Wisdom

028: Lance Miller: I’m emotionally and spiritually dead

Intro: Welcome to the Fast Leader Podcast, where we uncover the leadership like hat that help you to experience, break out performance faster and rocket to success. And now here’s your host, customer and employee engagement expert and certified emotional intelligence practitioner, Jim Rembach.

Jim Rembach: Okay Fast Leader legion, I am really excited to share with you the person who I have on the show today because he’s one of those folks where you would say, “Gosh, how was he been able to do all the things he’s done?” “Well, he’s old, of course.” Lance Miller is a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in Food Systems, Economics and Management. He began working as a teenager and his family’s milk and ice cream company learning life lessons while working in the processing plant, running delivery routes, managing retail stores, and he gained valuable experiences in understanding the importance of hard work and service in handling both employees and customers.

Lance has held sales and management positions with the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, Nestlé, Anheuser-Busch, and Katz Media Group. For 15 years he developed and managed sales and marketing programs for businesses in the fields of law, construction, international finance, alternative health and the Internet. He has also held key leadership roles in completing five new business startups and product launches. He has traveled extensively and has held leadership positions forwarding numerous international humanitarian causes.

In the early 1990’s he was a founding member of the Fair Tax Initiative and debated federal tax policy on over 300 radio and TV shows and scores of community forums. He has served as Vice President of the International Foundation for Human Rights and Tolerance where he organized and led international human rights marathons in the US and Europe covering over 10,000 miles and over 15 countries.

He served as the President of The Way to Happiness Foundation International. The foundation delivers programs in 94 languages in 100 countries teaching universal characteristics and ethics principles to assist individuals and organizations around the world by creating values of trust, honesty and responsibility. In addition to an extensive business background he has at the top 14,000 foot peaks, rafted some of the roughest whitewater in the US. Sail Transatlantic from the Virgin Islands to Norway and piloted his own aircraft, scuba-dived under the ice of frozen lakes in the dead of winter and twice hitchhiked throughout Europe. 

Lance is a member of Rotary international and Toast Master International. He is a distinguished Toast Master. In 2005, he emerged from the field of over 30,000 contestants from more than 100 countries to win the title of world champion of public speaking. And over the last 25 years, he has delivered more than 4,000 presentations in over 50 countries. Lance currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife Kathleen. Lance Miller are you ready to help us get over the hump?

Lance Miller:    After an introduction like that I hope I can. Thank you, Jim.

Jim Rembach:     You’re going to have to because like I said that’s so extensive. I was just kidding on the age thing, I mean, you’re still a young man you got a lot to do. I’ve shared with our guests quite a bit about you but can you tell us which are current passion is so we can get to know you even better?

Lance Miller:     My current passion is really helping people to rediscover what I found in my own life which was I was capable of a lot more than I ever realized I was. And I was figuring out how to get out of my own way and also tap into those skills, those passions, those convictions that I had. Where did I really live as a core being? And what I really learned in life, as long as I stay on my purpose in life things will work out but it’s so easy to get off on somebody else’s purpose and you wind up stuck in a ditch with the wheels spinning. 

And what I really try to do is inspire people, to ignite in them what their core beliefs are, and what their true story in their life is and that was a long journey for me and I try to shorten it for them by taking them to the process that I went through. I do that through public speaking, through seminar training, through one-on-one coaching. 

Jim Rembach:     And that’s really one of the things that we focus here as well on the Fast Leader Show, is that life experiences teach us a ton. And if we get the opportunity to share those stories it is quite possible that someone will be able to take those and better their own life so that they don’t necessarily repeat some of the same mistakes that we have made and therefore they can move onward and upward faster, so, I appreciate all the work you’re doing and glad you’re here on the show. 

When you start talking about some of the things that you’ve been able to accomplish there has to be a boldness there and risk-taking there that a lot of people may just be so afraid overcome like you were saying, and we need inspiration in order to help us and give us that push sometimes. A lot of time we focus on quotes on the Fast Leader Show, is there a quote or two that inspires you to push forward?

