The Talent Forge: Shaping the Future of Training and Development with Jay Johnson

Journey to Growth: Dr. Danny Brassell on Resilience and the Power of Reading

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 24

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Dr. Danny Brassell’s incredible journey from journalism to becoming a powerhouse in talent development and education is nothing short of inspiring. Starting his career covering President Bush in 1992, Danny found his true calling in teaching in South Central Los Angeles, navigating through setbacks like a real estate scam with unwavering resilience. His transition from educator to motivational speaker and coach showcases his ability to thrive amidst adversity, including during the economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Danny’s story is a testament to the power of perseverance and the impact one can have by fostering a love for learning in disenfranchised communities.

Unlock the secrets to turning knowledge into action with Danny’s innovative strategies for ensuring new information sticks. By paralleling the disciplines of coaching, literature, and sports, we explore methods like chunking information and consistent practice to combat the forgetting curve. Danny’s enthusiasm for reading is infectious, providing actionable insights into how teams, individuals, and families can harness the benefits of reading to achieve success in both professional and personal arenas. This episode is rich with resources that promise to inspire growth and enhance knowledge delivery across various facets of life.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where we are featuring special guest Dr Danny Brassell. Welcome to the show, danny.

Danny Brassell:

Thanks so much for having me, Jay. More importantly, thanks for spreading some joy around the world. We need a lot more of you.

Jay Johnson:

Well, thank you for that. So, danny, you've got an incredible history and I know our audience is going to want to get to know you a little bit better.

Danny Brassell:

Tell us your story. How did you get into this talent development space and what brought you here today? Yeah, I think what brought me here today is tons of mishaps. I've had a very crooked path to get here. 30 years ago I was a journalist. I actually covered President Bush in the 1992 presidential campaign and I had the greatest job. I got to meet every major newspaper editor in America and an editor offered me a daily working the city beat for $16,500 a year. And then a friend told me they were hiring teachers in inner city, los Angeles for $25,000 a year. So I became an educator for the noblest of reasons, jay, for the high pay and teaching in South Central was just wonderful. Eventually I became a professor in 2005.

Danny Brassell:

My wife and I attended a real estate seminar which turned out to be a scam and we lost everything and I could focus on all the negatives. But I'm a positive person, so I look at all the positives. First of all, my wife. She's my life mate. I put her through the wringer and she stuck behind me. Second of all, I learned that money's not everything, because you can lose it in a second. Third, I try not to judge other people because if I was a third party. Looking at what I did, I'd say, well, you deserve all of that. But now I realize, if you don't really know everything about a person, you don't know anything about a person. Fourth, I became a Christian, which I'm always embarrassed to say, but the more I read the Bible, I'm not the first screw up to find Jesus.

Danny Brassell:

And then, fifth, I didn't want to have to declare bankruptcy. Eventually I had to because of North Cuba, also known as Florida. But my accountant said, to avoid bankruptcy, I was going to have to make this much more money a year. And so I started speaking on the side and I hit the number right on the number that he gave me. Well, the next year, jay, he gave me a much higher number and I hit that number right on the number. And so then, in year three, I thought, well, maybe I should set a higher number.

Danny Brassell:

And so, basically, during one of the worst economic downturns in American history, I was able to build up a speaking business which far exceeded any kind of income I ever could have made as an educator. Well then, when COVID came around, that was the next pivot in my life, because people are asking me oh, how's the speaking business. I'm like, oh how, I lost 200 speaking engagements overnight because the world's not allowing us to gather, and so I had to pivot to be a coach. I had always resisted coaching. Just because I've always been a teacher that has a very high standard. I want you to do the work and I hold you accountable and I really won't get off your back until you succeed, and I've always been tough that way. But working with entrepreneurs and business people has been just a total joy and a blessing because they do the work. And so that's the long answer to your short question how I got here.

Jay Johnson:

But like, yeah, COVID pivot, we lost $200,000 in the first two weeks and it was speaking engagements, training engagements, face to face, all of that, Just so. I feel your pain, but obviously you have turned that around. I want to go back to something maybe post journalism, pre Danny the speaker, though, because I find it really interesting. You find yourself in a classroom Now.

