523: The Art of Influence (How if You're Winsome, You May Win Some!) (w/ Chris Widener)

Brian Nichols  0:04  
focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Tuesday there, folks. Brian Nichols here on The Brian Nichols Show and thank you for joining us on a CT Another con that builds episode I am as always your humble host into the den. Oh, we got a great conversation in store for you. When we get there that I'll go ahead and get a shout out to today's sponsor. That is the expat money summit 2020 to head to Brian Nichols show.com forward slash expat where you can grab your free tickets to this virtual summit taking place November 7 through November 11. Five days 30 expert speakers joined the calthorpe, founder of the expat money podcast and hosts of this year's expat money summit for a week and I promise you will reap the benefits for generations head the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash expat and grab your tickets today, folks, I am so so excited for today's episode because we always talk about bridging the world of business and politics and how there is in fact a great opportunity and avenue to find success. And today we're gonna be talking to a guest who has not only found some success, but has found success with some icons to say the least join the program. Chris Weidner. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Hey, Brian,

Chris Widener  1:28  
thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Brian Nichols  1:30  
Absolutely, Chris, looking forward to the conversation today. Because number one, obviously, you've been living this world of living both a business life and a sales influence life, but also you have a political life. And we have a great audience here who asks time and again, how to bridge that world. But before we get there, I would love for you to introduce yourself to The Brian Nichols Show audience and really quickly talk about some of these icons, you've had the chance to, to know and work with Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, among some others. With that being said, Chris, the floor is yours.

Chris Widener  2:01  
Yeah, I've been a speaker since 1988. I've written my 23rd book comes out in October. And I've had some success with that millions of copies in 14 languages at one New York Times and Wall Street Journal best selling book called The Angel inside. But the book that's taken me all over the world for the last 12 or 13 years has been a book called The Art of influence, given my last 1000 speeches on a book called The Art of influence, and it's how to persuade others and persuading others begins with you. And so that's what I train people on is how to influence other people, based on who you are not just what you do, not just what you say, but based on who you are. And you're right, I did have some some opportunities to work with some legends in the early 2000s. I worked with John Maxwell did some writing for John Maxwell, and ended up working with Jim Rohn for the last seven years of his life and CO wrote his last book called The 12 pillars. And then I had a television show was Zig Ziglar in Dallas, called True Performance, you can still see you can still see that on YouTube. If you go to YouTube, you can see Google Zig Ziglar, Chris wide nurture performance, you'll see I don't know eight or 10 of the past episodes that we did. People say how long ago do you do that show and I tell him about 40 pounds ago. A younger better looking Chris wider on that. But no, we we had great, great time. And then politically, I got involved in politics in 2004, when my best friend ran for governor of the state of Washington last the closest election in US history, governor's election US history, 129 votes out of 3 million cast. I was a primary candidate for the US Senate in 2010. And I ended up doing drivetime radio in Seattle. And and now I'm the president of the American freedom tour, we go across the country, bringing President Trump and what we call the conservative Dream Team to cities all around the country, talking about conservative political values. So I've had a dual track for many years of being in business and speaking and writing books, but also being engaged politically. And, and it's been great

Brian Nichols  4:03  
in let's talk about that political, the bridging of the political and business world, right. And I asked that question, because I know I spoke at a business summit up in Wisconsin back in February, and at the end of the conversation is actually us focused on business technology, which is my day job. And a gentleman came up and in the q&a, he asked a question out of left field and he goes well, you know, Brian know you're overtly political, you know, your podcast is overtly political podcast, but you also bridge the world by talking sales marketing strategy, talking to entrepreneurs, business owners. So what do you find in terms of any schism, where you you have your political ideas and they lead to friction? Or do you find it to be the alternative where you actually find people embrace you for who you are? And I thought when you were talking about the ideas of influence, and you mentioned how it's based on who you are, that's profound, so I would love for if you could press maybe exemplify a little bit more in terms of as improvisers expound a bit more there that is, in terms of what you're finding how influence based on who you are does lead to success. But and then I guess the question that I got asked, Have you ever seen where it leads to some friction in the business world as well?

