:40 Fair enough. Yeah, my point just being for their situation, they may have made a priority call and and i don't know what those calls are. And it's not my priority call to make. So it's not just blindly saying oh, you know, it was a Instagram notifications. I don't I don't know what it was about. I don't know whether it was important enough. So it's not a beta It doesn't matter. David Ralph 16:01 On this situation, I think that we be perfectly in our right to cast judgement, to say that that person is in front of us on stage, no matter what their personal situation is, they have put themselves in that position. You know, I don't sit here doing a podcast episode, we're halfway through, I disappear to make myself a cup of coffee. You know, I'm here, and I could be having a really bad day, I could be having a really bad time in my life. And as we were talking about beforehand, I've had some terrible times in my life. But I still got up and I did the podcast episode, because I knew that you deserved it. My listeners deserved it. And it was my business. Bryan Falchuk 16:41 Yeah. And so I mean, that's where the article ends up going as if you're with someone, be with them. And if you can't be Don't be and be upfront about it. So my position if I was going on stage, and you know, something happened, I would just be up front with people. I would cancel or if it was too late to Kenya, maybe it happened right before going on stage. If there was no way around it, I would at least share that openly with people. And I just had that in a meeting this morning where we've got a family situation going on last night, I just said, you know, hey, I may get a call during the meeting, here's why this is what's going on, I may need to step out and never want to respect that because I told them up front. But what I didn't do is sit there staring at my phone waiting for a call. David Ralph 17:18 Yeah. Because if I'm not, if I'm not going to attend to that thing that I've asked for permission to attend to, and I'm going to attend to you and give you that respect. And helps it would have been right, you're sitting in the audience. The guy comes on and says before I start, you know, yeah, I'm having this crap, this situation going on. I'm going to focus on you, but I have to let you know into the dark times. Every single person in the audience would go wow, credits. Yeah, Bryan Falchuk 17:48 yeah. And instant connection. Yeah, so can connect. I mean, there's a there's a point to all this. And actually, it goes back to that guy in the pub. And something you said earlier about just making space To understand each other and hear each other, and that's, that's where you move from just being in your half to sort of move the whole thing to better. What it takes is understanding, you know, for him, you're never going to see his point of view. So there's no point to the conversation. Well, maybe seeing his point of view isn't actually what he wants. And maybe he's not in touch with that. And maybe what both of you need to do is think about what does happiness look like? So I talked about these three principles. And the first one is happiness seeking and trying to understand our own definition of happiness and what the other person's may be. And you may have no clue in the world, you may not be able to guess it, you may just need to ask and elicit and try to get it out of them. Oftentimes, we end up arguing, because our goals are misaligned. But we're not even in touch with what those goals are. So I shared this example in the book and I did a TED talk and the idea of a book of the book last year and I showed the same example there because it's a powerful one. At that same company that we both interacted with, worked at. I had a panel who suddenly went from being a friend to confidant support, you know, in equal that we would turn to to someone trying to get me fired. And on the surface, it was just that she wanted to get me fired. And that's what I was initially reacting to internally. But what I realised is, there's something else going on here. I just seem to be in the way or I'm a threat to her she perceives need to be I don't know why or what that's about. But that's why she wants me out. It's not because she just suddenly decided like, Yeah, I don't care for him. And it's fun. Why don't I try to get him fired? Even though it may feel that way, you know, someone's yelling at us, or hurting us. It's not like they just woke up that morning said, Yeah, just for funds ease, I'm going to start being mean to him, there's something that they want, and they may not be in touch with what that is, but there's something they want, that you seem to be in the way of or represent the opposite of. and a less mature way of going about that is to just be mean and difficult and attacking, and what's beholden to us if we want that relationship to be better less of a threat more productive, more positive, whatever the, the outcome is that you ultimately want from it is to try to recognise what they're getting to or what they wish they were getting to and see if there's a way you can both have what you're looking for. So what I ended up finding out is she had screwed up pretty significantly, and was trying to cover it up because she was afraid for herself getting fired. And so anyone I didn't know this, I had sort of stumbled upon exposing it. Just in the course of my work, I had started to unearth some irregularities and problems. And as I was bringing attention to that, she went into defence mode. And her defence mode is to try to get rid of anyone who might expose her before she gets a chance to try to fix things. And you know, I didn't realise this at the time. But instead of reacting