Jay Johnson:

I spent some time in a classroom here in the Detroit area actually teaching in different aspects of debate in the city of Detroit, and I found that to be an incredible experience and one that brought a lot of knowledge about how to teach people that maybe don't feel like they have the abilities, the capabilities, how to teach people that feel like no one cares about them, how to teach people that have zero motivation for anything towards their future because they can't see a future. And I'd love to dig into your perspective, because I think this is helpful for our audience, and inevitably they're going to have an audience that's not motivated, that's not interested, that doesn't see the future of that. Can you talk a little bit about that experience that you had teaching in South Central?

Danny Brassell:

Well, now you're talking my language, jay. This is something I'm very passionate about. I've taught all age levels. I can tell people from preschoolers all the way up to rocket scientists. I can make that claim because I used to teach English as a second language to engineering students at the University of Southern California, and one of the things I learned is what works with an older student does not necessarily work with a kindergartner, but what works with a kindergartner works with all age levels. It was up to me We'd all start off as kindergarten teachers and working in Compton in South Central Los Angeles. It was a real eye-opener for me, jay, because I realized shame on me.

Danny Brassell:

I was really blessed as a child. Both of my parents were in the home and we weren't wealthy, but we always had food on the table and my parents always read to us kids in front of us kids, and we always had plenty of access to reading materials, and so it really became a passion of mine getting kids to read. It's the same thing as why I listen to your podcast. I'm always trying to learn. If you're not learning, you're slowly dying every single day, and I want kids. I want to infuse people with that constant curiosity. It was interesting. I was in a mastermind and one of the guys in my mastermind he wanted me to train his sales force and I said I don't know if I'm really qualified to do that. And he looks at me, he's like Danny, if you can train inner city teenagers to get excited about Shakespeare, you can totally motivate my sales force. And I really think and you know exactly what I'm talking about having those experiences in Detroit, I mean even when I was, when I trained kids around the country you know I do a lot of gigs in Detroit like just speaking in Novi, I remember in Novi just telling the kids I'm like, oh, you know why it's called Novi? They're like what? I'm like, oh, because it stands for number six. It was number, it was the sixth stop on the pony express and vi is six in roman and so the roman numeral. So that's where nobody's like. Really.

Danny Brassell:

I'm like, yeah, when I was a middle school teacher, that's how I got the kids excited about learning, is I? Always I had no tardy students. I was the only teacher in the school never had tardy students because I always started off class with a paul harvey story. I don't. If you remember, jay, I'm older than you At this point. Chop off my head and count the rings. But when I was growing up at 12, 15, every day Paul Harvey would come on the radio and he'd be like I'm Paul Harvey with the rest of the story and for five minutes you're trying to figure out who's he talking about or what's the company or whatever. My kids loved it, but a lot of those stories were about like Sears and Roebuck. Well, you know, kids in 2024, they have no idea what Sears and Roebuck is.

Danny Brassell:

And so the book that I wrote, the Leadership Begins with Motivation book when I wrote that it's basically an homage to Paul Harvey. Well, after I wrote it, jay, I started reading it and I'm like huh, completely unintentionally, most of my examples are of white male Americans, like people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. And so the last book that I just completed, just going to press last month Misfits and Crackpots. This book is filled with stories primarily of women, minorities and international people. It's a lot of fun. But again, that's the long answer to your short question how do you motivate people? You build on their curiosity, you figure out what they're interested in and you build from there.

Jay Johnson:

No, I think that's a great answer, danny, and I do find it. You know, when I was teaching in Detroit, that was one of the big things was like okay, well, if they're not seeing a future, what do you see yourself doing? Well, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. And that was like and I'm looking in, my long range vision is like all right, in 30 years, here's where I want to be and everything else. They're looking 30 days out. And one of the things that I was looking at from that motivational side of can you imagine, like, if you just did this, and what that would mean for you in the next 30 days, or what that would mean for you here, there and wherever? So I love that concept of digging into the motivation. You know, you seem to have this strong background in support of reading. You've even written a book. You know read, read, lead and succeed. And if I screwed that up, forgive me, I'm doing it off memory, but I'd love to. I'd love to dig into that just a little bit here too, because I think that it's one of those things.

