Did you know that your brain is most likely in survival mode? And, if it is in survival mode, there are only 3 ways you respond? Our guest today is Dr. Eugene Choi, shares with us some neuroscience about behavior within ourselves and others.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Our brains naturally have a fear of uncertainty, so help your prospective franchisees and customers gain clarity.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
- You can visit our guest’s website at:
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- Connect with our guest on social:
- www.instagram.com/eugenekchoi
- https://www.tiktok.com/@eugenekchoi?lang=en
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/eugenekchoi/
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
Dr. Eugene K. Choi is a Transformational Mindset Coach on a mission to transform leaders, businesses, and communities. He teaches executive leaders how to achieve and sustain peak performance in high-stress, high-stakes and high-change environments. Dr. Eugene created a unique, science-backed process that teaches leaders how to activate their executive brain to dramatically improve results and increase clarity and focus in challenging and unpredictable situations. He has a background in clinical pharmacy, neuroscience and business coaching and has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and executives optimize their mindset, reduce toxic stress, and lead with more impact. Dr. Eugene’s expertise in audience growth has also resulted in him generating over 11 million views on his online articles and over 30 million views on his short films. His experience and expertise in both strategy and psychology have proven critical in helping clients produce tangible results in both business and in life.
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] Tom DuFore: Welcome to the Multiply Your Success podcast, where, each week, we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom DuFore, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today, I’m wondering if you know that your brain is most likely in survival mode. When it’s in survival mode, and this is for all of us, there are only three ways in which we respond. We’ll get to those in the interview today.
Well, our guest today is Dr. Eugene Choi, and he shares with us some neuroscience about behavior within ourselves and others. Now, Dr. Choi is a transformational mindset coach on a mission to transform leaders, businesses, and communities. He teaches executive leaders how to achieve and sustain peak performance in high-stress, high-stakes, and high-change environments.
Dr. Choi also has created a ton of viral content and work, generating over 11 million views on his online articles and over 30 million views on his short films. His experience and expertise in both strategy and psychology have proven critical in helping his clients produce tangible results in both business and in life. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
[00:01:19] Dr. Eugene K. Choi: My name is Dr. Eugene K. Choi. I am founder of Neurohacking School. It’s a company that helps people achieve a higher level of peak performance despite however much adversity or high-pressure, high-stakes situations you might be in. That’s what I’ve been doing. I’m a former clinical pharmacist, turned viral filmmaker, now turned entrepreneur.
[00:01:38] Tom: Fantastic. When I saw your information come across my desk in terms of what you’re doing, I said, “We’ve got to have Dr. Eugene on the show. I just think what you’re doing is fantastic for this higher-level mental performance. I’d love for you just to really give us a starting point to build from, to talk about why you’re doing what you’re doing, and how you’re seeing it helping people.
[00:02:04] Dr. Choi: Yes, so I’ve had the fortunate opportunity of coaching hundreds and hundreds of business owners now. One of the things that I’ve noticed is majority of the time, the issue with the business owner actually wasn’t strategy. They already knew the strategy. In fact, they’ve probably researched the heck out of it. They’ve heard it from multiple people. For whatever reason, they’re not executing on these strategies that can help them get the results that they’re looking for.
That’s when I found out, “Oh, part of this is also psychology, mindset, the way that they’re thinking about things.” That’s where the resistance comes from. That’s what led down my path of studying how the brain works, the neuroscience. I have a background as a clinical pharmacist. I used to practice for many years, so it helps me understand the science behind things. I just started learning about that and realized, “Whoa, if people just understand some of the basics of this, it can be transformative for them where they actually execute on these things that will help them get the results.”
[00:03:02] Tom: As you started to go down this journey of investigating and researching, and now you’ve worked with hundreds of clients or coached with folks over the years, what is it that you’re seeing, or what did you maybe find?
[00:03:15] Dr. Choi: They just work a lot better. That phrase, “Work smarter, not harder,” that tends to happen a lot as well. The results are really amazing to see. There’s practical results where I’ve had a client who was only making $40,000 a year in their business, from that to breaking the seven-figure in revenue in a span of three years. Some other people who are like, “I can never charge a high ticket price for their offer,” and they come back that weekend going, “Whoa, I just closed four sales for a $15,000 package per person.” There’s that aspect to it, but then there’s also the feeling aspect to it. There’s a lot of times we’re emotionally feeling very stressed, strung out, burnt out. They just feel a lot better as well, both mentally and physically.