Lance Miller:    There’s a number of quotes that I have. I have a very good mentor—we were talking in my intro that I work in my family’s milk and ice cream business. I came out of college and that’s why I had a degree in Food Systems Economics and Management because my life plan was to be in that business as a third-generation heir apparent to that company. My grandfather started, my father had carried it on since—my grandfather started 1926, my father had taken it on. I came out and was planning on booming in and expanding and having a tremendous successful career there. But I had a mentor, he was an older gentleman named Oscar, and Oscar’s one of these guys that graduated from maybe the eighth grade. But since he didn’t have a formal education he looked at life every day and figure out what did he learn today could apply it tomorrow. He was about 60 when I got out of college and as I was about 22, 23 when I came back but he’d known me since I was an infant.

One of the thing he used to say, “I’d screwed something I’m afraid, I do make some mistakes, some ridiculously inexperienced [Laugh] mess,” and he pat me on the back and he would say, “The good Lord doesn’t give you youth and wisdom at the same time.” And then he would wink and he’d say, “You should enjoy each while you got them.” I didn’t like hearing that. When I was 23, 24 years old I thought I was pretty smart and to be honest I was smart but I wasn’t wise and there’s a big difference between being smart and wise. 

And I heard another quote from President of Rotary about five or six years ago he said the, “The difference between integrity and wisdom is integrity is always doing what you promise and wisdom is knowing what to promise.” [Laugh] And I think that’s true, we get wisdom by walking in the face of this earth and by living that life experience and having that empirical knowledge of having experienced it. And once you’ve done that—I had another uncle who was a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base was [6:56 inaudible] or back and highlighted a space race and everything and he always says, “You know it’s true when it happens to you.” And those are a couple of quotes that keep me moving.

And just on that, another thing I’ve learned to live by, was another quote I love that I use all the time is: “Good judgment comes from experience and a lot of experience comes from bad judgment.” And it’s really the ability to embrace the experience that you had and learn from it and not get hung up on the loss of it.  That was one quote there was a handful of them. 

Jim Rembach:    That was and they are all awesome and just to let all of our listeners know one of the things that we do at the Fast Leader show is we go through and we pull all these quotes and we put them on our show notes page. And you’ll be able to find many of the quotes from this particular episode at fastleader.net/Lance Miller. So, Lance I know that, like you are saying with you being bold, taking risk, having the family business all the things that you’ve done—moving away from the family and living in a garage with some friends in Los Angeles to break out and, do some new things and some adventurous things, is that we’ve had to learn and go through and have those mistakes. 

We talked about getting over the hump on the Fast Leader show and we have epiphanies from those, sometimes they’re pretty immediate and sometimes it takes a while for it to sink in, but can you think of a story or a time where you’ve had a hump to get over and set you in a different direction than you are heading?

Lance Miller:     The first one you’re talking about was thinking at a life plan set in front of you and then—especially with the closeness of the family business and a third-generation family business. Anybody’s who has grown up on either family farm or family business knows the almost, I would say congenital or inherent commitment that you grew up with on sustaining that because any family member whose running it that is their life. And so, you grow up and that to break out of that was a huge pivotal moment for me. And what I really had to look at was that the fact that this was my life and I needed to be able to figure out what that was. And at that time I was living in a family who is very—not controlled in a bad way just that my grandfather, my father were there, it was a very controlled environment on their goals and purposes that they’ve been living through their lives and I was a young guy without the experience and I was trying to learn and do the right thing but I wasn’t feeling the fulfillment.

I remember just looking in the mirror one morning saying, “I am emotionally and spiritually dead, I need to get away from here and figure my life out” and I wound up in LA. 

