Dave Bricker (00:06)
Want to expand your speaking and storytelling skills and grow your influence? This is Speakipedia Media brought to you by speakipedia.com. I’m your host, Dave Bricker, bringing you straight talk, smart strategies, and amazing stories from visionary speakers and thought leaders. My guest works with founders and leaders, creators and innovators, startups and restarts. She’s the founder and CEO of the Technology of Success.
a training consulting and coaching company which teaches 10 success and leadership skills. And she’s facilitated more than 4,000 training sessions in major corporations, educational and governmental organizations, and she’s coached individuals and teams worldwide, in person and on screen. Please welcome the woman CNN called America’s premier success and leadership coach, Susan Ford Collins.
Susan Ford Collins (01:05)
Quite an intro, thank you.
Dave Bricker (01:06)
And you deserve it. So Susan, please share that wonderful story about how you became interested in studying success when you were working at NIH.
Susan Ford Collins (01:25)
Well, it starts a little bit before that because I grew up in a family that was very dysfunctional. I had a mother who was an
was a workaholic. And so I knew that if I did what they did, I’d end up where they were. So I was very motivated. I took a job at the National Institutes of Health. And I wanted to find out what made people healthy and successful. And I figured the National Institutes of Health was sure I’m going to learn that there. Well.
A year and a half later, I realized we were only studying ill and dysfunctional people. There were no successful people in our research at all. And so one day after months of cogitating about it, I stood up in one of our very prestigious weekly conferences and I said, I think we’re on the wrong track. We should be studying highly successful people and find out what they’re doing and learn how to teach this to other people. And my whole
care group left, probably 200 people left. And let me tell you, that’s the way to start your career because in that moment, either you buck up or you walk off.
red-faced and you never do anything more with it. But I decided in that moment in front of that prestigious group that I was going to spend my career studying highly successful people. I knew I was onto something big and thank goodness that part of me knew because I’ve spent my career doing it. And that’s how the 10 skills came. and one other, a coda.
20 years after that, I was invited to speak at the National Grant Management Annual Conference. And after I told them my story about NIH and my book, The Joy of Success was published then, and I was in the back of the room writing autographs, 12 people headed my way. And I was like, who are these people? And they were
dead set on getting to me. And then they all started smiling and they said, we are the people at NIH who give grants these days. And we only wish we had been there that day because we would have helped you get the money to fund your research. And I’ll tell you, it was a wonderful moment, but 20 years too late.
Dave Bricker (03:43)
You did offer to let them fund you retroactively at I hope. You can still fund me, it’s okay. So before we continue, here’s an important philosophical question. We talk about success, but it means different things to different people. What is success?
Susan Ford Collins (03:48)
Back all the money up.
Yeah, go fun, man.
Well
means different things at different times in our lives. So this is what highly successful people told me. They said success has three essential parts. Success is completion. And they said, make sure you don’t hear me saying finishing because it’s not success is finishing. They said it’s finishing plus acknowledging to yourself and others that you have actually completed that task. So I mean, we all know the aggravation of delegating something to somebody in the workplace, and then not
hearing from them, no email, no response, we don’t know whether it was done or it wasn’t. And in that moment we realized, God, this acknowledging part is really important because you’ve got to acknowledge yourself or other people involved if you’re really going to be an effective member of a team. So that’s what they said, success is completion, which is finishing plus acknowledging. And then they said, this is probably the most important part, it’s not a dictionary and nobody knows about it, so I’ll tell you my secret. Success is also
deletion. It’s knowing when to stop doing what we’re doing. It’s knowing when not to keep persevering at something that’s dead in the water, that’s not getting us anyplace. It’s knowing when to delete a wish or a dream or a relationship or a marriage or a job. So they said most people stay too long at things and they don’t read the handwriting on the wall that says wrong way.
So success is deletion and third success is creation and they say life is really aimed at success as creation because in the first part of our lives we gather a lot of information, we develop some skills, then we start cutting away the stuff that no longer works and that’s all in the service of getting to a point of saying aha.
just thought of another way to do this. And it starts off the way it started off for me at NIH. Aha, I just thought of another way to do this. And we’ve all had them. The key question is, did we pursue them? Or did we red faced abandon them? So that’s my long answer to your short question.
Dave Bricker (06:22)
That’s all fine. The long answers are fine. And it’s interesting because we tend to label people as, well, that person’s a success or a failure. And it’s a bit like labeling somebody as happy or not. It’s not a destination. It’s a state that fluctuates greatly. So what is it about success that the ideas, the definitions of success that leads people astray?
Ahem.
