Welcome back Bridge Builders to Bread to Lead, the podcast transforming leadership across industries.

I'm your host, Dr.

Jake Taylor-Jacobs, and I'm thrilled that you're here.

We're currently ranked as the 30th top business and leadership podcast nationwide, and it's all thanks to listeners like you.

Bridge Builders, if you haven't already grabbed a copy of my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon, it's packed with strategies to elevate your leadership game.

Got questions or ideas for the show?

Visit us at BreadToLead.com.

And if you're finding value here, please take a moment to rate and review us on Apple Podcast.

Your support helps us reach more leaders.

Now let's dive in and continue breeding excellence in leadership.

Today's episode awaits.

Bridge Builders.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Welcome back.

Hey, hey, Bridge Brothers, listen, I'm excited to be back from the holidays.

Took a little bit of a hiatus, even a week before I went away.

Now, what I will tell you to be very transparent with you, this nine days was a little hard for me.

Simply because.

Last time I took a vacation, like a real vacation where we were there to not work.

Was maybe eight years ago so i was literally bugging out almost like a fiend needing to be productive and needing to do something uh that could definitely be impactful so listen i had nothing but time to think and nothing but time to be appreciative of how far this community has come how far this podcast has come y'all listen during uh our three-week hiatus uh we end up getting to top 20 at one point, which was extremely exciting looking at the rankings to see that on the business category, we are still ranked.

You guys are still sharing the content and things are absolutely amazing.

So I'm not going to be before you long, just sharing.

I just want to share with you how much I missed you.

I hope that you missed this content too.

And I hope that you're actually listening to it and you're getting something from it.

I feel like, I hope it's not one of those podcast that you end up getting tired of, but you look forward to the messages from week to week that you can use to continue to get better.

And listen, I'm gonna tell you this.

If anybody knew my content prior to starting Bread to Lead, I'm a very, very, very big advocate for entrepreneurship.

And I, at one point, used to tell people often that I believe that everybody should think about entrepreneurship in some form or fashion.

And I want to kind of retract that on this podcast.

I don't think that everyone should be an entrepreneur.

I think that everyone should have entrepreneurial skill sets and drive.

I think that everyone should be an owner of something, whether you have a piece of ownership in someone else's business, piece of ownership in the stock, piece of asset ownership in a cash flowing property, piece of some ownership everyone one needs.

But to be an entrepreneur is not the path that I would recommend for a lot of people, especially being the fact that, you know, I've taught business leaders in over 22 countries, more than 20,000 of them now at this point.

And.

Thousands of people have come through our education programs and coaching programs, and some people just don't have it.

But everybody can be a leader and everyone can add value.

And if your leadership skills get so great that they bubble over to where there's no more value, you can bring someone else's organization.

Then considering stepping out into your own is important.

And then you have some people that were introduced to entrepreneurship at a very, very young age, like myself, that when you grow up in entrepreneurship, you know, from eight years old and up, that's the only thing that you hear as a viable option.

That's the only examples that you see as success.

You end up becoming that.

So if you're newer to the space, listen, let me just tell you something.

Yes, we're talking about leadership.

Yes, we talk about a little health care.

Yes, we talk about different industries.

But the most important thing that I want you to I want to tell you is never make a decision solely based on money, because money will be the only thing that you're chasing.

And money is the biggest evaders of all things chasing it.

And this is coming from somebody that has had all the cool stuff that people aspire to have.

The Rolls Royces, the S550s, the Rolexes, the Omega watches, the renting out private islands in the DR jet rides.

Some of these things I still have and I still do.

But if you get lost in the sauce of that, you'll never find your own drip.

You don't want to get lost in the sauce of chasing money that you never find your own drip.

But the thing that God has created you for to be truly impactful, that you feel seated in like something that you believe in doing so much.

It doesn't matter how much money you make.

The core of you won't change.

And if you find yourself in opportunities that the core of you changes, depending on how much you make or how much you don't make, then odds are you probably in the wrong situation or wrong space.

OK, listen, I'm off my preaching horse right now.