Jay Johnson:

As a talent development practitioner, it's always scary to send out a reading assignment to your potential audience, or one. You know whether that's pre or post a training, because pre-training, you know that at best you know 7% of the people are going to open it and read it, and the other 93% may glance at it or take a look at it about three and a half minutes before the training. I think even Jeff Bezos knows this, and that's why he sets up his meetings with reading during the meeting, to make sure everybody's on the same page. So, danny, talk to me a little bit. How do we motivate people to read? How do we get the best out of our reading? You know encouraging other people to read. What are your thoughts on that?

Danny Brassell:

Yeah, it's ironic that I'm considered one of America's leading reading ambassadors, because I grew up hating reading. My father was a librarian. I always hated the public library. It always smelled funny to me. The furniture was always uncomfortable. There was always some elderly woman telling me to be quiet.

Jay Johnson:

Some love that smell. They're like oh, I walk into the library and that smell just hits me and I just want to stay there and I'm like I, I'm kind of with you a little bit. That's not exactly. That's not exactly. Uh, wine and chocolates for me. Well, there's always some freaky homeless guy.

Danny Brassell:

I think he's a vampire hanging out by this. I always hated the public library and, you know, once I started working with the kids and realizing, wow, they didn't have anything exciting to read, you know, here's where I'll go with this. I remember in high school I had a teacher. She forced us to read the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and no offense to the Nathaniel Hawthorne fans out there. The book is about Hester Prynne and she commits adultery, and so she's forced to wear an A on her chest. And I raised my hand in class one day and I asked my teacher if I could wear a B on my chest because I was so bored reading that book. I find that that's the biggest problem. And so I had a boss and see, I hate meeting. I absolutely hate meetings. I'm a person that likes to take action. I don't I like to walk, not to talk. And he always. It's the only person I've ever worked with where I always loved his meetings, because his meetings were exactly 75 minutes and he made us read our vision and our mission and our goals at the beginning of every meeting and he just expected 100% attendance and he said we are starting at 10am, we are. We are ending at 1115. I want you to be present.

Danny Brassell:

And it's the same with reading. Like I see, I see, like these HR directors they'll give like 120 page document to their employees to read. I'm like nobody's going to read that. It's ridiculous. But if you give them like five pages at a time and just say, hey, here's my expectation, can anybody find like the gem in these five pages? Well, now you're making, you're kind of sparking some curiosity with your folks. I mean that's why I like reading short thing.

Danny Brassell:

You were talking about it with this podcast. You're like oh, I like to keep the podcast about 20 to 25 minutes because that's people's attention span, exactly right. People can't focus very long. I mean, it's we're being trained that way because we're just being forced to deal with so much media every single day. And so if there was one strategy I would suggest to the tribe listening here is don't overwhelm people, just give them, you know, little bits and pieces. That's how you get people motivated and make it fun. Like a scavenger hunt, like can somebody find the way we're going to save money? Like in these five pages. Or somebody find that one strategy that will really help them. Or somebody tell us like in these five pages, or somebody find that one strategy that will really help them. Or somebody tell us like maybe it had nothing to do with the article, because this is one of the reasons I read it.

Danny Brassell:

Sometimes I read it's kind of like when I'm watching a speaker. Sometimes they say something and what it does is it spurs an idea in me. It might have actually nothing to do with what they're saying, but what they did is they sparked my curiosity on something. It got me thinking in a different way, and that's what I love about reading. I mean, you know, when people tell me they don't read, I mean I, this is a big deal with me. I got friends that graduated from Ivy league schools that like to brag to me that that was the last time they read a book. I'm like, well, you're an idiot.

Danny Brassell:

And I have friends that never even graduated high school, that are very well read, that are very successful entrepreneurs. I'm like, well, that's a smart person. I mean, look at the most successful people. When I wrote the Read, lead and Succeed book, I wanted to prove that to people. So look at it. In business, you got a person like Elon Musk, one of the wealthiest people in the world, who reads at least one book a day. Warren Buffett reads nonstop all day. Look at uh, uh, uh, yeah, I mean Oprah. I mean like people in entertainment. You got like, uh, uh, even people that are dyslexic, people like Tom Cruise and Whoopi Goldberg. They're reading scripts all the time. Uh, presidents, uh. I always like to point out to people that, uh, you know.

