How to Get What You Want with Alden Mills

george grombacher 0:01
Alden Mills is a three time Navy SEAL platoon commander, he is an inc 500 CEO, a mindset expert, and acclaimed keynote speaker and author. His newest book is unstoppable mindset, how to use what you have to get what you want. Welcome back to the show, Alden.

Alden Mills 0:20
George, it’s great to be back. And I’m honored. I’m hoping everyone today get something out of this that helps them get more out of the life they want. I

george grombacher 0:29
love it, refresh our memories, spend a little bit tell us about your personal life more about your work, and what motivated you to write the new book.

Alden Mills 0:38
What always motivates me to write a book, this is my third book, every time I get stuck, has to do with my four boys. So the My boys are now a couple years older since the last time they’re ages 14 to 20. And, you know, I always look at that as the first leadership, opportunity being a parent. But that other piece of leadership was a real driving point for why I wrote the book. You know, I spent a lot of time on stage around the world talking about what I call the three levels of leadership. And they are leading yourself, then leading teams, and then leading the organization, they stack on each other. And when I wrote my first book be unstoppable. That was really a parable for my four boys when they were much younger, and be on stage. The Unstoppable mindset book is the precursor to unstoppable teams, it’s all about leading yourself. And what I’ve found over the last 10 years being on stage speaking these audiences where people got the concept of leading the team, but they were missing the point about leading themselves and how they can take control of the few controllables we have. And the more they learn to lead those controllables the better they have the opportunity to change their destiny and what they’re looking for out of life. And that’s where I’ve really rolled up my sleeves and offered a lot of practical guidance, some of which might some people might say, well, that’s not that complicated. No, it’s just hard at times, to build out the routines to, to change your thought process to to improve our focus to shift the limiting belief into an empowering one. And that’s what the books about.

george grombacher 2:38
I love it. So how much is it possible to break down? Is it nature? Is it nurture? Is it hardwired into us? Is it learned?

Alden Mills 2:50
You know, I actually open the book with a story that I really think kind of calls out the nature versus nurture. You know, people when they hear like, Oh, you were in the seals, and you created these businesses, and you did this and college athletics, you know, I can’t relate with you. And the first thing I have to remind her is Whoa, whoa, I have failed way more than I’ve succeeded. And by the way, I was starting off in life being told that I needed to lead a less active lifestyle. And let me just share this first story to kind of set the groundwork for folks. You know, 12 years old, I had been bedridden for about 30 days. They thought I had spinal meningitis. I had to go get a spinal tap as a 12 year old that was an uncomfortable experience. I did not have spinal meningitis. But I this is my third time having pneumonia. I get sent to the big city of Western Massachusetts. Now I grew up in a small mill town in central mass. And there was a pulmonologist there a lung doctor, and the guy looked like a older Danny DeVito. Right wrong bald scalp white wispy hair. He looked like he was constantly smelling sour milk and had this coke bottle glasses where his eyes look appeared larger than they actually were. And he talked in a nasally New England accent. And when you walked into his office, it wasn’t a normal doctor’s office and had all these different machines to blow into an inhale into checking the size of your lungs and those things. And after a while he he stopped and because I see the problem here, Mrs. Mills, my mom’s with me. And we move to the central desk in his office and he flips his chart. And he says, you see this line here? This average size 12 year old boys lungs. It goes your son he’s way down here and he’s pointing way below this angled line He was born with smaller than average size lungs. And then he flips the chart and he goes, and you see this line here. This is a airflow for a 12 year old boys lungs, and my corresponding.is way below that again, and he’s like, that’s because he has asthma. You see, here’s what’s gonna have to happen. He’s going to take medicine for the rest of his life. And he needs to lead a less active lifestyle. I suggest the game of chess. My mom saw my body position immediately go into defeated look, chin drops to the chest, and she taps me on the shoulder and says, Why don’t you go wait in the lobby, I’ll talk to the good doctor from here. By the time she comes out, I’m having a full pity party crocodile tears, making pools on a brown linoleum floor and she comes out on that offensive hand position, you know, hands on her hips, kicks my foot. What’s wrong with you? I look up at her. I’m like Mom, chess, I’m terrible at checkers. How am I going to learn how to play that. And mom had these long French cuticle nails that she would file to grip when she needed to get the attention of me or my brother. And she dropped to a knee and dug that Velociraptor claw on her forearm. And she’s like, You look at me. Now get you that medicine, but nobody defines what you can or can’t do. But you, you’re gonna have to decide this. What is it you want to do? And of course, you know, I didn’t get it that day, right? I just wanted her to release. And she made he made me say it back to her a couple of times. And I didn’t get it that week. But I did start to get it over time. You know, I went out and played basketball. The only bucket I ever scored was against my own team. I was so excited. I got the ball, didn’t forgot where I was on the court scored against my team. But she was like, Hey, you scored, go do another go try another sport. And that that nurture led to trying new things. Even if I wasn’t that good at it. Incidentally, I scored against my own team in four different sports, lacrosse, hockey, soccer and basketball. So I’m going to tell you, I felt a lot. Not easy. I, you know, I found a sport that worked sitting on my butt going backwards as a rower. But when you bring up this idea about nurture, versus nature, I would really argue there’s a lot of nurture that’s going on. Sure, there was a nature of me wanting to go do something, right. I don’t think people can just manufacture what they want to go do unless it’s really passionate to them, unless they’re in alignment with something inside them selves in their heart that makes their heart sing. But I do say there’s a lot of nurture, if you’ve got a will, for something that you’re excited about, you know, the will for you to create this podcast and to do the number of interviews you’ve done. When you may have first started like, could I ever get to that place? There’s a nurturer, a nurturer of yourself, reminding yourself daily, and the feedback you get from others. And you’ve got to supply the passion. And you get to help yourself, figure out the purpose. But there’s a nurture element that’s comes. And it’s very important, and how you lead yourself to who I want to listen to, to what I want to tell myself to where I put my focus to deciding what I want to believe in. Those are all up to you to any one of us. And that’s what this book calls out and gives you a series of tools and techniques to take control of those controllables to help you get what you really want.