Chris Widener  5:14  
Oh, absolutely. Far more friction than then. Then, then the good stuff, I get cancelled all the time. I've lost a number of speaking engagements just in the last few months, because what happens is, is they call me up and you know, I'm a member of the motivational speakers Hall of Fame. I'm a best selling author. I've worked you know, I have a high profile in the personal development world. People call up and go, Oh, you're in we love you. It's great. Yeah, or event is this date, we want to hire you. You're fantastic. I read your book, you're great. I've seen your videos. It's amazing. Perfect, great. Put it on your calendar. Okay, perfect. Three days later, well, I took it to my board and one of the board members, they looked you up, and they think your politics stuff is a little, you know, they just aren't comfortable with it. So, you know, so you're out. So I've lost a lot of money because of my political involvement. But you know, I always say, I'm glad the founding fathers didn't worry about the money they were going to lose if they took a position. So and I've had some very famous speakers who shall remain nameless, but they just say, oh, man, I'm not willing to I'm not willing to say what I believe. And I mean, frankly, they're cowards. We need more people to speak truthfully, on both sides. I, you know, we call our tour the American freedom tour, right, people ought to be able to be free to speak their mind, we ought to encourage discussion, the free flow of information, the exchange of ideas, I want to hear from Rational liberals, I want to hear from Rational conservatives, I want to hear from Rational libertarians, and we ought to let the best ideas win. Unfortunately, we are so polarized in America today, that if you disagree with me, I'm going to try and get you canceled. If you disagree with me, I'm gonna try and ruin your business, not me, I'm saying that's what happens. I would never do that. I don't care what your political persuasion is good for you. If you want to discuss it, I'll discuss it with you. I'll make my case you make your case, that sometimes what I like to do, Brian, and I like to do it, because it's fun when it works. And I also like to do it because it proves a point when it doesn't work. I will often say to somebody who I'm disagreeing with or talking to, I'll say, hey, let's do something fun. And they'll say, what's that? And I'll say, let's switch roles. I'll make the liberal argument, you make the conservative argument. And when we do it, it's actually fun because you realize that the other person has listened. They understand it, they can articulate it, it makes me think, you know, what, are they thinking to make this argument, and it makes my mind crisper? What usually happens is they go, Oh, I can't really do that. Because they haven't ever consider actually considered the other opinion. So they can't make the conservative argument. I can make a liberal argument, you give me a topic, I can make a liberal argument, because I know what they think I know where they draw their conclusions from. I know what the rationale is, I disagree with it. But I've listened and I've considered it. And that's the way America used to be people would consider and listen, they come to different conclusions. But they would consider and they listen, and they debate and it wasn't about Daxing. And, you know, all these kinds of things. It's happening now I just heard a friend of mine today told me about something that happened near them a second amendment group, somebody came to them and went to their offices and broke the boat went to his house, pardon me or pardon me his office and broke the window and threw a Molotov cocktail in there and burned it to the ground. Wow. Come on. We don't need to do that kind of stuff. We need to discuss we need to vote. We need to get people out there and in the marketplace of ideas, and have these discussions so we can move forward. Unfortunately, we're just not there as a country anymore, I don't believe

Brian Nichols  9:04  
Yeah, I remember thinking back to some sales legends myself. And I've listened to and gotten to know over the years, you know, I remember first, I was watching a video on YouTube and I saw Jeffrey Gitomer wearing an enjoy capitalism shirt and I thought, oh, okay, I like that. And then I also did it for us funny too. Well, and then I listened to his podcast, right? It's LR di and all sudden I'm hearing him talk about some of his favorite books. And one of his favorite books is Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. And I'm like, Get out of here. And it hit me like, Hey, he's, he's kind of probably on our team, if you will. And then I you know, listen to Victor Antonio. And he's, you know, good friend and mentor.