Danny Brassell:

So, presidents, teddy Roosevelt, he read three books a day while he was the president. My favorite story was JFK. When he was president, he was in a press conference and a journalist asked him what he was reading and he said you know, I'm reading this cool little spy novel about this character named James Bond. It's by Ian Fleming. Well, mgm was listening to that press conference. They bought the rights to James Bond and that's why we have the James Bond movies was because of the flippant comment from a president.

Danny Brassell:

You got people in sports. Bill Belichick has the world's largest collection of football books. You know, I could have kissed LeBron James when he was playing for the Miami Heat in the finals. They showed him in the locker room and he was reading the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I'm like, dude, you just did more to get kids excited about reading than I'll ever be able to do, you know. So I don't care. You know, look in the military, people like General Schwarzkopf. He was reading. They say he could read in four languages and quote Shakespeare voraciously.

Danny Brassell:

And so what I'm trying to prove to people is you know, readers don't necessarily become effective leaders. But I've never. There's not a single effective leader that I can name in any field that is not also an avid reader. And what they're doing is they're they're reading very intentionally. So if I'm an HR director, I'm going to obviously read about things. What, what can help my tribe? I mean, you and I are in personal development business, so I'm reading tons of personal development. I'm reading biographies and things like I'm not reading. Actually, I have to read because I have one of the world's top book clubs, so I have to read lots of different things. But you know, here's a strategy for your tribe right there right now. I go to bookstores all the time, or to the children's section at the library. I'll go to the children's section. I'll read 10 biographies, picture biographies, 32 page biographies of people, and so when I go to cocktail parties, I know random facts about people like wow, you're so intelligent Like no.

Danny Brassell:

I just read a picture book about this person.

Jay Johnson:

That's amazing.

Jay Johnson:

That's so smart, you can think about it. You're like all right, I can either go get this 32 page picture book about. That's pretty funny. I love that.

Jay Johnson:

Danny, you know there's two things that I want to draw out of there too, and really kind of cement. And the first is very consistent with what here and there and take them on some kind of a journey, because getting them to do it in that fashion is going to number one allow them to even try something out or do something with what they have just read, and then B it's giving them that sort of I can do this for 10 minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes. It's achievable at that point in time, especially because for some people and I know this at my, my brother, who is also dyslexic, likes to read, but it's hard work for him, and I know that that's not just true of people, um, you know, with dyslexia. Uh, I know that that's true for a lot of people as they see it as a lot of work. So I love that kind of chunking concept.

Jay Johnson:

But the other thing that you said, which I really think is brilliant, is that giving them a purpose, really sending them on a pathway or sending them on that treasure hunt, sending them on that journey. And I think about, like all of the different Reddit articles or medium articles or any of the blogs out there, and what do they do? They hook you in with that subject line and then it's like well, I didn't know that, I was curious about the macaque population in Northern Kenya, but now that you've got my attention, let's read this article about it. So I love those two approaches. I think it's really powerful way for us to remember that we are human and, on some, that kindergarten brain of ours doesn't go away.

Danny Brassell:

Well said, well said. I love that you made me sound much more intelligent than I really am, jay.

Jay Johnson:

Not at all. Well, and I love reading. So I actually have a set of habits that I do every single day, and one of my habits is consume content, and content is not social media content. Content can be books, they can be the neuroscience journals that I study, it can be the psychology you know, the psychology today, the actual, like researched articles from there, the peer reviewed ones, et cetera. But I've got to spend 30 minutes every single day sharpening my mind, and that is just a big part of who I am, and it's also a big part of what I see as my pathways to success.

