EP 122 : Reading For Success With Danny Brassell

Introduction

In today’s episode, we have a special guest, Danny Brassell, joining us to discuss the power of reading, leadership, and success. Danny, a renowned speaker and coach, is on a mission to bring joy back to education and the workplace. With his reading engagement program and expertise in communication skills, he has helped countless businesses thrive. We will delve into Danny’s strategies for finding time to read, his favorite sales and leadership books, and the importance of storytelling for success. So grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and get ready to be inspired as we explore the fascinating world of personal growth and professional development. Let’s dive in!

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TRANSCRIPTION:

DYB Podcast EP122 Danny Brassell AUDIO RAW

Steve Burnett: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the DUIB podcast. Today’s guest is a highly sought after speaker, trainer, and coach known as Jim Carrey with a PhD. He’s spoken to over 3, 500 audiences, just a couple more than me, worldwide and authored 16 books, just 15 more than me, including his latest Leadership Begins With Motivation.

Steve Burnett: He helps entrepreneurs and small business owners boost their business. and impact by improving their communication skills. Dr. Danny Bressel, welcome to the show.

Danny Brassell: Thanks so much for having me, Steve. Thanks for all that you do. My

Steve Burnett: pleasure. Let’s lead with your mission. Would you tell us about your mission,

Danny Brassell: please?

Danny Brassell: Sure. My mission is to bring. Joy back into education in the workplace. And I do that in four different ways. First of all, I speak about a hundred dates a year, all around the world, primarily to schools and parent groups, but also to corporations, reminding people, take your job seriously, but don’t take yourself [00:01:00] too seriously because you ain’t all that.

Danny Brassell: If you think you’re all that, teach kindergarten for a week and those little ones will set you straight. Second of all, I have the world’s top reading engagement program, which in just over two months shows parents simple strategies they can use to get their kids to read more, read better, and most importantly, to love reading because I think that schools do an adequate job of teaching kids how to read.

Danny Brassell: But the question I always ask people is what good is it teaching a person how to read if they never want to read? I teach people why to read because I’ve never had to tell a kid go watch TV. I’ve never had to tell a kid go play a video game. And I never want to have to tell a kid, go read. I want them to choose to do it on their own because they love it already.

Danny Brassell: Third, you’d mentioned it. I work with entrepreneurs, small business owners, and executives on creating powerful presentations that gets their audience to take the next step, whether that’s to purchase their product or to donate to their cause, or even to just invest in their idea. And then finally, I am the North American CEO of a great little company [00:02:00] called CyberSmarties, which was founded in 2015 by Dermot Hudner in Ireland, which is a social media training platform for kids ages five to 12 that teaches kids how to use social media in a positive way.

Danny Brassell: So the way it works is if you typed in a message to me, Danny, I think you’re fat and ugly. It won’t let you send the message, Steve. Instead, it says, that’s not a nice thing to say to Danny. Here are some nice things you can say. And the research shows it frustrates kids so much that it slows them down that within three days they stop sending negative messages altogether.

Danny Brassell: The program has almost completely eliminated cyberbullying in Ireland. Now it’s in New Zealand, India, Turkey, and I’m in charge of North America. Very excited about that. So all of these are mission oriented, but they’re all very diverse.

Steve Burnett: Man, busy guy. My goodness. So very cool. A couple of these certainly caught my attention. The reading and why to read, and then also helping helping businesses [00:03:00] to, I think, present convert events on their Product or services. And as business coach for painting contractors. And so we have painting contractors all across the United States, Canada and Australia as members.

Steve Burnett: And then we also have many other in our audience this fact of somebody from Nigeria reached out we’re like, okay, Nigeria, you’re a prince. These are painting contractors across the world, and they’re anywhere from start up to two or three million, and so some are getting going and some are well on their way.

Steve Burnett: Reading is something that I’m passionate about, and we encourage. What what do you What advice do you have for painting contractors when it comes to reading a wider read and now from the context, they’re usually so busy running around, right? They’re either busy running around launching, trying to get past a million, or they’re 1 2 million trying to get their admin staff in place.

Steve Burnett: And trying to get their SOPs locked in and get [00:04:00] their sales training done. And so when it comes to reading, it’s usually audible, right? Cause they’re the way they have windshield time. But what encouragement insights would you have in regards to reading?

Danny Brassell: First of all, Steve, that’s what I love about your audience.

Danny Brassell: You were very smart. You made a very specific niche and you’re serving some really great people. So I commend you on that. Most people try to be everything to everybody and then instead they turn out to be. Nothing for anybody, . So I love that. Thank you. So basically for your audience, it’s what I do with my reading engagement program with kids.

Danny Brassell: There’s a couple of numbers I always point out to people to pay attention to. The first one is 67, so a lot of people say it takes 21 days to change a habit. And to those people, I say, show me the research on that. It’s completely fabricated. I know exactly where the number comes from. It comes from a wonderful book, which all of your.

Danny Brassell: Listeners should get written in 1960 called Psycho Cybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon, and in the preface of his book, [00:05:00] he said he noticed it took most of his patients 21 days to get used to their new faces. A lot of self help gurus, personal development experts, a lot of people that I respect, by the way, started telling people it takes 21 days to change a habit.

Danny Brassell: It’s completely… A bunch of nonsense. Back in 2009, University of London did a habit formation study and they determined it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days to change a habit. And the average was 66 days. I don’t like the number 66. So I throw in a bonus day, 67 days to change a habit. And it depends on the type of habit you’re trying to change.

Danny Brassell: So for example, if you want to drink a glass of water before breakfast, that might take 18 days to form that habit. But if you want to quit smoking, that’s going to take possibly 254 days. And here’s why this is critical. Steve, let’s say you go on a diet and you follow it religiously for 21 days. And then on day 22, you fall off the wagon.

Danny Brassell: You blame yourself and that’s completely wrong because the research shows it takes on average at least three times longer than [00:06:00] that to form a habit. Now, the second number which is really important is 20. So researchers were looking at the characteristics of successful students all around the world.

Danny Brassell: They were trying to figure out what are the common characteristics. They stumbled upon one which floored them. It was the number of minutes spent reading outside of school. So they looked at the low students, the average students, and the high students. The low students in the 20th percentile, bottom of the class, your F students, they average less than a minute a day reading outside of school.

