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Because only two things change your life. Either something new comes into your life. A new person, a new direction, a new hope, a new inspiration, a new opportunity. You know, you win the lottery, or some new job, or some new promotion, or some new opportunity you can go chase. Or something new comes from within, a new ambition, a new assertiveness, a new resilience, a new strength, a new personal power, a new sense of yourself, a new confidence, a renewed vigor and drive and hunger in life. So only two things change your life. Something new comes into your life. Or something new comes from within. Don't forget, that's not just my quote that. I mean, that's like good old fashioned gospel of St. Thomas, right? If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. Hey, my friend. It's Bren Burchard, founder of Progress Mode. Welcome to season one, episode number two. In episode one, I really shared about what Progress Mode is in our lives and what it could be in your life too. We all struggle with that question in our mind all the time. Am I on the right path? Am I going fast enough? Am I achieving enough? Am I happy with who I am becoming? And these are questions. We work together on Progress Mode. This is more of a conversational season that I'm having with you than I've ever done in any of my work before. Because I know that so many people are truly in that sort of crisis mode right now. And I don't mean crisis like everything's falling apart as much. It just feels like a lot of people, there's this forever itch in the back of their mind right now. You know, am I doing the right thing? Is things okay? There's a lot of like anxiety, frustration or stress out there. Even people who are wildly successful right now, I see them kind of reevaluating where their life is or recalibrating what should they should focus on. And what I'm always here to say is, what you should focus on is make sure you wake up each morning and you turn your brain into Progress Mode. Like you gotta flip the switch from being passive in your life to making real progress on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. And that courage, that faith, that things can turn out better, that's important. I also talked about sort of my own journey in discovering my career in episode one. So if you've ever been curious about how I went from, you know, this young kid who had a car accident, wanted to change his life and reading books on psychology, to writing my first book and getting my first job and eventually turning into a writer and speaker. I talked about that. I also shared how I fell on my face doing that. And it didn't go so well, even though I went for it. And isn't that where most people get stuck? You went for a dream, you put it out there, people judged you, people made fun of you. You didn't get the progress you wanted. And here's what happens when you turn off progress mode because something didn't go right. What you are also doing is you are turning on discouragement and playing small. A lot of people start playing small in their life almost by accident because they tried to make progress, they tried to make change over and over. And what ended up happening is it didn't feel like it was going well. They weren't satisfied with it, and so they quit even when it was something important to them. A lot of progress is persistence. And today I'd like to tell you that story of persisting through something that was really important in my life. It was probably the major turning point of my entire life. So like I always say, like, long before the six bestselling books, long before millions of paying students and, you know, 15 years of sold out seminars, before I spoke to every major arena in North America as a keynote speaker, before any of the work I've done with Growth Day or Ultra or my other brands, maybe you're familiar with those, or not, doesn't really matter. But just like anyone else who had any success or achievement in their life, you can kind of go back to some turning points in your life, can't you? When you made a real decision to go for it or you made a real decision to stick at it, like to keep going, when it was just terrible and you were a hot mess and you're like, this is not even working, Brendan, why would I keep going? Well, I'd like to tell you that story today. If you're on video, watching me on video. I don't know if you're on audio, listening to the podcast, but if you're on video on Like YouTube, I'm going to hold up a couple things to show you. And today I'm holding up life's golden ticket. What became like my breakout book and experience. And I'm going to show you like four versions real fast. This one you've never seen before. This is a cover I'm holding up. I know you've never seen this before because I made this cover in PowerPoint. Like I made this, I self published this book, Life's Golden Ticket before I ever get a publisher for it. And most people don't know this story. So I'll tell you it. Then I got a publisher and look what they did. They made this amazing box. I'll tell you about this pre release box as well. If you can't see it as a gold foil ticket, on it says Life's golden ticket. And then of course it came out in like hardcover. Looks a little different, doesn't it? And then it came out in paperback and the paperback was years later with my full vision delivered because in the back of the book there's an envelope with the actual Life's golden ticket in it. So how to go from self published idea to the final dream was years in the making. And I'd like to start with that story today here in progress mode. In episode one, I left off where I decided to go full time as a writer and a speaker. You know, I'd already gone through grad school, I had already written something that became the student leadership Guide, became a book. I was speaking to college campuses. I'd already led well, I'd already done a lot of research, I already had skill. I'd already spent, you know, now at that point, you know, five, six years as a consultant for a big company. And so I had a lot of, you know, experience at that point, you could say, and a lot of achievements. And I was doing okay. But I decided to leave and write Life's Golden Ticket. That was the book I wanted to leave my corporate job to write. Life's Golden Ticket. That was the book I knew I was meant to write. But a lot of people don't know the story of this book. And while it later on went on to become something significant, it began as a huge worry and crisis moment. I was not in progress mode. I was in crisis mode. And it's because I had quit my job to write this book. I moved in with my then girlfriend to write the book because I ran out of money after I quit the job. Several months go by, almost a year goes by. I'm not quote unquote, making it. I'm not getting booked enough as a speaker. I'm not selling enough of my instructor guides. I'm learning online marketing. I'm learning to do video. At the very beginning of online video, I mean, it was like difficult. Like Facebook was just starting out. To give you an idea of the timing of this, it was like 2006 and 7 and wow, I was Terrified. Have you ever made a commitment to do something and it does not work out? Like you say, I'm going to go chase this dream or start this entrepreneurial endeavor or even go try to get this job. But in the first couple of months of the job or the first couple months of the dream, you're not getting the progress you need. It can feel debilitating. So much to the point, you can be discouraged and stop even pursuing the thing with full heart. So what happened for me was I went broke. I'm