Danny Brassell:

Well, it's interesting. There's research on that that supports that, jay. So I've got the world's top reading engagement program, which, in just over two months, shows parents how to get their kids to read more, read better and, most importantly, to love reading, and there's two numbers I like to point out to the parents. The first number is 67. So a lot of people tell you it takes 21 days to change a habit, and to those people I say well, show me the research on that. It's a completely fabricated number. I know exactly where the number comes from. It comes from a wonderful book written in 1960 by Dr Maxwell Maltz called Psycho-Cybernetics. Everybody should read this book. But in the preface of the book, Dr Maltz was a plastic surgeon and he made an observation that it took most of his patients about 21 days to get used to their new faces. Well, a lot of self-help gurus a lot of people I respect, by the way started telling people it takes 21 days to change a habit. That's a completely fabricated number. No research whatsoever. Well, researchers at the University of London in 2009 did a habit formation study and they found it took anywhere from 18 to 254 days to change a habit and the average was 66 days. Well, I don't like the number 66, so I threw in a bonus day, 67. Sixty-seven days to change a habit. It depends on the habit you're trying to form. So, for example, if you want to drink a glass of water before breakfast, that might take about 18 days to form that habit. But if you want to quit smoking, that's going to take up to 254 days. And here's why this is an important number to remember. Is you know? Let's say that you are on a diet, you follow it religiously for 21 days and then you fall off the wagon on day 22. Will you blame yourself? Well, that's completely false. I mean because the research shows it takes at least three times longer than that to form a habit. So the first number is 67. The second number is 20.

Danny Brassell:

So researchers were looking at successful students around the world trying to figure out what their habits were, and they stumbled upon something that they couldn't believe. It was the number of minutes spent reading outside of school. They looked at the low kids, the average kids, the high kids, the kids in the bottom of the class, the 20th percentile, the F students. They averaged less than a minute a day reading outside of school. Well, that didn't surprise anybody. It's probably why they're at the bottom of this class. But then they looked at the kids in the middle of the class, the 70th percentile, the C students, your average students. They average 9.6 minutes a day reading outside of school. And so when I'm doing a live training with parents, this is when the first hand raises and the parent says wait a second, are you telling me if I can get my kid to read 10 minutes a day at home? I can take him from an F to a C. That's exactly what I'm saying. There's a lot of research to support this. But the other number really blew away the researchers the kids near the top of the class, 90th percentile A-minus students.

Danny Brassell:

Do they read three hours a day outside of school? No, do they read one hour a day outside of school? No, the average was just over 20 minutes, 20 minutes a day. That's all You're doing 30 minutes. So you're well on your way, jay, I, I mean. And so here's two things that are also awesome. First of all, those minutes don't have to be consecutive, so you can do three minutes here, five minutes here, one minute here. You know, I tell parents I'm like, if it takes you 10 minutes back and forth to take your kids to school.

Danny Brassell:

Put in an audiobook, and that's the second thing I tell people is being read aloud to is just as good as reading on your own. So you were talking about your brother being dyslexic. I work with lots of dyslexics and people don't understand that dyslexia is like every other reading disability is curable, and it's by far and away the most undiagnosed reading disability out there. Well, dyslexics process information a lot better through their ears, and so I always tell dyslexics I'm like well, listen to audio books. That's why I listen to podcasts. I mean, I'm not the greatest reader. I listen to audio books constantly when I'm on my thought walks or whatever, and so there's all kinds of little, just little strategies.

Danny Brassell:

This is the problem I see in a lot of our schools is we're just not paying attention to individuals.

Danny Brassell:

Everybody's a little bit different, and you know, I mean, when I taught second grade, I had a little boy, kiara, and Kiara's first grade teacher told me Kiara don't know nothing. I'm like well, thank you for that. Well, kiara, who don't know nothing, comes into my classroom one day this is a long time ago, jay. He's like hey, mr Bissell, you see Barkley, last night he had 18 points and 16 boards. I'm like thank you, kiara, because from that point on, every single day after lunch I'd sit Kiara on my lap, we'd read the LA Times sports page together and by the end of the year, guess what? Kiara was one of the best readers in my class and all that kid read about were sports. Now, do I think Shakespeare is important? Absolutely, but you got to get the kid hooked first. I always tell parents the little boy who only reads Captain Underpants is going to become a better reader than the little boy who refuses to read anything. Captain Underpants is the gateway drug to Shakespeare, but you got to get the quote.

