Brian Quick is a drummer, public speaker and consultant. Brian started to play drums at the age of 6 years old and has now turned this passion into his purpose by inspiring others to find and use their purpose. Brian performs drum clinics at schools, festivals and churches. Brian has been traveling speaking at businesses, churches, conferences, and many other platforms to teach on growth, leadership, and marketing. Brian consultants businesses and worship teams on how to authentically grow and better in their craft.
- CEO Hack: (1) Read a tone of books slowly (2) Spending time on social media (3) Having a real vision
- CEO Nugget: Save money and respect learning
- CEO Defined: Being a leader by example and humility
Website: https://www.brianquick.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebrianquick/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebrianquick
Anchor: https://anchor.fm/s/769f238/podcast/rss
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Transcription:
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Intro 0:02
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
Gresham Harkless 0:27
Hello, hello, hello this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Brian Quick of BrianQuick.net. Brian, it's awesome to have you on the show.
Brian Quick 0:35
What's going on man excited to be here.
Gresham Harkless 0:37
Excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about Brian, so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Brian Quick is a drummer, public speaker, and consultant. Brian started to play drums at the age of 6 years old and has now turned this passion into his purpose by inspiring others to find and use their purpose. Brian performs drum clinics at schools, festivals, and churches. Brian has been traveling speaking at businesses, churches, conferences, and many other platforms to teach growth, leadership, and marketing. Brian consultants businesses and worship teams on how to authentically grow and better in their craft. Brian, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
[restrict paid=”true”]
Brian Quick 1:14
Man, I'm ready to go.
Gresham Harkless 1:16
Let's do it. So the first question I had was the hear a little bit more about your CEO story. What led you to start your business?
Brian Quick 1:22
Yeah, absolutely, man. So I'm gonna go a little bit further back. So I started playing drums at 6 years old, I'm actually from a small town called Hickory, North Carolina furniture capital of America, essentially, man back then, and furniture was where it was. And if you grew up, you either became a military, farmer, or in furniture. And I knew none of those three were what I wanted it to be so. So I definitely took a little bit of a different path.
So I started taking lessons right away. And I just did my parents thought it was probably a fad. But it ended up being something that really became a part of me. And so as growing up, though, I always thought about do I want to play drums. Or do I want to be like an actual business owner, it was always one of those between, and I was like lucky to not do both.
And so I became a leader in the marching band that I played in, I was head of the caption of that, and then through just drum corpse and stuff like that, I really learned about leadership through them. And then I realized that drumming can only get you so far its creativity is in this. But drumming can actually only get you so far in the sense of performing in education. And so I started to sit back and think about what exactly do I want to do through drums. And I realized that drums are a toll, not necessarily my purpose.
And so I just kind of started just naturally and organically branch out to where I was just doing posting content on social media, and just friends and family just working with them and ended up just like playing in a lot of churches.
And just a little festival, a little festival, little festival. And through that, I just started to grow my social media accounts. And just I realized that bringing value to people is what I love to do, helping people find their purpose is what I love to do. And so my business is a little different because I don't necessarily have a staff or a building, you know, what I do is kind of through online networking and traveling to wherever you are man.
And I love being able to do that and love being able to reach people all over the world, dude from one station from one network from one location. And it's really cool to be able to do something like that every day. And I'm just really blessed.
Gresham Harkless 2:32
I know you touched on it a little bit. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear how you're helping out these people and these clients that you're working with.
Brian Quick 3:34
Yeah, absolutely. So currently, I'm working with a ton of churches, Man, church perspective, there is just a big gap between this whole fad of mega-churches and just staying small. And I don't think there's anything wrong with either one of them. But one problem that I see a lot of times in church worship settings is the lack of integrity to grow, which is huge, because in churches like they should have, and always be concentrating on your integrity.
And I mean, being authentic not even just to church at any point in life. But the thing is, is like I see more worship teams struggling nowadays than ever, with growth and connection, I see more congregations and more people leaving the church and I see more people just not even wanting to be around the worship team or even agree with what's going on up there.
