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Happy St. Patrick's Day. You know what else it's the anniversary of? It's the 10th anniversary of the Brian Buffini show, our original podcast. Well, we're celebrating this past decade and super excited about where we're going in the next decade. You know, St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland. And a little known information, he's also the patron saint of Nigeria. That's why the Nigerian soccer team wears green. How about that? I actually cover this in depth in episode two, sorry, season two, episode 22, lessons from St. Patrick. So I covered how the Irish Saved civilization, a great book by Thomas Cahill. Now, one of the dynamics for Americans and for Irish people now is that people think that St. Patrick's Day is about drinking green beer, dying rivers green and having parades. And that's all great, and I'm sure St. Patrick would have loved what this is all about. But St. Patrick was a very, very influential character, not just in Ireland, but in all of Western civilization. A remarkable character. He was actually a young boy in Wales and he was kidnapped. Irish raiders regularly went to England and to Wales and kidnapped people to make them their slaves, as we were a lovely bunch of people back in the fifth century. And so St. Patrick was, they said, tending the pigs and would eat with the pigs. And he was a slave for six years in Northern Ireland. He managed to escape, convince a fellow to take him back on a boat ride back to Wales, went back to his family, who then he went to study theology and went to a seminary and remarkably decided to go back to the very same people who kidnapped him, made him a slave. It's one of the great stories. In fact, there's never really been a great movie made about St. Patrick, and there really should be because it's a fantastic story. Kind of hard to believe, the shamrock which became synonymous with the symbol of Ireland. Many Americans again think a four leaf clover is the symbol of Ireland for luck. But it's a shamrock. It's three leaves. And it represented how St. Patrick taught the illiterate Irish about the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, all in one being. And he did it with shamrock. And I would say today that's still probably the best presentation of the gospel that exists. And it led to a massive revival throughout Irish society, one that lasted for millennia. And so many centuries later, when the barbarians took over Europe and destroyed all the places of worship and all the copies of the Bible, the only place you could find the written word was, was in Ireland. And that's where the famous books were written. The clerics developed. It became the land of saints and scholars. It was called the famous Round Towers of Ireland. Those big towers where the Vikings and the barbarians, they couldn't climb up the steps. There was 30 steps to get to the first floor. And so the Irish monks used rope ladders. And so they'd go up the 30 steps, they'd be in these granite based towers. And you couldn't burn them out, you couldn't sack them, you couldn't knock them down. And that's where they saved all the Scriptures. Well, St. Patrick was the man who started all of that. A remarkable character who led one of the biggest revivals in the history of Christendom. And it went all over the world. Like I said, he's the patron saint of Nigeria. Now the fact of the matter is, today we get to celebrate it because of the work that he did and the cultural influence that he made. And think about it in the fifth century, I mean, a long, long time ago. So a remarkable life lived, a remarkable human being, a remarkable ministry and legacy. And today, again, we get to have green beer, have a good time and celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It's also why we decided to launch our podcast 10 years ago on St. Patrick's Day, right? So that's the kind of the symbolism of that. And we launched as the Brian Buffini Show. Now we got some feedback about four years in, it's like, hey, we want to make the show a little broader and a little wider. So it became the It's a Good Life and we formed the It's a Good Life network, which is going to continue on. But we're actually going to reform the Brian Buffini show. And I've got more on that for you later. And so I just thought it'd be appropriate here as doing a little memory lane with St. Patrick to maybe do a little memory lane with. On the last 10 years of being on a journey with all of you. And it's been Fantastic. We've had 10 years. We've had 690 episodes of the podcast. That's hard to believe. We've had 25 million downloads. Again, very, very powerful time. Something that really grew me as a person. I got to meet some extraordinary people, hundreds of interviews, and my mom, lord of mercy on her, was the end of every show. I think she made up until about episode 640 or 650. So it's been downloaded in 175 countries. I think St. Patrick would be happy with how many countries we've reached. It's Been a great journey. And what's made it so special is all of you. All of you. And I just thank you for listening. I thank you for being a part of this journey. And I'm very excited about where we're going. I thought I'd take a minute or two to share a little bit about my own experience with the show. And I've been on all 690 episodes, but there are a few that stick out, maybe not so much even for the content, what was covered, but what was behind what was covered. And I think of one right now, very, very special to me is with the great Lou Holtz. And Lou wrote a book called Wins, Losses and Lessons. And Lou passed away a couple weeks ago. And Lou was a mentor to me. He was a golfing buddy, but he was a great influence and a winner. You know, Lou took six losing football teams and immediately took them to a bowl game in his first year. Every program he turned around, and he had a format for doing it, and so that's covered in his book. He went into hospice about five, six weeks before he died. And I had a chance to talk to him, and it was wild, because even going into hospice, he kind of rallied. And all the way to the end, he was a source of encouragement. All the way to the end, he lived what he believed. You know, he was excited to go to his eternal home. He was excited to be reunited with his wife. He was excited to go see God face to face. And he said, I have some questions for him, and fantastic character who lived a great life. And so episode 138 of season two was what I learned from Lou Holtz, and I learned a lot from that man. Another one that's memorable to me for different reasons was the interview with Matthew McConaughey. Now, Matthew had brought out a