[00:03:58] Tom: How is neuroscience used to help create some of these permanent and transformative types of behaviors that you’re able to help people through?
[00:04:07] Dr. Choi: Yes, that’s a great question. Basically, what I did was I created a framework because I realized a lot of this stuff can sound complicated to people. One of the things I learned from my filmmaking days, which I was fortunate to work with a couple of people, we created viral content together that reached millions of people. It taught me about marketing without learning about marketing.
How do you create something viral, which is basically how do you create something that people like so much they want to share it with other people? Those people share it with other people. It brought the same type of thought process to my mind of, “How do I take this content of brain science and make it easier to understand?” Hopefully, it’s easy enough to understand that other people can share it with other people.
I’ve created a framework that I bring people through, and they work with me privately, but I teach them basic concepts that once you understand it and you can see it, it should create some immediate shifts for you, the more you practice implementing some of these things you learn. The first and foremost thing to know about your brain, it’s really simple. It’s this. Your brain can only operate in one of two states at any given time.
It’s one or the other. It can’t be both at the same time. It’s what I call either it operates in what’s called a “survival state” or an “executive state.” The thing to know about how a survival state works is it’s the part of your brain that turns on when you feel threatened in any way. If you feel threatened, your brain will try to protect you. When it’s in that mode, it cannot think. You enter into this mode where you’re reacting without thinking.
Imagine you’re walking down a path. You see a snake on the side of the path. You’re not going to sit there and start thinking, “Huh, what am I seeing here?” Your body will immediately react and jump away from the snake. The problem with this when it comes to business growth is your brain’s not thinking. [laughs] You’re often reacting without thinking, which prevents you from experiencing these results that you want to see.
If we compare that to what I call an “executive state,” this is the part of your brain where a lot of higher functions turn on. We’re talking critical thinking skills, your creativity, your problem-solving skills, your empathy, your ability to actually connect with someone. The list goes on, out of all these amazing things that it’s capable of. That’s what an executive state is. Here’s the big aha moment I had. It’s kind of shocking.
Turns out research shows that for a majority of our adult lives, some research even suggests it’s for 70% of our adult lives, that we’re not in the executive state where your brain’s higher functions are. In fact, you’re in a survival state. For a majority of our adult life, our brain’s critical thinking skills, our creativity, our ability to solve problems are not being accessed. The question is, why? Why are we in a survival state for majority of our adult lives?
Especially if survival state is only meant for life-threatening situations, like a hungry tiger about to eat you, someone’s about to hurt you. It’s only meant for those, but why are we in this mode for majority of our adult lives? It’s because of emotional survival. It turns out emotional pain can be just as painful as physical pain based on the way the brain processes information. What does this mean? We have to think about how often, every day, do we feel feelings that are uncomfortable? Stress, anxiety, frustration, depression, anger. All of these types of feelings that don’t feel that comfortable actually tricks your brain into thinking your life’s in danger.
Boom, your ability to solve problems, your ability to think, it’s shutting off. If we can understand this, number one is can we see that, that, “You know what? Yes, you’re right. A majority of my day is I don’t feel that great. I feel stressed, I feel anxious, I feel frustrated.” Because of that, you’re not accessing these parts of your brain that you need. That’s the first thing. If people can understand that, then we can move on to the next thing that helps you understand, “What I can do about this?”
[00:07:52] Tom: That makes a lot of sense. How can you use that information? I know about it, but what can I really do about it? Is there anything I can do about that? If I’m at 70%, can I reduce that to 50%?
[00:08:05] Dr. Choi: That’s a great question. Yes, you can do something about it. The first step is all about awareness. Awareness is what gives us the power to change something we want to change. What do I mean by this? Imagine you have a piece of broccoli stuck between your teeth. Do you have the power to remove that piece of broccoli unless it comes into your awareness? Someone either has to point it out to you, or you might see it in the mirror, and you become aware of it. Now, I’m aware of it, I can change it.
Here’s this interesting part. Many of us are not aware of what our own survival state actually looks like. This is step one is we need to become good at becoming aware of what this actually looks like. That’s what I teach. This is the first thing that I teach to clients. When I’m up on a stage teaching, this is the first thing I teach is we need to know what survival state looks like in our daily lives.