trying to write the book, I move in with my then girlfriend. We didn't think we were going to actually move in together until we maybe got married. But I had no other choice. I was either going to move back to Montana where I'm from and live with my parents, or I was going to continue bouncing to friends couches and living on their floors, on air mattresses or move in. So I decided and my girlfriend decided. I moved in with her. I moved in with pretty much nothing like six pairs of jeans, you know, like 10 shirts and maybe 14 boxes of books. Because I've always been a dork. I've always been a reader. To all my readers out there, thank you. And to everyone who loves books as much as I do, you know, you just never give those up. So I moved in with a bunch of boxes of books and I would spend my day trying to write what became life's golden ticket. But here's the thing. I was dealing with crushing stress and worry because the bills were mounting up. But I also, you know, one part of progress is getting things done because some days I'd write a little bit. So I was moving towards it. But there's also that sense of progress where we want to become better, we want to feel like we are growing, we want to feel like we're becoming more right. It's not just what do I want to achieve, it's who do I want to become. And in both areas, they were depressed. Right? I wasn't achieving the thing I wanted to and I wasn't becoming the guy I wanted to become. I wasn't really doing good as a writer yet. And I mean that, I don't mean successful writer. I mean, there was a lot of days I wouldn't write anything. Here I am living with a girl. She is paying for the rent, all of my food. She's maybe the only person who believes in me in the entire world outside of my, maybe my family. My family definitely believed in me. But even it was like, I don't Know that people knew how hard that struggle was at that moment. Because, you know, I had gone to school and done well. I had gotten a job and done well. You know, I was out there speaking and already starting this entrepreneur thing. It looked like it was going well, but really the bills were just stacking up. And there were days stacking up where I did nothing. Have you had days where things stack up to nothing? Like, you just can't get yourself turned around. You can't get yourself turned on. You know, that's what progress mode is, right? You have to slide, like, in your brain. You have to put that slider over into green. Like, you have to, like, switch your brain in a progress mode and really go for it. That's hard when you're discouraged. Like I said, when there's a depressive feeling of where you're going and how much you are becoming who you want to become. So there I am watching my girlfriend get up in the morning, very early in the morning, we go for a walk, and then she would commute more than an hour to go to work, and all I had to do was get out of bed and pull out the laptop and frigging write something. But a lot of days I just couldn't. So I'd fool myself. I'm like, well, you know, it's not going well. I'm not feeling it right? The feeling of motivation isn't there. The energy of enthusiasm isn't there. The excitement isn't there. And so I would go search for it externally. I would leave the apartment. I would go to the fancy cafes in San Francisco, California, where the famous writers apparently went and wrote, and I would get the green tea. I would get the croissant. I would watch everybody on their laptops working remotely or writing. And I would, like, try to inspire myself. But instead, I'd sit there with the laptop open, looking at the blank screen, feeling like a fake feeling, you know, that sense that, you know, this is not gonna work out. I see the other people writing, tapping, tapping, tapping, tapping. They're writing. And I'm sitting there staring into my bottom of my green tea, going, oh, God, I left a job to do this. At the time, I was trying to write Life School and take it as a personal development psychology type of book. I was trying to tell the story of how I went from a depressed kid who had that car accident to later, happy leading on his campus people, asking me to write a book on leadership, writing a book on leadership, getting a big corporate job in leadership consulting, building leadership programs for multiple Fortune 500 companies. Like, I was trying to be like, oh, I went from the sad, depressed kid to a success. I was trying to write a book like that, not about me, but about the things I had learned in self improvement and spirituality that helped me become more motivated and happy. But now I'm chasing a new dream and I'm not as motivated and as happy. Maybe you've had seasons in your life like that. You were like, wait, I was on a roll and then I wasn't. And it really hits you hard. Even though you should have all the confidence from those times you were on a roll, you. You just don't feel like you feel bummed out. So I'd sit there in the cafes feeling bummed out. I would walk all around Fort Mason and all around the areas that were beautiful in San Francisco that I loved. And even the old neighborhoods I lived that were not that safe and good. And I just thought, I gotta get this thing done. I'd come home, my girlfriend would come home from her work at some point and you know, she was just like so motivated and so happy and I was just struggling. She'd be like, how'd it go? How many pages did you get it done? And I was like, and I hadn't done much that day. So then I'd go in, I'd write in our little bedroom on a little fold out table, and I'd, you know, try to write till the end of the night. And she would come home, you know, or she'd come into the bedroom and she'd kiss me goodnight and she'd go to bed and, you know, this goes on. I need to tell you, this is like week after week after week after week. One day I found out there was a writers group meeting in San Francisco and I got so excited and I said, I'm going to go to that, that weekend. I'm going to go to that writers group this weekend and I'm going to learn from these guys. Because it was being hosted by multiple New York Times bestselling authors. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can go learn from them. I can go talk with them. This is amazing. During that week, I came up with this idea that, you know, I'm not doing a good job trying to write this book as nonfiction, like my stories, and just teaching you guys stuff. I was like, I actually want to just tell a story. I want to write it like a parable. I'd been so moved earlier in my life by a book called the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Who eventually became not only a friend, but a mentor. And I just was so enamored by that writing style, I thought maybe I just need to tell a story. So I started kind of playing around with the story idea. I went to the writer's workshop that weekend and I brought a little book proposal about the idea of telling the story of a guy who gets a second chance. If you listen to episode one, you know why that matters? Because after I had that car accident, I felt like I got a second chance in life. And I really wanted to earn my life. I felt like I got life's golden ticket, a blessing to start life over again. A breath, an inspiration of a second chance. And I want to tell a story of a guy who goes through this journey and has this second chance and learns all about life and gets the second chance. I go to the writer's workshop, and let me tell you what happened. I talked with multiple big authors there, and they all said, so, kid, you've never written a fiction book? I said, no. You've never written a parable? I'm like, no. And