Danny Brassell: That didn’t surprise anybody. It’s probably why they’re at the bottom of the class. But this next number did surprise the researchers. The kids in the middle of the class, the 70th percentile, average students, C students. They average 9. 6 minutes a day reading outside of school. And so if I’m doing a live training with parents, this is usually when the first hand raises and the parent says, Wait a sec, are you saying if I can get my kid to read 10 minutes a day at home, I can take him from an F to a C?

Danny Brassell: That’s exactly what I’m saying. There’s actually a lot of research to support this. But the next [00:07:00] number really blew away the researchers. It’s near the top of the class. 90th percentile, A minus students, some of your best students. Do they spend three hours a day outside of school reading for fun? No. Do they spend one hour a day outside of school reading for fun?

Danny Brassell: No. The average was just over 20 minutes. My goal is to find 20 minutes in everybody’s day to get them reading for fun. And this is where it relates directly to your audience. There’s two things everybody needs to know. First of all, Those numbers don’t have to be consecutive. Those minutes don’t have to be consecutive.

Danny Brassell: So you can do a minute here, five minutes here, seven minutes there. And second of all, and you already stumbled upon it, the research shows that being read aloud to is just as significant as reading on your own. So all these painter contractors that are driving in their mobile universities can be listening to audible books and picking out just as much as if they were reading the book on their own.

Danny Brassell: Obviously you and I are readers, so we, there’s a difference in the experience when you read it on your own. But in terms of retention, research shows that being read aloud to is just as significant as reading [00:08:00] on your own. And so that would be the strategy I would share with all of your audiences and be very specific about your reading.

Danny Brassell: I commented on your library When I saw it, I was like, wow, this guy, he reads exactly the types of things I want to read, which are, like Robert Cialdini influence and reading about atomic habits James clear and anything by John Maxwell, I just devour. Cause the guy knows how to make really significant points with great stories.

Danny Brassell: So you want to be specific about your reading as an entrepreneur. Now, in terms of just becoming a better reader. The research is very clear on this. It doesn’t matter if you read James Joyce or James and the Giant Peach. People who read more read better. It’s the minutes that matter. And if you want to kick back after a long day and read the sports section, read the sports section.

Danny Brassell: Never read the news. The news is very negative. Read the sports section. That’s a positive thing. So that is a very long answer. To your short questions,

Steve Burnett: that’s great. I’m going to go out, just try to chase a rabbit trail here, but not too [00:09:00] far. What’s the distinction or difference, or is there any research on scrolling Twitter, reading, scrolling Twitter versus reading 20 minutes of of leadership book.

Danny Brassell: I can’t say between those different types of reading, but I can We need to broaden our definition of reading.

Danny Brassell: I was with a fourth grader and his teacher told me, Oh, he doesn’t know how to read Steve. I was with the kid for an hour. The kid sent him out 20 text messages. He scrolled a whole bunch of different sites on his phone. He’s highly literate. She’s using a definition from 75 years ago. Reading does not have to be.

Danny Brassell: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Reading and if you wanna be a better leader, obviously I always tell this to students, I’m like, you are what you read. So read good stuff. One of the things that kind of appalls me, I have one of the top reading clubs online called lazy readers.

Danny Brassell: com where every month I give 10 book recommendations three or four adult level, three or four young adult level and three or four children’s level books, all under 250 pages for people who [00:10:00] say they have no time to read and they need something to do while they’re stuck in a meeting that they don’t want to be at.

Danny Brassell: But what appalls me is when I’m going through picking books for young adults, so many teenage books are about suicide, date rape, dystopian society. And I’m like, no wonder teenagers are screwed up. They’re putting these things into their mind. You are what you read. So read good stuff.

Danny Brassell: So if you want to be a better leader, we’ll read John Maxwell, read great leadership books. I read biographies all the time. This is one of the things I always point out to students. I’m. They love that I’m a reader. I’m like, no, when I was a kid, I hated reading. My dad was a librarian. I, I avoided the public library like the plague.

Danny Brassell: It always smelled funny. The furniture was comfortable. There was always some elderly woman telling me to be quiet. There’s always a homeless guy thinks he’s a vampire hanging out by the bookshelves. It wasn’t until I started teaching in the inner city and I saw a lot of my kids didn’t have the advantages I had growing up.

Danny Brassell: I was very blessed to both. My parents were in the home. We weren’t wealthy, but we always had food to [00:11:00] eat on the table. And my parents always read in front of us to us kids, and we had plenty of access to reading materials. There’s a great government program in almost every community in this country.

Danny Brassell: They get these buildings, and in these buildings are rows and rows of books. And look, this is amazing. All you have to do is apply for this free card. And they’ll let you take the books home for free or the audible books. They’re called public libraries and I don’t care what your socioeconomic status is.

Danny Brassell: They’re all over the place. And now with the internet getting back to your question, I love Twitter. I love the people say, Oh, kids are illiterate. I’m like, kids are reading more today in any given day than the amount of that was available to 18th century in their entire lifetime. I, Is it, is Twitter better than reading a a biography of Steve Jobs?

Danny Brassell: Probably not. I don’t think Twitter really serves you that much. Most of it’s negative, and people gripe, and if you ever want to get in a bad mood, just go on Twitter. People are all in a bad mood on Twitter. But I, like John Maxwell I read, when I saw [00:12:00] your book with Maxwell, I’m, oh, I love anything by John Maxwell.

Danny Brassell: He just writes I’m a person who loves stories. I, The last book I wrote The Leadership Begins With Motivation book. When I wrote this, it was because when I taught middle school, I was the only teacher in my school to have zero tardies. And the reason was I always started off class by reading the kids a Paul Harvey story.

Danny Brassell: I don’t know about you, Steve. I’m old. I grew up listening to Paul Harvey on the radio. He’d come on every day at 1215 and be like, I’m Paul Harvey. What’s the rest of the story? The whole time I’m trying to figure out who’s he talking about or what’s the company he’s talking about. And my kids love those stories.

Danny Brassell: They always wanted to hear it. But the problem is a lot of those stories are about like Sears and Roebuck. Kids in 2023 don’t even know what Sears Roebuck is. And so I created a book with more updated stories about people like Michael Jordan and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. And actually completely unintentionally, after I wrote the book, I read it and I’m like, huh, so many of my examples are like white male [00:13:00] Americans.

Danny Brassell: And so the book I’m writing right now is primarily examples with females, minorities and international success stories. Cause I think people need to hear about all these amazing. Things most of us focus on the negativity and it’s just going to, they say garbage in garbage out. My friend Keith Harrell, he used to say garbage in garbage stays.