Susan Ford Collins (06:49)
You know, we are a little deceived growing up and deceived in the nicest, kindest way. Our parents say, this is what you need to do and this is exactly how to do it. And then they go, that was great. And they give us lollipops and they give us an award and they give us parties. And we get in a habit of doing what we’re told to do the way we’re told to do it. But it’s a trap.
Because if you keep doing that, you will never be able to express your unique talents. You will never be able to pursue your unique interests. So one of the reasons that we never get to the place of feeling like we’re creating and being ourselves is because we got sold this bill of goods that, you know, in the family, you do what you want and you’re the good kid. In the corporation, you do what we want you to do and you’re the good employee. And we’ll give you the bonuses and the promotion.
So what I realized is that there’s three gears of success. And yes, it’s very important to be able to learn and be obedient and follow the rules to a point. And then it’s very important to be competitive and do more, better, faster, cheaper to a point. But…
can burn us out, it can kill us, it can destroy us and their families. I mean, look at how many marriages end because people are quote, successful. And then the most devastating of all is that we aren’t living our dreams. We aren’t living our potential, we’re not expressing who we are. So
know, success. That’s why I’ve spent my career pursuing it. It’s a complicated thing, but I’m hoping I’m making it simple and making it understandable.
Dave Bricker (08:33)
Well, if you’ll pardon the the application of the term success to your books and ideas, it seems like people are embracing them, which is a great thing. Let’s back up a step because you went and decided to do this research and you ended up shadowing a number of HSPs, highly successful people like Mr. Fuller. And I know that must have been an amazing experience for you.
Also sounds like many successful people don’t know why they’re successful, because their special strategies are just common sense to them. Doesn’t everybody do it this way?
Susan Ford Collins (09:13)
Yeah, that’s the line. Well, let me just back up to NIH and when…
after this happened, made a list using my colleagues there to make a list of highly successful people that I thought I should study. And I interviewed a few of them and I discovered early on that they didn’t know what made them successful and they couldn’t tell me. So I realized I was going to have to shadow these people, not just for a day or a week, but for maybe three months at a time, which is in fact the number that I used. And so then the next question is, who’s going
willing to do that. You know, okay I’m known to me but I’m unknown to them. This is brand new stuff. So I had my list and the principal of the school, I was teaching in a school because my husband got a job and we had to move from the DC area where NIH was to Jenkinstown, Pennsylvania, it was actually in Bethesda, Maryland. And I had to find a job, another job, and there were no
research position. So I was teaching a gifted program in the school where my kids went because now I have two little girls and I’ve got to mother and I’m pretty soon into that a single mom. So I picked a job that would give me vacations and schedules that were in harmony and it also gave me the opportunity to teach the gifted program. So the principal said to me one day, Susan, I want you to go to world game.
It’s at the University of Massachusetts and it’s gathering leaders from all over the world to look at what we can do to make Earth work because they felt that we were off track. So Earth work. So I went to World Game. I’m in there. I get my name tag. I put it on and I turn around, bump into somebody and I mean bump hard, boom. And I looked down because this person was short and it was Buckminster Fuller, the person who was at the top of my
successful people list given that he was in the same area that I was I thought okay he’s he’s one I probably can get to and so I recovered myself and I said I’m so glad to bump into you and we laughed.
He said, why? And I said, because I want to shadow you for three months. I’m doing this research at the end. I was at NIH and all of that. He said, well, we can do that. He said, you’re at Jenkins Town and I’m at the University of Pennsylvania and there’s a mainline train that goes between us. So, okay, I’m game. You can come whenever you can and shadow me, ride in cars with me, go to meetings with me, whatever. And what I want from you, Susan, is I want you to tell me at the end.
what the skills are that you observe me using. I said, well, that was my plan. So this is perfect. So at the end of three months of back and forth and meetings and being with him a lot, because he was very generous, he said, what are the skills? And so I listed off the 10 skills and he said, Susan, I do all of those things, but doesn’t everyone? It was the line that you picked up on.
doesn’t everyone and I said no Bucky sadly they don’t and I said that’s my mission I want to give everybody the opportunity to know what these skills are to live these skills to model them for their kids to model them for their employees and he said that’s really important he said because what happens is success becomes a burden if you can’t find people to delegate to
then you’re stuck doing it all by yourself. And he said, I’ve been in that place and it’s a terrible place. And so he went in his Rolodex and that’s old technology for contact list.
and he started connecting me with other highly successful people who then connected me to others and others and others and it grew like a tree. It was very exciting. And then in 1985, I was ready to present the first technology of success public seminar at the University of Miami through the University of Miami Continuing Education Department.
and it was hugely successful. Within three months I started getting calls from HR departments of the people who had been there and they were like, we don’t know what you taught our people but whatever it was we see great changes in them.