you're like a consultant. And you wrote this nonfiction thing, the Student Leadership Guide, and that started doing okay. Why do you think you can write fiction? And I want to tell you guys something. I never thought about it. I just thought that would be a good idea. Have you ever had a good idea and it seemed right to you, but somebody told you that's stupid, that's not a good idea? Who do you think you are if you didn't listen to episode one I talked about? There are only two enemies on your journey to progress. One is your own self, limited thinking. And two is social pressure or social oppression, in which someone says something to you that diminishes you, disempowers you, or it's being around other people who don't have a higher standard or align with the higher aims you have in your life. So it's either self or it's social. And in both cases, it feels like oppression. It feels like pressing down, it feels disempowering. It doesn't feel like an uplift. So here I am with these very, like, well known authors, and one of them says to me, listen to this line. Says to me, kid and calls me kid, which is no problem. Says, kid, do not risk your life's message about second chances on your freshman effort at fiction. Just write nonfiction. It's easier. You'll find a publisher better. Just trust me. Don't try to do that. A lot of people try to write fiction, it's really hard. And he handed my folder back with my little proposal in it and my little cover letter. And I walked out of there like, defeated. Can I tell you how defeated I was? I don't know if I've ever told this story before. I'd walked to that meeting that day, and I put on a suit, like my best suit, which is not that nice, but I really got. You know, you ever have that day where you really get ready? You know, like, you really spend a lot of time getting ready. You want to look right, feel right. Maybe you're applying for a job, or maybe you're going on that first date, or maybe you're gonna go pitch something. It's important for, like, you to feel good. And you spend the extra time. Like, I'm not someone who does that in my life. I kind of get up and get going, but I, like, put on my suit. I even wore a tie. And can I tell you, when I went in the writer's workshop, it was a little like, throwing off. Cause everyone was super hippie'd out. It was San Francisco, by the way, at that time. And there were writers. I mean, writers in San Francisco, you know, notoriously. Don't smell so good. You know what I'm telling you? It's like, we're hard. They were hard working. They're. They're like. They're like. They got a lot of caffeine going, they got a lot of nicotine going. You know, it's been hours working late, late, late. I mean, it's a traditional, like, what you would think of, like, writers. And. And I say that in an admirational way. Like I wanted to be that, you know, and they kind of looked at me like, why are you dressed like that? And they thought it was weird. I brought a proposal and I left embarrassed. And, you know, the truth of it is most people don't fear starting their dream, like, doing the work. That's not why you're scared to start something new. Most people are scared to start something new and really go for it because they worry about the rejection. They're not scared to start. They're embarrassed to be seen starting small. And I left embarrassed. I was like, what was I even thinking? Yeah, who am I to write a fiction book? I'm not Paulo Coelho. I don't know how to write a book. I was devastated. I walked home. It was like three mile walk. And I remember feeling so sad and so embarrassed walking the streets of San Francisco in a suit that didn't Quite fit in shoes that didn't quite fit. Heading home to an apartment that I couldn't even help contribute any money to. And of course, I know you were thinking, and. And of course I was thinking. I'm like, and I'm writing a book about second chances and succeeding. I felt like I had had that arc. I had my second chance from my car accident and I had this arc. Grad school, wrote a book, got a job, was speaking on the side. It felt like this. But then I left the job, and I didn't know how to get more speeches. I didn't know how to run a business. I didn't know how to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know how to get the message out. And so there was this in between time. Do you know when progress mode matters the most? Like to force yourself to summon yourself, to turn yourself on in terms of progress mode, did you know the most important time that matters is in between? People think it's, oh, I gotta motivate myself for the start. I'm like, starts. It's not even for the first arc up. It's when the first arc up happens, and then it declines a little bit. To stay in progress mode through the struggle that's life's calling for you. That's where the juice is gonna come from. That's where the conviction, the fire, the courage, the breakthroughs, the turning points are gonna come from is when the dip is happening and you still stay in belief, you still stay in faith, you still stay in motion, you stay in progress mode. Making progress every day, even if it's small, even if it's not as fast as you want, even. It's not a big magnitude or a big delta of change. It's like you're still in it. And you're still in it, committed. Well, I had to give myself that pep talk on the way home that day. Sad and embarrassed. I went home and I decided they were right. Who am I to write fiction? So weeks go by where I am struggling each day to write anything that is nonfiction, meaning it's not a story. It's more like teaching points weeks. I'm trying to teaching points, and it's awful. It's just not happening. So I keep going outside the apartment, trying to meet with people, going to writer conference over here, trying. Nothing is coming together now. The bills are really stacking up. And one night, when my girlfriend comes in at the end of the night into the bedroom, and I got my little table, I've got on the bed, all of those bills all of my vision board, all of those notes from the conferences, all of those proposals, everything I've got going on. And it's just dire at that point. I know you've had bills stack up before most people have had it. And that's worrisome enough when it's your problem. And it also gets to that point where sometimes you don't even open the bills. Like it's gone a couple months and you didn't even open the credit card bills because you just know how bad it is. And so that night, though, she comes home, we have nice conversation at dinner, I go into the bedroom, I'm writing, she comes in. Actually, I should be honest, I'm pretending to write. She comes in, kisses me good night, goes to go to bed like normal, but I hadn't cleared off the bed yet. She crawls under the covers of the bed to go to sleep and I'm pretending to type away so that she knows I'm working at it. And there's just this moment where I look over and I see the love of my life sleeping under my bills. And it just hit because none of us want our own inaction or inability to be the financial harm that hurts our family or somebody that we love. And I thought, I don't want to live like this. You know, one of the biggest shifts I've seen in people's lives, when they hit progress mode, there was a decision where they go, this is not the life. This is not how it's supposed to be. This is not how it's supposed to be. Me sitting here pretending to write something I don't even want to write because they told me I should write it this way. Going broke, watching my girlfriend sleep under my bills, heading into bankruptcy. This is not what I signed up for. This is not the dream. This