Danny Brassell: I completely agree with that. Same thing with positive. Like when you’re reading things that lift you up, that sticks into your head. Again, another long answer to a short question.

Steve Burnett: Oh, so I’ve got a whole new list of questions. Let’s see. Now clarify real quick. Your book club is called Lazy.

Danny Brassell: Make sure you put the S on the end or else it takes you to a British porn site or something like that.

Danny Brassell: Oh, that’s not good. Free subscription. And it was funny with it’s been around since 2003 and within five months we were beating Oprah. We were beating Amazon. We were like the number one book club. And I asked my web designer, I’m like, what’s going on? And we discovered [00:14:00] teenage boys were going to the site looking for short books to do their book reports on and I just thought that Was hilarious because I was that kid I always hated reading, but it’s because people didn’t give me John Maxwell books to read when I was in 10th grade.

Danny Brassell: They didn’t give me The Killer Angels by Michael Schirra, which would have gotten me more interested in history than any of the stupid textbooks they gave me. Instead, they made me read a separate piece by John Knowles, which made me want to jump into a le drove me nuts. Give me something besides classic literature.

Steve Burnett: Yes. Yes, indeed. Thank you. The your book that you just mentioned that it was like Paul Harvey. So I’m officially part of the old club because I remember Paul Harvey, the best at open loops. You’re like, what, where, who? So your book is leadership begins with motivation. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Burnett: Okay. I want to make sure we, we got that. And so

Danny Brassell: here, I’ll give you an excerpt. This kind of shows you what the books like. These are just short ones and, okay. I use it now with my own [00:15:00] kids every day. My poor kids. It’s almost like a welcome back cot or how he used to always do a joke. I always do a story for my kids.

Danny Brassell: So here’s one my kids like it goes. On the morning of January 17th, 1977, Gary Gilmore in a plain t shirt strapped into a chair with a bag over his head, awaited a firing squad of five law enforcement officers to execute him at the state prison in Draper, Utah. Convicted of murdering a gas station employee and motel manager in Utah the year before, Gilmore would be the first person in the United States to be executed in nearly a decade.

Danny Brassell: Shortly before his execution, prison officials asked Gilmore if he had any last words. Neither he, nor anyone else that day, would know the impact of those words. Over ten years later in 1988, Dan Wyden, an advertising executive who co founded the Wyden and Kennedy Agency in Portland, Oregon, made something of a morbid pitch to a struggling fashion company.

Danny Brassell: He recalled the inmate’s final words and used a slight variation for his pitch, and seemingly everyone [00:16:00] hated his idea for the company’s new slogan. Trust me on this one, Wyden implored the company’s co founder, and the co founder, his company, and the public have not looked back since. The co founder’s name was Phil Knight.

Danny Brassell: The struggling brand he co founded was a shoe company called Nike. And advertising executive Dan Wyden slightly altered death row inmate Gary Gilmore’s final words, let’s do it, into the phrase, just do it. This is how you get… Those are the kinds of stories I love. I’m constantly… I devour things like that.

Steve Burnett: Me too. In fact, I just bought the book. I

Steve Burnett: just bought a hard copy to read with my son, Samuel, who’s eighth grade. He’s 13 about to be 14 and we just started homeschooling them. He’s been going through some of my books here and started them off with some of the motivational books. And then we’ll get into some leadership, but that sounds like it’s going to be a great one for us.

Steve Burnett: I’m looking forward for that one to show up.

Danny Brassell: Thank you, Amazon. Yeah, holler whenever Samuel needs anything. I would, I was Samuel when I was

Steve Burnett: [00:17:00] 13. Hey, there you go, right on. Now do you agree that at any point so something school teaches is one, to hate reading, but two, whatever you start, you have to finish it before you want to something to another book.

Steve Burnett: Do you agree that at any point a book loses your interest, you should stop reading it right away and grab the next one.

Danny Brassell: Oh, I love this question. This is a wonderful question. I’m going to do something for everybody in the audience. Cause I’m a PhD. I can do this. For those of you who had that large book on your bedside table that you started three years ago, I absolve you of that book.

Danny Brassell: Get another one. Books written in English last year. A book reading a book is like eating a piece of food. If if you don’t like the chapter, the first chapter here let’s say you take a bite of something. Oh, man, that’s nasty. Maybe it gets better. Oh, no it’s nasty.

Danny Brassell: If you don’t like the first chapter of the second chapter, you’re not going to like the rest. Stop it. There’s lots of great books out there. Find something that’s right for you. It drives me nuts when we force [00:18:00] kids to read certain things. I don’t even like the term literature. It’s like when people talk about culture, I’m like, yes, the opera is culture, but so is a monster truck event.

Danny Brassell: That’s also culture, different ends of the spectrum, but they’re both cultural. Same thing with reading. Some of the best writers I’ve ever read, I read in sports illustrated, it doesn’t mean that they’re any less than the Bronte sisters. What’s important is getting kids to read and getting adults.

Danny Brassell: I see so many adults that don’t like to read. Because they were taught how to read. I always give the example when I was in high school, I was forced to read the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. And no offense to people that love that book, but the book is about Hester Prynne commits adultery.

Danny Brassell: And so she’s forced to wear an A on her chest. And I raised my hand and I asked my teacher if I could wear a B on my chest. Because I was so bored reading that book, all it would have taken is a teacher to say, you know what, Danny, what do you want to read? What interests you? And I would have been an avid reader.

Steve Burnett: Yeah. Yeah. That reminds me, I had to [00:19:00] grind through Great Expectations and…

Danny Brassell: Dickens,

Danny Brassell: you never read Dickens aloud. I’m like, Oh my, I, my, for some reason, my youngest daughter, she likes literature. And so she always makes me read I had to read the great Gatsby hate the great Gatsby. At least when I read it aloud, I’m like, okay, the guy that’s got Fitzgerald knows how to form sentences, but we just did, it wasn’t great expectations.

Danny Brassell: It was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Yeah. Reading it aloud. I felt like the biggest imbu ever. I had to get out a dictionary like three times per page because I No idea what you’re talking about. Ridiculous. Yeah,

Steve Burnett: that’s when I need to read from the Kindle app so I can just hold on to the word to get the definition.

Steve Burnett: Speaking of biographies, I’m trying to think a couple off the top of my head, and they might be here, but Ben Franklin’s, I enjoyed The first half of his through all his brilliance and his discipline until he went to France. Yeah. And he started staying up late, sleeping in, eating a bunch of [00:20:00] garbage and chatting it up with an 18 year old.