And we want you to come and teach your technology of success skills in-house. And so pretty soon I was so busy in the corporate world that I wasn’t doing public seminars anymore. But I guess that’s what I wanted in the first place, to work myself out of that job.
Dave Bricker (13:59)
Every speaker’s dream, right, is to just catch fire and the world notices. And instead of having to chase the meeting planners around, you’ve got clients calling you. That’s magic.
Susan Ford Collins (14:11)
Yeah, well, and CNN called me and I was on CNN and then they called me America’s Premier Success and Leadership Coach because I coached their financial news team for a year and a half in New York and they had such changes that that’s why they gave me that title. So it’s been a magical path, a lot of work and a lot of disagreement, but wow, joy, lot of joy.
Dave Bricker (14:37)
That’s wonderful and a lot of work is not necessarily a bad thing. So one of your success principles that I love and practice personally is something you call success filing. Talk a little bit about what that is and why it’s important.
Susan Ford Collins (14:42)
Not for me.
Well, it goes back to childhood and depends kind of on your parents. If they go around following you saying, “Oh Dave, that was wonderful! You’re so smart. You’re so bright. You’re so talented. You do that so well.” Or, then they go around following you
and say, God, you’re such a screw up and you never get it right and you’re just dumb. And different kids have different sets of parents. So they’re filing as successes for us. They’re telling us when we’re successful and when we’re not. The challenge is for us to be able to take that responsibility for ourselves, especially if we’ve had negative parents. I had a father who always told me that I wasn’t doing enough.
And it’s part of my drive, which I’m grateful for, but it was part of my, you know, frenzy because I could never measure up. So success filing is the opportunity for you to define success in your way and use those three parts, completion, deletion, and creation. And take time each day to say, today I was able to complete and write your list. Today I was able to delete and it’ll probably be a little shorter list, but it’ll be there. And today I was able
to create or take a step toward a creation of mind and put those things down. And what it does is it frees you from needing other people to agree with you. So this is particularly important if you’re in a new job.
school or a new relationship, you’ve got to build your own self-esteem because the world kind of is out there to bump us off and knock us down and the question is can we get up, can we rebuild our self-confidence, and can we keep going? And if we’re dreamers and we have valuable dreams, we’ve got to know how to success well.
for the next generation, we’ve got to ask our kids, you know, what success did you have today? What deletion? What creation? And teach them so that from the time they’re very little, their success filing on a daily basis. And I used to teach this to parents when I did my public seminars. I remember having one mother who called me and she said, I just had the most wonderful thing happen.
My son, who’s been success filing ever since you taught me to success file with him, just said, mom, I want to turn this around. You always ask me about my success, but I want to know about yours. I don’t know what your successes are. And so it really changed their relationship and took it up a notch. And he became a guy who created technology, went around the world and she got to be a mother who was very proud of him and very.
happy that she’s been able to teach him to success file and keep going early in his life.
Dave Bricker (17:48)
Now, completion is intuitive. If I complete a task, I feel successful, no big deal. Creation.
Susan Ford Collins (17:55)
Now, that’s not true because remember, if you don’t acknowledge yourself, then you don’t feel that. So I just want to put that in there. Okay.
Dave Bricker (18:05)
Fair enough. When I create something, I think that’s also pretty intuitive. created, I have a new idea, a new concept. I started a new book, I finished a new book, I made a new friend. Whatever it is, that’s creation, that’s also intuitive. I think a lot of people struggle with this idea of deletion. And I know that if I go through my inbox and clean out 500 old emails,
Yes, that’s literal deletion, but that feels good. there are lot of deleting toxic relationships from your life, deleting subscriptions to things that you were excited about when you signed up to pay $20 a month. And now you just realized, hey, that’s gone. $240 a year back in my pocket. So there are a lot of deletion successes that aren’t even on people’s radars.
Susan Ford Collins (19:04)
The other part of that is not just money that you get back, it’s energy you get back. Because if you’ve got a whole long list of things and you keep telling yourself, I can’t get to it, I can’t get to it, energy’s tied up in that. so when you success file and you have a completion and you acknowledge it, energy comes back your way. It’s like there’s a flow, it’s like a transaction that’s been checked off.