I’d a couple of fraternity brothers from college, Michigan State, that has a house in Manhattan Beach and they said, “We got a loft over the garage, you can stay there if you want.” We pulled the suitcases out of loft and I got carpet remnant and put some drywall up and there’s a cools room in the house and I had $20 as rent living at the beach, which is great because I never had to pay rent the I moved to California because I was either living at home or with my grandfather. That was a huge pivotal moment and I remember it’s very scary to leave that security,  and it was a very financially secure situation for me because I wasn’t earning that much money but I was netting a ton because I didn’t have any expenses because of the family support that I had around me. I remember the first time I moved to L.A. I had to pay for an oil change, I never have to do that and it was like, “What I got to pay to get an oil change in my car?” It was just I was stuck as getting nickel and dime. But that was a huge adjustment because quite honestly I thought once I got a way that everything would clear for me and I wouldn’t have any stops or barriers in front and just be able to succeed like crazy. 

I had a great time working for the Olympics, I wish I could continue to do that full time that was very much the type thing I want to do. A life-changing experience working on a project that was huge and all-encompassing worldwide. The uplifting aspects of it, the benefit we were doing to mankind, the bringing people from different cultures and races and nationalities and religions together and all competing together and doing it in a peaceful caring manner it’s truly a life-changing experience for me.

 I left that, I’ve been able to get very good jobs I was able to get them. I went into Nestlé and brand management which is something that typically MBA’s only get. I had a contact, I’ve set up a lunch one that get in the job I spend a couple of years at Nestlé and I was expecting to be fast-tracked and thought I was brilliant and everything. I learned how Fortune 50 companies work and I spent a year and half and then I was at Anheuser-Busch and sports morphing which is a lot of fun. I wasn’t really going anywhere but I got to wear a lot of cool shirts and drink a lot of beer, and when you’re in your mid-20’s it was cool but I’m not achieving, I’m not moving like I want. I have a lot of friends installing media, Katz Media Group is one of the largest media sales companies in the United States and I was able to get in with the company that they had just acquired and they had some problems with it. 

And again I have I learned something about going with the winning company or a losing company it was a company they had bought that was selling radio but I’ve got to learn how Nielsen works, I’ve got to learn how Arbitron works and I’d call on the major advertising agencies in Los Angeles it was my first sales job, I had a window office on Wilshire Boulevard, I was earning more money that I had ever earned before and I was miserable. This comes down to a specific moment, I was driving to work and it was about 6 o’clock in the morning and I gone through several stoplights that were green and I had a red light and I’m sitting there by myself the radio is off and I was relieved to hit the red light and I look back I remember ever time I went through a green light I was disappointed I want to hit a red light. You have a thought in 

the back of your mind that you don’t realize it’s there and I sat at that red light looking at it going, why don’t I want to hit red lights? And I also realize I had a thought that I wish somebody would just come running to me that day and have a car accident so I don’t have to go to work. [Laugh] And I sat there and I said, “I don’t like what I’m doing I’m not happy at all, I’m going in here based on somebody else’s dream or purpose and I have no idea why I’m doing what I’m doing.” And I just said, “I’m not going to live my life wanting to hit red lights, wanting to stop, wanting to have something prevent me, I want to get up every morning and be excited to do what I’m going to do and I had no idea what that was. 

I went in and talk to my boss and I’d be honest I wasn’t doing great on the job. I didn’t do great in the Fortune 50, the large corporation environments, but it was invaluable experience to have. It was very difficult besides when I came out of that I did feel like I wasn’t as able as a lot of my peers because they seem to be able to succeed in it and I didn’t. I discovered I don’t do well in a cubicle. I need a lot of space, I need a lot of freedom, I’m more of a pioneer type person and that comes from that entrepreneurial family that I came out of. And so, I left, I left that business I turned it over trained another replacement for myself for about five weeks. 