Now, I just really want people to really focus on mastery of skill set and mastery of of appreciating every moment of your journey in this space that we're in and slowing it down a bit to see what life is.

You know, the last 10 years and chasing my entrepreneurial journeys and goals, I probably can only remember maybe 20 people's names.

In 10 years out of everyone I met, maybe 10 people were extremely memorable to me where like I can see them.

And it sucks because there are a lot of other great moments, highs and lows that I just try to rush through that I didn't get a chance to embrace.

And so these next, you know, 70 years of my life, I want to take the time and smell the roses and really, really be observant of everything around me and not become so numb to it, chasing something.

I want I want what God has for me to come to me, which is why on this Bread to Lead podcast, I truly, truly, truly hope that you're understanding the importance of cultivating your craft and being ready for the opportunity, which is what we're talking about today.

So Bridge Builders, we're diving into something that separates true achievers from the dreamers.

And the understanding is the understanding that success happens before the moment of opportunity arrives.

Remember, I talk to you all the time and I said that my mentor told me, Dr.

Jake, you're not a millionaire until you create a million, a millionaire.

And you don't become a millionaire until you're worth a million dollars.

So I said, how can you become a million, be worth a million dollars before you become a millionaire?

He said, because you can only have what you are.

And because you can only have what you are, if your core, if you make a million dollars, but the core of you is only worth one hundred thousand, the million dollars will end up.

You end up burning it, losing it, tearing opportunities up and your real value will come back down to what your real what the real value of who you are, your asset of you, what you are.

It will become back there, back down to that.

This is why you typically always see people make a bunch of money, have a bunch of success and bust.

When they bust, they can never get it back.

It's because they never took the time to develop to becoming worth that or becoming worth.

Whatever the amount of monetary value that they received in the moment.

So it's very important that we understand that success happens before the moment of opportunity, before that moment arrives.

You don't just dream success.

You visualize it.

You simulate it and you practice it until it becomes real.

Let me share something I've observed working with leaders across industries.

Everyone wants success, but most people are just hoping for it.

They're waiting for their moment, thinking they'll rise to the occasion when it comes.

But here's the truth.

Bridge builders listen life doesn't give you what you wish for it gives you what you've prepared and trained for, Think about any significant achievement in your life.

Was it really spontaneous or was it the result of preparation meeting opportunity?

Whether you realize it or not, your success came from some form of preparation, mental, physical and or both.

I worked with a leader who was thrust into a crisis situation.

Her organization faced a sudden major challenge that threatened its survival and let me pause here usually when clients customers uh businesses facilities hospitals are calling us, they've tried everything else it's kind of like when you try to self-remedy your you know to do self-remedy for sickness or whatever you have and you can't break it then you go to the doctor versus coming to the doctor first and we don't even have to go there and so I believe in myself.

As somebody that you should come to prior to hitting stops when you're in momentum you know the best time to come to us is when you're in momentum because that's when you begin to truly start seeing that we can navigate hitting those bottlenecks and this is what we typically deal with hospitals all the time you know they continue to come to us when there is a problem versus when there isn't one that they see coming to us to make sure that they never have to run into a problem a lot of us just historically you know by nature we um we um are reactionary.

The people that are proactive, their lives are completely different than those that are reactive.

One thousand percent.

And this goes back to training.

So in this situation, she was dealing with, you know, is threatening the survival of the organization.

Everyone praised her natural leadership ability and in handling the crisis.

But when we talked about it later, she revealed something very crucial to me.

She had been mentally preparing for various crisis scenarios for years.

She run through different scenarios in her mind considered various responses and even practice critical conversations and when I was in and when when I was coming up as an entrepreneur, especially the first portion you have to master people in sales if you don't master people in sales you're never gonna have a business so I would visualize all of the worst things happening to me I would visualize every like like at the kitchen table and someone just spits in my face and how can I steal clothes the husband comes in mad and thinks that I'm trying to push up on his wife or the wife comes in mad and and think that we're trying to set like all the type of things that we could do from the kitchen table to organizations to dealing with a business partner who wants to work with me and another business partner that hates my guts and is trying to push the other business part, everything that you can imagine.

