Mentors can be hard find. So many of the guys that we work with struggle to connect and learn from older men. In this episode, Park Harris, the founder of Junto Global, comes on the show to share about the value of mentorship and how to find a mentor that you respect.
Intro: [00:00:00] Mark Azoulay is an industry leader in psychotherapy and men’s mental health. He’s helped countless guys get back on their feet, deepen their relationships, and excel in their lives. Now he’s taken all that he has learned and is sharing it with you. In each episode, Mark will interview an expert in the field of masculinity and men’s work.
We’ll cover topics such as emotional intelligence, masculine identity. Anger management, financial health, trauma, recovery, marriage, and divorce, ethics, and spirituality. Tune in and become a better man.
Marc: Welcome back to the men’s therapy podcast. I’m here with Parker Harris. He’s a entrepreneur. He’s an investor.
He’s a man, and he’s the founder of Danto Global, which does mastermind groups for entrepreneurs trying to find community. Parker, welcome to the show. Thank you, Mark. I’m excited to have you talk because, you know, at Men’s Therapy [00:01:00] Online, my company, we talk about these kind of pillars and pathways to masculinity and finding mentorship is an early one.
It’s actually the first pillar that we help guys do is try to find communities of men that have done some of the work and that are out there thriving. So I’m excited to hear about your journey into kind of building these spaces for mentorship and for community.
Parker: Happy to share. I think you’re doing some important work.
I’d like to contribute to it.
Marc: Yeah. So starting with you, like what got you into building mastermind groups and creating these communities for entrepreneurs?
Parker: So I started by actually organizing speaker events. So I would bring in a mentor, uh, an executive, uh, entrepreneur, investor to speak to students initially.
And then after I graduated, it was a group of peers that, um, all graduated with opportunities and kind of weren’t lost, but were committed to leveling up their success. I think there’s like a combination of Ted, you know, a lot of great Ted talks, a lot of great content on YouTube podcasts. There’s just so [00:02:00] much great content online.
And over time, I started getting less and less value from the speaker. I think that I just had heard a lot of the patterns for success. And I’m, I’m really passionate about, like, Something called what I call authentically relevant, like, really making sure we’re zeroing in at the, like, on the right subject or the right topic at the right time.
And I found some of these stories of, like, oh, what it worked 30 years ago or 20 years ago to be less and less valuable to me. And so. And I started seeing more and more value from the peer to peer exchange at the beginning and end of those events. And so I decided to bring together the people that were attending this event, this, this kind of speaker format in more of a round table conversation, because I was missing some of the community and.
Not networking, but some of the camaraderie that I had experienced in college that once I started working in the corporate world, I felt was missing.
Marc: Yeah, I think that’s great. I mean, I experienced that when I go to [00:03:00] conferences to is that the most valuable stuff happens after the talk when you can talk to the peers and be like, hey, okay, we learned this thing.
But how does it actually apply to our lives or to our job or to our career? You know, and I think. I’d imagine, especially for early entrepreneurs, it can be intimidating watching those people talk and be like, Oh yeah, they figured it all out. They made it through, they did all the right stuff. Whereas the early entrepreneur, you’re like, I have no idea about any of this.
I don’t even know where to start. Where what’s step one is. Well,
Parker: it’s also like, there’s those 4 stages of learning. Um, it’s like unconscious incompetence, conscious, incompetence, conscious competence and unconscious competence. And I think sometimes what happens at the speaker events is. There’s this unconscious competence that the speaker has and being able to have the converse in there, like, 20 or 30 steps ahead versus the peer that.
We’re sharing the room with that’s either at the same level or maybe 2 steps ahead and they’re still in that conscious competent phase. And so, you know, it’s, it’s a little more relevant to [00:04:00] the situation that we’re in as an example, it’s like, you know, leaving college, starting a career, working to go to the gym, trying to date and just live a successful independent life.
There’s not a lot of extra room and sometimes extra money. So it’s like, well, what are you doing right now to get an extra hour? Or how are you like, enjoying this now can be more beneficial than what worked 30 years ago before the Internet was working or before social media and, you know, just the problems.
The problems change or the solutions change, so, you know, I think sometimes solving the right problem at the right time versus like solving a problem. That’s 10 steps ahead. There’s just a different level of value. That’s created,
Marc: right? Yeah. The problem might just be like, how do I sit down on my computer regularly and start to chip away at some of this content?
Right? Or how do I, how do I focus? Yeah.
Parker: Yeah. With all the noise. Right. And that was different when, you know, it was just newspapers and cable television versus, [00:05:00] you know, smartphones and internet. And I think that’s, that’s just an example. You know, I think this, you know, with health being the way that it is now, where, you know, I think the majority of Americans are obese, not to.