I left I’d no idea what I was going to do but I started getting up every morning and trying to figure it out. I’m now going to let you talk, I can talk for a long time, but that was the pivotal moment for me. And I’d be honest here is my viewpoint, I’ve had four jobs since leaving my family, the Olympics, Nestlé, Anheuser-Busch, Katz media group, I’m either going to win or die in the attempt to figure out what it is but I’m not going to live my life for 40 years in a job I don’t like, so that I can have a couple weeks off here and do what I want. 

Jim Rembach:   You and I had the opportunity to speak before the interview and you shared with me something that I can connect with very much and I suspect that there’s a lot of our legion that would connect with it as well and that you said that when you started working in the corporate world, and I’m sure some of the whole nature and nurture thing with the whole launch counter spirit in your family, but you felt like slowly over time the life was getting sucked out of you and that your different thinking and your differences weren’t appreciated even though they may say that that’s what they wanted. If there was a piece of advice that you would give to our Fast Leader legion from that story and you going through that epiphany that took a while, what would it be?

Lance Miller:      I think it’s two sides. One of them, looking back in your life it’s beautiful, it’s 20/20, yeah, wouldn’t I like to be 26, 27, and 28 years old with the knowledge that I have now in my mid 50’s but we don’t get that. And I said to good the Lord doesn’t give you youth and wisdom at the same time and so you have to realize that you’re gaining wisdom as you live your life. But one the of things is, as you said, if you’re in a situation that’s not a good situation, what I would advise people is look at what you’re benefiting because you’re learning something invaluable at that point. 

I look back on that 45 year period that I was in the Fortune 50 environment, as critical knowledge I needed for life. Yeah, it wasn’t that enjoyable and we were talking about most of the people were MBA’s, they had a mentality that you needed to have the schooling. I had a college degree but I had more empirical business experience with dealing with independent grocers and farmers and difficult of employees and I said we are to attempts to unionized you company, we have attorney’s, we had legal battles, we had a fight, I have a lot more hands-on on empirical management experience than a lot of the people I was working with that were even five or six or seven years older than I was in that environment. 

The first one is understand your learning valuable information even if that information is what you don’t like or what not to do, that’s very valuable in life. The second one is, as soon as you can you need to be true to your core purpose, your core sense of what you want to do in life and I was sort of in a viewpoint that I needed to gain more experience before I could be on my own and do what I want. As I look back on it I could’ve started doing what I wanted immediately, and there was going to be a run, there was going to be some road to travel but don’t delay that, get on that thing that dream you have that purpose you have as soon as you can. Maybe you have to work at McDonald’s, flipping burgers to pay for it but you need to be doing that in your life.

Jim Rembach:      I appreciate that and appreciate you sharing that. Now, I know you have a lot of things going on. You talked about several startups, you talked about all of your speaking and all of your travel but if you’re to say that there was one thing that really is just giving you a lot of energy and passion, what would it be?

Lance Miller:    I think the biggest thing is I like to see people win and I had my own struggle with trying to really feel that sense of fulfillment. And if I’m doing a startup, what I love to do is win, you get the team winning. And we’re talking about leadership, we’re talking about accomplishing something. It’s so easy to get stuck in the day-to-day treadmill, stuck in the rut of life where you just feel like you’re digging some unknown ditch, you just keep shoveling. What I love to see is to see people accomplish their dreams and see this twinkle in their eyes and the spark of life.

As I look back again all those experiences were invaluable experiences that have put me in the position I’m in today and I wouldn’t trade that path for anything even though it was tough while I was going through it. 

Jim Rembach:     The Fast Leader legion wishes you the very best.  Alright, now it’s time for the—Hump Day Hoedown. Okay, Lance, the Hump Day Hoedown is the part of our show where you give us good insights fast. So, I’m going to ask you several questions and your job is to give us robust yet rapid responses that are going to help us move onward and upward faster. Lance Miller are you ready to hoedown?

Lance Miller:     Let’s get the fiddle up there on the hay bell and you go, okay? 

Jim Rembach:     Alright. So, what do you think is holding you back from being an even better leader today? 