george grombacher 9:13
That’s an awesome story. Yeah, your mom sounds like she is or was a great lady. Unfortunately, she

Alden Mills 9:21
was right. She lives on through this book now and, and with my dad and my dad was a great supporter. I was lucky. I had two parents that where hey, I’ve never, never done those things that you want to do. But if you’re that passionate about it, we’ll figure out a way to help you. And at some point, one of the things I talk about in the book is you’ve got to find your own board of advisors, your what I call swim buddies in SEAL team, you’re aligned with a swim, buddy. The moment you show up at a team now, a key piece of the swim buddy has two roles, reducing the gap and X perience between perhaps your lack of experience and their wealth of experience at the team, and the second is a much more emotional backstop. Because we are human, which means we’re flawed, which means we all have weaknesses we can’t do at all. We’re imperfect. And when you have somebody else that can be your backstop that you know, has your back, that can handle you without judgment, and you know that they’re thinking about the best for you. You can do a lot more than you originally, originally believe you can.

george grombacher 10:42
Within the seals, that, that I guess I was gonna say it seems easier or more obvious. In business, how do I do that? I’m not in a platoon or a unit, whatever the term is, how do I even that’s probably customary within the seals is that, how do I manufacture that or engineer that as a professional?

Alden Mills 11:07
One of our biggest challenges, and we have it all? And you probably heard the term, maybe you haven’t, our ego, is not our amigo, right? And one of the first things that we need to learn is to put check on our ego. And so let’s say I’m the young person showing up at the new place. And let’s say, hey, I really want to get to this position, I want to learn and have this knowledge in that particular position. First stop, seek out that person that already has it, that’s up there that’s been there. Ask that person for advice, build a relationship with that person, eventually getting to the point of like, Hey, I’m looking for some mentorship. You know, buy a cup of coffee once a month, could you talk to me about how you did this, it might sound really simple to do that. But to go ask for somebody’s help and admit that you don’t know at all, especially at a young age can be a really difficult thing to do. If you’re the senior person, appreciate that one of the great things you can do to help retain folks is by one making them feel valued and to educating them, which means educating them with on the job training is bringing in people that are senior to them to help close that senior experience gap. And so from one side, you got to ask for it from the other side, you got to offer it.

george grombacher 12:44
I appreciate that. So this is not complicated. It’s just hard, developing new habits and routines. I think about waking up early in the morning, and knowing that I need to get out of bed and go get my exercise and get my day started. And I do it 99 times out of 100. I really do. But I think what animates and motivates me is more from a negative chip on my shoulder than it is positive. Do you understand what I’m saying? 100%? What is what is that from? Is that true of you and and others?