Steve Burnett: I’m like, what? And so I quit reading that one. And I’m trying to think here as I’m looking back, there are a few others. Yeah, Elon Musk is first, the first one, not the one that just came out. Yeah,

Danny Brassell: I haven’t read the one by Walter Isaacson. I read the one by Ashley Vance, which I don’t know, but there’s two stories in that book that I love.

Danny Brassell: Yeah, there you go. There you go. Elon Musk by Ashley Vance. There is stories I love in that book is he’s having he’s having a dinner with his biographer. At a Mexican restaurant and he has a new girlfriend. He says I’m considering allocating eight and a quarter hours per week to her. Is that sufficient?

Danny Brassell: Who talked like that? It’s like Mr. Spock. The story that was that impressed me about Musk was his engineers at SpaceX were getting annoyed because he was asking him questions all the time on the floor. And they’re like, man, we already got this job. What’s he doing? Interviewing us again. But then they started comparing notes with one another.

Danny Brassell: They’re like, wait a second. He’s listening to our answers. [00:21:00] He’s learning from us and we think he’s actually learned it better than we understand it now. And I was like, wow, that’s, even now he’s running 4 billion companies and he still reads at least a book a day, he’s an avid reader. I always tell people that I’m like, there’s plenty of readers that don’t necessarily become successful leaders, but I can, I can’t tell you have a single successful, effective leader.

Danny Brassell: That’s not also an avid reader.

Steve Burnett: Readers are leaders. There it is. Leaders are leaders. Thank you. What are some other biographies that you like and would recommend for the business?

Danny Brassell: I love anything by Walter Isaacson. You, Benjamin Franklin was fascinating. You’re right. That’s the thing is as you get older, you start reading about your idols and there’s always something weird.

Danny Brassell: Oh, while he wasn’t, he was wearing a dress every night. Oh my God, the one by Walter Isaacson on Steve jobs. Have you read that book? No,

Steve Burnett: but a friend of mine did. And he was just sharing about what a jerk jobs was. And I was like, okay, thank you. I’ll just,

Danny Brassell: So that’s what I like about the [00:22:00] biography though.

Danny Brassell: Cause you, a good biography shows you the warts and all. And It’s interesting because he was a jerk. Like he, when he worked at Atari, they had to put him on the night shift because he refused to wear deodorant. And everybody was complaining about his smell. He always speeds, he always parked in handicap spots.

Danny Brassell: It was like he’d scream at people. There was actually a story though. I liked cause. He’s screaming at his engineers on the Macintosh. You got 48 hours to create this technology that’s never existed on the planet. He’s screaming at all of them. And guess what? Within 48 hours, they had created the technology.

Danny Brassell: And one of the engineers says all of us were ready to quit. And right as we’re about to quit, Steve Jobs, he holds up a pen. He’s like, all great artists sign their work. And he had all the engineers sign the microchips that went into the first Macintosh. I’m like, wow. That’s an amazing story of the perfectionist.

Danny Brassell: Probably the best story I’ve ever, I tell this story. I always get chills on this. This is a true [00:23:00] story. So Steve Jobs, he was adopted and, when Apple went public, he made like a hundred million overnight. And so one of the first things he did is he hired a private investigator to track down his mother.

Danny Brassell: Guy finds her in a week. She’s living in Los Angeles. So Steve flies down, he’s having lunch with his mother and she’s apologizing. I’m so sorry. I gave you away. And he said no, my parents have always been great. One thing I always liked about him. He always called his adoptive parents, his parents.

Danny Brassell: I appreciated that in him, but then all of a sudden there’s this Star Wars moment where she looks at him and she’s there’s something I have to tell you, Steve. You have a sister and it turns out his sister is Mona Simpson, who’s like a best selling novelist. She wrote anywhere but here, which was made into a movie with Susan Sarandon and Natalie Portman.

Danny Brassell: And they wind up becoming best friends. They talked every single day of the rest of his life. His sister’s Steve, you and I have the same father. I don’t know who our dad is. Can you hire this investigator to find our dad? He’s sure. They meet like for lunch about a week later.

Danny Brassell: He gives her a three by five [00:24:00] card. He’s there’s his information. If you want to contact him that’s up to you, but don’t even tell him about me. This guy’s a jerk. He’s a deadbeat. And so she flies up to sacramento her father their father. He’s running some small restaurant It’s very tense for about five hours.

Danny Brassell: And finally they start to warm up to one another And he looks at he’s like mona. Oh, man. I’m, so sorry about everything I’m, sorry, you have to see me like this. I used to be successful. I used to run big restaurants. I used to run the biggest restaurant in Silicon Valley. Get this Mona. One time, Steve jobs came into my restaurant and she’s staring right at him and she can’t tell your son.

Danny Brassell: This is a true story. I get goosebumps every time I tell that. That, that book was just, Walter Isaacson, I just worship this ground. Like he takes. Actually, I’ll tell you, my favorite biographies were Edmund Morris wrote a trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt. The first one’s called The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

Danny Brassell: It won the Pulitzer [00:25:00] Prize. It impressed President Reagan so much that President Reagan made Edmund Morris, his official biographer. The second one. So that one takes you up to the moment he becomes president. The second one is called Theodore Rex. That takes you through Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency.

Danny Brassell: And then the third one’s called Colonel Roosevelt, which takes you through what Teddy Roosevelt did after. He was president. I gotta confess to you. Before I read this book, I knew two things about Teddy Roosevelt. I knew that teddy bears were named after him. And for some reason, his face is on Mount Rushmore.

Danny Brassell: You talk about a six year period in a person’s life when he was 36 years old. He was police commissioner of New York City. When he was 37, he was assistant secretary of the United States Navy. When he was 38, he led the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in the Spanish American War. When he was 40, he was elected governor of New York.

Danny Brassell: And he didn’t even have an affair. When he was 42, he was elected vice president of the United States. Later that year, following the assassination of President McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt became then, and to this [00:26:00] day, the youngest president in American history. That’s not a bad six year. I’ve gone almost three months parking ticket.

Danny Brassell: This guy set the bar pretty high. Yeah, about the biography is it takes you through his childhood when he was a kid. He was sick all the time. And so he spent all this time reading. He was a speed reader. He had a photographic memory and he could read in six languages. They say you could give him. An 800 page book in Latin at dinner.