I wanted to focus on ensuring that we didn't have to go through that.

Like, I mean, that when I when it came up, it wasn't a surprise to me.

I was prepared for it.

And this is exactly what she ran through.

She said, Dr.

Jack, I ran through so many different situations in my mind and in practice and very responses that when this came up, It wasn't even one of the worst situations I created is actually one of the easiest in my mind.

I made things harder.

And this is why I tell people all the time.

If you don't practice.

If you don't practice and put yourself in simulations, when you're running your organization, when you're trying to become a leader, when you're dealing with difficult people, if you don't simulate the worst things happening, how you can navigate that to both parties are agreeing in your mind.

If you don't create those simulation practice, the real world will be hard.

But if you create hard scenarios or situations in your mind, in your body, in your language and all those other things, and you find ways to to overcome those and processes to overcome those difficult times, guess what will happen?

I promise you one thing when the hard time actually comes, you're prepared for it.

Why?

Because you are proactively thinking of all the exit scenarios that you needed in order to be great.

Imagine getting on a cruise and then nobody that's on a cruise, not the not the the guy driving the cruise, whatever you call him.

I can't even think of his name right now.

Not the pilot, but the guy, the captain, nobody, none of the boat crew know what to do.

And you guys are stuck in the middle of the road.

I mean, stuck in the middle of the of the ocean.

You hit something.

There were no exit protocol trainings.

There's nothing.

So everyone, including the people who you're supposed to have your life, your life's supposed to be safe with, aren't even prepared.

What do you think happens on that cruise ship?

Pandemonium.

But those who have practiced for the tough moments, when everyone is going crazy, they step up.

And those moments happen and are successful only to those that prepare it.

So listen, bridge builders, success doesn't happen by accident.

Get my book.

Get my book, Bread to Lead on Amazon today and learn how to design your success through deliberate preparation.

And if you really want to know how to really be a great executive, get You're Not a CEO Yet.

If you can master, you're not a, get this book, You're Not a CEO Yet, along with Bread to Lead, this book.

These two books are truly the only books that you need if you truly want to actually master not only being a leader in an organization, but preparing your mind to be an executive or a CEO to get out their founder's mindset and actually start thinking like a CEO running a multi-million dollar organization with more than 100 200 employees that's something that you want to you know make sure that you go and get and both of those are on Amazon they both are under Dr.

Jake Taylor Jacobs bred to lead and you're not a CEO yet now let's get back to understanding why success happens before the moment I'm gonna share is something powerful about visualization and practice.

It's not enough to just picture success.

You have to train your mind and your body to operate in that successful state before the moment arrives.

I want you to think about elite athletes.

They don't just visualize winning.

They visualize every move, every decision, every potential scenario.

But here's the key.

The combination of visualization and physical practice, they train their bodies to execute what their minds have already experienced.

So in sports, my coach used to have us when we came to shooting, right?

He used to have us actually visualize shooting in the ball going in the rim.

Where's the rim?

Where's the ball?

Where's the rim?

Where's the ball?

Where's your pocket?

How do you shoot your form?

How do you release?

And we will have our minds, our eyes closed, laying flat on the ground and just visualizing that ball in pocket.

He'll say, freeze.

Where's the ball?

Is it in the right spot?

No.

OK, boom.

Where's the goal?

OK, I see it.

Visualize the ball going in a hole.

But visualize the ball going in a hole and then he would take us out to the court and then we'll do the same exact thing same exact thing visualize the ball going in a hole visualize the ball going in a hole and then guess what then we open our eyes we shoot visualize the ball going in a hole and our our shooting percentages increased.

Just by visualization this is why in sports they say coaches say the best athletes watch film why because there is something that goes on in your mind when you're watching the film and you're seeing mistakes of your of your competitors of your competition you're seeing the mistakes of your own uh demise and the things that you made a mistake on and how you can fix it and what happened in your mind.

So when the game comes, it slows down.

The same principle applies for leadership.

I was working with an executive who was preparing for a major organizational transformation.

Instead of just hoping it will work out, we spent months preparing.