Alden Mills 13:30
So let me ask you a question. Yes. If the source of fuel at times is the negative of Well, I don’t want that to happen. Therefore I’m going to do that. Is that a negative or a positive? That it drives you to get something done that you otherwise wouldn’t have done?

george grombacher 13:51
It just did it. So I guess it’s good. It’s good,

Alden Mills 13:54
right? In the focus chapter I offer up by the way, I love acronyms. I particularly like acronyms that people can remember because that’s where you like to use it. I turn focus into an acronym of five different focus tools. The O stands for own the outcome. And I introduce people to the outcome account. Now, I was terrible at accounting class. But one of the things I remember from accounting class was the T account. And all I want you to think about is a large capital T. On the very top of the tee, you write your goal. And maybe your goal is hey, I want to lose 20 pounds and I need to get up at 530 in the morning to do a 30 minute or an hour workout right on underneath that on the left hand side of the ledger and once you write a plus on the right hand side and once you write a minus and then answer these questions, number one, what is positive outcome, I’m writing this under the positive side. If I achieved this goal that I’ve written up above, number two, who does it impact if I achieve this goal? And number three, how does it make me feel? Do exactly the same thing. But under the negative side, on the other side of the ledger, if I don’t achieve this goal, and remain 20 pounds overweight, what happens? What don’t I get to enjoy? Who does that impact over time? And how does that make me feel? Now, this is breaking down the building blocks of envisioning process to see you in a future state of your outcome. What I offer up people is that many times the negative creates such a compelling story that you’re like, you know what, I don’t want to star in that movie. Because the outcome account builds out what I call an outcome movie. And when you build the movie out, you can replay that as many times as you want. And I use that, unbeknownst to me going through SEAL training, like, you know what, I know what happens if I ring that bell. I don’t want to go through life saying I woulda, shoulda, coulda. And that was a powerful motivator, which in that case, ironically, the negative became a positive fuel to help me push forward.

george grombacher 16:36
I love that. That is an I love. That is awesome. It is the outcome movie. And you just need to do the exercise the one time, and that is super simple. And, and so powerful, because that is sticky and it stays with you. It’s not obvious, though. It’s obvious once you think about it, and once you write it down, but what a powerful thing to go through the upside. And then the downside. You know, Joe,

Alden Mills 17:15
you you said you? You said, you repeated a comment I said earlier about? Well, it’s not complicated. It’s just hard. Right? That’s actually from another story in one of the lead instructors in our SEAL training. And it’s, it’s a key story in the second chapter. And he pulls us all together before we start SEAL training. And we have to take this PT tests, a physical training test for the fifth time. And if you pass it this fifth time, by the way, everyone’s already passed it four times, right. And he had he talked like this. And he said, candidates of the class of 181. You all want to know the secret of making it through Navy SEAL training, right? And there’s 122 of us all lined up neat military rolls and rolls and he’s like, Well come on, break ranks gather around. And we’re all like, huddling around him like a campfire to get free smores. And he says, well, that secret? Well, it ain’t complicated. It’s hard. But it ain’t complicated. You see, you just have to decide what you’re going to think about. Are you going to think about the pain of training, or you’re gonna think about the pleasure that training can provide you. Now he goes on and says, Now I know for a fact over 80% of you, you’re going to think about the pain. You know why? Because you have been thinking about being a seal on a sunny day. And you see that’s rubber seal countries, you don’t need seals on sunny days. She needs him on scary days. And he goes on for a while. But the point of the story, and I’m truncating it for our conversation today is is it that’s our first leadership decision. It’s our leadership decision. So what we want to think about that’s, that’s in our wheelhouse, not somebody else’s, yeah, okay, that’s painful. I’m cold, I’m tired. I’m hungry, whatever those pains are. Those are short term pains. We get to think about if we want to stay focused on that we get more of that back. Right, we get more cold if we think about our goal we are. But we started thinking about, hey, this is why I’m doing this. And this is what this could afford me and this is what I’ll feel like at some other place. Well, guess what? You can start to feel that right now. We have that power. That’s up to us. But as you mentioned, we have to pump the brake AIX, and we got to think about that for a moment. We got to re orientate ourselves. And that’s what this book does is it helps you pump the brakes. Think about it, reorient yourself. And then get after it. And open the tools that are already inside of you to go get what you want. I love it.

