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Robert Plank 0:00 Marketer of the Day episode 715 do your happy and get the spark back to make better decisions, recover passion, reignite creativity and have fun with Vernon Brown. Hello and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We are here with return guest, Vernon brown. You can find his old appearance at marketer of the day.com/four to eight. And Vernon is all about finding your happiness. His work has touched the lives of 1000s of executives to increase employee engagement, as well as entrepreneurs who have doubled their business beyond six figures. And as and Vernon has helped save countless lives and countless personal relationships in the process. His website is, once you're happy, but that's happy with an i, so that's W, H, A, T, S, Y, o, u, r, H, A, P, P, i.com Vernon, glad to have you back. What's the latest? Rob,

Vernon Brown 0:57 thanks for having me here, man, I appreciate it. Part Two, the latest, gosh, I'm gearing up for workshops. Workshops for healthcare are my big thing now, just, I shouldn't say just healthcare, but my big, my big drivers, women healthcare to get the people who are on the front lines of giving people the best support, the best help. You know, both physically and mentally, they they need to be taken care of as well, getting them more connected with their happy you with their happy. Fantastic.

Robert Plank 1:23 And so you're talking about getting connected with their happy and healthcare. And what is, what does healthcare mean? Exactly, we're talking about like coverage or self care, or self care, or like mental, I don't know, like being alive. What are we talking about here? So it would

Vernon Brown 1:38 be doctors, nurse practitioners, just physicians as a whole. Nursing is a big, big, big thing, because it's a boom in industry and such a big need for nurses that a lot of healthcare workers I just mentioned they're tired, and if they're not only are they tired, but they are the people taking care of us like they it's seldom, and I know this personally, just growing up in a family of nurses, it's it often gets overlooked. The helpers tend to help other people before they help themselves or take their time and give themselves the space. So, so the people who kind of get, I get on the front end, on the front line, yeah. I

Robert Plank 2:17 mean, you can't pour from an empty cup, right? So is there an easy starting point? If someone says, you know, I'm I'm in healthcare, or not in healthcare, I'm overworked. I'm helping everyone else. Just non duck time for me, what is something that people can do right now, today, within the next few minutes, either like, some kind of, like awareness or some kind of action? How can we get a quick win towards getting the the energy back, getting the magic back, getting the fulfillment back.

Vernon Brown 2:45 It's a couple of things. I think a big question here is, what made you get into healthcare? And that question is kind of going back to to the passion, into the spark. You know, did you get into it because you wanted to connect with people? And then once you the second step there is, you know, what can you do to make it fun again? How can you start to have fun with this? What are some ways you can practice having fun with it daily? You know, sometimes in healthcare, you know, dealing with reimbursement, dealing with different protocols being called down, there isn't much space. There isn't much space created for fun. So you got to try to create that space

Robert Plank 3:21 yourself. So just gonna say, Do you have an easy way of doing that? Or in the the people that you, you coach, or that you, you train or you deal with? It's one thing to say, you know, find remember back when you started and when you were happy, or how do you make it fun again? What solutions do people normally arrive at when they're trying to find ways to get the phone back. Think

Vernon Brown 3:45 some of the biggest things is they stopped. They got themselves too busy. They started over, committing to certain things. That's a big thing that I see, and there's some things that you have to learn to say no to, is putting those boundaries back up. Whenever I work with and I know this, just a few contact positions, they started got so busy, and they started taking on certain things that they really don't need to do. And I see a lot of business. I've seen a lot of business this year, especially a lot of my clients that are in healthcare who are in the nurse practitioner world.

Robert Plank 4:15 And so as far as those tasks that people like kind of say yes to too many things take on too much. What sort of things are people taking on too much of

Vernon Brown 4:24 some of those things, especially if you have a family, are getting them children, and it's, it's getting the kids overly involved, overly but kind of stretching themselves then to keep up with some of their kids events and activities. And it's, do you really? Is there someone else that you could call that, could help you out with that. Do the kids have enough space, you know, to be kids by kind of filling the schedule up? So again, you got to take that one kind of with the grain. Take that one with a grain of salt. I just that one's fresh in my mind from call ahead earlier, recognizing that if something's taken. You to double the time to finish. Maybe you should take a break from it. And it's sometimes we think if we're going to do something and only takes us 20 minutes. Now, it takes two hours you need a break. And then when they say you need a break, and it's okay to take

Robert Plank 5:13 a break, and when you're describing that, it sounds like that, that whole thing of like the if you when you've been working for 12 hours straight, your mind begins to play tricks on you, right? Like, because you're you're you're running out of gas, running out of batteries, and you think that, you think that you're productive, but you're not. And if only you had handed it off to someone else, or, like, took a nap, took a walk, trained gears, and came back to it, then you'd get it done. But just because you keep on trying to push it's it's not working right?