Chris Widener  9:42  
Victor Victor's Amazing. Amazing. I think he's the best Latinos. He's one of the best speakers in America today. He's the best Latino speaker in America today. Just fantastic.

Brian Nichols  9:53  
Oh, Victor is incredible. I'm a huge, huge fan of Victor and Tracy.

Chris Widener  9:56  
I don't know if you've had Brian Tracy. But no, no, he's nonetheless, he would be a good guy to have on the show because he's always been very upfront with his political ideas. Now, the other thing that you'll find with a lot of folks is there'll be conservative fiscally, but there'll be socially more libertarian or liberal in that regard, but fiscally, most of these business speakers are going to be conservative fiscally, because, frankly, liberal policies, monetary policies get you what we're living through,

Brian Nichols  10:24  
right? Oh, my God, no kidding. I know, I just sat down with a business owner. Today, literally. And this is the benefit I love about being still in the world of sales and living every single day is I get to hear what's happening. His prices have gone up 35% across the board, he's like, I don't know what to do. Because I can't like my fixed costs. I mean, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. And you feel the pain you feel because there's still the problem is they have to have better solve, but they just can't do it. They can't find the cash. And I guess we need more people right now right to actually stand up and be their authentic selves and a statement like this isn't right. When unless do it

Chris Widener  11:01  
in a way that is winsome? Yes. One of the phrases that I coined and I love it, because I think it makes a lot of good points. And that is, in order to win some, you must be winsome. And, and I really believe that you can't be a jerk. You know, sometimes, the Bible says to speak the truth in love. And I think that's a great merger, right? You want to speak the truth, but you want to do it in love. Some people they want speak the truth, I'm not gonna say anything I'm not gonna, you know, is everybody can do whatever they want to do, I'm not gonna say something's wrong. And they just love everybody. Well, society of people don't move forward if you just do that. But then there's other people who they just speak the truth. And they don't, they don't demonstrate the love, and people's honesty, truth teller, and I'm like, now you're kind of a jerk. You know, speaking the truth in love means considering the other person's interests and doing it out of helping the other person. But sometimes you need to say something that they're not necessarily going to like. And you know, there's an old biblical proverb that says, wounds from a friend can be trusted. I want people to know that even though it might hurt, you can trust me that I'm saying it, because I believe that it's the right thing, and it'll help you out. We need to be winsome, you know, the old Ronald Reagan, happy warrior kind of thing. And I just, I think that we would do far better if we could do that.

Brian Nichols  12:25  
Amen. I can't agree more. And I frankly, that's why I've been trying to encourage business owners to to stand up, but not necessarily fight back, but just to speak your values. And don't be afraid of, to your point, the canceled culture, it's going to be there no matter what it's when we say, Nah, when we canceled the canceled culture, that's when we actually can reclaim the control. And what I wanted to do as we move forward to the next part of the conversation is to kind of focus on taking control of what's going to happen here going forward, we have a recession down the road, and it seems that a lot of business owners have a decision to make in terms of how they're going to approach this from a leadership standpoint. Now before we get there, though, I do have to give a special shout out a live on air shout out to today's sponsor, and that is Eagles Eagles is a phenomenal sponsor. They do CBD products, but they also do CBD rolling I've been living on the Eagles CBD free gel the past few days, I helped a friend whose parents they were hit by a tornado and we cut down about 15 or so trees and in my helping with the cutting the trees and throwing logs I twist it just just the wrong way it happens Chris and pull my back. Well, this has been saving my back I'm gonna tell you this has been my lifesaver. And folks if you want to go ahead and get your your Eagles free shell will go the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash evils. You can grab that plus you'll get it for for 5050 My goodness, though, don't kill me if I do that. 15% off. There we go. So one more time Brian Nichols show forward slash evils. Now, Chris, let's talk about this looming recession. I've heard from business owners and I'm having this conversation you know, daily with with leaders in their industries that it's getting tough. They're seeing the the inflation it's hitting right now. And we're seeing it's only gonna get worse. And now there's the looming recession, where you're starting to see a companies are scaling back in terms of planning their projects long term. And also they're starting to tighten the belt, the budgets are being restrained, and they're looking to either a use their existing cash flow more effectively or be cut costs. So there's a lot of decisions that a lot of leaders have to make right now. And there's gonna be a lot of turmoil that's gonna be happening over the next few months to a couple years. So you've been through this. You've seen the recessions in the past, and I'm sure you've coached business leaders in the past as well. What some sound advice for for business professionals and leaders as they're going through this tumultuous time, especially over the next few years with economic uncertainty, and I'm sure it's gonna be inflationary and based on the recession as well.