Jay Johnson:

I love that. I'm pulling that as a quote there, danny. Captain, underpants is the gateway to Shakespeare. Well, and it's so true. You know a lot of times that we hear somebody lament somebody else's being lazy, and it's actually really an interesting. There's a book called Reality is Broken. I'm forgetting. I think it's Dr McGonigal out of USC.

Danny Brassell:

I got to write that one down. That sounds good, fascinating.

Jay Johnson:

It's all about like, hey, she looks at gaming and the gaming culture and you know how games can actually create like incentives for motivation and you know, the first thing that she really tries to debunk is when we see somebody sitting there and playing their video games and we're like they're so lazy, they're not doing this, they're not doing this. But if you actually calculate the amount of energy, effort and attention span that is put into that and then figure out how we can repurpose that into something that is maybe positive, productive, et cetera, it's not a question of laziness. They're engaged, they are really engaged. It's just reality is not as fun as whatever that game is. So if we can make reality more fun, if we can make the workplace more fun, if we can do all of this, we might see that level of motivation. So that's the kind of the whole premise, but I love what you're saying. There is, hey, you know what hook them with what they're interested in, get them to see the value of that. And Captain Underpants is a gateway to Shakespeare.

Danny Brassell:

Yeah, I love that. Take them from where they are. That's everybody's at a different place and you have to figure out. That's what I'm a coach as well. I mean, I know a lot of your audience are coaches and a good coach. What you're doing is you're figuring out what are the strengths I? I love the movie hoosiers. Uh, the very first scene, gene hackman. He meets the team. He's like let's see what I got, let's see what, what you know. Here's the talker, here's the walker you know. Uh, here's the creative one. Uh, let me figure out how to to utilize Love it, yeah.

Jay Johnson:

So, danny, the question that I'm going to have here is from a learning capacity, right? So you've done, you do speaking, you do coaching. Obviously, you're a huge advocate for reading and consuming different materials. Forget Actually, there's quite a few, but the forgetting curve right Like what we learn today. If we're not actively engaging it and using it, within two days we essentially lose 70% of what we just learned. Within two weeks, we've already lost 90% of what we just learned.

Jay Johnson:

So a big part of this show is to help our audience learn. How do we take knowledge and turn that into action? I might know some things. That doesn't mean I'm going to act. I might know that working out 30 minutes a day and reading 30 minutes a day and going to all my preventative checkups is great, but I'm probably not doing all of those things every single day.

Jay Johnson:

So, getting from knowledge to action. Now, I love what you brought up about the research about habit formation, and we've got 18 days to 254, and we're looking at 67 as being the key. Well, even 18, even at the low end, if I learn something today, by that time, more than likely 90% of what I've learned is gone. How do you help to reinforce, or how do you help to kind of keep that at the top of mind? So, hey, what I'm learning here by listening to the podcast with Danny and Jay today that somebody is going to be able to, a week from now, really operationalize or do something with it that's going to have meaning and impact in their behavioral shift.

Danny Brassell:

Yeah, so consistency and reteach it. You already talked about chunking. I'm a big believer in chunking. When you put out your e-course, you don't put out a two hour course. You put out 20 modules that are each five minute bits or whatever. I mean this is how you do things, is you chunk it? It's the same thing when I'm teaching people how to speak. I mean, well, you know, people think they're going to.

Danny Brassell:

I worked with a guy. He wants to be a speaker. I'm like that's great, you want to be a speaker. He's like I want to make $10,000. I'm like great, well, if you want to make $10,000 as a speaker, you have to look like a $10,000 speaker. I mean, you know, you have to have a really good video of you. You need to have materials that promote you that way.

Danny Brassell:

You know, this doesn't just happen overnight. You know, I look at a person like Michael Jordan and people like man he's such a great basketball player and I'm like I always think of that quote by Kobe Bryant. He said you work hard in the dark so you can shine in the light. We don't pay attention to all the work that's going in there, and so the strategy I always share with people is if you really want to get good at something, you have to practice it. It's got to be consistent.