Vernon Brown 5:39 And that's what happens. And it can happen. It's anybody and everybody, smart, capable people. One of the first things that they do is they get busy. That's something about the long and short of it, and it's some oftentimes, when I kind of go through an audit, their schedule, audit, some of their perceptions. It's a lot of busy. It's a lot of things you really could ask for some help with. You could maybe give it to a way to you could pass it off to someone else, or you can really say, is it bringing you any closer to what you really want? Is it truly helping you? Sometimes we get realizing that we leveled up and we don't need to do certain things anymore,

Robert Plank 6:13 and I imagine that they see a lot of that, like this seems to be really common thing of just like, you know, going through the motions, going through the day to day, and just charging forward and then not realizing, like, Wait, what was my goal again? Or why am I doing this, or how important it is. And so you mentioned there that you don't just, you know, just dispel the the the quotes, the things, but you also kind of look at the data, right? You saying that you like, you do things like you dive deep, and you look at these people's schedules and things like that.

Vernon Brown 6:39 Yep, I get in completely involved with everything, because I have to know, I have to understand, it's not to dissect and see what's wrong. But really looking at, is this really moving the needle forward? Is this making you happy? Is this giving you energy? Is this, is this taking away that powerful brain power that you could be putting towards something else? And it's those questions they start to wake you up. So it's a little different for it's a little different for everyone. No, no, no, you're good. It's conversation. It's a little different for everyone. But there's always a certain level of busy out off the cuff, I'll say 30% of the schedules i audit, and look at some of the wood that you're at the time. It just doesn't need to be there. And it's not me saying that, it's that my clients saying that, like, I guess I really don't need to do

Robert Plank 7:23 that, and what I like and, yeah, and I almost interrupted you, but let you finish your thought is, like, I really like that, that little thread that we had out there a minute ago of, if you're so busy and you're so tired, you're going to, like, miss out on your creativity, right? You're going to miss out on your greatness. So with these people that you're helping out, does a specific story come to mind about someone like that who maybe they weren't even, like, really aware that much of the problem, but once you jumped in, worked your magic, got them refreshed, got them back, then they suddenly, like, could think again. Is any story come to mind like that?