And more debates are happening than ever. Now, on the other side of it from a business standpoint, you know, I think that a lot of businesses are struggling to hop onto this new thing, you know, social media and what it actually is, and things are changing, and you have to be changing with it.
And I'm just you know, I think that I'm getting actually a lot of pushback sometimes from businesses just because I'm like, Hey, you guys need to be appropriately and organically growing your business online. Otherwise, you're gonna lose in the next 5 to 10 years. And so that's one thing that I'm really striving to work on in 2019 is helping businesses. But I'll be from a church worship perspective, I'm really hitting on 4-5 things and that's mainly how are you properly introducing songs to the congregation. How are you helping your congregation grow and connect?
And how are we able to actually authentically do this the right way without going up there and just being phony and being real? And from a business perspective? I think that leadership is everything. Leadership is where it is. And there's a big misconception about being a boss and being a leader. There's a big difference between being a boss and being a leader. And if you're a boss, you're always going to struggle, like I'm saying, like, and if you mean, if you don't mind, I can get into a deeper reason of why that is.
Gresham Harkless 5:36
Yeah. Why is that?
Brian Quick 5:37
Well, here's the thing, there are a few things that a boss does that a leader won't do. So one, a boss will always instill fear. And I'm sure we've always we've had that boss before in our lives. If you've ever worked, in any job that has a boss, a boss will always strive to lead and is still by fear. A leader, however, inspires with confidence.
And a leader will always inspire by confidence, they will never go the fear tactic. Two a boss will always assign blame. It'll always be someone else's fault. It'll always be like, well, why didn't you close the sale? It could have been better, you know, whatever, therefore, but a leader will take responsibility, a leader will be like, Okay, well, instead of being like, Okay, well like, there's no excuses for not making that sale. You know, they were and they walked into a retail environment.
If you're in a retail environment store, we should have closed the sale versus Hey, okay, I take full responsibility for not coaching you to where you need to be like let's go. Let me help you do this. Number three, a boss demands loyalty.
And that's never ever should be the case, I don't believe I was listening to a documentary the other day, and I'm not sure if you know, Gary Vee, I'm sure everyone knows who that guy is nowadays, Gary Vee booming. But he talks about how instead of like, you have to earn my trust, you have to give in I give my trust. And man I 110% agree that a leader extends trust, a letter extends trust doesn't and does not demand loyalty. If you demand loyalty from anybody, you're probably not going to get it. I think that people are leaving their jobs, not because of the job itself. But because of the boss who is in charge of them. I 110% believe that people don't leave their jobs, they leave their bosses.
Gresham Harkless 7:11
Yeah. And a lot of that kind of goes back to kind of like the culture that a lot of these bosses and these companies are sometimes creating so being able to make sure that you are putting people in their right path and in alignment with what it is that they're good at doing. And it helps to push the business forward and push the mission for the business or organization definitely helps out a ton. So that makes perfect sense.
Brian Quick 7:31
Absolutely, man.
Gresham Harkless 7:31
Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. So this is what you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart.
Brian Quick 7:37
Yeah, man. So I think that my secret sauce is not even really a secret, I think it's something that we should all implement is just being kind. Just be nice and be sociable. For me in my organization, personally, for what I do, what makes me unique is the fact that I'm using a tool that not everybody does to inspire everybody. And so for example, I worked with a business three weeks ago, I use drums as the tool of saying like, Okay, well, here's what a snare drum sounds like.
And I hit the snare drum. And it was all it was. And then I started to implement other parts of the instrument to make an actual voice to make an actual groove, but they needed each other to be able to do that moral that is, we need people and so we have to use each other, I don't care if you're a legit business or an entrepreneur, we can't do this without each other. We can't do this without people.
And so some people have, I don't know what it is, man, but people have a hard time being real. I mean, dude, I've done three or four or five months of tours, and I like connecting with people on a good deep level. And then as soon as that tour ends, we never hear from each other again.