Danny Brassell: And he’d quote pages to you at the breakfast table. They estimate by the time he was 30 years old, Teddy Roosevelt had read over 20, 000 books. So now you have to say what my little ones say, wow. The kids all go, wow. I’m like, so we got to read. I read 10 books a day now. Many of them are scratch and sniff and pop up, but I do read 10 books a day.

Danny Brassell: But that book, oh my gosh. I like the writing at the end. Steve, if I could write like that, the very last scene in the book, and he’s taking author, author privilege. Basically, McKinley’s been shot at the World’s Fair in Buffalo, but it looks like he’s recovering. [00:27:00] And whenever Teddy Roosevelt is stressed, he has to climb the highest mountain nearby.

Danny Brassell: So he climbs this mountain in New York State at a state park, and he’s on that mountain, and this is where the writing’s beautiful. It’s at that point, he started thinking about all the different mountains he had climbed throughout his life. And he realizes, I’ve made the biggest mistake ever. I am the Vice President of the United States.

Danny Brassell: I have no power. And as he’s thinking that, a park ranger is running up the mountain with a telegram. And the next book begins, the president is dead. I’m like, Oh gosh, I wish I could write. It’s just, it’s nasty writing. So yeah, though, I love presidential by Truman by David McCullough, anything David McCullough has written is fantastic.

Danny Brassell: I love. I love Truman. I just thought that was an amazing book. And obviously, I’ll, like Ron Chernow is great. John Meacham is great. These are all Douglas Brinkley. These are all historians or [00:28:00] whatever for trying to think of what do I got? Actually, I like one I got one the Reagan diaries.

Danny Brassell: President Reagan, I didn’t know this. He’s the only president who kept a daily diary while he was president. It’s just fascinating. You’re like reading his diary. It’s fascinating. Every Thursday, him and Vice President Bush had Mexican food for lunch together. I’m like, that’s the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read in my life.

Danny Brassell: And it’s just fascinating. I’m always interested though. And then I know you’re interested in this too, is what is it that gives people a slight edge? What is it that they do? What is their habits? You were talking about Franklin, I was the same way with you. I’m like, wow, this guy was disciplined or whatever.

Danny Brassell: And then, then he went to France. But pretty amazing guy. You look at everything Franklin did. I really wish Americans actually paid attention to history and looked at all the sacrifices the founding fathers made. And look at ’em. It’s like when they were tearing down statues.

Danny Brassell: I’m like, why are you tearing down statues? What a great teaching point. All of us have good and bad. Keep the statue up and let’s teach the [00:29:00] history. Everybody, cause historians change their points of view over time too. Yeah. Yeah,

Steve Burnett: that’s true. How about, what are some. I’ll just throw out a few subjects here and see what pops out at you.

Steve Burnett: And I know when being interviewed or presenting off the spot, our brain doesn’t go to the correct memory places, I’ve forgotten like my own name when presenting sometimes. But yeah, I’ll throw out what are some of your favorite sales and or leadership slash culture books.

Steve Burnett: Now again it’s tough because a lot of it’s written for corporate. We’ve got to bring it down to small business for our painting contractors. For example, like one, I think sales book Jeffrey Gittimer’s Little Red Book of Selling. So over here, that’s a favorite. Yeah. And then Brian Tracy’s got great sales principles, psychology of selling.

Steve Burnett: Enjoy that one. And for motivation, Zig Ziglar, is a classic Right. Especially helped to get our mind right about sales. And,

Danny Brassell: Yeah. So I’ve been blessed, Steve, ’cause I’ve had lots of great mentors. Brian [00:30:00] Tracy I sent him a book. He had never met me. I’d never met him. And I asked him if he would give me a testimonial.

Danny Brassell: And within three days, I got a written testimonial from Brian Tracy. This is a guy that’s awesome. Top of the world. I have friends, Steve, that I asked who still haven’t written me a testimonial between a successful person. And an unsuccessful person. Zig was a great mentor to me. Jim Rohn was a great mentor to me.

Danny Brassell: Jack Canfield is a great mentor to me. One of the books you should definitely, it’s a longer book, but you can just eat it, you can read it on the toilet in bite sized pieces, is The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. When I first read that, I was like, oh my gosh, he’s put a 25, 000 coaching program into a 25 book.

Danny Brassell: The points are incredible, the stories are fantastic. I would have paid 25 just for the bibliography. Of books that I should read based on that book. I’ll tell everybody listening if you really, and this, I don’t care if you’re corporate or if you’re a painter, Robert Cialdini, the book [00:31:00] influence is essential.

Danny Brassell: I read that at least once a year. The psychology of selling and actually look at some of the old books too. Dale Carnegie, how to win friends and influence people. There’s actually a lot of great wisdom in there. Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking, odd man, Dino, the greatest salesman on in the world, those are three books written in like the thirties, forties and fifties thinking grow rich was written in the thirties.

Danny Brassell: They’re just as applicable today as they were before. But if there was one book, if I could only get one book, it would be Cialdini’s influence. And then he wrote another one a few years back called persuasion, which is also phenomenal. And it’s just, there’s so many practical, I was working with an entrepreneur the other day and he was putting together a presentation and he was doing what at a lot of presentations.

Danny Brassell: He was trying to sell his coaching program for 10, 000. He’s Oh, I’ll give you the coaching, which is worth 10, 000. I’ll give you follow up phone calls, which is worth 7, 000. I’ll give you, it’s called stacking the offer. It’s oh, it’s a value of 60, 000 [00:32:00] today for only 29. 97 or whatever. And Cialdini was the person and his research found you don’t have to do that.

Danny Brassell: There’s great studies that show the way the human brain works is all you have to do is give a large number first and then go with a smaller number. So it was like contractors for city governments would give presentations to city councils and they’d laugh and they’d say, Oh, don’t worry, this isn’t going to cost you 30 million.

Danny Brassell: It’s only going to cost you four and a half million. Yeah.

Steve Burnett: So people

Danny Brassell: are thinking it’s a lot. Oh, four and a half million is a deal. It’s not a deal, but it’s fascinating the way. The human brain works like every chapter. He has at least one, one little study like that where I’m like, Holy cow, does that work?

Danny Brassell: And I, I just think Chaldini’s a genius. And I love watching him speak and yeah. And I get him or is a great, get him or is a funny author and he’s a funny speaker.[00:33:00] I like Larry Winget always cracks me up. Larry Winget, he’s bald and he used to do this thing where he’d get a plunger and he’d find another bald guy in the audience and they’d put the plungers on their heads and toss rings trying to get them on the plungers.