Your brain, when it’s in survival state, remember, it’s reacting without thinking. You’re doing it without thinking about it. You just do it. It can only do one of three things. Your brain only has three options when it feels threatened in some way. You enter into survival state. Fight, flight, or freeze. For people who are familiar with what that phrase means, it means it’s those are the three options that your brain tries to execute on to try to survive from an actual life-threatening situation.
In a physically life-threatening situation, it’s really easy to understand and know what this looks like. You might pick up a weapon to fight, because if you’re in danger, you’re going to pick up a weapon to try to fight to stay alive. You’re going to run for your life and run away in flight, or you play dead and freeze. Possums are great at doing this because their predators actually like to eat their food alive. Possums play dead. They don’t get killed.
Humans have done this, too. If you ever see those war movies where there’s a pile of dead bodies and you see the enemy coming, you play dead so that you don’t get killed by the enemy. Now, that’s easy to spot. What becomes harder to spot is, what does emotional survival look like? What are we doing when we’re stressed, when we’re anxious, when we’re worried, when we’re frustrated, when we’re doubting? That’s the thing to spot.
What does an emotional fight response look like? It could be, imagine someone says something. It hurts your feelings. Now, you’re arguing with them. You’re fighting back. Your brain in that moment is actually viewing that person as a threat, and you’re ready to attack them. Usually, it happens verbally. Hopefully, not physically. Unfortunately, it can happen physically, right? You’re verbally attacking this person in the fight mode.
The worst part is if you’re doing it to someone you love, because your brain got triggered. You’re not thinking anymore. Your brain is actually attacking that person because you’re feeling emotionally threatened. Some people who are in fight mode, it could be physical fights as well, or if you ever see road rage happen, that’s a fight response. I feel a certain way when you cut me off. Now, I’m trying to cut you back off. You see what I’m saying? That’s a fight response.
A flight response can be things like procrastination. Why do we procrastinate? It’s because the thing I probably should be doing right now, there’s some sort of fear and security around it. What if I do this now? I look stupid. What if I do this now and I’m right? I get judged. Sometimes it’s physically avoiding someone. It could be an ex, I don’t know, your in-laws if you don’t like your in-laws, or whoever people that you might not want to be around, a boss, a colleague. You physically avoid them.
One funny story I like to share about that is when we’re in a flight response, remember, you’re not thinking. You’re just reacting without thinking. I used to take the subway to high school in New York City where I grew up. My friend and I are heading to the subway station. You see one of these Korean ladies with a bunch of those pamphlets. She’s clearly trying to promote something, which is promote her church, trying to convince you to go to her church.
My friend and I immediately feel that reaction of, like, “Oh, God, we just want to get to school. We’re not wanting this whole spiel about going to her church,” but we see her approaching us, because my friend and I are both Korean as well. She sees that we’re Asian, and she walks over. She says to us in Korean, “Hanguk bun-iseyo,” which means, “Are you Korean?” Remember, your brain’s not thinking in flight mode in survival.
My friend looks at her and responds, “Aniyo,” which means no, but he just responded to her in Korean when she’s asking her, “Are you Korean?” [laughs] Our brain can make very stupid mistakes when we’re in survival for that reason, right? We’ve all experienced stuff like this where we make a silly mistake. Freeze mode is what happens when you feel like put on the spot. Your brain can’t think anymore.
Someone just called on you in the meeting, and you didn’t expect it. People who get caught in a lie, your body freezes up because it’s their brain going, “Quick, pretend to not exist so that this person stops interrogating you.” If we can see what fight, flight, freeze looks like, you’re giving your brain the ability to snap out of survival so that you can access these higher functions of your brain.
Now, it’s important to get really good at this, though, because it gets very subtle. There’s a lot of things people aren’t aware of where it gets deeper. What do I mean by this? What’s a deeper fight response people might not notice? The need to prove yourself. Why do you fight to prove yourself, unless you already view yourself as not so great of a person, unless you already have some sort of insecurity about yourself or self-doubt? Why do you need to prove yourself? The need to be right all the time. You ever meet those people?
The people who always have to be right? Why are people like that? It’s because, usually, at some point in their life, they might have gotten shamed, blamed, rejected, or embarrassed for being wrong about something. They fight because that emotional pain didn’t feel good, so they fight to be right all the time. The people who just overly interrupt you. Ever meet those types of people? That’s a fight response, too. Overworking can be a fight response. People who work too hard to try to prove themselves, for example.