Lance Miller:    I talked about taking your lumps and moving forward with  everything you do but everything you do has a consequence in it. I’ve done five successful business start-ups the thing that has impeded me from really taking up where want to right now is that I had, in the last five years, I had one that was not successful. And quite honestly, it was a huge drain on resources, time, commitment and I just was able to cut the tie on that about a year and a half ago. One of the things that you need in life to succeed is a banking account. Quite simply, you need to be able to invest in your service activities, and that’s the thing I’m working on right now. And the biggest thing that hit me was I did do a program, I did do a startup, had it gone, my share of it was $30-$40 million. It was a huge launch, it was an environmental company and I can tell you a whole series of things why that failed but when it failed it put me in a bad position financially. And right now I’m building that base back so I have enough firm ground to stand on that was a huge life lesson that I learned in the process of it. But the biggest thing that’s been preventing me from moving forward is having the available capital to put into the services I want to establish the things I want, I’m just now, I’m building at that right now.

Jim Rembach:     What is the best leadership advice you’ve ever received?

Lance Miller:     The best leadership advice I’ve ever received came from Oscar, who I’ve shown you about earlier in the show, my mentor, and it came after the first time I fired a man. I was 23 years old I was acting pretty cocky and Oscar got up from his desk and looked at me and he said, “Did you fire him?” and I said, “Yeah, I did.” And he goes, “Well, Lance anybody can fire man that doesn’t take any special skill or talent, can you get them to work? Now, that takes a manager.” And he walked out the door. What I realized, as a leader it’s really our responsibility to get our juniors to work and to get them to succeed and get them to be competent at what they’re doing and anybody can go kick some in the butt, anybody can cut their head off, kick them out the door that doesn’t take any special skill or talent. That’s what I wanted to do and it took me never a number of years to develop that skills to take people and get them to function as they should, but that was a pivotal moment in my life.

Jim Rembach:     What is one of your secrets that you believe contributes to your success? 

Lance Miller:     One of the secrets to my success is being able to laugh. Quite honestly, no matter what happens be able to laugh at it and be able to glean from my biggest failures the silver lining of the lesson. That didn’t come easy. I accumulated a lot of baggage, I accumulated a lot of failures and quite honestly it was all the speech competition I did in Toastmaster where I competed in the speech content for 13 years and finally I had an epiphany one night that it was going to be pretty hard to learn from my mistakes if I was unwilling to admit that I was making any. And when I was willing to admit that I was making mistakes and I had room to grow that’s where it opened up for me in my life. I was able to go back and a lot of mistakes I’ve made in my life and find the lesson rather than looking at the loss. 

Jim Rembach:     What do you feel is one of your best resources that helps you lead in business or life?

Lance Miller:     Probably one of my best resources, it comes from two things, it comes from hands-on experience that I’ve had and the mentors I’ve had around me. I also believe in reading and in the learning. You need to find something that really resonates with you and you find is true for you and your process of it. There’s a lot of people out there and I really feel that each one just needs to find what is what right for us. And one of the biggest resources I’ve had is actually a tremendous amount of management work put together by a man named Laurent Robert who has some of the most sane management systems that I’ve ever studied, and I studied those extensively and that’s giving me—whenever I have a problem I can go to his writings and find the solution there’s something that spurs on my thinking from that standpoint.  ** has been a controversial man in society for number of reasons but I have also learned in the process of that is, if you want to know something go look at yourself and don’t listen to what you hear on the radio or TV and observe for yourself and see if it’s true for yourselves. 

What would be one book that you would recommend to our listeners? It doesn’t have to be business book. 