george grombacher 20:29
Pump the brakes reorientate go get what you want. All done. Thank you so much for coming back on the show. Where can people learn more about you? They’re part of an organization or a conference that’s looking for a speaker how can they how can they reach out? And finally where can people get their copy of unstoppable mindset how to use what you have to get what you want,

Alden Mills 20:50
or they can come to my website, Alden dash mills.com and the books are available at every local bookstore from the Indies to the Barnes and Nobles to the Amazons of the world. So thank you for having me George and I really appreciate what you do.

george grombacher 21:07
It’s always a pleasure if you enjoyed this as much as I did to Alden your appreciation share today share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to Alden dash Mills, a l d n dash mi ll s.com. And check out all things Alden mills and then pick up your copy of unstoppable mindset wherever you buy your books. And we could all pump the brakes from time to time get reoriented and then get back to going after what it is that we want. Thanks, good. Alden,

Alden Mills 21:38
thank you Joris. Take care.

george grombacher 21:40
Until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

george grombacher 16:00
So if I want my iPhone, and my Tesla and my Bitcoin to work, we need to get the metal out of the ground.

Pierre Leveille 16:07
Absolutely. Without it, we cannot do it.

george grombacher 16:13
Why? Why is there a Why has production been going down.

Pierre Leveille 16:21
Because the large mines that are producing most of the copper in the world, the grades are going down slowly they’re going there, they’re arriving near the end of life. So and of life of mines in general means less production. And in the past, at least 15 years, the exploration expenditure for copper were pretty low, because the price of copper was low. And when the price is low, companies are tending to not invest more so much in exploration, which is what we see today. It’s it’s, it’s not the way to look at it. Because nobody 15 years ago was able to predict that there would be a so massive shortage, or it’s so massive demand coming. But in the past five years, or let’s say since the since 10 years, we have seen that more and more coming. And then the by the time you react start exploring and there’s more money than then ever that is putting in put it in expression at the moment for copper at least. And what we see is that the it takes time, it could take up to 2025 years between the time you find a deposit that it gets in production. So but but the year the time is counted. So it’s it’s very important to so you will see company reopening old mines, what it will push also, which is not bad, it will force to two, it will force to find a it will force to find ways of recalibrating customer, you know the metals, that will be more and more important.

george grombacher 18:07
So finding, okay, so for lack of a better term recycling metals that are just sitting around somewhere extremely important. Yeah. And then going and going back to historic minds that maybe for lack of technology, or just lack of will or reasons, but maybe now because there’s such a demand, there’s an appetite to go back to those.

Pierre Leveille 18:33
Yes, but there will be a lot of failures into that for many reasons. But the ones that will be in that will resume mining it’s just going to be a short term temporary solution. No it’s it’s not going to be you need to find deposit that will that will operate 50 years you know at least it’s 25 to 50 years at least and an old mind that you do in production in general it’s less than 10 years.

george grombacher 19:03
Got it. Oh there we go. Up here. People are ready for your difference making tip What do you have for them

Pierre Leveille 19:14
You mean an investment or

george grombacher 19:17
whatever you’re into, you’ve got so much life experience with raising a family and doing business all over the world and having your kids go to school in Africa so a tip on copper or whatever you’re into.

Pierre Leveille 19:34
But there’s two things I like to see and I was telling my children many times and I always said you know don’t focus on what will bring you specifically money don’t think of Getting Rich. Think of doing what you what you like, what you feel your your your your your, you know you have been born to do so use your most you skills, do what you like, do what you wet well, and good things will happen to you. And I can see them grow in their life. And I can tell you that this is what happens. And sometimes you have setback like I had recently. But if we do things properly, if we do things that we like, and we liked that project, we were very passionate about that project, not only me, all my team, and if we do things properly, if we do things correctly, good things will happen. And we will probably get the project back had to go forward or we will find another big project that will be the launch of a new era. So that’s my most important tip in life. Do what you like, do it with your best scale and do it well and good things will happen.

george grombacher 20:49
Pierre Leveille 21:03
Thank you. I was happy to be with you to today.

george grombacher 21:06
Damn, tell us the websites and where where people can connect and find you.

Pierre Leveille 21:13
The it’s Deep South resources.com. So pretty simple.

george grombacher 21:18
Perfect. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did show up here your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciate good ideas, go to deep south resources, calm and learn all about what they’re working on and track their progress.

Pierre Leveille 21:32
Thanks. Thanks, have a nice day.

george grombacher 21:36
And until next time, keep fighting the good fight. We’re all in this together.