book called Greenlights. We got his little hat here. And this became a huge bestseller. And Matthew did a ton of shows. So we were not unique in being able to interview the great movie star, but was unique, was two things combined. First, being Irish, you know, we like to treat everybody the same. And some of my dad used to say, we treat everybody same badly. No, but we like to have that spirit of hospitality, and we don't take ourselves too seriously, and we don't kind of take anyone else too seriously either. And so that's why many, many celebrities have homes in Ireland, because they can sit in a restaurant, sit in a pub, and be left alone. And so that, combining with my experience as a real estate agent and how to build rapport with people. Before Matthew got on the interview, we had about 20 minutes to talk. And during that time, I had lots of conversations with him. I asked him a bunch of questions about himself and his family and where he came from, found out his mother was Irish, all these great things. And we just connected and we did this interview that was terrific. And he had done many very good interviews. But when he was finishing up, he was like, man, I've done tons of these. This was like the most fun I've had in a long, long time. And when he came out with a new book recently, he called up our show and said, hey, I'd love to do another interview with Brian again. And I thought, you know, the great lesson in that behind the scenes is, you know, be yourself. And it doesn't matter whether somebody's rich or famous, Everybody wants to be treated like a real person. And when you take a real interest in people, it really has an impact. And so Green lights was season one. It was episode 261. If ever you missed that one. That was a great interview. One of my favorite interviews, actually fairly recently, but also one of my favorite people I've ever met is Carla Harris. And she had her pearls of wisdom. And she always wears her pearls when she presents. One of the best speakers. We've done 2,500 seminars at Buffini Co. And me personally, and I'd say Carla was probably top five of all the speakers we ever booked. And we booked hundreds of brilliant woman, brilliant insight, Wall street guru, but a great teacher, instructor, and with a beautiful spirit. Has performed over a dozen times at Carnegie hall, has produced best selling gospel albums. Absolutely fantastic woman. And one of my favorite things was when we put Carla out in front of thousands of people in an audience and handed out microphones, man, she can answer those questions. Cause she was speaking from experience. And so much of that is missing today. In today's culture of influencers versus people of influence, you know, nobody asks anymore, well, what have you ever done? Now again, people have built these fantastic social media platforms and tip the cap to all of them. But one of the things I love to hear from people who've been there, done that. One of the things we talked about when we launched this show was the, the mindset, the motivation and the methodologies of success. And we wanted to talk to people who could speak to those things from experience. And Carla, man, episode 352, season two was full of those pearls of wisdom. Now, I have a couple of things in life where you think, man, you're always Looking forward and things are better. My best round of golf ever was when I was 16. I shot a 67. I haven't come close to that since. Maybe on nine holes I have, I don't know. But it's tough to say I peaked in my golfing career at 16. I'm not going to say I've peaked in my speaking career because Lord will and I have a lot of years in front of me. But if I was to point out one time that stands out above all else was when we had a chance to have Neil Armstrong come to our Mastermind event. And Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon. It took me a long, long time to get him to come out of retirement to do a presentation. He had become reclusive, to say the least. And it took a lot of work to get him there. And when he did get there, he was very, very closed off. And it was through a series of experiences with my family, connecting backstage, interacting with him personally, and that Irish dynamic, along with a little bit of real estate, knowing how to build rapport. The dam opened, he cracked open. He became a person. He started talking about his experiences in Ireland playing golf. And he liked being around my family and it reminded him of his own growing up and all these things. And right before we went on stage, he said, brian, would it be okay if we threw away the script my agency gave you and you can just ask me the questions you want to ask me? And I did. And we recorded that episodes. It was unbelievable. We recorded that live on stage in front of 5,000 people in Las Vegas. Many of them got to ask our version, our generation's Magellan, a live question. And it was remarkable and it was spellbinding. And many times I felt like I was sitting at the feet of me grandfather while he was telling epic tales and stories. And so we put that together and if you never had a chance to listen to it was in season one, episode 164. And we had the great Neil Armstrong. Another great story that became a great friendship was Captain Charlie Plum. Now he goes by Captain Charlie Plum. He actually retired as an admiral. And he was season one, episode 286 and it was called I'm no Hero. Now that's the only time that we had the title of an episode that wasn't true that go out on the air 690 episodes. We never told a lie in 690 episodes. We did with this one because it was entitled I'm no Hero. Because if Charlie Plum is not a hero, there never has been one. Charlie Plum was one of the original Top Gun pilots. Charlie was shot down over Vietnam. He spent six years in what was called the Hanoi Hilton, being tortured, battered and bruised every day of his life, and came out of it with an attitude that is so uplifting and so encouraging and so inspiring. And like many things that happened in my life, my wife Beverly struck up. I became a friend of his, but he became a special friend of Beverly. And we've stayed in contact all that time. And every time he's got stuff going on or we've got stuff going on where interacting back and forward. Fantastic guy. He went up to see my girls play college volleyball up near where he lives. A remarkable man, a remarkable story. And if you have never listened to that episode, do yourself a favor. In fact, maybe you're going through a little something, maybe you're a little beat up and banged up and, you know, all five of those episodes that I mentioned, it'd be great to go and listen to again. And so episode 286, I listened to it just