Judge or condemn that, but what’s the, where does mental health and physical health come together? Because the healthier I get physically, the healthier I get mentally, the more focused I have, the more ability I have to execute on my goals and the things that are important to me. So some of these things compound on each other.
Marc: Yeah, I think that’s so true. Right? It is the mind, body and spirit is 1 thing. Um, before we dive into that, I’m curious about your story. So how, what challenges did you hit when you were starting to launch this community? Yeah, I’m going to go
Parker: back a little bit further is I’m, I’m an only child. Um, I was, I have 2 really loving and supportive parents who taught me great values and I was surrounded.
I surrounded my, like, I was around my parents and their friends. And so I never really got the same [00:06:00] connection with people that were my age growing up. And kind of didn’t understand what they thought was funny or what was important to them. And I just was more interested in ideas and I got really involved in like civic engagement and politics.
And I was fascinated by economics and business. And through that journey, I felt very alone. Um, I didn’t feel like there was a lot of people I could relate to. And the more I’ve learned about psychology and human needs. Connection and acceptance is a more basic human need than success. And so I had a lot of opportunities to be successful, but I didn’t have a lot of community or connection that supported that success.
So I was self sabotaging myself and I eventually like sold out a lot of the opportunities that I had just to be around, you know, just to have the connection and acceptance from people that I thought were my friends. And. And so that led me to a lot of partying, drug use, [00:07:00] alcohol use, um, a few near death experiences.
And, you know, I woke up one day just realizing that I had surrounded myself with a number of people that didn’t really care about me, were probably taking advantage of me, and I had to make some new choices. So I walked those people out of my life, started fresh. It was a very lonely journey. And from that point on, I was, I was about 20 years old, 21 years old at the time.
I was very careful on who I let into my life afterwards. And then for many years after that, I focused on personal development and success and professional development, building a network, but I still had a lot of residual habits that didn’t serve me. And looking back on it, the more I’ve learned about.
Healing and recovery. And, um, I’m a really, really big fan of, um, that book healing and recovery and letting go and, and I’m forgetting the author’s name right now, but, um, he has a framework around [00:08:00] consciousness that I found really interesting where. I think I was living in a lot of shame and guilt and regret and just lower fear, anger, lower level emotions because of these mistakes that I made.
And it was causing me to, even though I wanted to improve my habits, I wasn’t necessarily able to. And so it took me a while to raise my consciousness and heal to the point that I could have the courage to forgive. Myself forgive others, except reality, except where I was at that time and have the understanding of why I made those decisions and start raising my vibration into love and joy and peace and start moving forward my goals.
And as I did that, I was able to clear some of the beliefs that weren’t serving me and really create a compelling vision for my life that allowed me to start building the habits that, you know, I now get to live with and find more joy in.
Marc: I like that story. There’s a lot of things I can dive into. Um, I’m also in recovery.
Um, so it’s kind of the same thing of thought drugs and [00:09:00] alcohol back in college. It went really hard, really fast. Um, so
Parker: it’s almost, it’s almost like a badge of honor, you know, unfortunately, um, I think it’s, it’s something that gets marketed to us in so many ways, both, you know, commercials as well as just within movies.
And, and maybe it has to be that way, but yeah, I really, I would have gotten a lot further if I could have skipped that step.
Marc: Yeah. You know, and I’m curious, this is true for you. This was my experience. We talk about male connection. That’s the only place I found it in those early years, right? There’s something about like the guys I was talking with any kind of real vulnerable conversation was after a night of drinking or after smoking a bunch of weed and like, you know, opening up a little bit.
Um, so it was a way to kind of get that connection, but it came with a big cost. I’m wondering if you had a similar experience there.
Parker: Yeah, you know, I learned that using drugs and alcohol were a way to cover up those lower level notions and essentially get to that place of neutral. And, you know, I, I do think there’s a [00:10:00] certain level of camaraderie or acceptance and can, you know, conversation and connection that happens.
In, in, in those environments that, you know, for better or worse, you know, create some sort of connection to other people as well as potentially a connection to myself and some interesting thoughts and exploration that happened.
Marc: Right. Yeah, it’s connected, but they’re all, there’s still this like chemical artificial layer to it.
Um, which makes it kind of a little bit less real. And then I want to take it to the, like the friend audit thing. You know, there’s a phrase you said, which I talk about a lot with MTO is like, you know, looking at reality for what it is. You know, and just being like, okay, my friends right now are holding me back.
Right. Or I’m really lonely or I carry all this trauma or I carry all this grief, whatever it is. I’m curious for you about that moment of that reckoning. Um, this idea of like opening your eyes and looking around and being like, okay, you know what, let’s just take inventory and then start putting the pieces back [00:11:00] together.