is not how it's supposed to be. And at that turning point, you have two choices. You fall into the depths of despair, or you switch on progress mode and you say, I'm going to get through this, I'm going to change. I'm going to go in this direction. I'm going to go full hearted, I'm going to shift it. I'm going to change. I'm going to make it happen. Because I'm not going to allow that to happen. Because sometimes we make change out of desperation, or we make change out of a higher demand, or we make change because we believe in something. We make change because we have to sometimes. And in those moments, I want you to choose, have to. I want you to choose, like, do the thing. Like, get over yourself. Don't tell yourself a pity party and stay there. I'd already been in pity party for weeks and months. That's why the book wasn't done. I didn't feel it. It wasn't fair. How come this isn't turning out? No. At some point you go, no, I'm gonna switch into green progress mode here, and I'm gonna go for it. And I felt the click that night. First I felt when she was sleeping on the things. I felt like a crash. And my heart was like, it's like, this is not supposed to be like this. Why? And yes, I felt terrible, but I also felt a little bit of edge and anger and angst about, like, this is not. No, this is not how write the book. Brendan Fresh Page got rid of that other concept, write nonfiction, because who are you to write a fiction book? I said, I'm going to write it in fiction. I'm going to turn around. And I started writing what I wanted to write. Life's golden ticket as a parable, a story of a man who goes on an adventure through his past to find what really happened to him and find what happened in his relationship, to see what happened in his life and why it turned out that way and to make a change. And I decided that's what I'm going to do. So I started writing that night. I just fresh started writing with that invigoration to make sure I live what I promised myself to live and to tell that through the story of this character so he could go through that same big awareness journey, so he could accept himself and do what he wanted to do, so he could take accountability for his life, so he could take action. And I said, that's what it's going to be. And I just started writing and I started writing and I started writing. I started writing, I started writing, and I just, like, fired up, Wrote through the night. Next day, Wrote through the day, Wrote through the night, Wrote through the day Wrote through the night, Wrote through the day, Wrote through the night. Eighteen days later, stepped away from that little table, shocked by the ending of life's golden ticket. For those who've read it. I didn't know the book was going to end that way. I actually didn't know. I remember typing faithfully, watching it like a movie, because it's a story. I'm watching life's golden ticket as I'm typing it in my mind, and something happens at the end. I didn't know that was the end of the book, it was just leading. And all of a sudden this character went here and there. Wait, can that do? Can this happen? And I stood and I stood up, I walked around the little desk. I'm like, can that even happen? Can that be the end of the book? I didn't even know it was late at night. I mean late mid morning, about 2, 3 in the morning, I went outside for a long walk and I had to think about the plot. I was like, can that even happen? Then I, of course, a little part of me thought, you know, am I, Can I, am I good enough a writer to make that happen? I don't know. But the book was done and I had it and I believed in it. And I thought, all right, all right, you're going to do this thing. You're going to do this thing. And then began one of the hardest journeys of my life. And I think you might relate with it because sometimes you believe in something and you get it done. You actually went into progress mode and you actually got it done. But there's a difference between finishing something and shipping it, right? A lot of people create something, but they never ship it, they never promote it, they never see it through. I know this because I've had lots of writings, lots of posts, lots of videos, lots of things I've done in my life where I didn't ship it. I was proud of it, but I didn't follow through. Progress mode follows through. What dream do you have? What have you already created and done, but you haven't given it enough light into the world? Be honest, for me, I had the dream. And so what did I do? I said, well, how do you get a book published? I didn't know. I'd gone to a couple writers conferences. I knew to make like a proposal. And so I'm like, okay, life's golden ticket, I'm going to play on that. Because the character in the book at the end literally gets a ticket, a physical ticket, and it reveals life's secret on the ticket. And so I said, okay, I'm going to play with that. And it's life's golden ticket. And it takes place. I know this is going to sound bizarre. Stick with me. The parable takes place as this character, he's had a tough life, a relationship of his suddenly ends, and the woman who he was in love with, she disappears. And she is noted to have like, disappeared near this abandoned amusement park in the mountains. And so he goes on the search to find out what happened to her. And when he goes to the Abandoned amusement park. A series of mysteries and miracles happened to him that reveal not only what happened to her, but why his life had turned out the way it did. And towards the end, a character hands him the secret of the story. Life's golden ticket. Because it took place in this amusement park and the ticket is so central to it, I decided, okay, I'm going to pitch this book to all these publishers. But listen how dorky I am. Do you ever have a dream and you don't know how to pitch it, you know, or you get super creative about it? I got too creative about it. I'll give you an example. Because the golden theme of this thing and the ticket theme of it, you know, you're supposed to send this proposal to these book agents or these book editors and hopefully they get you a publisher and then your book gets put out into the world. And self publishing was very rare back then. And so I, you know, send the manuscript out with the COVID letter with the proposal. But what I do is I put it in this box. I spent all my money in getting these little specialty boxes and I put it in there. Oh, I'm so cute, little Brendan. I put it in there with like this gold foil paper and like gold foil confetti. I put like a golden ribbon around it. I put it in this box and I wrap it like in Christmas gold wrap to mail to these people. And I sent it out, I mean a hundred, some agents and editors, over a hundred of them, the big name ones I'd gotten off this book. There used to be a big book, like a telephone book where you found out where to mail or email these agents and publishers. So I sent out like a hundred of them, like all of my last money spent on these boxes and these printouts. And I was constantly going down to, you know, FedEx, Kinko's to mail these things out. And of course it's urgent. I gotta mail them out fast. I gotta get em right there. Cause you have a dream and you want to get it out. Days and weeks go by. Nothing. Dead silence. I know people received them because I mailed it for the FedEx. They had to sign for it. Nothing. Weeks. And I'm just sitting there, I, you know, continuing to edit. You know, look back through the book. I'm, I'm, I'm trying to, you know, build my website. I'm learning about online marketing, I'm learning how to do videos, teaching myself like how to do a video on the