Danny Brassell: Here’s what was amazing about that one, Steve, is… Everybody loved the plunger and it was memorable. And so he bought a bunch of plungers and put his branding on it. Larry Winger, he sells the plungers. It costs him like what a dollar for a plunger. He sold them for 20. He made like 800, 000 one year just on the plungers.

Danny Brassell: I was like, it was, I was just watching an interview with Kenny Loggins. He’s the guy that, he did Footloose the song and he did Top Gun Danger Zone. But he also, he did the theme song to Caddyshack, I’m Alright. And I don’t know how he was able to get it. I guess the producers didn’t care, but he has the rights to the Gophers.

Danny Brassell: And so whenever he has a concert, he sells the Gophers for 30 bucks. [00:34:00] He makes more from the Gophers than from the concert. That’s just brilliant. I love people. I was watching there’s a great show oh, it’s one of my favorite shows on History Channel called The Food That Built America.

Danny Brassell: And they show Henry Ford is annoyed because in the Ford production assembly they’re spending over 200, 000 a day. This is back in the early, the beginning of the 20th century, 200, 000 a day. They’re spending on. Getting rid of wood, because there was a lot of wood in the Model Ts. And he asked his buddy, it’s like his vice president, what can we do with this wood?

Danny Brassell: We’ve got to make it into a product. I’m tired of taking a hit for 200, 000. And he and his buddy, they go on a campaign trip, and the wood is wet, and they can’t light the wood. His buddy’s name is Kingsford and he’s Oh, I know what we can do with the wood. We’ll make it into charcoal. How do people [00:35:00] why these people are billionaires?

Danny Brassell: And you look at me, I’m like, Oh my gosh that’s just amazing. I love how people think that way. And so those are the stories I’m always interested in is what was it that got that person? When I read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography long walk to freedom when he was the president of South Africa, he created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Danny Brassell: This was the official government policy. Any whites that had killed any blacks during apartheid, they had the option instead of going to trial, they could go to the Truth and Reconciliation Council, which they would have to stand in front of the family of whoever they killed and confess to killing them and apologize.

Danny Brassell: And they were forgiven. This was the official government policy. I’m like, who thinks like that? And they credit that with being one of the ways that they were able to get everybody together. And so I’m like, that’s amazing. That’s a person looking at things in a totally different, or it’s I’m a sports fan.

Danny Brassell: I’m like, why is it? Michael [00:36:00] Jordan always wanted the last shot and Scotty Pippin didn’t want the last shot. Why is their brains just wired a little bit differently. I think that’s fascinating. That’s why we. We read about these things. So the people out there that are trying to figure out sales tips, look at people that are successful salespeople.

Danny Brassell: I want to see how is it, how is a person sell, I watched that movie, the wolf of wall street. I learned all kinds of sales tips from that. I’m like, wow, these people, they’re hustling. And that’s what most of the entrepreneurs are doing every single day. Is what’s that quote is entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life.

Danny Brassell: Like most people won’t. So you can live the rest of your life. So like most people can’t. And I completely agree.

Steve Burnett: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think I heard that from Jim Rohn first. You mentioned Jim

Danny Brassell: Rohn. Yeah, Jim. Jim’s a fun… Jim is one of my favorite speakers. He’d say if you want to change, change.

Danny Brassell: You’re not a tree. You’re not a tree. And Zig, one of my favorite ones that Zig used to say was greatest labor saving device ever invented is tomorrow. [00:37:00] Fantastic. I love those. They’re, that’s why they’re the

Steve Burnett: best. They’re wonderful. Yeah. Right on. Thank you. Thoughts about leadership, culture books?

Danny Brassell: Leadership again, when I saw John Maxwell on your shelf I start with John Maxwell. Let me look at my leaderships. Oh, for another sale. I love, I think your listeners, Harvey McKay always cracks me up. Swim with the sharks without getting eaten alive. I think Harvey McKay is

Steve Burnett: hilarious.

Steve Burnett: But here’s my favorite quote from Harvey McKay regarding sales. They say, Hey, Harvey, how how long should we follow up? And he says, till one of the two of you dies. Nah.

Danny Brassell: Here’s a quote I like, I’m gonna screw up the quote, but he says, I’ve known successful salespeople who were drunks, gamblers, liars, and thieves, but I’ve never known a successful salesman who sat on his.

Danny Brassell: But all day. Yeah, that’s true. Oh, Grant Cardone, obviously right now, he’s one of the biggest people. I work with Grant, so I should have thought of Grant pretty quickly, but Grant the 10X rules, fantastic. [00:38:00] Great sales book. You would had the one thing on your shelf behind you.

Danny Brassell: I like that one too.

Steve Burnett: What about some books along the lines of motivation for example, this one come to mind because you mentioned, how do you get that slight edge or how do you so I forget what you said, but it reminded me of slight edge by Jeff Jeff Olson. And then, which reminds me of Darren Hardy’s Compound Effect, right?

Steve Burnett: So it’s important to

Danny Brassell: see. Yeah, Compound Effect is a fantastic, everybody, that’s a short one. Tell everybody out there to read that’ll take you two hours. That’s a real short one. I like short ones. That’s what, again Think and Grow Rich, short book. Compound Effect, short book.

Danny Brassell: How to Win Friends and Influence People, short book. Greatest Salesman in the World, short book. And I like Ogmandino, I’m a big fan of, like the little parables, like business parables for success. So I like Steve Farber he worked with Tom Peters and Steve Farber has like the radical edge.

Danny Brassell: They’re always like these surfer parables, which are great. I love Robin [00:39:00] Sharman, not Sharman. That’s bathroom tissue. Robin Sharma is one of my favorite speakers out there. He wrote the monk who sold his Ferrari. which is great. So I like those business parables are great. Nothing too complicated.

Danny Brassell: Yeah I learned that from Ken Blanchard. Ken said something to me once, which was phenomenal. He said, Danny, why write a, an 800 page book when you could write eight, 100 page books? I’m like, there’s a lot of wisdom in that because Most people, you see an 800 page book, they don’t want to read that, but if it’s only 100, that’s not so intimidating.

Steve Burnett: Check out this little stack from Brian Tracy, absolutely. He’s writing the regular ones too, but this is, I bought this just for inspiration. I’m like, to your point right there. And for our listeners, I’m holding up a stack. It’s a stack of eight 50 or 100 page books from Brian Tracy.