And if I ever reach out to that person, it's like they never knew me. And that is the worst thing anybody could ever do in life for one by just being a good person and to in business and wanting to grow, I get people are busy, I get that you can have our conversations all day with everybody, we got things we got to do. But the massive amount of people who are wanting to grow their network who are wanting to grow their social media, or whatever it is that they're wanting to do in their entrepreneurial life, but refuse to or don't take the time to send back DM messages to people who are Instagramming them or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, or commenting back to their comments on social media, or really anybody who sent you a text message to be like, Hey, bro, it's been a while. How are you and just be like, I'll get around to it. And never, they never do.
Gresham Harkless 9:25
That makes perfect sense. And I definitely agree with that a lot of times, people forget how important it is to have those interactions and how far it does go to just be able to respond to a message or do whatever, it goes so much farther. And so few people are actually putting that as a tremendous amount of value as it is. So it was great to hear that you're doing that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And you might have touched on this but this is an app or book or a habit that you have or something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.
Brian Quick 9:52
Yeah, man. So I read a ton. I love to read if you looked at my Evernote list, I have probably 250 plus books in my list read. I'm a slow reader. So I know guys who read a ton of books, I read a book a week, great for them to shave. However, I like to really apply the book to my life, I try to read books that are well aware of what I need to hear in the moment. For instance, right now I'm reading a book called 52 Ways to be more productive, and it's challenging the crap out of me, I thought I was productive, but I actually waste a lot of time.
And so I actually have to one is I read a ton of books and read them slowly. Don't try to be a fast reader, Mark Cuban said one time that he reads books quickly because if he can get one thing out of it, he's successful with that. Everything I've agreed with 99.9% of the things that Mark Cuban has said except for that one because I would rather read it a little slower and get five things out of it.
And one thing, but we all learn differently. And so props to that guy for that. I like to apply at least one thing out of each chapter night in my life, every single day, I just felt like I'm being a better person by doing that. Two the second hack I spent a lot of time on social media. I love social media, I think it's where it's going. And it's where it is now.
And I think that if we're not embracing social media, it's not even really a CEO hack. It's just like, using what we have. And just messaging people contact people be real, kind of like what we just talked about, I really want to, I don't really feel like we need to go back into that. But I can't emphasize enough what it is and how it is to actually just personal development and being real and having a real vision of your life. Like those three things. If you have those things like three things figured out, you're gonna win.
So I really try to read and as a man like I love books or documentaries. It's just in my nature. I love all of those. So don't get me wrong, man. I love a good grip. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Yeah, exactly. You gotta have moments when you turn it off. I mean, no, but you have to turn it off. But reading books, honestly, is my hack. It is a college education for $13 a book, and it is a private mentorship for $13. And that's the way I think of it. Every book that I buy is a private mentorship with that person.
Gresham Harkless 12:05
Alright. That makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's a great opportunity if you can, if you open up the books and just start reading them. There's a tremendous amount of information there. And you might have already touched on this. But I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your business self?
Brian Quick 12:22
And then if I could go back and tell myself something, oh, man, there's a lot of things I would say one thing, I would definitely say save money. I don't remember anything that I spent money on back in the day when I was in high school, or even when I was in college, or even younger. I know it's hard to do that as a kid. But save every penny, I would tell myself to save every penny that I could save and to appreciate learning because I wasn't a very good student.
To be honest with you, I was a horrible hospital student I'd never get in trouble. I was never in trouble. I always respected my teachers, I was always taught to be respectful, not my family's military. So I was always taught to be very respectful. However, I'm a selfish learner. And when I was in class 95% of those classes I didn't really care about.
So I didn't do really well in them. And so respect learning, because if there are any high school kids or any college kids listening to this podcast, let me say this to you, I don't care if you never apply a number and a letter together in your career, there is something you can get out of it in that semester that you're gonna be in, there's something I don't care if you think about it or not, right now, he can come back to you 10 years from now, but do your best to be your best. Because there is something that you can learn on actually finding things now that like in geometry that I'd never thought I learned geometry and never use that unlike Oh, shoot. I'm like not even from a geometry perspective. But from what I got life perspective from like the Pythagorean Theorem, how they need each other to solve the equation, and it's like, where's your triangle? What, where's your A, B, and C square?