Internet. Which doesn't sound like a big deal, but again, we're in the 2005, 6 era I'm speaking about. So, you know, getting a video up and getting it play independently was hard, actually. And so I am like, I went downtown, I remember in San Francisco, and I got a little flip video camera. Remember the flip video cameras? I got a little flip video camera and I duct tape it to a box. And I'm just practicing talking to the camera. It's a joke. It's embarrassing. I have no idea what I'm doing. And so sometimes, you know, Denise, my girlfriend, she's coming home and she's looking at this goofy videos. She's like, what are you doing? I got like these shirts open like a used car salesman. I mean, I don't know how to talk yet. I'm learning how to edit it. It's kind of embarrassing, but I'm waiting and nothing. What starts happening is I start getting in the mail rejection letter and rejection letter and rejection letter. No one is like, hey, this is nice, but who are you? You're really not known enough to get published yet. We're looking for people who are media savvy. We've never seen you in the media before. It's a nice story, but people really aren't looking for stories like this right now. Maybe you should write a book on leadership, because you did that for five years at one of the biggest consulting companies in the world and you already wrote a book called the Student Leadership Guide. Maybe you write a leadership book for somebody else one day. But, you know, not the right time. Not us. Over and over and over, it became very clear I was not going to get published. And so I had to question, do I go back and get my job? I'm running out of money. The stream is not taking off. This website's taking longer than I thought. You know, I'm getting booked and people love my speeches, but I'm, like giving four or five, you know, a year at this point. Like, am I ever going to break through? And then that's when your decision is. Hey, guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you, resources related to this episode. And I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmo.com, click on Private group to apply to see, you can get into Ultra and we can take it to the next level by getting in private person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progress mode dot com. Remember, there's two things I really want you to write this down. If you can just give yourself this gift. There are two enemies on your journey to real progress. One is your own self limitation. The thoughts that you have where you zoom in on you not being enough, you being a catastrophe, you being a hot mess, you being you messing things up. You never breaking through. Something's wrong with you. You're not good enough. You don't measure up. You're not like them. You don't have what you need. That's a self limitation. And the other one was social oppression or social pressure in a downward way. And it was like, now I've got evidence. I have evidence. All these people saying, I'm crazy, I'm not good. This book is not going to resonate. It's not for us. The professionals are all saying, this book's not going to work. All the professionals are saying it. And I go, all right, I don't know if I believe in myself. These people are saying, no, what am I going to do? Am I going to go in backwards mode or in a progress mode? I said, what is the dream? The dream is the book is out there. The dream is the book is out there. People are finding it. They're falling in love with the story. They want me to come and speak to them about this inspirational message. I can share the real story of the car accident. I can share my real expertise of all of the research and the writing I'd done on leadership development. At that point, I can share the story of inspiration about this character in the book. What do I need for that? What do I need for that? First principles. What is the dream? What is real progress? What's the first thing that has to ship for the real dream to happen? A book. That was it that my friend's like, I just gotta get the book done. All right? So I'm holding up for you in this video, that book, the first ever edition of Life, School and Ticket. There was like a hundred of these ever. I printed them out and on. You know, this was the one that maxed out the last of the five credit cards you've ever been there on your dream. This is the one. I designed it myself. I actually paid a team to make a little ticket and take a picture of it. And I designed this whole thing. Right here. And this was the story that I wrote. And I designed the interior, I designed the whole. The whole thing. I found somebody to print it and I printed it out. And then I mailed it to a bunch of those editors and agents. Didn't hear anything back. I took maybe the last five of these to a writer's conference. And I was telling the story at this writer's conference about this book and about how I'd just self published it. And I told one of the speakers at the conference and when I say I'm telling the story, I wasn't on stage. I was just telling people about it in the hallways. And I was this young kid who believed in this book who had a story about second chances. That was all I had. I literally, I'm there in, you know, that same suit, that same tie with five copies of this book, trying to find somebody who would believe in me. And one of the speakers, I'll never forget Mark Victor Hanson. He wrote the Chicken Soup for the Soul series with Jack Canfield. I'm at their event. I had borrowed money from my dad, who didn't have much money, and put it on his credit card to go down to this conference to learn how to become a published author. And I ran into Mark in the hallway and I told him and I said, I've done this. And he could see like the fire and the belief in my eyes and the commitment in my eyes. He says, you should meet this guy over here. He introduced me to an agent and this agent named Scott. And I started talking and Scott just liked my energy. I just think he believed, he could see the enthusiasm that I had for other people, that they have second chances too. He didn't know if I could write or anything. I gave it to him. He went, he looked at it, he read it. He liked the idea. He could see I was building some websites, which was original. Then I was putting up some web, you know, videos. None of them were good. He just believed. He believed. I told him I could get partnerships for this book because, you know, I had. Having come through my car accident, I had started volunteering at companies and sorry, nonprofits. And I built these nonprofit relationships. I said, I think they could promote the book with me. So it looked like I had a platform. It's like these companies or these associations or these colleges and these nonprofits where I speak or I've done volunteer work. I'm going to enroll all of them to help me promote the book. And I think he just thought I was a crazy kid. So Scott Went away with that book, with that proposal and came back to me and said, hey, I want to let you know, I took your book and your proposal to my boss at my literary agency, and we've decided that we're going to try with you. And over the coming months, he pitched that book as an agent to dozens and dozens of publishers. And I would be working on a website or shooting a video or out on the road speaking somewhere, and I would get the call and he would say, yeah, they've turned it down. I don't know if this has ever happened to you in your life where you had month after month after month after month after month of rejection from the experts and how discouraging and defeating that really does become, especially if you're an artist or maybe you started