I had a client of mine. He had this aha moment where we’re going over this fight, flight, freeze response because the rabbit hole goes deep of what it looks like. He had this aha moment. This is a guy in his 60s, very successful, had the multi-million dollar business, the beautiful home, the beautiful family, everything. He was wondering, “Why am I still so anxious and stressed all the time in my 60s, even though I have everything that I thought I wanted?”
He has this aha moment going, “Oh, my God, I spent my whole life fighting,” and I’m like, “What do you mean?” “I spent my whole life fighting to prove to people that I’m better than my older brother.” His older brother was an NFL football player, and he was sharing a memory with me that when he was in high school, his football coach said to him, “Don’t even bother. You’re never going to be as good as your brother.” That pain causes us to fight reactively. How do we fight? We try to accomplish more, get more status. Even though you get it, you don’t feel as happy.
A lot of the people think you need your fight mode because it’s what’s productive, right? I found that it always leads to a lack of fulfillment, and it always leads to burnout 100% of the time. Because if you’re just in that fight mode working, working, overworking, overworking, you’re bound to get burnt out at some time. One of the signs that you’re doing this is you might accomplish something, doesn’t feel that great, and you just move on to the next thing. That’s usually a sign that we’re in a chronic fight response, if that makes sense.
Another client of me argued with me. I think this is what a lot of successful business owners struggle with, actually, is they’re great at fighting. They’re great at doing stuff. They’re great at executing, producing results, but something’s behind the scenes where it’s starting to fall apart. You’re feeling burnt out. You’re feeling anxious. You’re feeling stressed, and it’s not going away.
Another client of me was arguing with me. He’s like, “No, you need this fight response.” He was bringing up a really good point because he was sharing a story about how he hit rock bottom. His second wife was leaving him because she was cheating on him. His first wife cheated on him, too, which is why she left him. Still, the judge ordered that he pay over $2,000 a month in child support. He had a couple of kids, went broke. His son was asking him, “Dad, can I have some ice cream?” He had no money.
He was scavenging for coins throughout his house, going to one of those Coinstar monies and those coin machines that you put them on. That machine takes money from you, too, because they charge a fee. He ended up with only enough money to buy his son ice cream. He couldn’t even have enough money for his own ice cream. He realized, he was telling me, “That was the moment I needed to fight. I needed survival where, every day, I needed to put my shoulders up and my head down. I had to bash through whatever concrete wall is in front of me after concrete wall after concrete wall.”
He’s like, “You need survival at those times.” I was like, “That’s a very fair argument. I’m not saying you should have done this, could have done this. This is just a thought exercise. What if, because you’ve developed the ability to activate your executive state more often, even if it’s for a moment, you have the ability to put your shoulders down for a moment, put your head up? What you might see is those concrete walls that you thought you had to bash through were only three feet wide.”
What do I mean by this? It means what if there were other options, better options, faster options that could have gotten you the same result that you got? In the world of that saying, “Work smarter, not harder,” when we’re in the fight mode, we’re just working harder, not smarter. We just keep spinning through the same loop. One of the main reasons this happens is when your brain is in survival, it develops tunnel vision.
Imagine a hungry tiger walks into the room. Are you going to look anywhere else, except where that tiger is? When we’re stressed out and we’re in this tunnel vision, there might be a better option, such as franchising, right? There might be a smarter option, but your brain just doesn’t see it in the moment because of the stress, and you develop this tunnel vision. This is why it’s so important to be able to be aware, “Am I in a fight mode?”
Flight mode, where it gets more subtle, is things like when we numb ourselves. There’s no judgment around any of this. We all do it. We all numb ourselves at times to emotional pain. It’s important to be aware of it, not judge it. By the way, judging someone can be a fight response. It’s usually because we are insecure about ourselves. This is why a lot of people gossip and say negative things about other people. It’s, “I’m insecure about me. Maybe if I put that person down, it will help me feel better about myself in some way.” It’s important not to judge.
Numbing ourselves in flight response can be things like overindulging in things like television, food, alcohol, sex, drugs, to the point of addiction. It’s to numb this feeling I don’t want to feel. The problem with that, again, is you’re not accessing the higher functions of your brain. Subtle freeze responses is when you hear some traumatic news, like some shocking news. Your body freezes up when you hear something shocking you didn’t expect.