And the more network you have the more exponential growth you're gonna have. I mean, there, it's just a realistic view for me, but I learned that from geometry.
Gresham Harkless 13:59
Now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Brian, what is being a CEO mean to you?
Brian Quick 14:07
Okay, so for me, being a CEO is about being a leader by example, and humility, not about position or chair, it's not about your position. I love the fact that to be a leader, I think anybody can be a CEO. It stood the term CEO is Chief Executive Officer, it doesn't say the chief owner of the business, you know, like, if we look at businesses out there in the world, obviously, like, the CEO is the head guy, but that doesn't mean that he's the owner of it. Verizon just got a new CEO, but he didn't start Verizon.
You don't have to start a business to be CEO. Every single person who's breathing is a CEO of their own life. Every single person is it's so funny when somebody's like, Dude, I want to be a CEO. And I'm like, dude you are CEO Lee talking about? You know, like, we are a CEO of our own life, which obviously tells me you're out there that is not by a position or a chair that you sit in being a CEO is by being an elite leader by the example of showing humility. That's me, man. Like, I want to be as humble as I can in life. Humility is everything.
Gresham Harkless 15:06
That's a great definition and a great reminder for us to kind of remember. And Brian, I appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best people can get a hold of you.
Brian Quick 15:17
Yeah, absolutely. So the more proactively you move towards your purpose, understand this, the more negative voices you're going to hear from others. So just be prepared guys, as you grow, be prepared to start having a little bit of pushback, but just know that if you're actually having pushback, you're probably doing something right. Honestly, you're probably you because you're touching some sensitive areas in people's lives. And that's okay to do that, too. That's what you're wanting to do. For me, guys.
So actually, I'd mentioned earlier about my podcast. So I just released a podcast called Bringing Value to You with Brian Quick, and it's on every platform, iTunes, Spotify, etc. I'm talking about business, talking about growth, talking about leadership, it's going to be for businesses and churches. And so if you guys want some help when it comes to growth or just some wisdom, you can either get on my website, which was mentioned in the beginning, brianquick.net and there's a contact there, or you can just message me directly at brianquickleadership@gmail.com. But really, Instagram is where I push and post a lot of my stuff.
Gresham Harkless 16:14
Awesome. Alright, sounds good. And we'll have those links in the show notes. But Brian, I appreciate you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
Brian Quick 16:20
You too, man. Thanks so much for having me on here. It was awesome.
Outro 16:23
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co
I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
Intro 0:02
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
Gresham Harkless 0:27
Hello, hello, hello this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guests on the show today. I have Brian Quick of BrianQuick.net. Brian, it's awesome to have you on the show.
Brian Quick 0:35
What's going on man excited to be here.
Gresham Harkless 0:37
Excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was read a little bit more about Brian, so you hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Brian Quick is a drummer, public speaker and consultant. Brian started to play drums at the age of 6 years old and has now turned this passion into his purpose by inspiring others to find and use their purpose. Brian performs drum clinics at schools, festivals and churches. Brian has been traveling speaking at businesses, churches, conferences, and many other platforms to teach on growth, leadership, and marketing. Brian consultants businesses and worship teams on how to authentically grow and better in their craft. Brian, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?
Brian Quick 1:14
Man, I'm ready to go.
Gresham Harkless 1:16
Let's do it. So first question I had was the here a little bit more about your CEO story. What led you to start your business?