Vernon Brown 7:57 Yeah, it does. And that's a really good question. So this lady, I wouldn't say late, and we're midway through a career, she's had a phenomenal, phenomenal executive presence. And what had happened was she heard me doing a workshop, and she reached out to me, and what made her connect with me? She said she just kind of lost her, her fight, her kind of her spark with things. So when she came in, I could just see that she was this very powerful person. I could see that she's very astute, she's very sharp, she's just there. She's with it, but the way she presented was not the same. She was very quiet, she took small steps, she just seemed almost a shell of who she was. And I could see that clear as day, because I'm looking at her, because we met through video chat, and most of my clients don't have to video chat. I mean, a lot of my clients in different places geographically. But when I saw her, I'm like, this is going to interest him, she said that she was getting overlooked because she was a woman. She said that share with me she was getting overlooked because of her gender. She also let me know that she felt like she wasn't making the money she was supposed to. She felt as though her team didn't respect her. It was taking her so much longer to get work done. And it was suffering, not only carefully used that were suffering, but she was struggling. You know, not only professionally, but personally. If things are like that at work, a lot of that stuff, then comes back home with you, her kids and her her family, they just weren't very cohesive to the point where they're about to get a divorce, and they were just, they were done. Everybody was just sick and tired of everybody essentially, kind of going and kind of going down that route. I could see it. Now, what happened with her was, and this is something I think we talked about in the first podcast. The interview was, you know, what are you doing for fun? And she looked at me like I was crazy. Like, what do you mean? What am I doing for fun? Are you not hearing everything that going on? And you know, she got a little frustrated, and I asked her, I said, you know, bu school, I can ask you a difficult question. And she said, Yeah. And I said, What are you doing for fun? And she got so frustrated, to say the least, and we had a little heated conversation. It, but I stuck with it. And what, you know, we kind of came to and what she really Ahad was she stopped having fun. She stopped pressing pause on hitting the brakes on some things she really did need to do, or some looking at things from different perspective. And it was having that fun. Fun is underrated. They don't You don't realize that when things get tough, fun is the first thing to go, but it needs to be the first thing that stays. By giving yourself that break of fun, by giving you that relief, that break, no matter what it may be. And we started off with something simple, 30 minutes, just 30 minutes in an entire seven day week. I don't want to hear that you don't have the time. You do have the time. You have 30 minutes. If you have Netflix and you're watching Netflix every night, you got 30 minutes to have some fun. But with this lady in particular, I mean, we laugh about it now. We laughed about at the time now then, but um, we gave her that space that she could think. And you mentioned creativity, where she could be more creative with the way she was, kind of doing things and executed be creative with her approach when. And that's going to get off topic here. Like we all know that there's going to be prejudices. No matter where you are in this world, they might not like you because the way your hair looks. People might not like you because you were a sweater. There's prejudices, but we got to be creative with our approaches. Now, by you giving yourself that space to see things differently about what you can do versus what's wrong, you start moving better. You start moving faster. You start thinking more than the people who are trying to keep you down or keep you away from certain things. But that all started with her giving herself some more space. You know, I'm not a big fan of the fan of the phrase, Choose happy when you're knee deep in it, when you're covered up with it. There is no choice. You get the sense of, there's not being any other way out. This is what I have to do. And we start going to get absolute in our thinking, a better way of, you know, kind of incorporating my client. And what I'm saying right now is we have to give yourself the space to see the choices, and the fastest way to find that space, but it was her, but it's when you give yourself that space to see the choices, then you can choose happy, but in tune, you create that space. It's not it's you don't see it initially. It's there. It's always been there. You're just not seeing it because you're busy. Yeah, and

Robert Plank 12:12 I mean, you're so right that sometimes people will just not like us, or find a reason not to like us. And I mean, I think it's human nature to sometimes dwell on on that one time in when you were eight years old and someone picked on you, for some reason you're like, Oh, why is that happen? That's just like that. That's just how it is. But then, you know you're talking about like, like phrases and sayings, like, as you were saying that, what came to mind is like, the Don't, don't, wish you was easier, wish you were better, right? And sometimes we just have to kind of rise the UK to the occasion, figure out a way around it, figure out a way to to make it work and but like you said, it's hard to see that, because sometimes I hear from physicians things like, they'll say, Well, I don't start making money until 3pm in the afternoon, right? They'll say, with with the the cost of the office overhead and all the stuff to pay. It's like, they don't make money into, like, the final couple hours of the day. And it's like, well, that that means sometimes, like, you can't take that last two hours the day off, because then you'll start losing money. It seems like it's really easy to get, get stuck in the hamster wheel. And sometimes they need someone like you, like, kind of like a voice of authority, because everyone else in their current inner circle. They're always in it. They're not listening them. But then you need some kind of like outside expert to say, Okay, here's here's the simple solution. Have some fun. I know that you're not listening to the simple solution, but this is what works. This is what you need to do,

Vernon Brown 13:33 right? And it's sometimes, I mean, I never want to again. Come across as flipping like, go have fun. And that fixes everything. No, what I'm saying, it's just when we start looking at our problems, we start creating more problems. And so sometimes back, in a way, changes our perception. And a big thing here is challenging people's perceptions. And you just mentioned something that's powerful is oftentimes in environments, you're surrounded with people who want to talk about what's wrong. You're surrounded with people talk about how there's no this way won't work and that way won't work, and it can literally start becoming your inner voice. And to some degree, I'm not trying to say that some problems aren't there and they don't need to be acknowledged. However, we need to figure out what we're going to do about it. Looking at data is great. There's a point where you do need to look at the metrics. KPIs, just figure out if you're only making if you don't start making money to three o'clock. You know, you know that's important to acknowledge that. However, that's not the entirety of the that's not the entirety of the situation. There's more. But yeah, to see it,

Robert Plank 14:31 yeah, I agree completely. You have to, like, acknowledge the problem, but then don't keep on digging yourself deeper in the problem. Figure out what you can do to get out of that problem. And it might seem like like a dumb question to for me to ask you, but when you go and tell people to have fun, is there a common answer, or is it just a matter of, like, sport, exercise, some kind of, you know, creativity, art thing, something with their personality, are the answers that they come up with about having fun? Is? It like all over the place, or are there specific things that these kind of, I don't know, high achievers tend to gravitate to?