This is also why I found out that I don’t think there’s such a thing as laziness. Someone might label a person as lazy, but something’s going on in their brain that’s probably a chronic freeze response. We can’t make decisions. It’s usually because of some sort of emotional pain that’s been happening a long time, whether it’s from their own upbringing or whatever the case may be.
If you can spot these fight, flight, freeze responses that happen in everyday life, it’s usually easier to spot it in other people. It’s like, “Oh, there’s that person procrastinating. There’s that person not taking action. There’s that person that has anger issues.” The big challenge is, can you spot it in yourself? We all have it. The better you get at spotting this, I can guarantee, it’s going to be a transformative experience. That’s just the beginning of the conversation. We need to be able to spot this first.
[00:18:59] Tom: One thing it made me think about, we work with entrepreneurs, help them franchise their business. Someone takes that step. They pass through, I’m sure, some of this fight, flight, freeze mode. They get through the survival mindset to take that step at some way moving through it. Then it makes me think about them selling a franchise. For franchisors that are in the business of selling franchises, well, that prospective franchise buyer probably has a lot of fear coming along with this purchase. Maybe it’s not you going through that, but maybe it’s a customer. In this case, maybe it’s a potential franchisee going through. What are some things that you might maybe suggest or maybe could help that prospective franchisee come through that process or help them understand what they’re looking to get into here?
[00:19:48] Dr. Choi: That’s a great question. Your brain naturally just doesn’t like uncertainty. It’s actually what kept us all physically alive all of these generations. It’s because our prehistoric brains don’t like uncertainty, because if you go into uncertain territory back when we lived in caves, you might get killed by a wild animal. This is why our brains naturally have a fear of uncertainty. If you’re the franchisor about to sell someone to a franchisee that’s very interested in purchasing, anything that you can help them have that sense of clarity will help them move forward.
There’s a saying in the marketing world where it says, “If you confuse, you lose.” What that means, if you confuse someone, you’ve lost the sale.” It’s like that experience. If you’ve ever gone to a fine dining restaurant where they have really fancy food, and you know how they have each dish there, and it lists all the ingredients out. Imagine you’re like, “Oh, this food looks good,” and then there’s this one ingredient, you’re like, “I don’t know what that is.” Does that make you go, “Oh, I want to try this now”? It actually causes aversion.
Anything you can do to help a person have full clarity, like, “Hey, look, this is exactly the step-by-step process. It’s a four-month process. Here’s a document for you that you can look at it week by week of what to expect.” Any sort of clarity you can provide for that person you’re making a sale that’s potentially interested in purchasing with you, that’s the best way to get their brain out of survival. Because if they’re in survival, they’re either going to fight with you and argue with you and nitpick on every little thing because they don’t trust you.
They’re going to flee from you, which is avoid you, ghost you, not purchase with you, or they’re going to freeze. They’re just not in a mode. “I can’t make a decision right now. I’m too overwhelmed. I’m too scared. I’m too nervous.” As the franchisor, it’s good to pay attention to. Is this person I’m dealing with right now in a fight mode, flight mode, or freeze mode? The more that you can see that, now, you can know what to do to help them with that.
[00:21:44] Tom: You had mentioned about your framework and some process and things that you take people through. How can people learn more about that, or get in touch with you, or learn a little bit more about what you’re doing?
[00:21:53] Dr. Choi: Yes, absolutely. My work, what I teach, is that’s just step one is the fight, flight, freeze response. Where the value really comes in, where it becomes even more deeply transformational, is it turns out your brain, by the time you’re about 35 years old, 90% to 95% of the brain goes subconscious. What do I mean by that? It’s on autopilot. For a lot of us, our survival state is on autopilot, which is why every day, if you ever have that experience, “I know what’s good for me, but I don’t feel like I’m doing it, so I’m not going to do it. I know I should work out to get my body healthier, but I don’t feel like it, so I’m just going to stay home.”
It’s because your brain goes into this autopilot mode. It’s for efficiency purposes, actually. This is why you don’t go down the stairs, going, “I’m going to put my left foot forward, my right foot forward.” You don’t think that for each step. You just do it without thinking. The skill that we want to develop is, how do we change that autopilot that’s not serving us? In order for a franchise to work successfully, the systems need to work well, right?