Chris Widener  14:52  
Well, you're about to learn some character. You're about to learn some perseverance. Yeah. You're about to learn some tonight. acity you're gonna give a, you're gonna have an opportunity to be an optimist in the face of some realistic, negative situations. You know, I was just thinking today about somebody who lives 20 miles from work, and their car gets 20 miles to the gallon, and they work five days a week, so they're spending two gallons a day. So there's 10 gallons a week. And, you know, gas at $5 instead of $2. You know, they used to spend $20 a week, now they're spending, or $2, at 10 gallons would be $20 a week, now, they're now they're going to spend five times 20 hours or 10 gallons, $50 weeks, what's an extra $30 A week times four weeks, it's an extra $120 a month, and $120 a month, if you're, you know, a lower income $3,000 a month, that's, that's a significant tax. Now, Joe Biden says, you know, anybody under $400,000 won't pay any extra, but they are going to pay extra, they're paying extra already at the gas pump. And of course, most things get trucked around, which means that trucking things around those big trucks at $5 $6 $7. In some states, now, they have to pass that along to the consumer, because it costs more to move that truckload full of stuff and, and there's 10s of 1000s, maybe millions of hundreds of 1000s, millions of trucks out on the roads, prices are going up, everything is going up. And it particularly hurts the people who are lower income. You know, if you're making a million dollars a year or more, it's not going to bother you as much. Or even, you know, $250,000 a year, although in some major metropolis is now major cities, you know, where houses are million dollars plus, even $250,000, if you got some kids going to college, and you know those kinds of things, it's going to be tough. And I just think we're just going to have to first of all vote, right? Vote, people who are going to make a difference in this vote for people who are going to create energy independence, vote for people who are going to be able to figure out the supply chain issues, you know, vote for people who are going to have positive economic policy, but you know, we're looking at, you know, nine months before the Republicans take the House and Senate back, and even then they're still gonna have a gentleman in the White House who loves to just make executive orders and kill businesses and, and those kinds of things. So we're looking at two more years before we have a chance to be able to replace him. So we've got a, we've got a slog ahead of us. And it's really unfortunate, and I don't know what we're going to be able to do other than just, you know, put up with it, make our voices heard, I would suggest people get a plan B, you know, there's tons and tons of side little businesses that people can do in the evenings, on the weekends, those kinds of things, whether it's a, you know, a network marketing business, or you know, you're you're taking some of your hobbies, and maybe you're you make ads and shirts, or you do woodworking or you know, all those kinds of things, I wouldn't have a plan B to generate some extra income, maybe buying and selling things on Ebay. I heard about a guy it was kind of interesting, a pastor who he was, I don't think he ever made more than about $60,000 a year. But his he loved high end watches. Well, when he retired his sons, I think they gave him $10,000. They each kicked in $5,000 to start his watch trading business. Well, now the guy makes like 200 grand a year trading, I end watches. He makes like three times more in retirement than he ever did as a pastor, because he taught himself to know everything about high end watches. And now he buys and sells them and trades them but it's going to be tough for the next few years. I don't I don't think there's any way that you can sugarcoat that.