Lance Miller:     I’d tell you the book I’d recommend it’s a book called, Endurance. It’s about Ernest Shackleton’s failed attempt to across Antarctica in 1914. A book that truly changed my life because—just a short story behind that, I attended at age of 14 I attended the Telluride Mountaineering in  leadership school it was an outward bound program which I talked my parents into sending me out to. We learned technical climbing—how to slide down snow fields and arrest ourselves how to raft rivers and navigate to the mountains. One night around a campfire, the director of the camps said, the best book he’d ever read in his life was a book called Endurance, that’s all I remember, twenty years later I went to the library got the book.

Shackleton was almost got to South Pole, Amundsen got it year later, Shackleton came up on the hundred miles, and he almost went down in history as the guy that got to South Pole. And he wanted to make his mark in history so he was going to be the first person to do a transcontinental exploration of Antarctica, this is equivalent to Lewis and Clark exhibition it was huge. With 28 man on a ship called Endurance who’s going to Antarctica, he got within 80 miles of the shore where he’s going to be dropped off. The ship gets stuck in the ice and it’s down there for two years, it gets crushed, they move out on the ice, they have three lifeboats and 22 months later he winds up saving all 28 men. It’s the most horrific, heroic story of survival and overcoming any obstacle in your path that I’ve ever read. There had been so many times that I felt that my life had just hit the dirt and was not worth anything and I could look at Shackleton’s experience, and you know what? At least I’m not stuck in the ice in Antarctica. [Laugh] I got a lot of positive things to be thankful for, it could be a lot worse. That’s the book I will highly recommend you read.

Jim Rembach:     Well, we’re going to make a link to that and other things like we mentioned before on our show notes page and you’ll be able to find that at fastleader.net/Lance Miller. Okay Lance, this is my last Hump Day Hoedown question: Imagine you are given the opportunity to go back to the age 25 and you’ve been given the opportunity to take the knowledge and skills that you have now back with you, but you can’t take everything you can only choose one, what skill or piece of knowledge would you take back with you? And why?

Lance Miller:     Wow, what skill or knowledge would I take back with me and why. I think the piece of skill or knowledge I would take back is I said, good judgment comes from experience and a lot of experience comes from bad judgment. And it was the skill or knowledge to embrace my mistakes, embrace my failures with as much fever and enthusiasm as I embraced my successes and realize it is all part of the process. One of the things I’ve learned in life, if I’m not succeeding enough it’s because I’m not failing enough. If I’m not winning enough it’s because I’m not losing enough. I really got hung up for a number of years in my—what I thought we’re my failures and it was just pure life experience but I viewed as failures. And I would’ve liked to have kept that twinkle in my eye early in my life that I got back when was really able to embrace the knowledge that I had gained through the experiences that I had. 

Jim Rembach:     Lance it was an honor to spend time with you today. Can you please share with the Fast Leader legion how they can connect with you?

The easiest way is to go to my website, which is lancemillerspeaks.com, and by the way, I have a brand-new site that I’m coming out with, at this recording it should be up in about 30 days and I’m very excited about, because I have just a ton of content I’ve been wanting to put on the web for people access and I haven’t had—again because of that business situation I got into—I hadn’t had the resources to build the site up that I wanted. I been working on this for the last six months we get this put together to really have that platform in place that I could put the training and the interviews, like were doing, the experiences that I’ve had, the coaching all of the things I want to on both communication and leadership and just basic success on that. 

So, that will be up in probably within 5 days, I will say the end of August 2016, depending when you’re listening to this, lancemillerspeaks.com, you have all my contact information on there. And quite honestly, I really love getting out and energizing groups, and energizing people to win in a group. No man is an island as I say, even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Life is lived in a group setting and we had to learn to work together in businesses and families and communities and have that alignment behind things. That’s where I really love to help bring people together and realize how to get along and how to win together.

Jim Rembach:   Lance Miller, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom the Fast Leader legion honors you and thanks you for helping us get over the hump. Woot! Woot!

Thank you for joining me on the Fast Leader show today. For recaps, links from every show, special offers and access to download and subscribe, if you haven’t already, head on over the fastleader.net so we can help you move onward and upward faster.

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