your business and, you know, 5,000 people hit your webpage and no one's bought it yet. And you're like, that's 5,000 people who have voted no on this product, you know? Or you've pitched your idea at work a hundred times and a hundred different co workers said, that's stupid. That hurts, man. That is where you either go into discouragement or you stay in progress mode. It's such a decision in your life. Do you stay in progress mode or not? Now all the evidence is saying, quit, quit, quit. I don't know if I ever told you the story. I don't know that I've ever stolen it publicly. I think my agent has. But Scott calls me and says, hey, Brendan, my boss has told me to drop this project. We got so many no's and life's golden ticket. And he told me at the time that 11 publishers turned me down, that he had real conversations with and had the book. And he said, so I'm being asked to drop it. And my heart just sunk. I was like, oh, the last guy, okay, not the last guy. The only guy to believe in me. He says, brendan, I've been asked to drop it, but I believe in you. I believe in this book. I want to leave this company, and I want to start my own literary agency, Brendan. And I want your book to be the first book. I want to take this book out there and push it to everybody. Will you be my first client if I leave? And I was like, what? Yeah. Okay. Because sometimes one believer, one believer in your life changes everything. One person. He goes, I'm gonna start this litter agency. I need you to be my first client. Can I take this book? I said, yeah. He knows at this point, my plan, I'm just Gonna print that book out. I'm just gonna keep doing it guerrilla marketing style. I'm gonna figure a way. So he said that gave him conviction, too. And he took it out, and nine other publishers turned him down. And then one day, I remember exactly, like my physical structure. I was at an airport. I had just given a speech. It was actually going like I'd gotten a speech. It felt like one thing. I was like, I made this one thing happen. I'm sitting at this airport outside with. With my little bag, same suit. I'm sitting in this same suit and little bag. Phone rings, flip it open. Flip phone. Remembers. I open the flip phone and Scott. And he goes, brendan Harper, San Francisco. They want the book. I was like, okay, okay. And we just. I don't think we said anything, you know, anything. Some time went by on the phone. We just. We were both emotional. And I think at some point I was like, will they pay for it? No. Is there any money? Is there any chance of this thing? He says, yeah, there's a contract and we're going to do this. And they really believed in the book. One guy at the publisher, now HarperCollins, in many other divisions had already turned down the book. But it got to this one guy who, it turned out, had worked on projects with Paulo Coelho, the guy who wrote the Alchemist. And he saw some kind of parallel. And he was like, this might work. And I showed you at the beginning, this is the book. I self published what it looked like. You know, what they did with this book? They believed in this book so much. They loved the theme of the book so much that look what they did to promote the book. Do you remember all those people I sent the books to, the editors, the agents, and everybody else, they all said, no. Harper San Francisco, shout out to Roger, who believed in me. Roger Freet believed in me. Scott Hoffman was my agent. They took the book and they made this beautiful advanced version in this box. If you're online, it's worth going to see it on YouTube. Life's golden ticket. They put this golden foil here. They made the image of the amusement park come to life here. You can see here coming May 2007. They sent this to all those agents, all the press, all the publicity. They put this out. I'm not going to take it off. But this gold foil, it opened. And so if you opened it, the gold foil, when you took that gold foil off, the book is inside this beautiful case, okay? And this was the advanced reader edition box, they call it. And they ship this out to everybody believing in this book. Now, this might not sound like this was a big deal back then. This was like a major investment, a major, major move. This is like before social media. So it was like you had to get in the media. So they believed. They put this thing out out there. I begged him. I said, in the back of the book, could we put an envelope in the back of the book that has the actual golden ticket in it? They're like, that's going to be too expensive in printing the book. But you can just say, what's on the golden ticket in the book? And I was like, it's supposed to be kind of a mystery. And they literally had editorial meetings, and they said, brendan, we actually think it works. If there's no. Like, the reader never finds out what the golden ticket says. It's a little bit of a mystery. It works fine that way, and it'll save us money. And I thought about it and thought about it, and I was like, well, that'd be a cool angle. Okay, So I acquiesced on that. But they put out this beautiful book, and I got this wild idea that became a huge turning point in the entire industry of book publishing and in my entire approach to things. And I can tell you that sometimes in your life, you believe in something so much and you get one or two believers. But when you have one or two believers and you're going to go do the thing, you still have to say, what type of progress is this going to be? Are you going to make an incremental approach to doing things? Meaning you're gonna kind of do how everybody else does it, but maybe you'll do it a little better. Because, listen, ultimately, progress is about forward momentum. It's about betterment, isn't it? Progress means, like, you're gonna make things better, you're gonna feel that way. And I'm gonna do a short interlude here with you real quick on what is progress anyway? And share how this turning point in thinking shaped my career forever. Cause now you hear the story. I've just survived it. I've gotten through it. The breakthrough's about to come. But getting the publisher wasn't the breakthrough, right? That's at the end. You got to ship this thing and put it out there. See, you're in motion, in change. But not all change is progress. So let me give you a short interlude on this idea. What is progress anyway? Right? There's just a few components of progress to know if it's just change or activity, real progress. That's what I wanted to make in my life, in my career, with this book launch. I wanted real progress. And I didn't just want to follow the way everybody else does it. Following a plan you know you can implement. That's just called execution. Execution is not always the same as real progress. Progress is. First, it has a vector, a direction. Right? I've chosen this direction. There's a direction I want to go. There's a goal out here that I have. That's first direction. Second in progress is velocity. Am I moving quickly towards the thing? Third is really relevant, like change or magnitude of change? Right, Relevant. Change means I went from point A to point B. That's distance, isn't it? Progress can be distance. I went from point A to point B. But there's also magnitude of change. Okay, you got from point A to point B, how big of a difference is B over A? That's the difference between distance and magnitude, right? Between speed and velocity. That's called rate. And then magnitude, like delta. All right, I know this is a little dorky for all of you, but I'm a dork. Like this. This is the way I think. This is literally how I think. I'm like, okay, there's a direction, there's a speed, there's