Danny Brassell:

You already talked about you spend 30 minutes a day. You're consciously devoting time to reading every single day. I mean, I see most people they waste so much time on their cell phones, on social media every single day. I'm like this cell phone is actually a wonderful tool if you use it in the right way. And so what I do is I set reminders on my cell phone every single day, and so, like I'm always trying to learn different things, and so like I'm a bad Christian, and so I'm always trying to learn different things, and so, like I'm a bad Christian, and so I'm trying to learn like scripture, and so every day at 2.17, I've been practicing Proverbs 27.17, which is as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. Okay, I got that Good, I'm practicing that.

Danny Brassell:

I just read the book Dune by Frank Herbert and there's a great thing called the litany against fear. So every day at 9-11, I've been practicing the litany against fear, which is I must not fear. Fear is a mind killer, fear is a little death that brings total obliteration. I go through that. I love the in King Henry V, the St Crispian's Day speech, it's the band of brothers speech and it's an act for scene for us every day at 4-0-4. I've been prized like 50 lines. What's he that wishes? So? My cousin in Westmoreland? You know I've been practicing that. You know I got married on December 20. So every day at 1220, I have an alert to write a text to my wife that I love her.

Danny Brassell:

So what I'm doing is I'm taking something that I used to waste time on, you know, watching cat videos on YouTube, and now I'm sitting there and actually consciously learning things, and that would be the same thing with any kind of skill that I'm trying to learn. I'm like, okay, now you got me interested in that tribe in Kenya and you know I'm going to actually have to research that. After this podcast, I'm like, okay, let me check out this. What's cool about this tribe? But this is what I love about this podcast it's conversational From conversations. We actually oh, that was something interesting. I need to investigate that further. So the people listening right now, whatever they are picking out of this, what they need to do is figure out okay, this is something I like. Maybe I'm going to reteach this to people at my meeting and I'll learn a little bit more about it. And I mean, this is how I teach everything is. I'm like oh, that was an interesting.

Danny Brassell:

I saw a bit in a movie that it was interesting when I read books. I just read a book and the book stunk. It was a horrible book, but there was one story. And there was one story in that book that I'm like oh, it was worth the entire book.

Danny Brassell:

It was a marketing book and this guy was trying to figure out what was going to be his next big thing. He's traveling the world trying to figure out what he could market and he's in Chile and he's watching these fishermen and they're fishing and he notices they're catching one kind of fish and there's another type of fish that they're throwing out, but that's the fish that they eat. And so he says oh, are you eating that fish? Because you know you captured this other one. And they're like well, yeah, but also, this is a tastier fish. He's like oh, may I try it? And he tries it oh, my gosh, this is so much better than the fish that you're being paid to catch. He's like what's it called? And they're like oh, it's called the toothfish. He's like the toothfish. That's the worst name I've ever heard.

Jay Johnson:

Ever, no one's going to order that off the menu.

Danny Brassell:

So he takes it to America and he just renames it the Chilean sea bass and it's the most popular fish in America right now and I love. I was like that's a cool story. I mean I'm going to, I'll read an entire book if I can get that one little story, one little anecdote about. I mean exactly, you already shared that one. That one little anecdote that that tribe in Kenya. Oh, I've got to find out what's interesting about that tribe. There's something there.

Danny Brassell:

This is what I'm always looking for, and especially the audience listening here today is, you know, the the read, lead and succeed book, which I'm going to give everybody for listening to me today. Uh, what it does is it's a book. I wrote it for an elementary school principal who was trying to keep his faculty and staff positively engaged. So I said, okay, I'll write you a book. So every week I give you a concept, I give you an inspirational quote, an inspirational story, a book recommendation of a book you should read. But you're probably too lazy because you're an adult, so I also give you a children's picture. Book recommendation demonstrates the same concept. You read that in five minutes and this is where a lot of people you know there's nothing that pleases me more than seeing a CEO start his move, start his meeting, with a Dr Seuss book, but we ignore this. I tell people all the time.