a couple days ago, and that's when I said, ah, Charlie, you are a hero. We have to change that brand. Now. We have been honored to have you all on this journey with us for the past 10 years, and it's been a great experience. I feel like we have a great relationship with all the people listening. I get letters all the time of people who walk their dog listening to me every day, or they drive to the office listening to me, or they. I have family members who listen while they're on their elliptical machine every morning. I have many people who said, I take a shower with you every morning, Brian. I try not to think about that one. But we've also been listening, been out doing a lot of events, a lot of meet and greets, and we've been asking people, like, what do you like best? What would you like to see more of? And continually, we've heard more and more. We want to see more original content. And people have also said we'd like to see it as well. And they want to see a video based program. Okay. More original content. Yeah. And then they want to see more varied aspects of not just business, but also life, kind of, how have we done it? You know, many people appreciate the marriage I have for 35 years with my bride or the six terrific children I have. And they want to know, how does that all work? And how does it work with the time management, how does it work with the money and how does it work with the business and more and more of these conversations. So we brought in some talent, we've done a bunch of interviews and we're here to tell you today that we have a brand new format for the show. In fact, you'll see this new logo, the Brian Buffini Show. And we're relaunching that. The It's a Good Life network is going to continue. And our goal is to have different shows and other shows connected to that in the future. But I'm going to be with the Brian Buffini Show. That makes sense. And so they have this cool new logo. I love it. It's got a little bit of the almost the Beatles in here. It's very cool. So they put together some great merch and all that kind of good stuff as they're talking about. It's going to be a show that's also going to be on YouTube. So you're going to be able to see it. And many, many people, up to 80% of business people now watch a show rather than listen to it. Now don't worry, if you just like to listen in an audio format, you're going to be able to. So we'll continue to send this to you. You'll be able to receive it and listen to you the way you can keep walking your dog. But if you want to watch it, if you want to see it, you want to see more of the action, we're going to do that now. So I want to walk you through the new format of the show here as we're relaunching the Brian Buffini show on St Patrick's Day, 10 years to the day when we launched the original. So it's going to be broken into a series of segments. Right off the bat we're going to have what's called Give me a minute. Now every show will start with a one minute quick hit of truth. And that's maybe can create a paradigm shift in how you view challenges and opportunities that are right in front of you. So we'll start off kind of like the cold open that you'd see in a TV show. Then we're going to have the next segment which is going to be a little bit longer, which is Brian's blueprint based on what we covered in the one minute. We're going to kind of lay out, hey, here's the principle that we're going to work on today. So then I'll give you a blueprint, practical guidance on business or money or family and all the fundamentals that go with that to build long term success so that's really kind of here are the how to's, here's the structures. The third one I'm very excited about, it's called Ask Mr. B. And many of you know, the people who I've mentored over in my life, they always refer to me as Mr. B. And so that's just become a thing. And so especially younger people and my kids would always bring young people past into our house. We could have 100 kids any given night in our house sometimes. And Mr. B, Mr. B. And many of these young people I've had a chance to mentor over the years. So my daughter Anna will be joining me for honest conversations about the questions that people are carrying around business life and kind of what really matters. Kind of many times the questions they don't ask maybe in a seminar or public setting. And so that'll be cool. It'll be in a, we'll be in the kitchen. It'll casual and candid, having a good conversation. So that'll be a lot of fun. And then we're going to have a session that involves all of you and it's called Coach Em Up. And this is where we're going to invite you to come and participate in the show. And I'm going to get a chance to coach up, you get to be a part of the show and I'll get a chance to kind of suit up and dig deep with you. So I want you to bring your questions no matter how hard or difficult because we know it'll minister not only to you but to many other people. This will be a great opportunity for you to participate in the show because you guys at the end of the day are who we're doing it for. And I'm going to coach you up real live. We've been coaching for 30 years. We've done almost 2 million coaching sessions at Buffini and Company. So there's really no challenge that you're going to face that we haven't seen before. We're going to tackle those real challenges, give you some real world help and how tos, and hopefully some encouragement on your way. If you want to participate in these Coach Them up sessions, you just go to thebrianbafini show.com so go to thebrianbuffinishow.com and then you can participate that way. Also make sure you subscribe to the Brian Buffini show on YouTube. So if you could do this right now while I'm talking to you, just stop whatever you're doing and just go and subscribe on YouTube. If we can get everybody, we have to just right away subscribe to YouTube, it'll make a huge difference for us. We'll be able to provide more and more value to you and you'll be able to come and see the show. So again, it's going to be a great program. You're going to be able to listen to it the way you always did, but now you're going to be able to see it. Fantastic. We're very, very excited. Again, the biggest innovations in my life, in my business have all come from my customers. And in this case, you guys, as the listeners to this program have helped shape the future. I'm grateful to all of you who've been on this journey with me for the last decade. I'm very excited for this new, fresh format. And we believe our best days are yet to come. And we believe that for all of you, too. So until next time, Happy St Patrick's Day, and make sure you subscribe to the Brian Buffini Show.