Brian Nichols  19:09  
All right, and I know we're hard pressed for time. But I do you have to ask this final question. Because, yes, you are a part of the American freedom tour and you're going across the United States. With President Donald Trump, you're talking to 1000s Millions of Americans about the issues as we talked about here in the show that they care about. So number one, what would you say are the top issues and they'd be like the top three issues right now you're hearing from people? And number two, the question that's on everybody's mind, Chris Trump 2024 Is it happening with

Chris Widener  19:39  
that? What's gonna be the question? I'll start with that one, I don't know. He hasn't informed me of his decisions yet. But I'll probably find out about at the same time you do. I would love for him to I mean, you know, people get so wrapped up in in, you know, his personality and I find him to be gregarious and fun and light hearted and Funny one of my favorite pictures with me and President Trump is him laugh as him. I'm laughing. And I can't remember what he was saying. But he's a funny guy. He's got an amazing grasp of facts and figures. And, you know, he doesn't use notes during his his speech. Brilliant speaker. But no, I don't have any idea. When I hear the things that people are concerned about. They're concerned about money. It's always pocket book issues. You know, the one thing that Bill Clinton said that was really true was it's the economy stupid. And that's how we beat George Bush Senior. And so it's important for us to understand people vote their their pocketbooks. I think public safety. I think people you know, they read the stories on the Internet, or they watch television, and they see crime. And these these woke week DBAs are letting people out I think people are very interested in that kind of thing. I think people have to be concerned about the looming showdown with Russia. And the fact that that Putin is even using the words nuclear war. He threatened to destroy Europe yesterday at an event. And we just continue to engage ourselves in Ukraine. I think people are, are interested in that, that nobody wants to get nuked over what's happening in Ukraine. And so, you know, it comes down to money and safety for most people. Nobody's sitting around. You know, when they do these, these polls, nobody says I'm very concerned about what happened on January 6, nobody cares. We saw it on television. It was not nearly an insurrection, it wasn't even close to and it's who goes to an insurrection with no weapons, you know, and antlers. Yeah. And antlers in fur coats and snap selfies while they're walking in between the red velvet ropes. No. And by the way, the police who opened the doors and allowed people to walk in, they're not concerned with that. There were some bad things that happened. And if somebody broke the law, the established law, they ought to be punished according to that law. But nobody's sitting around going, oh, let's figure all that stuff out. Because they don't believe it. It wasn't an interaction. You don't have a non weaponized interaction.

Brian Nichols  22:17  
All right, Chris, we are now officially are pressed for time. So with that being said a while give folks a chance to continue the conversation. So where can they go ahead and find you online? If they want to reach out?

Chris Widener  22:27  
Yeah, they're interested in the American freedom, joy, they should absolutely go to American freedom tour.com We're coming to a city near most of the folks who are listening to this at some point in the future American freedom tour.com If they want to follow me, I'm on truth social, Chris Weidner at Chris Wagner. I'm also on Twitter at Chris Weidner. I'm on Facebook at Chris whitener speaker and we'd love to connect with folks.

Brian Nichols  22:52  
Perfect. Alright, folks, so how about this, we'll make it easy for you. If you're the audio listener, all you got to do is click the artwork in your podcast catcher, it'll bring you right to Brian Nichols show.com, where you can find yesterday's episode plus the entire transcript, but also all of Chris's social media links and if you're our YouTube watcher will please do me a favor number one, make sure you hit the subscribe button in that little bell notification. So you're not missing a single episode. And then number two, yeah, we'll include all those links for you right below. And also, by the way, did you check out our episode from yesterday, I went ahead, I gave you five tips, you could go ahead and still crush your sales quota, even if we're facing a recession, pretty topical conversation based on what we talked about today with Chris and folks, thank you for joining us on today's episode of The Brian Nichols Show. If you enjoy the episode, please go ahead and give it a share. And when you do give Chris a tag and when you do it also please give yours truly a tag as well at be Nichols liberty, but with that being said, Folks, thank you for joining us on today's episode. It's Brian Nichols signing off for Chris Whitener.

Unknown Speaker  23:45  
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