Brian Quick 1:22
Yeah, absolutely, man. So I'm gonna go a little bit further back. So I started playing drums at 6 years old, I'm actually from a small town called Hickory, North Carolina furniture capital of America, essentially, man back then, and furniture was where it was. And if you grew up, you either became military, farmer, or in furniture. And I knew none of those three were what I wanted it to be so. So I definitely took a little bit of a different path. So I started taking lessons right away. And I just did my parents thought it was probably a fad. But it ended up being something that really became a part of me. And so as growing up, though, I always thought about do I want to play drums? Or do I want to be like an actual business owner, it was always one of those between, and I was like lucky to not do both. And so I became a leader in the marching band that I played in, I was head of the caption of that, and then through just drum corpse and stuff like that, I really learned about leadership through them. And then I realized that drumming can only get you so far it's creativity is in this. But drumming can actually only get you so far in a sense of performing in education. And so I started to sit back and think about what exactly do I want to do through drums. And I realized that drums are a toll, not necessarily my purpose. And so I just kind of started just naturally and organically branch out to where I was just doing posting content on social media, and just friends and family just working with them and ended up just like playing in a lot of churches. And just little festival, a little festival, little festival. And through that, I just started to grow my social media accounts. And just I realized that bringing value to people is what I love to do, helping people find their purpose is what I love to do. And so my business is a little different, because I don't necessarily have a staff or a building, you know, what I do is kind of through online networking and traveling to wherever you are man. And I love being able to do that and love being able to reach people all over the world, dude from one station from one network from one location. And it's really cool to be able to do something like that every day. And I'm just really blessed.
Gresham Harkless 2:32
I know you touched on it a little bit. So I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear how you're helping out these people and these clients that you're working with.
Brian Quick 3:34
Yeah, absolutely. So currently, I'm working with a ton of churches, man, church perspective, there is just a big gap between this whole fad of mega churches or just stay small. And I don't think there's anything wrong with either one of them. But one problem that I see in a lot of times in church worship settings is the lack of integrity to grow, which is huge, because in churches like they should have, and always be concentrating on your integrity. And I mean, being authentic not even just to church at any point in life. But the thing is, is like I see more worship teams struggling nowadays than ever, with like growth and connection, I see more congregations and more people leaving the church and I see more people just not even wanting to be around the worship team or even agree with what's going on up there. And more debates are happening than ever. Now, on the other side of it from a business standpoint, you know, I think that a lot of businesses are struggling to hop onto this new thing, you know, social media and what it actually is, and things are changing, and you have to be changing with it. And I'm just you know, I think that I'm getting actually a lot of pushback sometimes from businesses just because I'm like, Hey, you guys need to be appropriately and organically growing your business online. Otherwise, you're gonna lose in the next 5 to 10 years. And so that's one thing that I'm really striving to work on in 2019 is helping businesses. But I'll be from a church worship perspective, I'm really hitting on 4-5 things and that's mainly how are you properly introducing songs to the congregation. How are you helping your congregation grow and connect. And how are we able to actually authentically do this the right way without going up there and just being phony and being real. And from a business perspective? I think that leadership is everything. Leadership is where it is. And there's a big misconception of being a boss and being a leader. There's a big difference between being a boss and being a leader. And if you're a boss, you're always going to struggle, like I'm saying, like, and if you mean, if you don't mind, I can get into a deeper reason of why that is.
Gresham Harkless 5:36
Yeah. Why is that?
Brian Quick 5:37
Well, here's the thing, there's a few things that a boss does that a leader won't do. So one, a boss will always instill fear. And I'm sure we've always we've had that boss before in our lives. If you've ever worked, any job that has a boss, a boss will always strive to lead and is still by fear. A leader, however, inspires with confidence. And a leader will always inspire by confidence, they will never go the fear tactic. Two a boss will always assign blame. It'll always be someone else's fault. It'll always be like, well, why didn't you close the sale? It could have been better, you know, whatever, therefore, but a leader will take responsibility, a leader will be like, Okay, well, instead of instead of being like, Okay, well like, there's no excuses for not making that sale. You know, they were and they walked into a retail environment. If you're in a retail environment store, we should have closed the sale versus Hey, okay, I take full responsibility for not coaching you to where you need to be like let's go. Let me help you do this. Number three, a boss demands loyalty. And that's never ever should be the case, I don't believe and I was listening to a documentary the other day, and I'm not sure if you know, Gary Vee, I'm sure everyone knows who that guy is nowadays, Gary Vee booming. But he talks about how instead of like, you have to earn my trust, you have to give in I give my trust. And man I 110% agree with that a leader extends trust, a letter extends trust doesn't and does not demand a loyalty. If you demand loyalty from anybody, you're probably not going to get it. I think that people are leaving their jobs, not because of the job itself. But because of the boss who is in charge of them. I'm 110% believe that people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses.