And so if you want to keep going and you want to keep having energy to do new things and to find new relationships and to move ahead, then you’ve got to delete the things that don’t work and stale things and even things that you agreed with earlier, but you don’t anymore, you know, because life is a very changing process. And so what was right two months ago might not be right today. And who was right six months ago might not be
right today. And deleting relationships is a very important part of this because a lot of the people who came to my seminars were there because their self-esteem was low because they had gotten a divorce or ended a relationship and they were sad and they felt like they had done something wrong. And so when I said deletion can sometimes be the greatest success of all, they were like ecstatic. They couldn’t believe somebody was actually saying that sometimes if you’ve tried everything and you know you’ve really put
your energy into it and your wisdom into it. Divorce can be the very best thing. You give somebody else the opportunity to find another relationship and you give yourself. And letting go of employees, another of those deletion successes. I have CEOs all the time who tell me I’ve got six people I should let go of but I can’t. go, deletion, success? know, those are six positions that you could have somebody who really wants to be there.
who really has the skill set you need, you need to let these people go so they can find something they’re really good at and you can find people who are really good at it. So yes, it’s intuitive but I guess grape farmers are the ones who best understand it is they keep pruning back their vines because if you don’t prune back your vines you don’t get fruit. It’s true in life in general not just vineyards.
Dave Bricker (21:26)
Perfect metaphor. So if you’re just joining us, you’re tuned into Speakipedia Media for aspiring and professional speakers and thought leaders who want to change hearts, minds, and fortunes. My guest today is author and success coach, Susan Ford Collins. So Susan, you have this gears concept and it relates to success, but you also talk about the idea that leadership has gears.
What’s the relationship between leadership and success and how does the gears concept apply?
Susan Ford Collins (22:01)
I love it. Well, it’s kind of like this, know, success and leadership and the gears have to mesh otherwise it’s
So when somebody’s in first gear, that is they’re brand new at something and they’re trying to learn what’s right and wrong and good and bad and what they should and shouldn’t do, you need to be the kind of leader who’s there standing with them, pointing it out, telling them yes, no, good, do more of this, do less of that. The directive leader, the one who’s standing behind you when you’re learning to use a computer or a new cell phone.
There comes a point where you don’t need that kind of leadership anymore because you’ve got the basics and you’re able to do it effectively, consistently. And that’s the key phrase, effectively and consistently. And then you need a leader to step back and give you more room and give you an opportunity to test out, do I need all of these first gear rules now? Are all those rights and wrongs still applicable now that I know how to do it? Or can I eliminate some of them?
And it’s really important to be able to cut away some of the stuff because in second gear it’s about doing more, better, faster, cheaper. And you can’t do all of the first gear rules and be able to do more, faster.
And if you’re gonna compete and the corporate world is all about competition, then you’re gonna have to be success filing for yourself. You’re gonna have to be cutting away. You’re gonna have to skip steps and still produce a result and produce more better faster of the result. But then.
As leader, you’ve got to recognize, have I got somebody that I’m managing, somebody on my team who’s got a new idea. Now, the first gear stuck in first gear leader might say, I don’t want to hear any new ideas, just do what I tell you to do. The second gear leader says, I don’t have time for new ideas, we just got to get this cranked out. The leader in third gear says, tell me about your idea.
What do you need? How will it help me in my organization? Why should I support you? And the good third gear leader is the one who says, okay, I agree. I think this is important. I want to back you up. I’ll introduce you kind of like Bucky. I’ll introduce you to people. One of my favorite stories is about the El Cortez Hotel in California.
and they were going to have to renovate the hotel because the elevator system was inadequate. So there was a janitor with his broom pushing in there cleaning up the dirt and he’s like, my goodness, I just overheard them say they’re going to close the hotel down for two years because they have to replace the elevator system. That means I won’t have a job for two years. And he said, I wonder, could they just put the elevator on the outside of the hotel
that work? And so he went over to the CEO, a smart CEO, I might mention, because he said, Well, I’d love to hear your idea. And he told them about putting the elevator on the outside. And he turned to his engineers who were going around with him, this is the CEO, and the energy’s engineers said, Yeah, that’s feasible. We can do that. We can come back to you with some pricing on that.
considering what he said that you won’t have to close it down for two years, this could be a very economical solution. So the El Cortez Hotel was the first hotel that had an outdoor elevator.
And it happened because of a janitor’s creativity and a leader who was in third gear who recognized the potential of his idea and supported him and got his engineers on board and carried through. So it’s really important when you got somebody in first gear, help them be there, be very direct with give them rights and wrongs and when they’re in second gear, give them rewards, give them projects, give them timeframes, give them bonuses. But when they’re in third gear,
because they may have an idea that saves your company or saves your industry and if you don’t think of that idea or recognize the idea, they’ll still look to somebody else who puts you out of business.
Dave Bricker (26:23)
I’m reminded of a time where I was doing some some substitution, some fill in work at a friend’s advertising agency and they wanted me to do some stuff related to graphic production, which I’m well familiar with.
But I got this sheet of instructions from the production manager and I’m exaggerating, but it was like, put your thumb on the left side of the mouse and your ring finger and your little finger on the right side with your index finger on the button. Don’t push the button yet. Now move and in the menu. I mean, it was broken down so granular. was like subatomic. And I was just thinking, please just tell me what outcome you want.