to her when she would send these scathing emails to myself and our CEO about all the terrible things about me and how wrong I am and all these facts of how I'm screwing up that by the way, are not facts. You just making them up. I'm not one for Fake News, but it was like, you know, she says Brian did three and it's like, No, I didn't, I did too. And here's the evidence of it, or you know, whatever the numbers are actions where I could just try to refute every point and do the whole thing and email and just fight with her. But actually, it's not about the fight. And that's what I started to realise is rather than responding back, she's obviously going to have some come back, or she's going to argue with me or try to you know, she's making up information right now who's to say she won't make up worse information. So that's not a winning path. Instead, what I need to do is get a meeting with all of us, the CEO myself, her we brought the CFO into get her to try to illustrate what it is she's actually looking for. Because to have her sitting here rattling off all these terrible things about me, it's not serving anyone. I need to get to what's actually driving all this because it really just seemed to come out of the blue. And so David Ralph 21:52 it just jumping into that was very interesting is I agree with everything you're saying. But Unless you're like a therapist, it's quite difficult to dig around and find the reason isn't it? I know you did it because you found an audit route of failure. But a lot of people would. That's not how I did it though. How did you do it? No. Bryan Falchuk 22:14 Yeah, no. No, no, no. So when when she saw it Friday night, of course she she sends this email out with like 12 bullet points of all these numbers of all the evidence of how bad I am. And so the the normal response I would have it First of all, fuming mad and now it's like my weekends ruined David Ralph 22:34 worse than the hot dog. Bryan Falchuk 22:36 Oh, God, yeah. Or the donut did it like either of them this I mean this because because my employments at risk now it's like how much time and energy when we have actual emergencies going on? How much time and energy Do I need to put into this nonsense? And And the thing is, I had seen her do it to a couple of our other peers. We were all in the C suite and the leadership team and I saw her do this to one in particular And, you know, I didn't know the facts on either side. Now I know why she was doing it. But she's she's a former litigator. So she's really good at doing this. And I mean, she just went after him. And I was just like, Oh, god, I'm not. This is not what I need right now. So it just, you know, weighing on me and I had all the facts, I had all the evidence. So I'm like, I'm going to punch back and I said, hang on a second. That never goes well with her. So that's not what I'm going to do. And it's going to make me look like an ass in front of the CEO. So instead, I'm going to this is, this is weird. I thanked her. I just said I have a different view on the situation. But rather than debating it, why don't we all get together and talk about it? And you know, over email, it was nice because you can see how Maroon My face was. You can see the steam coming off of me, but I sent that out and left it and I scheduled time for all of us. We got into the meeting and it was basically it starts off with her acting just like the email you know, she's rattling off All these facts and I had my evidence laid out so I had all of my counterpoints, so I could have refuted all them. But again, I was like that's not the path to success here because she's just going to yell over me. And she's a really good argument and she's brilliant and well respected and so those women are like most women are she's I don't know that I'm going to win by trying to fight you know, point for point with her. So that's not the path. And the reality is there's going to be something under the surface that actually is fair and accurate and worth fighting for that striving her and this other stuff. She's just confused about it. So I'm not going to go head to head with her about that. So I thanked her again, which is not the response she's expecting so you could see her step back. We're on video she literally like went back in her chair kind of shocked because she was ready for a fight. She had a stack of papers with her so she had like, you know, she'd prepped slides to argue with how terrible am and I just said, You know, I said this in the email. I have a very different view of the situation, I've pulled the information from the system so that you know the numbers that I'm seeing don't align to yours. But rather than us go through each one of these and figure out whose data is right or not. What I'd like to understand is what is your concern? What is it ultimately, you're trying to achieve? And again, she wasn't ready for that. So she was a little bit dumbfounded. And she was like, Well, I'm worried about this happening to the business. And it was a pretty rational thing. So I was like, Yeah, me too. And so, you know, we're all sort of like, you can't argue with that. And that was her ultimate goal. Like, she wasn't gonna say, Well, I just want to get you fired. I knew she wouldn't say that, because that would make her look pretty stupid. And if she did, then I you know, I come out the victor, because that would be like, holy crap. You know, what is this about you? That's ridiculous. You need to go Brian, you're fine. Let's see your data. But you know, it would work out well for me, but I didn't expect her to say that. But when she voiced her concern about the impact on the business, that's really feminine. rational. And with what I was