I made her visualize different scenarios.

I made her practice crucial conversations and run simulations with her team.

When challenges arose during the actual transformation, nothing felt new because she'd already been there in her mind and practice.

See, when you can actually prepare your mind to be ready, think about it, because a lot of people have good muscle memory.

Under perfect environments.

But can you perform?

When everything looks like it's about to bust, can you perform?

These are the questions that we have to focus, visualize and focus on in our mind.

So here's the framework I use for preparing leaders for success.

And it's built around three key elements, mental stimulation, physical practice and integration.

Mental stimulation isn't just positive thinking.

It's about running detailed scenarios in your mind.

What could go wrong?

How would you respond?

What would success look like?

you're not just visualizing the victory you're visualizing the process the challenges and the solutions physical practice is where most people fall short they think about what they should do but they don't actually practice doing it whether it's a crucial conversation a presentation or a crisis response you need to physically practice the skills you need when the moment arises my My team gets mad at me when we do this, but every time they crush it, when the moment gets hot, they thank me.

If we have a demo, want to talk to a client, we're talking through a tough time.

If someone stands up, stands us up on a meeting, we still run the demo.

If we're dealing with difficult staff, before we actually talk to that staff, we run through all the options.

All the conversations.

We practice someone coming in hot Being mad Pointing fingers Cussing you out And that person has to Psychologically and mentally, Program and reprocess themselves To actually being ready For that position For that opposition at the time, My grandfather used to always say Hey son I said yes pop He said never get caught slipping.

Never get caught slipping.

This is what that means.

If I'm recording a training I've done, I'm watching the video over again.

Before I do a virtual training, how am I engaging everybody?

I'm practicing all the time.

So now that when things come up, it seems like it's easy for me.

And it's only easy because practice.

And then the third thing, integration.

It's about bringing mental and physical preparation together.

It's about creating muscle memory, not just for actions, but for decisions, responses and leadership presence.

Let me share a powerful truth about mental simulation.

When you run scenarios in your mind, you're not just daydreaming.

You're creating a neural path.

You're creating neural pathways that your brain will use in real world situations.

But here's the key.

Your simulations need to be specific and detailed.

OK, so when I was working with a leader who was preparing an organization for a major market shift, instead of just hoping that they'd adapt, we ran weekly simulations.

Sessions, simulation sessions with a team.

They'd create a scenario.

What if our biggest competitor launches this product?

What if our main supplier fails?

What if our what if the market demands shift dramatically?

Those weren't just theoretical discussions.

They developed actual response plans, assign roles, practice their execution.

And when real challenges hit, they weren't reacting.

They were implementing plans that they already rehearsed.

A lot of problems that are happening with the police force and other, you know, government agencies in our life is that a lot of them don't actually practice all of the hard simulations all the time.

You may have an original training.

They may do a training once a year.

But how often are they going through simulations?

How often do they have goggles on and they're actually going through and trying to talk down situations and looking at hand movers and hand gestures to ensure that they can protect both the person that they're checking and themselves?

How often?

How often as you are, are you as a leader?

Putting your simulations of things that you can what you can anticipate could happen.

How often?

How often are you preparing yourself when you do get that uh raise when you do get that promotion when you do get that money that hits that account when you do close that major client when you do get that major deal when you do get everything that you want what simulations are you putting into place that can protect you what habits that you have will you protect yourself from hey man i got a bad habit of doing this so what i'm going to do is that when this ever happened I'm immediately going to set a mechanism in place to make sure that I protect myself from myself and I don't self-sabotage.

This is knowing thyself.

This is knowing who you are.

Now, let's talk about physical practice.

We talked about visualization.

You cannot visualize and be generic with visualization.

You have to be specific.

So let me go back to visualization for a second.

People like me, I'm gonna be a billionaire when I go.

No, no, no, no.

That affirmation is dumb.

You're never going to be a billionaire.

Because you're just saying I'm going to be a billionaire is not visualization.

There's nothing that you can simulate and nothing that you can actually physically practice on that will prepare you for that.