Susan Ford Collins (27:04)
Exactly.
Dave Bricker (27:06)
this mismatching of gears. And I thought, wow, there’s a first gear leader, someone who just breaks it down so far that you spend more time reading the instructions and resenting them than you do getting the work done.
Susan Ford Collins (27:22)
Well, and you know, we’re allergic to first gear as adults because it was overdone in school. Maybe we had parents that drove us crazy with it. Maybe we had bosses and trainers that made us nuts. And so when somebody says, read the instructions or call customer support, it’s like, no, I don’t want to do that. can’t do it. I don’t have time for that.
So it’s working against us now because we’re kind of unwilling to go back into first gear and learn those basics which we need. So be aware, sometimes you do need to slow down and listen and learn the rights and wrongs. And sometimes you need to slow down and listen to the oddball ideas. So it’s that matching of gears, it’s the meshing. Remember I said it’s about making the gears mesh instead of crash.
Dave Bricker (28:13)
Yes, and I think sometimes we have to bite that bullet and go back to first gear. I’m thinking about cookbooks because I tend to just if I want to make something I envision and I cook up a recipe in my head for it and then I make it and usually it comes out all right, but there are just certain things. You know what? Follow the recipe, measure everything out and you’re going to get a good result. Then improvise. Start in first gear.
Susan Ford Collins (28:41)
Yeah.
Dave Bricker (28:41)
and take it from there because I’ve created some truly inedible meals.
Susan Ford Collins (28:50)
My grandmother was one of those extraordinary home cooks and she was just amazing and so I was taking home back in the seventh grade and I wanted to learn the recipes that my grandmother used well I was very upset to find out she didn’t use recipes she used a pinch of this and a dab of that and a spoonful of that and when when was the dough risen well you stick your two fingers in it I mean you know she knew she knew enough she had enough experience to recognize that but I had to follow her around
and measure her spoonfuls and her dabs and what size eggs they were before I could actually create a recipe for myself that would work when I was a new cook. So yes, I’m with you.
Dave Bricker (29:34)
And interestingly, not to stay too long on this topic, but it’s kind of fascinating. I think about, for example, an instrument maker who’s making a guitar or a violin. Now, there are all sorts of measurements you can apply to the thickness of the top and the stiffness of the braces. But the people who build wonderful instruments are the ones who have made hundreds of instruments and they’ve tapped on the top. They’ve flexed it and they develop a feel.
for how it’s going to sound. And they get a lot of flexibility. I want to bring out the trebles in this instrument. I want to make it a little boomier in the bass. And they can do that, but you cannot do it with a recipe. You have to start with a recipe and that only gets you to base camp.
Susan Ford Collins (30:21)
Well, and it also depends on how experienced you are. You know, like my grandmother, she made fruitcakes a trillion times. So if it was a wet day, she knew to cut down on the amount of water she added. I didn’t know that as a new cook. And so it’s really important to recognize a recipe for an experienced cook or a recipe for a new cook. And they’re quite different.
So maybe I’ll just have, you you add these four and you bake it for this amount of time. And that’s enough for me, but for somebody who’s brand new, it needs a lot more instruction levels.
Dave Bricker (30:57)
So let’s move on because many of us try to climb the mountain alone or worse, we proceed up the slope with teams and partners who hold us back. So talk about your concept of co-dreamers and their power and importance.
Susan Ford Collins (31:11)
Yes, I think this is really essential and we’re recognizing it more and more. If you’ve got somebody who’s dreaming something different than you, they’re sucking your energy away. So what you want to do is find somebody who first of all wants to know what is your dream and they want to know in detail. Now, the caveat there is you’ve got to know so that you can tell them. And what I find is a lot of people kind of operate in blur. I call it blur.
where they really don’t know what they want and they figure they’ll stumble along and find it at a certain point. But what we really need to do is be very clear about what our outcomes are so we can recognize opportunities and we can recognize pitfalls. So it’s about being responsible as creators. It’s about making sure that we share with our co-dreamers the details we have in mind.
A lot of times people in the corporate
what their realization is because they’re afraid somebody will steal the idea and take it someplace else. But hiding your outcome from your team is a really bad idea because you don’t want them following you around in two minute increments saying, I’ve got two minutes, here’s question, here’s my question, I need this, I can’t do anything without you. We want people who know what you would want.
we’ve discussed it, we’ve gone over, we’ve co-dreamed it so many times in so much detail that when they go off or you go off and do something else, they can give you the outcome you have in mind because you put it in their mind, detail for detail, detail, detail, detail, detail. And leaders who do that have remarkable
success with teams and leaders who don’t have remarkable failures with teams because pretty soon the smart ones come up with their own product and go someplace else. So co-dreaming is essential and it’s literally what the words say co-doing it together and goes back to the holograms the more detailed the more power the more detail a dream is the more power it has the more detail oriented a team is the more power it has.