What most people don’t realize is our brain runs these systems as well. It’s a habit of thinking, feeling, and acting. We think 70,000 thoughts a day. 90% to 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts as the day before. Majority of those thoughts are negative thoughts about ourselves, which causes more survival state. Same thing with the feelings. Your body can get used to a feeling. If your body’s used to the chemical feeling of anger, it craves it like a drug addict.
You might not feel angry one day, and your brain goes, “Hey, I need that anger. Can you give me my dose of that chemical of anger?” Our feelings are chemicals. Your brain might think about something that it’s stressed about, and you’re going, “Oh, I’m so pissed off.” Well, your brain’s going, “I’m so pissed off.” Your body’s going, “Ooh, that feels so good,” right? Your body gets used to a feeling, and that becomes a habit as well. Then, because of these feelings, we might react without thinking on a daily basis. All the fight, flight, freeze response we talked about. What I teach now is, how do you change that autopilot?
There’s a lot of things that you can do to change that autopilot, but that’s what I started my community for. It’s called Neurohacking School. This is an online community where it has my course. We meet once a month online to talk about it. We’d answer any questions. I also have The Neurohacking Podcast. That’s a free podcast that people can listen to, to learn more about, how do you change this autopilot? A lot of our autopilot works against us, doesn’t it? That’s what bad habits are. That’s the name of the game is if we can get really good, at least seeing what fight, flight, freeze looks like, that makes you ready to learn about, “Well, how do I actually change these habits that I keep doing each day?”
[00:24:24] Tom: Well, Dr. Eugene, this is a great time in the show, and we make a little transition. We ask every guest the same four questions before they go. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey, and something you learned from it?
[00:24:37] Dr. Choi: I actually transitioned careers quite a few times now. I started off as a pharmacist when I went into the working world. After three years, I quit to actually make films online. I was working with a YouTube channel. They got pretty big. Now, it’s called Jubilee Media. They went from pretty much zero to 10 million followers across YouTube. I was working with them when they were starting off. We made multiple, multiple pieces of short films that went viral.
I think the biggest project I work on got 23 million views online. The miss was after doing all of that, I still ran out of money because we’re all living off our savings. Just to give you a frame of reference, every video you make needs to be making millions of views for you to make decent money. For example, one project I worked on with the first Asian American basketball player, Jeremy Lin. We did a film for him, got three million views on it. $5,000, that’s all it paid off. We were a team of seven people, [laughs] right?
We’re all just living off our savings. That money went back to the company. Ran out of money, and it taught me a lot. The miss here was, yes, all of the financial aspect of things, the business aspect of things, I didn’t know any of that. The thing I learned from that is there are times where the feeling of passion itself also needs to be paired with competency. There are certain things that it’s good to become competent in, like basic business foundations, sales, marketing, how it works at the least, so that you can combine the two, and then produce more value for your audience. Yes, that was the miss for me. It’s like I’ve run out of money multiple times because of that reason.
[00:26:16] Tom: Let’s look on the other side. Let’s talk about a make or a highlight, a win or two you’d like to share.
[00:26:22] Dr. Choi: It actually stems from the same story. It’s the concept of leverage. How do you make the most use of your time? I think out of all the businesses I’ve coached, this is the big aha moment for me that comes to mind now is I did these pieces of content that went viral. We’re talking like it generated millions of views. There are plenty of business owners who would kill for that type of exposure.
That experience helped me leverage that where, “Whoa, I know how this works.” I did that with my writing. One year, one article I wrote generated seven million views. At the time, I was getting mentored by a CEO of a big business, and I was a business coach for that. They hired me to be one of their business coaches. I originally hired them to be my business coach. They hired me because they’re like, “Whoa, in a year, you got a million views on your work. How are you doing this?”
There’s a lot of businesses that are struggling, getting more exposure for their business. I’m like, “I don’t know. I just learned it from my filmmaking days. Now, I’m just doing it for my writing.” Then one year, my article went viral, seven million views on it. I made in a weekend what the company was contracting me with, paid me for the whole year. It got me thinking a lot about like, “How do you create these moments? How do you build, look at the right information, create the right skills so that you can leverage your time the best?”
Ever since then, that’s why I’m a huge component of like, “If you’re starting a business, work from the top down.” What’s the most expensive thing, the highest price item you think you can offer that provides value for the problem you solve? If you can get a few of those, it’s a lot easier than trying to find 10x, 100x of those people paying for a fraction of the cost, like a $10 product. You know what I mean?