When it's generic but when you say hey listen i'm starting from here i'm gonna run a million dollar organization when i'm running this million dollar organization i see it being in this industry i'm seeing based on this i'm gonna need to have this much in revenue or this much in operational gap whatever that is you have to be specific so specific that it seems real.

See scripture says to write it down and make it plain so that those who see it can run with it How can you run with it if it's not playing?

You are the architect of your life.

You are the you are the you are what you create in this world.

God gave you the full range to create whatever world that you want.

And it's all based on what you have written down and exactly that.

And what is it?

What do you have?

What simulations are you processing in your mind?

Are you only memorizing the lyrics to songs and who made you mad last because your world will become what you visualize and what you practice in the visualization what habits are you practicing god dr jake i want to be a millionaire what what what visualize who how would you talk when you're a millionaire who would you associate with yourself associate with if you're a millionaire would you keep the same friends yeah dr jake i'll keep the same friends well if you change your habits and your friends don't change their habits, how can you keep the same friends when you've been disciplined and changing who you are?

See, these are all conversations that you must have with yourself.

You say, Dr.

Jake, I don't plan to be a millionaire.

All I plan is to grow in my career and I'm fine taking care of my family.

What does that look like?

What does taking care of your family look like?

Have you already picked out the prep school or the school they're going to go to?

Have you picked out the gymnastics coach that they want?

You got to already have this pre-planned.

So when it happens, you're not shocked.

You're ready for it.

Now let's talk about physical practice.

This isn't just about repetition.

It's about deliberate practice with purpose.

Every practice session should have a specific focus, a clear objective and immediate feedback.

Here's how one organization mastered this.

They created what they called leadership labs.

Controlled environments where leaders can practice crucial skills.

Difficult conversations, crisis management, strategic decision making, team alignment.

And this is something I've taken with us since that was developed there.

I want to put my leaders in all of the worst situations and figure out if they have the wherewithal to think their way out.

The best example of that is when they lock you in those rooms, a panic room.

I forgot what they call it.

It's like a panic room.

You got all these other puzzles and stuff you got to figure out with a team to get out the door.

Escape, escape room.

That's what the environment needs to look like if we're developing truly developing leaders helping them process their thought process and then watching the film on how they reacted to certain things these are all ways and all things that we must be able to develop to ensure that the people or you yourself are growing as a leader and that the people in your organization are growing as a leader.

You got to practice difficult conversations.

You have to visualize and practice crisis management.

You have to have strategic decision-making skills.

You have to understand team alignment.

And you and a partner can go at it.

One can be the difficult one.

The other can be the one, and you truly make it hard for each other in practice to ensure that that person is getting what they need.

But here's what made our Leadership Labs effective.

We recorded these sessions, analyzed them, and provided specific feedback.

They weren't just going through the motions.

They were building muscle memory for success.

After we go from visualization to physical practice, integration is where the real power lies.

It's about making preparation a daily practice, not just something you do before big moments.

Let me share how successful leaders build this into their routines.

Every morning we spend time visualizing our day not just our schedule but how we'll handle different situations, we see ourselves in crucial meetings having important conversations making key decisions then throughout the day we create micro practice moments.

Like somebody flares up it's not that big of a deal but you're processing using some of the tools and skills that you use and a lot of you need to be doing this with the skills that you're learning with this pie class there's a ceo who i helped transform um, his effectiveness using this approach before every significant interaction he takes 60 seconds run through the mental simulation before difficult conversations.

He practiced his opening lines before strategic decisions.

He'd review his scenario plan.

A lot of us just plan to fail.

We don't plan, so we fail.

A lot of our failing is because we lack a plan, ill-prepared, winging through life because you're able to wing a couple of moments you think that you can wing life.

This is where the issue comes in.

And if you're ready to transform your leadership through deliberate practice you need to visit bread to lead.com for exclusive resources and join our community of leaders who design, their success go to bread to lead b-r-e-d to lead.com you can click on that thing i think it says something like watch our last um master class and then once you watch the last little master class let me pull it up here once it says get access to the leadership summit, if you just click access replay you can actually get um gain access to our free community, our executive edge community that you can join to participate in okay that.