So, you know, these are the secrets that I see with highly successful people and organizations and CEOs and creators.
Dave Bricker (33:39)
Now success skill number five explains the importance of working with experts. And aside from the fact that so many people hire experts and then tell them what to do, how are experts different from co-dreamers and what’s their role in our success?
Susan Ford Collins (33:56)
An expert is someone who can already do what you want to do. They don’t have to be the world expert that you know is charging a thousand dollars an hour. There’s somebody who can already do what you want to do and you go to them and you say okay I need to do this how would you do it and they tell you. But what I find is a lot of people avoid experts because they’re afraid of looking stupid or asking dumb questions or you know feeling like they’re revealing it
front of the whole team that they’re really ignorant or really completely off course. So experts are people who can do what you want to do and you can find them all over the place if you look, if you start using that definition. You don’t have to hire the top guy, you just had to hire the person who’s one step ahead of you and then an on and on and up.
And then you want to develop a team of experts, people who are good at all the things you need to do in your organization, whether it’s a design organization, social media, all these different parts, you need experts. Not everybody has to become an expert.
You know, a lot of times we spend time trying to be an expert at things we aren’t prepared to be an expert in. And therefore we have to know in detail what we want so we can tell the experts what we want so they can help us.
Dave Bricker (35:21)
And I think that’s particularly apropos with the freelance economy because I think about myself and I’m not doing a lot of projects and production work, but I have somebody who’s an expert at 3D modeling. If I need something 3D, I call so-and-so. I have people who are experts in code at a level that I can’t get to. I have…
people who offer these different things. And instead of me having them on payroll, because I use them occasionally, I have them in my quote unquote Rolodex to go back to the beginning of our conversation. I have them in my contact list. And I think that there are a lot of people like graphic designers who may focus on the web design. But if she needs a copywriter, she calls so and so. If she needs a PHP coder, she calls so and so.
And having these networks of reliable experts is really a way you can build a solo business and have those invisible partnerships that make you powerful and competitive.
Susan Ford Collins (36:29)
Well and
This is the day of teams. We have teammates all over the world working with us. My graphic designer, April Joan, is in the Philippines. I’ve never met him. We’re 12 hours apart, so we picked 9 a.m. to meet because it’s a reasonable time for both of us. He barely speaks English, but he speaks graphics, and so do I. And we have the most fun creating graphic images together that nobody else could do because we just have this vibe.
and he’s very committed to what I’m doing. So keep in mind, you can have somebody in the Philippines, you can have somebody in China, you can have somebody anywhere. And if you are able to spell out what you want and call on their area of expertise and be willing to have somebody tell you what their expertise is, it’s amazing what we can do today. It’s a global world. It’s a global knowledge base. And I love that.
was alive he used to talk he was an engineer at Microsoft and he used to say that Bill Gates loved his knowledge base he was always talking about his knowledge base and that they kept records of all the cases so they could put him in the knowledge base so that when an oddball question would come up you could search the knowledge base and see if that question had ever come up and what was the solution so remember we’re building a knowledge base in here and it can come from anywhere
As long as we know what we want and we can be specific about it, we can get the expertise of somebody, whether they’re six or whether they’re 80, know, somewhere in the world. It’s an amazing time.
Dave Bricker (38:12)
Absolutely, I love that. Now Susan, you talk about holographic memory and suggest that with the right approach, we can quote unquote, update memories of grief and trauma that hold us back. So how does that all work?
Susan Ford Collins (38:31)
It’s really a hologram. And let’s compare photography and holography. In photography, if you take a negative and you cut it up into, let’s say, nine pieces, you see a ninth of a tree, if it’s a picture of a tree. In holography, if you cut up a holographic plate, you see nine trees because they’re whole in each cell. Well, it turns out Dr. Carl Pragram, who’s one of my great heroes,
and one of the benefits of working at NIH, got to be aware of his work. He realized that thoughts are recorded holographically in the brain. We have a holographic brain. And how did he get to that? It isn’t the way you think. He wasn’t taught that in school. In fact, he was taught the opposite. He was taught that specific memories were in specific locations in the brain. But then during the Korean War, when he worked on
people who had soldiers who had shrapnel wounds, he realized they still had their memory. Maybe it was a little spotty and a little confused, but they could remember everything if you gave them enough time and enough information. So he had to come up with another thing. And he’s the one who is a Nobel Prize nominee because he created what’s known as the holographic brain. so a hologram is a
that we have in our brain that has pictures, soundtracks, emotions, energy, and it’s all stored in every cell in your brain. So if you lose a piece of your brain, you don’t lose all of your memory. You may lose a little piece of it, but your memory is all there. So whether it’s a past memory or past hologram,
or a future hologram, what happens is it is attracted to what we see in our lives. We have a part called the reticular activating system. It’s in the brain stem, the back of our head. And if you say, I’m going to the drugstore because I need toothpaste, and you get in the drugstore and you’re heading down the aisle,
your reticular activating will say, activating system will say, hey, there’s the toothpaste. You need toothpaste. You may not have thought about it five minutes before that, but you know that this part in there is putting you on alert. So you, we’ve all had that experience that aha, yeah. How about.