Danny Brassell:

I actually wrote a letter to the LA Times recently. They didn't publish it because they're dumb, but they accused the President and Congress of behaving like children and I said that is such an insult to children because children get over it. Adults are the ones that hold grudges like kids are great. Kids get in a fight in 10 minutes later, like this, my best friend. I love that about kids. Kids have a different way of looking at the world and I miss that interaction, jay, of being with and at all ages. I'm like, wow, you're looking at things and you said it Like I once had a kid, we were doing an essay and I said what do you want to do when you turn 18? And he started his essay if I Turn 18. And I was like, oh, my gosh is that your expectation?

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, it is heartbreaking, so kudos to you. So, danny, you are a wealth of knowledge If our audience wanted to get in touch with you how might they be able to connect with you?

Danny Brassell:

Well, again, as a thank you to you and your audience for bearing with me, I'm going to give everybody a couple of freebies. So you'll get that book Read, lead and Succeed. You just go to freegiftfromdannycom Again freegiftfromdannycom and besides the book, I'm going to give everybody access to a five-day reading challenge. I did last summer for about 700 parents around the world where every day, for an hour, I give all kinds of strategies on how to get kids excited about reading, because the more excited we get people to read, the more likely they are to read, and the more you read, the better you get. I mean because I find schools do an adequate job of teaching kids how to read. But the question I always ask people is well, what good is it to learn how to read if you never want to read? I teach people why to read because I've never had to tell a kid go turn on the TV, I've never had to tell a kid go play a video game and I never want to have to tell a kid go read. I want them to choose to do it because they love it and they're simple strategies and we have already talked about some of these, the biggest being, you know, don't overwhelm kids. I mean, reading does not just mean war and peace by Dostoevsky, if you like.

Danny Brassell:

Reading People magazine, that's reading. I mean, I used to volunteer at a juvenile detention facility for teenage girls in South Central and they said there's no way you're getting these girls reading. It took me a week and the way I was able to do it Jay is in the back of Us magazine there's this thing called the Fashion Police where it's all these comedians ripping on celebrity outfits and the girls. They just couldn't get enough of that, that spark, that was the spark, and now it was my gateway drug Cause. Then I started reading them short passages from Jane Austen and stuff, and now and now they're willing to listen to.

Danny Brassell:

I mean, when I was teaching in Watts the special education, which was not special education, it was 16 boys that nobody else wanted to teach them. I're African-American, latino, if their life wasn't miserable enough, they got the white dude as the teacher and I'm supposed to get them interested in reading Shakespeare, macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and stuff, and all I had to do was, you know, it was great because in Los Angeles there's this great author named Walter Mosley. He wrote a lot of great books, but one of my favorites is Always Outnumbered, always Outgunned, and he's from their area and the kids talk in a certain way I'm like this is all Shakespeare, all the Capulets and the Montagues are. They're gangs back in England. That's why they talk this way. And the guy's like what? I'm like, yeah, this is like Crips and Bloods in England and all I had to do was find that connection where the kids like, oh, the reason they talk this way, this is street talk in England. Make the connection, show them how it relates.

Danny Brassell:

I mean, this country is crazy. We teach calculus to kids but we don't teach kids how to balance a checkbook. I'm not saying calculus isn't important, but I mean show kids how they're going to use this stuff. And the same thing with adults. I guarantee you got HR directors listening right now and they have meetings but nobody understands why they're there. And this is what we talked about. You got to give people purpose. I'm going off again, anyway. So basically, basically you get. You get the reading training and the book if you go to free gift from Dannycom, and I just really want to thank you for having me. Jay, I dominated the conversation. I apologize, but you got me really excited about uh sharing my, uh my passion for reading and I hope I've given a little bit of that passion to your audience today I love it, danny, and there are some points in times that you recognize that you're getting gold, so you just let that gold flow, my friend.

Jay Johnson:

so this has been incredible, really, that we're going to put those links into the show notes. So, audience, if the thing that I want to say is I find this so powerful because not only is this something that can help our coaches, our trainers, our HR practitioners with work, with being able to deliver knowledge and be able to do this, but let's think, they're also family members, they're also parents, they're also whomever. So I encourage you, audience, to check out these resources that Danny is generously providing. See what that you know, see what you can do to inspire your teams, your people or even your family members to be able to read, lead and succeed. So incredible, danny. Thank you so much for your time and energy today. It's been an incredible conversation. No-transcript.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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