Now, let's talk about organizational muscle memory, because this isn't just about individual preparation.

It's about creating an organization that's prepared for success.

The best organizations create what I call success laboratories.

Environments where teams can practice handling difficult scenarios, leadership laboratories, success laboratories.

We create this and when we go inside of hospitals or within organizations when we develop that leadership core we're building this in.

Handling situations like market changes how do we navigate if we lose a million dollars tomorrow what's the move that needs to be in place and i always tell people build your career on the worst happening not the best and build your company on the worst happening and not the best Because if I can build the company on the worst happening, the best would be icing on the cake.

But if the worst happens, I'm still fine.

If your foundation to your home that you live in was only built on the best scenario, it wouldn't be prepared for water.

It wouldn't be prepared for shifts in the foundation.

It wouldn't be prepared for any of that.

It would literally crumble.

Second thing, customer challenges.

When we're talking to our sterile instrument departments and central sterile processing that support the OR and surgeons by preparing their surgical equipment.

We tell them all the time, listen.

The surgeon is your customer, so why not practice what they're going to challenge you on?

Someone's coming new into your organization.

You should be putting them in your success labs quick.

Get trained on what they could say, how they can move and how they need to react.

The biggest reason why people overreact when things happen to them is because they never practice reacting in the first place.

If I never practice reacting to somebody acting heinous, heinously against me or somebody giving me praise or celebration, I don't know how to react.

I don't know how to move because your body would naturally go to what you practice to.

And if you haven't practiced anything, it will literally revert back to the last time you dealt with a situation like this.

Whatever that reaction was, whether it was right or wrong, that's going to come back up.

So you must instill new habits in order to revert back to those habits when things do come up, because they will, y'all.

How to deal with internal conflicts, strategic opportunity.

These are the things that you have to master within your success and leadership lab.

OK.

And we ran these regular simulations.

These are these are these are not tabletop exercises.

Oh, we create a real pressure, real stakes, real feedback.

Why?

Because when real challenges come, they want their teams operating from experience, not theory.

That's even when it comes to our certification within Central Sterile Processing.

We have our own certification that we built.

It's a three phase certification in order to get your final designation.

Your scope, which matter of fact, every phase, there are these leadership labs or success labs that we have.

That's a portion of their assessment.

So not only do they take the physical assessment, we actually have to either fly to the hospital or they fly to our facility for them to actually pass their laboratory, their lab.

Can you handle the pressure?

And if you can, now we know we have a leader that's in practice and experience, not just theory.

Because success happens by design, not by choice.

That's why y'all need to go get this bread to lead book.

It's the first start of learning what you got to learn, understanding the psychology that you need to have in order to ensure that you're OK and you can navigate these situations.

And I want to share with you something critical about maintaining this practice over time.

Most people in organizations start strong but fade when immediate pressure is present.

Real preparation isn't about preparing them for one moment.

It's about staying ready for the moment at any time.

We build what we call readiness rhythms into the culture.

Every week included, we have a scenario planning session, skill practice opportunities, performance feedback loops and mental preparation exercises.

The key is making it systemic, systematic rather than sporadic.

They weren't just preparing for specific events.

They're building a perpetual state of readiness.

So with every phase, every module, there's a phase of readiness that they may show.

They must show.

And here's something crucial about success preparation.

It's not just about big moments.

Every small interaction, every minor decision, every daily challenge is an opportunity to practice excellence.

The most successful leaders I work with understand this.

They treat every meeting as a chance to practice presence.

Every conversation becomes an opportunity to practice influence.

Every challenge becomes a simulation for bigger moments.

And remember, Bridge Builders, hope isn't a strategy.

Wishing won't make it happen.

Real success comes from deliberate preparation, mental and physical, long before the moment arrives.

This is Dr.

Jake Taylor Jacobs signing off.

Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Bread to Lead.

Until next time, keep preparing, keep practicing, and keep breeding excellence in everything that you do.

Remember, Bridge Builders, success isn't discovered.

It's designed.

Make your preparation count.

Talk to you all later.

Peace.