Dave Bricker (40:39)
Mm.
Susan Ford Collins (40:52)
And that’s the reticular activating system sorting through incoming sensory data and stored data about what we want and creating matches, creating opportunities. It turns out that our brain is designed to give us what we want. But this is another big and important piece of the success technology. A lot of times we think about what we don’t want.
instead of what we do want. And we tell people what we don’t want. I don’t want you to be late. I don’t want you to drink and drive. I don’t want you to use the elevator when there’s a fire.
We have bad habits. So for example, the city of Miami hired me to help them redesign the signs for the elevators to say, in case of fire, use the stairs, and then post a sign that would say the stairwell is located. And they reduced the amount of time it took and the amount of confusion it took for people to get out of the building. Why? Because it was a hologram.
but was a hologram of getting to safety. It wasn’t a hologram of confusion and don’t. So holograms are all positive. This is important. Holograms are all positive. So when you put a not in a sentence, it doesn’t change the hologram. So if I say to you, don’t drink and drive, and you wonder why.
and drives then you have to realize that it’s because these instructions that we’ve been getting historically are inaccurate. They are not understanding the holographic brain and so they’re putting us in positions to do things that we don’t want to do but we’re programmed to do. So this is the unprogramming.
of all those negatives. And just the key phrase is, what you think is what you get, like it or not. So think about what you do want instead of what you don’t want.
Dave Bricker (42:50)
Yeah, it puts a new spin on think positive, speak positive, because it’s, well, what is the old cliche? Don’t think about an elephant. And of course you immediately can’t, you can’t help but think about an elephant.
Susan Ford Collins (43:05)
a pink elephant which even gives another level of detail to the vision, you know?
Dave Bricker (43:09)
Right, right, poor sunbird elephant. see him clearly in my head. So that’s, and of course this translates into marketing and messaging. When we tell people what not to do or what to avoid, we very often turn them off when we’re actually trying to warn them and help them. So I think that positive messaging is important.
Susan Ford Collins (43:29)
Well, think very much so. And it’s one of the reasons that diets don’t work, because diets tell you what you can’t eat, what you shouldn’t eat. And what that sets up is desire. It’s like, my god, I can’t wait to have that.
So understand we have a positive command brain. If you want to get what you want to get, then tell your brain what you want in detail. See it, hear it, feel it, taste it, smell it, pre-experience it. And then your brain will work for you and it will give you opportunities that you normally would miss. I know sometimes I would write down in my agenda for the day, I want to bump into Tom today because I have a question for him. Then I get in the
elevator and Tom’s in there and I go, woo opportunity. Hey Tom, I have a question I want to ask you. And I’ve got that done then and not three phone calls later where he said, I’m busy, I’m busy, I’m busy. So if you want to be efficient and you want to be powerful, then use your positive command brain as it was designed.
Dave Bricker (44:37)
So your latest book is called Blur. And in that book, you apply the technology of success to promote emotional and spiritual success and healing. So what is Blur and what brought that direction about?
Susan Ford Collins (44:53)
blur was a period of my life that was probably the hardest one ever. My husband, well, first a tornado and a hurricane hit my home. Then a month later, my husband was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. And a month after that, my sister was diagnosed with throat and tonsil cancer. And I was in blur.
And how I define blur is so overwhelmed that I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t feel straight. I was like, I didn’t know what to do. I was in blur. I couldn’t seem to set a direction. And so after a while, I realized, I stop success filing every day. I thought I was so busy and I was so in blur.
was so in pain that I shouldn’t success file. And then I realized, but that’s the first and most important success skill. And so I very consciously said, I’m going to start success filing again.
And within a week or so, I was feeling right. I was feeling in touch. I was back into dreaming. I was back into what I wanted and not what I didn’t want. So I realized that the technology of success worked in devastating personal situations too. And that might be deaths. That might be relationships ending. That might be like what’s going on in Florida with these devastating floods or in North Carolina.
When we’re overwhelmed and a lot of our holograms
get destroyed suddenly, we have to go back in there and very consciously start success filing, building new holograms, editing holograms, knowing what we want so that we can get our balance again, so that we can feel like we’re seeing things clearly again. But you know, the answer was I wrote Blurr because I realized these 10 skills were essential for people who were going through very traumatic periods of their life.