Vernon Brown 15:06 You know, well, first I got a first reaction. There's no such thing as a dumb question for me, because it's something that you don't think about fun. Who says, I want to go have who says, um, I'm going to do my happy today. No one's going to say that. You know, most people look at you like you're crazy. If a seven year old says that though you're like, okay, cool. But as we get adults, we forget that that's just as important. So definitely, that's, that's a powerful question you asked. It's, it's the reason why my practice is, what's your happy? You know, my happy is gonna be very different for you, very different for me, than is gonna be for you. And your happy to be very different than from your best friend or your neighborhood down the street. We all have different things that makes us happy. All of us do one of my happies. And I share this with every audience, every group, every time is like my happy is going to a grocery store. I love looking at the labels. I have so much fun with that that's one of my happies. I mean, I love to cook. I mean, it's just those things make me happy. So it's a little bit all over the place. I'll be honest with you some people. I've had one of my clients, he loves putting together furniture. It's his thing. He loves it, and he loves going to his garage and tinkering around. That's one of his habits. That's where he taps into his creativity. I've had some clients where they just enjoy fishing. I've had clients where they like rock climbing. I've had clients where ah, big one. What? Something was really different. It really caught me off guard. No, nothing really catches me off guard. I guess. No, think about it, but it's your happy is very unique to you, and if, and then there's a tip to everyone out there, if you haven't figured out what makes you happy, that's great, because the next step there is what can you get curious about? But I've get so many different things that so many things that makes me, makes people happy, it's really hard to nail a theme down.

Robert Plank 16:52 Okay, fair enough. But as you're kind of explaining some of those examples there, it kind of ties back into what you said a couple minutes ago, of like tapping back into the magic of childhood, right? Like when you were a kid, you were curious about things, you weren't negative about things, you were excited about all kinds of things you could do. And then, as we get become adults, and we get all these responsibilities, it seems like some of that goes away, and we need to tap back into that, right?

Vernon Brown 17:18 Exactly. I have a workshop. It's how to use the K ID formula to achieve more happiness and success. And it's obviously, I'm a little biased, but it's a two hour or four hour depends on the group, but it's a two hours about tapping into and really embracing being a kid, everything that you needed to learn in life. You learn as a kid everything, and as you get an adult, you let go of so many things, like kids are curious. I have a four year old son like nothing scares him. He's not afraid to be curious. He's not afraid to he's not concerned about people laughing at him. He's not afraid of breaking the status quo. There is no status quo. This makes me happy. He goes to it my son, he will hide behind my back and just start saying, like, I'm more powerful. It's fun to him. And as adults, we got to remember, be curious. Be curious. And that's a lot of some. Large majority of my work is getting people to be a child with, to be to appreciate the kid that's still in all of us, to revisit that kid, to sit down with that kid and color with them. It sounds, you know, like, what? But a lot of it's about just kind of setting the adult hat down when you need to set it down, and when it's appropriate to set it down. And just embrace the curiosity of life. If you can't figure out what makes you happy, you don't feel like you're curious about anything, the next thing you can think is say, I will say to someone is, what did you used to do for fun? Because that's another thing people forget about.

Robert Plank 18:53 Yeah, we were all we're all kids at one point. It's just a matter just going back to that. Yeah, have a

Vernon Brown 18:59 client's business guys. And you know, they all business guys and gals. They all, you know, very successful. And then, of course, it's like, I can't find any time for fun. And I'll ask that question, well, what did you used to do for fun? And come to find out they wanted to be an archeologist like Indiana Jones. And then we'll start laughing about that. And it's like, I totally have forgotten. I'm like, Okay, now don't you remember? What are you gonna do about it? Next thing you know, they found out they have these historical societies in this, in their city, where they can, you know, go on to local digs or trying to help archive things. But um, so I kind of digress. I went everywhere with that

Robert Plank 19:32 one. But that's good, though. That's like, even if, even if your your childhood dream was something silly, like being like, be an astronaut, there are practical modern day like clubs and there's, there's ways to still tap into, even if it was a silly, crazy dream. Yep,

Vernon Brown 19:48 there's a way there. I promise you, you're not the only one. I can promise you.