a rate of change. I want. I want to go there. I want distance from A to B. I'm poor, I'm broke, I'm bankrupt. I had some successes. I stopped believing myself. People told me it wasn't gonna work. 2. Okay, look, I saw the thing through. I followed what I say. I've walked the talk. I've had this achievement. I've got the publisher. Okay, that feels one level. But now I'm gonna push the book out. I have to ask it again. Okay, how do we push about? And, like, what's a magnitude of difference here? What's the magnitude of difference? Everyone's just going to do this playbook because that's what their playbook was. Oh, we'll send this beautiful box out to all these people. You'll get on media and you'll make sales. I'm like, that's not enough. There's got to be something different in your life. Sometimes you have to ask, am I just going to proceed incrementally doing what everybody else does, or is there going to be a step change of my effort? Is there going to be an innovation? Is there be a way of doing this so differently that will shift it up and sometimes you'll fall on your face? I thought doing it so differently, mailing the completed books in little golden boxes with golden foil to agents would give me the. That fell on its face. Didn't work. That was an innovation, I thought. Didn't work. So now the book's about to come out. How do I do this book differently? How do I launch this thing differently? Back then, there was the same mold that everyone was doing to launch books. You would go get a bunch of. You know, you would reach out to all these people with big email lists. You would ask big famous people to give you something to download an MP3, a PDF, some digital thing that people could download. You would drive their audience and your audience to a big, long webpage where you said, hey, get this book and you'll get these 50 bonuses from all these other people. Go buy the book on Amazon, come back here, enter your receipt, and you'll get these 50 huge bonuses. I had bought tons of books that way, and I looked at it and I thought, but all these bonuses, they're all just like promotional leads. They're not really, like, going deep with people. And also, I think the consumer is overwhelmed by so many things. I was like, what if we did that? But Instead of giving 50 things, we gave three. Instead of trying to give it from all these famous people, we just went way deep. What if I gave them a course, a full online video course with the book, which you have to understand again in 2006 when we're preparing. This is super rare. Then I say, what if I give them a ticket to come to an event? Because the book, life's golden ticket, and what if instead of doing a conference in some airport, you know, hotel venue, I brought the book to life in, like, an actual amusement park? I rented or found an amusement park to do the event in? What if instead of trying to get little affiliates with email lists to promote this thing, I got major corporate partners and major nonprofits to promote this thing? These were all very different things that I decided to do for this book. For those who know the story, long story short, those differences, these were step changes. We were very different approaches. That bam. Puts the book to the top of Amazon. That thing starts selling like crazy. More importantly, people start getting the course and seeing me teach and my public speaking requests go way through the roof, people start claiming that ticket to come to the live event, and I can start planning the live event to bring this vision to life in front of people, to do the story as, like, a play in an amusement park. This is a version of a play like Cirque du Soleil for personal development this is basically like the Cirque du Soleil for self improvement. I literally rented the Mexican National Circus. It turned out to get this thing put together and bring it to life. I could go on and on about how that changed my life and changed my career, because you can imagine that was a very different thing than anyone else was doing. It felt like a revival in a tent. Cirque du Soleil ish thing from this author. This new kid on the scene in personal development doing something different. This new kid doing this innovative leadership development. This new kid doing life coaching. What is that? Doing online courses. What is that? In other words, I was going for dreams that I didn't even see, and I think that's important. The more you're in progress mode, the more you're seeing other people. You're seeing things other people don't get. Here's what's interesting. The more you're in progress mode, the more people don't get you. Are you hearing me? The more you are in progress mode, the more you see a future other people don't see because you're moving towards it at a faster velocity. You're moving towards the future at a faster velocity, so you're seeing things before other people see it. You have a forward belief in faith. So big ideas are coming to you because you have faith and openness and, yes, naivete, thank God. And so I'm proceeding. I'm seeing a new future for the entire industry. I'm like, you're no longer a book author. You're no longer a speaker. You're a coach. You're doing online video. You're selling courses. You're selling memberships. You're bringing people to innovative events. Not just hotel conference rooms that are cheap near airports. We're going to zhuzh this thing up. We're going to go to another level here. This was like, it might be something. You're like, yeah, yeah, of course, Brandon. You understand. This is 20 years ago. I started this. This was crazy innovative. Everyone thought, who's this crazy kid? Even the speakers I asked to come and speak there. They literally came for free because they just wanted to see it. They're like, you got a circus tent? I'm like, I have a circus tent. They're like, how do you get a circus tent? I'm like, I got these partners and sponsors. Like, how did you get partners and sponsors for a circus tent? They couldn't even believe the story, so they came and spoke for free. These were huge names coming to speak for free because they believed in what I was doing. Sometimes when you're in progress mode, people will not see what you see. They will not believe what you believe. You might only have one or two believers, period. You might have the entire establishment telling you you are crazy. And at that point, do the two enemies win or does progress mode win? Does your own doubts that might even be proven? Do the haters and the people who disbelieve and the experts who might be right? When your brain says this could not be good and other people tell you it's not good, but you believe, will you persist? Will you stay in progress mode? Or will you go into scared mode, quit mode, backpedaling mode, half hearted mode? Listen, the more people doubt you and the more obstacles that come your way, that usually means you got a bigger future, you got a bigger vision of the people. I'm not here to say that we can't all learn along the way. I learned a lot along the way. I learned to do those proposals. I learned to go after the agents. I learned how to talk to editors, I learned how to build webpages, I learned how to do videos. I learned and learned and learned. It's not like I was self righteous about something, but I had a dream to be a writer and a coach and a speaker. That might not be your dream. I'm just saying, as you have a dream to do 1, 2 and 3 along the way, you have to keep learning as you get the rejections, you have to keep learning as you feel the embarrassment, you have to keep going. If it is something that matters to you and it is on the aspirational