That was a huge win for me because I was fortunate enough because I learned those skills during those days when I got mentored, how to do sales, marketing, all that. Yes, my first package is out the gate when I started my business for a higher ticket item. It got me thinking a lot about that, right? That was a huge win, which led to a lot of the bigger wins, like getting into corporate now. They pay five figures for a 60-minute talk, a 90-minute talk, and that’s average.
That’s actually pretty average for a corporate company that brings in a keynote speaker, for example. That was a huge win. It was just learning, like, “Wow, you can leverage your time a lot better.” Then, from a heart perspective, it’s just like, “Whoa, it’s nice to know that you’re capable of these things you didn’t think you were capable of before.” Prior to that, you might not have believed that it was possible for you, if that makes sense, right? That was a big win for me, yes.
[00:28:56] Tom: Let’s talk about a multiplier that you’ve used to multiply yourself personally, professionally, or any of the organizations you’ve run.
[00:29:04] Dr. Choi: Yes, so that’s the main multiplier is through my content. I tell people all the time, it’s like, “If you find yourself saying the same thing over and over again or teaching the same thing over and over again, why are you spending your time doing that when you can record it once and multiply it?” In the marketing world, there’s a phrase called, “The rule of seven.” It takes someone up to seven times being exposed to your brand, your name, who you are, before they even remember you or even decide to trust you or not.
It’s evolved so much. It’s not the rule of seven anymore. It’s the rule of seven hours. It’s even harder to win someone’s trust these days. It takes about seven hours of them interacting with you to decide, “Do I like this person? Do I trust this person?” Then if you want a multiplier, it’s great to record content as an example. Who has the time to spend seven hours with every new person you meet, especially if you network a lot?
If you can multiply yourself by creating recorded content or systems, creating good systems in your business that can be replicable, that’s a great multiplier. The way I did it was through content marketing, right? One piece of content, seven million views. Another piece of content, 23 million views. I’m not doing it 23 million times. I did it one time, and 23 million people saw it.
[00:30:21] Tom: Dr. Eugene, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
[00:30:26] Dr. Choi: Success means to me, especially of now, I have three little children. They’re little toddlers. Success means to me being able to have that autonomy and freedom of choice and being deeply connected with my family and the people I serve, and being able to cultivate a safe space. That’s always been my mission. From a neuroscience perspective, that’s because that’s when your brain performs at its best when it feels safe. It’s not feeling threatened, not feeling worried, not feeling anxious. Yes, that success to me is being able to have that autonomy over my time, and also cultivating safe spaces wherever I go, whether that be with a client, my family, my friends.
[00:31:05] Tom: As we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
[00:31:11] Dr. Choi: If I look behind the scenes of like, “What is it really getting in people’s way from this bigger success, this bigger opportunity for them?” and it actually stems down to this one question. There was this leader that asked this really powerful question. This leader was being asked about relationships, about romantic really. How do I find the perfect partner? As if there’s such a thing as a perfect partner out there that you can hold responsible for your happiness, which doesn’t exist.
It’s a survival state like an insurance policy people create. Maybe if I find someone I can hold responsible, then at least I have someone to blame when I’m not happy. It doesn’t exist. This leader asked this powerful question, “Would you go out with yourself?” I remember, this was such a powerful question because my first reaction was, “No, I wouldn’t.” It’s easy to spot things you don’t like about yourself, be negative, be self-doubtful, and all that kind of stuff.
The bigger aha moment I had was, “Do I actually have a healthy relationship with myself?” If I don’t, I’m going to be transactional in my relationships. I’m going to use other people. Unfortunately, I’m not proud of it, but I’ve used my family for that reason. How do I know this? I might claim that I’m sending my kids to the best– sending them to a nice school or whatever. I buy all these things for them because I love them. If I don’t have a healthy, loving relationship with myself, I’m not doing it for them. I’m doing it for me.
Maybe if I do these things for my kids, I will feel better about myself. I will feel less stressed. I will feel more happy. Maybe if I do these nice things for my wife, claiming it’s because I love her, I will finally feel better. I’m using them to feel better about myself. How do I know this is true? It comes out in an argument. What do I say? “Well, I do this and this for you. Why don’t you do that and that for me?” Why did I keep track of those things?