Dave Bricker (46:58)
So success skill number three is dream the future you want now in vivid detail. And that sounds like an optimistic note to wrap up our interview on.
Susan Ford Collins (47:11)
Yes, well, you know, it goes back to the positive command brain. Yes. Do you take time every day dreaming about what you want? Or do you think about all the things you’ve got to do and what you didn’t get done yesterday? I’m just suggesting, as I did after blur, I created a room in my house that I call the dreaming room. And I would go in there and I would actually say, what do I want?
happen today? What do I want to happen this weekend, this month? And who am I looking to talk to? What phone calls do I want to make? Go back in there and start really being clear about what you want. And it sets you right. It gets you out of blur. It gets you back to dreaming again. I couldn’t dream for a while. All I could think about was the diagnosis and how long was he going to live?
How many chemo sessions was he going to have? It was devastating. You know, I really couldn’t allow myself to dream. But what I’ll tell you is you have to allow yourself to dream. Otherwise you get in this blur pattern.
this period where all you see is the terrible circumstances you’re in. And I say this to the people who have just been flooded out or had a storm to destroy their lives. As soon as you can, as soon as you’re safe and you’ve gotten things back, patched up and working again, take time to re-dream, recreate, re-imagine, get excited, get the details going, share it with co-dreamers. Some people have people in your life that know your dreams and who will say,
hey, I met somebody you should meet. I mean, isn’t that wonderful when somebody actually knows your dream well enough to actually hand you a piece of information that’s essential for you? I love that. And that’s the power of co-dreaming and hologramming and being positive about the outcomes you want.
Dave Bricker (49:06)
So Susan Ford Collins, thank you. Please share a little bit about the various programs you offer, who should engage you to speak trainer consultant, why, and where can our listeners discover more about you?
Susan Ford Collins (49:16)
you
Well, you years ago, CEOs said to me, Susan, we love hiring you and you produce such results in our companies and we love that. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if you would teach this to parents?
And then they could model these skills to their kids at home. The kids would grow up using them. And then teach it, Susan, teach them in the schools because the teachers need to model them and reinforce them and be in sync with them. Then when all those young people come to work in the workplace, they’ll already know the skills that we’re having to pay you thousands and thousands and thousands to teach our 30 year olds. And so during my life, I attempted on many occasions to do that, but I wasn’t making a lot of money.
I had get my kids through college before I could really devote myself to it. But now I am creating programs for elementary students. I’m creating programs for high school and college students. I’m creating programs for people who are getting ready to go into the workplace. And I’m next week doing a pilot program in eighth grade class here in Miami.
to find out and I’m doing all these graphics with my guy in the Philippines because I know students like to see pictures they don’t want to see page and pages of text they want an illustration that gives them the concept very quickly that they can remember so this is kind of the capstone of my career it’s the legacy phase of my career it’s the time where I give back where I know
It’s the set of skills is needed most And so, hey, CEOs, I’m giving back. If you want to, if you want to engage in this, I’d be only too happy to have you fund it. But this is what I’m up to.
Dave Bricker (51:13)
And people can find you, I believe, at thetechnologyofsuccess.com.
Susan Ford Collins (51:18)
That’s right, and pretty soon at successfiling.com, it’s under construction, we’re working on it.
These programs will be called success filing because the very first thing you’ve got to do is build and rebuild your self-confidence and turn it over to the kids to do it for themselves. And if you’re in the workplace, the same thing, you may come in having been the smartest person in your college class, but you may look like the dumbest people in your training class in the workplace. I remember my husband worked for Microsoft and he was a genius and he was just one of the smart people and they sent him to a
training program and he was the top person in the training program. Then he went back to his supervisor and the supervisor gave him the lowest possible score. And Albert was befuddled. Why did he score me so low? He said, because you didn’t do anything for me. You were good in that class, but you didn’t do anything for me. And that label of not
doing enough, stuck with him for five years and hurt his trajectory in his career and his salary. So it’s really important for us to get this across the board into students, into trainers, into bosses, into schools and universities. And I’m on it. I’m on it. Let me know if you have a program that I should reach out to.
Dave Bricker (52:39)
Susan Ford Collins, thanks so much for joining me today.
Susan Ford Collins (52:42)
It was a pleasure.
Dave Bricker (52:45)
I’m Dave Bricker, inviting you to explore the world’s most comprehensive resource for speakers and storytellers at speakipedia.com. If you’re watching this on social media video, please love, subscribe, and share your comments. And if you’re listening to the podcast, keep your hands on the wheel, stay safe, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Speakipedia Media.