Danny Brassell: Yeah. Just because it’s short doesn’t mean it’s not, I read Fish by Steven London and all those guys. I thought Fish was, that’s a hundred pages, [00:40:00] very, it’s a small book with very big print. I like that. I, I always feel like a Native American small book, big print, right?

Danny Brassell: That’s what I like. Because you want to feel like you’ve accomplished something too. There’s nothing better than, I was just on a flight the other day from New Orleans to Denver. And I finished a book on the flight and I’m like, wow, I, there’s nothing more fulfilling than actually going cover to cover on a book.

Danny Brassell: You’re like, wow, that’s pretty cool.

Steve Burnett: Now, by chance, you don’t have any information or data about, we, we talked about leaders or readers, but those and if, so there was the 10 minutes a day. Students went from F to a C, 20 minutes to an A, just 20 minutes a day. What about entrepreneurs who read, is there any data on the chances of them succeeding or the data being,

Danny Brassell: any data on that?

Danny Brassell: But like the book I’m going to give everybody for listening to me today, I have like different areas. I have entertainers. Like famous entertainers all had to read a lot. You look at like in the [00:41:00] military, General Schwarzkopf, they said that he could quote Shakespeare with no problem and read in four languages.

Danny Brassell: General Patton was nothing but military strategy. He read all the time. Actually General Patton, I don’t believe actually learned how to read until he was 12 years old and then he learned it in two months. But he actually, that’s pretty fascinating. You look at presidents in politics president Clinton used to say whenever there was a tense moment in the White House, he’d go out and read like a mystery novel.

Danny Brassell: It was actually, that’s a cool stories. President Kennedy, when he was president a journalist asked him what he was reading. He said, Oh, I’m reading this really cool spy novel about this guy named James Bond. And because of that. MGM bought the rights to Ian Fleming’s James Bond series and they made the movies.

Danny Brassell: That’s just based on a flippant comment from a president of the United States. Actually I think it was president Obama who he mentioned he was reading team of rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin about Lincoln’s cabinet, which was. But all it took was a prayer or like you hear Bill Gates will [00:42:00] say what he’s reading this year.

Danny Brassell: And all of a sudden everybody has to buy those books or Oprah. That’s all. That’s I’m a highly spiritual person. My, my prayer to God every single night is dear Lord, just let Oprah tell everybody to read one of my books. That’s all I ask. That’d be great. Yeah. So entrepreneurs, again, you look at Warren Buffett, all he does every single day.

Danny Brassell: is read from eight in the morning until eight at night. Elon Musk, still an avid reader, Jeff Bezos. And again, it’s what you use the Jeff Olson term, the slight edge. What is that slight edge? What pushes me a little bit farther than people? Here’s a strategy for everybody. Before I go to parties, I stop by the bookstore or the library and I go to the children’s book section.

Danny Brassell: I’m a lazy reader. I don’t want to read 900 page biographies. And so I usually go and look for a 32 page picture biography of some famous people. And so then at the party, I sound like this really intelligent person. Oh, did you know that Thomas Edison did this? And that John D. Rockefeller. And [00:43:00] I, and what I like about that…

Danny Brassell: Is it also gets me interested in people too. So I didn’t know anything about Jackie Robinson. I read a couple of kids books on Jackie Robinson. Now I’ve read nine books on Jackie Robinson. I’m like, I don’t think the guy gets the credit. He just, I don’t think Martin Luther King even happens without Jackie Robinson.

Danny Brassell: This guy broke barriers. People know he was the first African American. baseball player in the major leagues. People forget that he also played running back for UCLA. This kills me because I’m a USC fan, but he was a running back for you, UCLA and his teammate was the first black football player.

Danny Brassell: I’m like, man, how did UCLA get two of those? But, and Jackie Robinson was just good at every sport and everything. It was just amazing. So I got that from reading short little books. So again, don’t knock those when people Tell me a thing. I’m like, I like, I used to read a daily devotional and the pastor always gave like a neat little story, and those were nuggets to me.

Danny Brassell: I’m like, oh, . A lot of people, they collect cars, some people collect [00:44:00] coins. I collect stories. I’m like, oh, you give me a good story. This is a strategy I share with when I’m coaching. I’ll do two day seminars for entrepreneurs and we’ll put together, we call it a stump speech.

Danny Brassell: What’s the speech that when people don’t know you, how do you introduce yourself to people? And one of the strategies I say is tonight get a libation of choice, a pen and paper. I want you to start writing down every story that’s ever happened in your life. And I don’t mean the whole story.

Danny Brassell: I just mean triggers like the time I locked myself out of the car in front of Costco. The time dad spilled mustard on his tie at that fancy restaurant, and you’ll find that within an hour, you’ll probably have about 4 to 500 stories right there. So that’s the first part of the exercise. The second part of the exercise is then you look at that story and you figure out what’s the teaching point here.

Danny Brassell: You say, Oh this is really a story about responsibility. Oh, this is a story about leadership. Oh, here’s a story about accountability. On my computer, I got thousands of these folders with stories. So if I ever need a story, I have different, when I’m giving speeches and [00:45:00] then I’ll every now and then I work, I was working with a woman last week, she’s nothing’s ever happened to me.

Danny Brassell: I have no stories. Things happen to everybody, but if you’re going to be that stubborn, look at one of the most successful personal development books of all time. It’s Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, in which Napoleon Hill shares no personal stories. All of his stories are based on interviews of all the millionaires that he, he worked with.

Danny Brassell: You could write an entire book filled with stories just on the different people you interview. On your podcast, Steve Oh, here are the tips. Every here’s a strategy, not tips. I would say I tip waiters. I give strategies to my clients. But here are all the different strategies. You could easily format a book like that.

Danny Brassell: And now with AI, gosh, he’ll probably write it for you. So I don’t even remember what the question was. I’m going way too long on my answers, Steve. I’m sorry.

Steve Burnett: This is great. No, I appreciate it. I don’t remember what it was either, but this is I see why you’ve given over 3, 500 presentations because [00:46:00] you’re fantastic.

Steve Burnett: Not just a great communicator, a fantastic storyteller, which is. I’m more of a process and strategy guy. I’m like, here’s the process, and so I admire storytellers and I know that’s something I need to work on. So thank you for all this insight. This is

Danny Brassell: very encouraging. Look at what you’re doing.

Danny Brassell: You, you have a podcast. Most people don’t do anything. I commend you, Steve. You’ve done something. Most people do nothing. I, I. I worked with this is my favorite guy I’ve ever worked with. So last January, Gustavo from Ecuador, they should make him president United States is a great American success story comes to this country doesn’t speak a word of English, makes a fortune in real estate.