Usually, when we don’t have a strong, healthy, supportive relationship with ourselves, it’s what’s preventing us from performing at a higher level. We enter into a lot of transactional relationships. Who likes transactional relationships? Nobody. I do this for you, you do this for me, or it’s just business. Business is very personal, too, especially when you’re talking about bigger deals, bigger things that you’re working on together that make big impact.
That’s what I realize is if we get good at developing better relationships with ourselves, and that all starts with looking at our inner environment, because when you’re in survival, it focuses on the outside. If you go to a dark forest, for example, you hear a scary noise. Where do you focus? Your brain will focus on the outside, going, “Where’s the sound? Where’s this noise?” The problem is when we feel emotional survival, your brain does the same thing, going, “Where’s this pain coming from?” It must be from the outside.
It’s because of this relationship. It’s because I don’t have this much money yet. It’s because of this circumstance. The most courageous thing we can do is look inwards and see what’s there. The better we get at looking at that, being aware of it, having a better relationship with ourselves. Honestly, that’s the key ingredient I’ve seen when people skyrocket their success. They’re working smarter, not harder, but they’re also feeling better. They’re more connected with the people around them. People enjoy being around them. [chuckles]
I think that’s what comes to mind of like, that’s what it all came down to for me is if you get into a better relationship with yourself, because it takes courage to do that. No one likes looking inwards because there’s all this junk that you don’t like. That’s why we don’t do it. It’s like that feeling of imagine you go on a spending spree, and the credit card bill comes in the mail. You don’t want to open it. That’s what personal development feels like, honestly. It feels so uncomfortable, but it takes a lot of courage to do that. It requires a commitment to your own growth.
That’s what I noticed behind the scenes is people who don’t blame others, they take full responsibility for their growth. This is on me, my thoughts, my feelings, and my actions. It’s because of me. I’m willing to take ownership over it. We don’t do that unless we have a healthier relationship with ourselves. I don’t know. That’s what came to mind when you just asked that question, because that’s what was most transformative in my life was to commit to my growth and take responsibility for it, regardless of what circumstances outside of me are happening.
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[00:35:04] Tom: Dr. Eugene, thank you so much for a fantastic interview. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is that your brain can only operate in either a survival state or an executive state. I found that interesting, and that for most people, about 70% of the time today, our brains are in this survival state. Takeaway number two is when our brain is in this survival state, we respond in one of three ways. We respond with fight, flight, or freeze.
What I found really interesting about this, because most of you have probably heard the fight, flight, or freeze from a physical standpoint, but I thought it was very interesting how he applied it to the emotional standpoint. The first step to help support you in figuring this out and how you respond is through awareness and oftentimes noticing in others. Takeaway number three is in marketing, it is no longer the rule of seven, which was seven impressions or seven touches in marketing with a customer, a prospective customer. It’s now the rule of seven hours. The customer wants to spend seven hours with you before they’re looking to make a decision. I thought that was great. Now, it’s time for today’s win-win.
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[00:36:32] Tom: Today’s win-win is thinking about Dr. Choi’s interview and really starting to think of it from a franchise perspective and a franchise sales perspective. I thought it was interesting when we spoke a little bit about that. He said our brains naturally have a fear of uncertainty. He quoted Donald Miller, who says, “If you confuse, you lose.” Thinking about how you can apply that to your franchise sales structure or engagement with your franchise prospects, being clear, helping them understand the process, trying to eliminate ambiguity will be helpful.
I really liked when he was at that session, and he talked about how, at one point, he was at this leadership program. Someone in the audience had asked about how you find the perfect wife or something to that effect. The response back from the presenter was, “Would you go out with yourself?” It really made me think about applying that in this case to the franchise sales perspective.
Now, my experience in working with franchisors is that most founders would not necessarily buy their own franchise because they’re entrepreneurs, and they’re creative and going out that way. To me, it made me think, “Okay, let’s walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. Let’s walk a mile in that franchise prospect’s shoes to help provide context to the decisions you’re making in the franchise sales and franchise marketing process.” I thought that was a great win because if you’re pursuing and approaching it in that way, it’s going to be a win for you and a win for the prospect to gain the clarity and make the process easy for them to make a decision to decide to go with the franchise or not.
That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to our podcast and give us a review. Remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise their business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com, where you can schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with myself or one of our team members. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