Robert Plank 19:54 Well, cool. Well, you mentioned a few times that you do these workshops. So are these live streamed in person? What are. These.

Vernon Brown 20:00 These are in person, because it's more powerful. One of my and this is a whole nother subject, but you know, I'm big on people finding out their superpowers. What you are you amazing at? And lot of the work that I do is especially in like in this workshop, you have to figure out what you're amazing at. And I'm saying all this to say is one of my superpowers, what I'm amazing at is my presence. I have a very strong presence. And I'm not saying I'm better than anybody, or I'm perfect. I'm just saying, hey, look, I have a very strong presence, and I'm a funny guy. I know that. So when I love doing workshops in person, because it makes people listen, it makes people connect. It gives a sense of immediacy. But yeah, we do those in person, we have a fantastic time. I talk about very serious subjects, but we but we laugh about it, and you walk out of there with a plan, a written, actual plan. Yeah,

Robert Plank 20:50 and are these in one location or all over the country? Or where do these take place?

Vernon Brown 20:54 Generally, doing it, not even generally, they tend to bring me into the corporation or their organization, or to their business into like a conference room, like next year, it's I got a few of them up next year, but I'll be flying a little bit different places across the US, just doing this workshops for those companies.

Robert Plank 21:12 Fantastic. And so if people say, you know, a lot of this makes sense, and I want to take the next step, and maybe it's some organization that wants to to bring you, want to do one of these workshops, or maybe it's like an individual entrepreneur or someone who just wants more information. Where's the good stuff at where? What sort of websites? URL should we we be going to at this point

Vernon Brown 21:29 in terms of like, for like, my website or other people's websites,

Robert Plank 21:34 your your website, where find find out about you, where you can learn some free stuff or buy some paid stuff. Where should we go? Um, first

Vernon Brown 21:42 up, it's my website. What's your happy.com and it's happy with an I think you can it's W, H, A, T, S, Y, o, u, r, H, A, P, P, I sorry. I kind of brain fog. Another place that I'm really, really active at is LinkedIn. I posted daily on LinkedIn. I post videos that you happiness tips. I Yeah, LinkedIn is probably the most active platform that I'm on. I am on Facebook and Instagram. On facebook.com, forward slash, what's your happy? And Instagram, what's your happy as well. But I'm very much at I'm very present on LinkedIn,

Robert Plank 22:21 fantastic. So the places to go there are, what's your happy.com go to LinkedIn and search Vernon Brown and add him there and follow him there. And something that that really sat with me and stuck to me, it was in a conversation here, was just that whole concept of if you're, if you're going to be, if you're focusing on those problems, focusing on the negativity, that's just going to lead to more of that. And it tends to be that if we're if we're just unhappy, or we're stuck in a rut, then we might be surrounding ourselves with all these negative, unhappy people. You go on Facebook, it's easy to find the negativity people complain about, politic, politics, economy, environment, whatever. Why not proactively? Go and chase some of that happiness yourself. Chase some of that positivity. And you can begin by adding Mr. Vernon brown on LinkedIn. That way you can see his daily posts. Go to Facebook, what you're happy, go to Instagram, what you're happy, and then go to what's your happy.com that's happy with an I go to that website, poke around and see what you can find out there, see if anything makes sense, resonate with you, and begin taking those baby steps towards rediscovering that your, their your inner kid, and in taking a break every once in a while, having fun. That way you can be the best that you can be, and that way you don't get yet burned out and and just you don't, you avoid that downward spiral, and instead, things become better and better for you have that upward spiral. So go to what's your happy.com and we'll see you there. And thanks so much Vernon for telling us what we need to know whether we're in healthcare or not in healthcare, just giving us that little dose of inspiration happiness. I really appreciate it,

Vernon Brown 23:58 dude. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me again. I appreciate everyone for listening.

Robert Plank 24:01 Fantastic. This is Robert plank, and would you like to be a guest on the program? Do you have an idea for a future episode? Or do you just want to tell us how we're doing? Get in touch with us right now at marketer of the day.com/ask, to let us know you.