Danny Brassell: And so now he’s offering a real estate coaching program for 40, 000 for four months. Now, that’s a big ask. That’s one of the biggest ask I’ve ever heard a person pitch. I’m like, 40, 000? That’s a big ask. But we worked on his presentation, and that night he was going on a podcast, and I always emphasize to my people, I’m like, Jim used to say, you can’t pay other people to do your [00:47:00] push ups.

Danny Brassell: The way you get better at speaking is you just gotta speak. And so I said, Make the pitch tonight on the podcast. He’s but I don’t really, I’m like, Make the pitch. You’ll suck. But then tomorrow you’ll do it again. You’ll suck a little bit less. You get better every single time. Steve, he makes the pitch that night.

Danny Brassell: He calls me the next day. He’s Danny, you’re a genius. I’m like, did you make the pitch? He’s yeah. I’m like, did you sell any? He’s like 23. Whoa. Steve, reading’s my thing, not math. But if I calculate that correctly, he made 920, 000 on a speech we had crafted the day before. I’m like, what am I doing with my life?

Danny Brassell: But I love it. I’m so proud of him because he did. I had another guy. It was the same thing was he was very nervous. And so I said, just go on Facebook live every single day. Nobody’s going to watch the first day. You’re going to stink. Two people watching the second day. You’re going to stink, but a little bit less.

Danny Brassell: He did that. This is several years ago. He now has over 6, 000 people in his coaching program. And I’m so proud and it gets back to [00:48:00] you. He did the work. Most people don’t do anything.

Steve Burnett: Right on. Wow. Danny, I I really appreciate all the insight and stories that you’ve provided. You’ve been very generous and I don’t want to know you’re a real busy guy, but before we roll out a theory.

Steve Burnett: Question or a final point you’d like to make question. I should have asked, excuse me, or a final point that you’d like to make.

Danny Brassell: No, you have, you asked a couple of questions. Nobody’s ever asked me before. I love Steve, but as a thank you to you and your audience for listening to my long answers, I wanted to give everybody a couple of freebies.

Danny Brassell: So if you go to free gift from danny. com, again, free gift from danny. com. I’m going to give everybody a complimentary e copy of my book, Read, Lead, and Succeed. This is a book I wrote for an elementary school principal who was trying to keep his faculty and staff positively engaged. So I said, okay, I’ll write you a book.

Danny Brassell: So every week I give you a concept, an inspirational quote. An inspirational story, a book recommendation on a book you should read, but you’re probably too lazy cause you’re an adult. So I also give you a [00:49:00] children’s picture book recommendation demonstrates the exact same concept. You can read that in five minutes.

Danny Brassell: Nothing pleases me more than CEO starting off meetings with Dr. Seuss. I’m also going to give everybody access to a five day reading challenge I did online last summer for about 700 parents around the world where every day for an hour. I give you all kinds of strategies that will get your kids to read more, read better, and most importantly, to love reading and, those strategies work for adults as well.

Danny Brassell: And I’ll give you one final little ninja trick that I, I love to share with parents. A lot of people say, I’ll work in trainings and they’ll say I have nothing to read at home. I’m like, Oh, you do. I’m pretty sure you do. President Bush Senior, 30 years ago, signed a very important law in this country.

Danny Brassell: It says every single television set sold in America has to have closed captioning. So here’s a quick strategy to improve your reading. Turn on the closed captioning and people say wait a sec. If the show’s in English and the subtitles are in English, what good does that do? I’m like that’s a fair point.

Danny Brassell: Let me make a point though. Have you ever [00:50:00] watched a show with subtitles and not looked at the subtitles? It’s very difficult to do. Your brain is actually directed towards the text, and there’s actually research to support this. If you look at the reading scores around the world, the more kids watch tv, the lower their reading scores are in every single country on the planet, except for one, the country that has the highest reading scores on the planet.

Danny Brassell: Also has kids watching the most TV on the planet. It’s Finland. And people always ask how can this be Danny? I’m like because Finland makes really bad TV shows. And so what they have to do is they have to import all these old American sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island and Brady Bunch and they subtitle and finish.

Danny Brassell: The kids are reading all the time. This is an easy strategy. All of us can incorporate into our daily routines. And again, You’re working with painting contractors. I know that. I’ve painted so many dang houses. It ain’t easy, man. But it’s easy to put in some headphones while I’m painting to listen to an audible book.

Danny Brassell: It’s easy on the drive to work to listen to something like a podcast that’s motivational like your podcast where [00:51:00] I’m like, Oh, there’s other people just like me. This is what people need to know. This is what, this is how you’re serving your community. There’s a lot of people out there. And that 3 million painting contractor started off.

Danny Brassell: As a do it for the cheap painting contractor. Yeah. Oh yeah. The person learned and the way they learned was, they grabbed all this knowledge from all these different people. So thank you for all that you do for your audience, Steve. I appreciate it.

Steve Burnett: Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you, Danny. Give us that URL again, please.

Steve Burnett: And then also an email address, or if they wanted to follow up directly

Danny Brassell: with you. Okay. So it’s a free gift from danny. com. I also gave you lazyreaders. com if you want the book recommendations and then you can always contact me on my website dannybrussell. com. My last name is really easy to remember how to spell.

Danny Brassell: It’s spelled like bras sell. No, I never took any grief over that as a child. But I appreciate you giving me this time today, Steve, and I appreciate all that you do. The

Steve Burnett: pleasure has been [00:52:00] all mine. Thanks again. Thank

Danny Brassell: you. God bless.

About the Author

As a newly single father of two from MI, he struggled to start over as a paint contractor in FL, going door to door. His situation was so bad, even the IRS had mercy on him.

 Feeling completely hopeless, he remembered the story of King Solomon praying for wisdom. Could it be so easy? 

He felt he had absolutely nothing to lose. So, as a bankrupt, divorced, high school dropout, single father of 2 young kids, now living 1250 miles away from all friends and family, started to pray for wisdom.
 And while he continues to wait for the wisdom to arrive, what did come was an insatiable desire to learn and read books… 
Thanks to God for giving him the burning passion to read books, and attend seminars, (oh and winning the wife lottery) he not only cracks the success code and overcomes the struggle, but also streamlines his painting business in less than 3 years, published a how to book, then sold the company. Now he leads a business coaching company for painting contractors so he can help other businesses, like yours, to do the same. Hear more... http://www.DYBCoach.com/01 Or JoinDYB.com