Gresham Harkless 7:11
Yeah. And a lot of that kind of goes back to kind of like the culture that a lot of these bosses and these companies are sometimes creating so being able to make sure that you are putting people in their right path and in alignment with what it is that they're good at doing. And it helps to push the business forward and and push the mission for for the business or organization definitely helps out a ton. So that makes perfect sense.
Brian Quick 7:31
Absolutely, man.
Gresham Harkless 7:31
Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. So this is what you feel kind of sets you or your organization apart.
Brian Quick 7:37
Yeah, man. So I think that my secret sauce is not even really a secret, I think it's something that we should all implement is just being kind. Just be nice and be sociable. For me in my organization, personally, for what I do, what makes me unique is the fact that I'm using a tool that not everybody does to inspire everybody. And so for example, I worked with a business three weeks ago, I use drums as the tool of saying like, Okay, well, here's what a snare drum sounds like. And I hit the snare drum. And it was all it was. And then I started to implement other parts of the instrument to make an actual voice to make an actual groove, but they needed each other to be able to do that moral that is, we need people and so we have to use each other, I don't care if you're a legit business or an entrepreneur, we can't do this without each other. We can't do this without people. And so some people have, I don't know what it is, man, but people have a hard time being real. I mean, dude, I've done three or four or five months tours, and like connected with people on a good deep level. And then as soon as that tour ends, we never hear from each other again. And if I ever reach out to that person, it's like they never knew me. And that is the worst thing anybody could ever do in life for one by just being a good person and to in business like and wanting to grow, I get people are busy, I get that you can have our conversations all day with everybody, we got things we got to do. But the massive amount of people who are wanting to grow their network who are wanting to grow their social media, or whatever it is that they're wanting to do in their entrepreneurial life, but refuse to or don't take the time to send back DM messages to people who are Instagramming them or Facebook or Twitter or whatever, or commenting back to their comments on social media, or really anybody who sent you a text message to be like, Hey, bro, it's been a while. How are you and just be like, I'll get around to it. And never, they never do.
Gresham Harkless 9:25
That makes perfect sense. And I definitely agree with that a lot of times, people forget how important it is to have those interactions and how far it does go to just be able to respond to a message or do whatever, it goes so much farther. And so few people are actually putting that as a tremendous amount of value that it is. So it was great to hear that you're doing that. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And you might have touched on this but this is an app or book or a habit that you have or something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.
Brian Quick 9:52
Yeah, man. So I read a ton. I love to read if you looked at my Evernote list, I have probably 250 plus books in my list read. I'm a slow reader. So I know guys who read a ton of books, I read a book a week, great for them to shave. However, I like to really apply the book to my life, I try to read books that are well aware of what I need to hear in the moment. For instance, right now I'm reading a book called 52 ways to be more productive, and it's challenging the crap out of me, I thought I was productive, but I actually waste a lot of time. And so I actually have to one is I read a ton of books and read them slowly. Don't try to be a fast reader, Mark Cuban said one time that he reads books quickly, because if he can get one thing out of it, he's successful with that. Everything I've agreed with 99.9% of the things that Mark Cuban has said except for that one, because I would rather read it a little slower and get five things out of it. And one thing, but we all learn differently. And so props to that guy for that. I like to apply at least one thing out of each chapter a night in my life, every single day, I just felt like I'm being a better person by doing that. Two the second hack I spent a lot of time on social media. I love social media, I think it's where it's going. And it's where it is now. And I think that if we're not embracing social media, it's not even really a CEO hack. It's just like, using what we have. And just messaging people contact people be real, kind of like what we just talked about, I really want to, I don't really feel like we need to go back into that. But I can't emphasize enough what it is and how it is to actually just personal development and being real and having a real vision on your life. Like those three things. If you have those things like three things figured out, you're gonna win. So I really try to read and man like I love books, or documentaries. It's just in my nature. I love all those. So don't get me wrong, man. I love a good grip. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Yeah, exactly. You gotta have moments when you turn off. I mean, no, but you have to turn off. But reading books, honestly, is my hack. It is a college education for $13 a book, and it is a private mentorship for $13. And that's the way I think of it. Every book that I buy is a private mentorship with that person.