path of your life. This was on the aspirational path of my life. And this change, this thing that came out eventually, Life's going Ticket does pretty good, you know, could have done better, but I was pretty happy with it. They were pretty happy with it. It ended up leading to my next book contract, which I'll tell you about later. That was for multiple millions of dollars. It eventually, because those other successes, they put out Life, School and Ticket. If you've been keeping tally here, I've shown you what, three versions so far. I showed you the original. I showed you the one that they created when it came out. It came out in hardcover. Looked like this, right? But when you opened it, nothing in the back. I couldn't convince him I wasn't big enough, I wasn't successful enough. I didn't fight hard enough for the idea that the ticket needed to be in there. And then years later, we came out with a paperback and in the back of the paperback was the envelope that the character gets and there was the tickets. And I didn't share with you guys that there were then, you know, dozens of languages versions of this book. You know, Portuguese, Spanish, language. I don't know this one. I don't know what that one is. This one? German, maybe. This? I don't know. Chinese simple. Chinese complex, I think. This one? Nope. Idea? Nope. Oh, that's French. No clue. Korean maybe? I don't know. German, I think. So this thing took off around the world. Now, here's the thing this isn't about. Did this fulfill the vision that I had? Because no. Every author in the world thinks they're gonna sell hundreds of millions of books. It's not about the volume. When you are in progress mode, it's direction and velocity. Am I moving in the right direction with the speed and rate of change that I want? And am I becoming who I desire along the way? See, it's not just about the achievement of quantity or volume. I want you to get that in your head because sometimes people get really down because the number they didn't hit the number that they wanted, it was so important to them. Like, this book did not hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list. In fact, I got snubbed on the New York Times bestsellers because no one knew who this kid was selling books on the Internet. And so they like, didn't even count. It felt like it was so frustrating even though I hit like number one or top on Amazon. And so it was so frustrating to me that I didn't hit these numbers and. And in no way did not hitting a specific number slow me down. Look at the result. I'm a kid from Montana. Look at all these books and languages. I don't even know I'm in the right direction. I'm going the right direction. You know, the speed of change in my life is at the level I want it to be. I'm becoming who I want to become. That's progress mode. Do you understand? It's not just about one goal or one achievement. It's you living in alignment. You being in alignment with the path you want to travel on at the pace you want to be on, with a positive mindset that you hold. That's progress mode. You know, this book, it's fiction, It's a parable. And this character has to go through this story and the struggle of getting more self aware, becoming more self accepting, take accountability for his life, taking action. It was something I was living at the time it was something I'd lived since my car accident. It was something I was living again. And you know what? There'll be another season of my life where I'm living this story again. And so will you. Because the blessing here is you have a second chance. You always have second chances. All of those moments I could have quit, but I stayed in progress mode. Those were all little second chances. The nice thing about second chances is they're actually infinite. Right? It's on repeat that you have so many new. Every new morning you wake up. That new breath, that new sunshine, that new light in the sky, that's your second chance to be more of who you want to be. To pursue your dream again, to stay in progress. Like I was saying, you just have to switch your brain on it. I'm in progress mode. I'm not in doubt mode. I'm not in quit mode. I'm not half hearted mode. I'm full hearted still. I'm in progress. I'm going to go in the right direction and at a new speed and make a real change over and over and over. It doesn't mean that you can't be consistent on other things. It doesn't mean you're not always incrementally improving your learning and your excellence. But sometimes you're really going for it. You're trying new ideas, you're going for dreams that people can't see and they think you're crazy for it. Stay in progress mode. You got a second chance, you got a new blessing. Do not forget that ever. I'm here to tell you, don't forget that ever. Because sometimes along the way, guess what? The new things that you wanted aren't coming for me. All the publishers weren't saying yes, Brendan, all my friends weren't saying this is a good idea. The writers met, they weren't saying it was good. Nothing new was coming into my life. What was new coming in my life felt like more failure and failure and failure. So like I said at the very beginning, either something new comes into your life or. Or something new comes from within. You summon a different belief, you summon a different choice, you summon a different direction. And that makes all the difference in the world that you kept believing. You stayed in progress mode when you had all the reasons not to. I believe in you. I believe in you. Summon that dream. Keep going after it, even if they don't see it. There's one guy out here who sees it, who believes in you, who knows that story, who's cheering you on. That's why you're listening to Progress Mode. That's why I want to tell you these stories and help you in these decision points in your life. There's something beautiful and huge and important in your future. Do not give up on your dream. If you've enjoyed this one, go to progress mode.com get my newsletter I'm sending encouragement out every single week through progressmode.com I I'd love for you to get on the newsletter and make sure you join me for the next episode. In the next episode, Progress Mode, I wanna tell you what happened with me and my girlfriend, the girl who believed in me before the book came out. I wanna tell you about the big struggle of what to do next when you achieved one goal. How do you know what the next thing is? How do you find clarity of what you really wanna do in your life? Even if things are going well, even if you're in progress, what's the next stage for you? I want to share with you a story of starting to try to build something that no one really saw coming. And a lot of people judge me for being too young or too inexperienced to do at that stage of my life. I want to tell you about falling in love and getting married and moving. I want to tell you about some of the stories that maybe is really probably the reason you might know me because of my courses or my promotions, my marketing, my social media, my work in personal development all these last 20 years. But there's some one critical turn you probably have never heard about. That'll be in episode three. I want to thank you again for listening to Progress Mode. Maybe somebody to need this episode. Please share it with them and let's keep the world in progress. Make sure you wake up tomorrow believing in yourself again. Listen to the next episode like Stay in faith. Keep in forward motion in your life. When you wake up each day it should be like a celebration, a shout out. There's a second chance. The sun came up. It's a new day to grow. Stay in Progress Mode Baby Sam.