Gresham Harkless 12:05
Alright. That makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's a great opportunity if you can, if you open up the books and just start reading them. There's a tremendous amount of information there. And you might have already touched on this. But I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you tell your business self?
Brian Quick 12:22
And then if I could go back and tell myself something, oh, man, there's a lot of things I would say one thing, I would definitely say save money. I don't remember anything that I spent money on back in the day when I was in high school, or even when I was in college, or even younger. I know it's hard to do that as a kid. But save every penny, I would tell myself to save every penny that I could save and to appreciate learning because I wasn't a very good student. To be honest with you, I was a horrible hospital student I'd ever got in trouble. I was never in trouble. I always respected my teachers, I was always taught to be respectful, not my family's military. So I was always taught to be very respectful. However, I'm a selfish learner. And when I was in class 95% of those classes I didn't really care about. So I didn't do really well in them. And so respect learning, because if there are any high school kids or any college kids listening to this podcast, let me say this to you, I don't care if you never apply a number and a letter together in your career, there is something you can get out of it in that semester that you're gonna be in, there's something I don't care if you think about it or not, right now, he can come back to you 10 years from now, but do your best to be your best. Because there is something that you can learn on actually finding things now that like in geometry that I'd never thought I learned geometry and never use that unlike Oh, shoot. I'm like not even from a geometry perspective. But from what I got life perspective from like the Pythagorean Theorem, how they need each other to solve the equation, and it's like, where's your triangle? What, where's your A, B and C square? And the more network you have the more exponential growth you're gonna have. I mean, there, it's just in a realistic view for me, but I learned that from geometry.
Gresham Harkless 13:59
Now, I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition for what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Brian, what is being a CEO mean to you?
Brian Quick 14:07
Okay, so for me, being a CEO is about being a leader by example, and humility, not about position or chair, it's not about your position. I love the fact that to be a leader, I think anybody can be a CEO. It stood the term CEO is Chief Executive Officer, it doesn't say chief owner of business, you know, like, if we look at businesses out there in the world, obviously, like, the CEO is the head guy, but that doesn't mean that he's the owner of it. Verizon just got a new CEO, but he didn't start Verizon. Like you don't have to start a business to be CEO. Every single person who's breathing is a CEO of their own life. Every single person is it's so funny when somebody's like, Dude, I want to be a CEO. And I'm like, dude you are CEO Lee talking about? You know, like, we are a CEO of our own life, which obviously tells me you're out there that is not by a position or a chair that you sit in being a CEO is by being elite leader by example of showing humility. That's me, man. Like, I want to be as humble as I can in life. Humility is everything.
Gresham Harkless 15:06
That's a great definition and a great reminder for us to kind of remember. And Brian, I appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and how best people can get a hold of you.
Brian Quick 15:17
Yeah, absolutely. So the more proactively you move towards your purpose, understand this, the more negative voices you're going to hear from others. So just be prepared guys, as you grow, be prepared to start having a little bit of pushback, but just know that if you're actually having pushback, you're probably doing something right. Honestly, you're probably you because you're touching some sensitive areas in people's lives. And that's okay to do that, too. That's what you're wanting to do. For me, guys. So actually, I'd mentioned earlier about my podcast. So I just released a podcast called Bringing Value to you with Brian Quick, and it's on every platform, iTunes, Spotify, etc. I'm talking about business, talking about growth, talking about leadership, it's going to be for businesses and churches. And so if you guys want some help when it comes to growth, or just some wisdom, so you can either get on my website, which was mentioned in the beginning, brianquick.net and there's a contact there, or you can just message me directly at brianquickleadership@gmail.com. But really, Instagram is where I push and post a lot of my stuff.
Gresham Harkless 16:14
Awesome. Alright, sounds good. And we'll have those links in the show notes. But Brian, I appreciate you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
Brian Quick 16:20
You too, man. Thanks so much for having me on here. It was awesome.
Outro 16:23
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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