Parker: Yeah. I think death, like confronting death, having those near death experiences, you know, have an interesting way of. It impacted me in that way, but I think even it’s something that it’s not like a one time decision to accept reality. I think even more and more with what happened with coven and maybe potentially where politics are just like current events.
It can be really challenging to accept reality for the way that it is versus wishing that it was different. And so. You know, it’s something even a few years ago, I got challenged on in a mastermind environment was I was very frustrated by some things that were going on. And someone was like, Hey, you know, it says it sounds to me like you’re not accepting reality for what it is.
And that potentially was limiting my power. In a significant way, and once I really sat with that and realized it was true and accepted reality for what it was, it allowed me to make [00:12:00] decisions of where I wanted to focus my time and energy and eventually move forward my goals.
Marc: Yeah, I think that takes true courage, man.
I mean, really, like, to look at it, especially if it’s not what we want it to be, you know, it takes that courage to meet the demons, right? And look them right in the face. So that’s incredible. That’s really good.
Parker: I think courage is that gateway out of the lower level emotions.
Marc: Yeah. How do you inspire in your mastermind groups?
How do you cultivate courage? It’s always a question I have. All right. Cause I do think that it’s such a difference maker. I think
Parker: entrepreneurs are inherently courageous in that they have to take risk. Like they’re risking failure and they’re risking like what that means about being wrong. You know, I think salespeople also are in this camp where the best salespeople, the best entrepreneurs, the best leaders.
Are potentially wrong more than they’re right. And so I think that that takes some courage. I see my responsibility [00:13:00] within a mastermind group is creating the space for us to show up as we are to show what, you know, without the mask and be able to be vulnerable and creating that confidential space, um, and, and doing the work beforehand to really understand where people are at and what would be valuable for them to talk about to get to where they want to go.
Marc: Yeah. Do you have an example of some of the issues that come into the mastermind groups?
Parker: Yeah, I think it’s why, you know, we have a holistic focus. So we focus on business health relationships. And so, um, I’ve heard a lot over, you know, over a period of time, you know, sometimes it’s struggles with business of not bringing enough leads.
Not like not knowing how to do the marketing side of things. Sometimes it’s an issue with the team or like, how do I hire the people that I’m looking to hire? Sometimes it’s like, hey, like, do I have product market fit? Like, what is my strategy? Sometimes it’s around, like, how do I [00:14:00] say it? Okay. Ours, or how do I set, you know, the goals for the company, you know, sometimes it’s around issues with our wife or, you know, our significant other and, you know, potentially the lack of fulfillment that we’re having in that relationship or just the contention and some of the negativity that it’s bringing.
Does that person really support me? Um, so it, it, it, it varies pretty 80 percent business. Sometimes it’s 80 percent personal.
Marc: Yeah. That interplay is always so. Interesting to me, you know, and a lot of my guys, uh, they come to therapy starting with work problems, you know, like, Hey, I can’t generate leads, right.
Or I can’t respond to emails or, you know, this conflict that it’s hard to work on. And it just takes a little nudge to be like, Hey, does that happen in your real life too? Is that happened in your personal life? You know, cause a lot of these entrepreneurs, and I’m sure you know this, right? Like when they’re starting off, it’s often just them.
So their business is them. So any issue the business has, they also likely have in their regular life, you know, Yeah,
Parker: um, [00:15:00] I see that 80 to 90 percent of the time when someone brings a problem to the table, it’s, it’s not actually the real problem. Like, we need to get to a root cause. We need to get to that, that deeper level.
And sometimes that’s deeper within a business. Sometimes that’s deeper on the mindset side of things, or the, like, the belief and and so. You know, I think that sometimes the value of a coach or a therapist or a mentor or a mastermind is being that sounding board to bring an issue and potentially see like that unknown unknown.
Marc: Yeah, exactly. Like, being able to see from the outside in and for the. Participant to be able to take it in to be able to take in feedback, you know, um, I, I, I joke with, with my therapist that I need to, I personally need to be in therapy for like 5 years before I could take feedback. I had a real problem with authority.
So when anyone told me anything, I would immediately just dismiss it just because it wasn’t coming from me. I was like, really insecure, you know? Um, so it took a lot of inner work for me to be able to, to see those mirrors and act on them.
Parker: And sometimes we need to [00:16:00] release energy before we’re actually looking to shift.
Right. One of the questions I’ve learned to ask my wife and, and loved ones and, and people that I care about is when they, when they’re bringing something to me, it’s like, Hey, do you want me to hear this? Or do you want me to help you solve it? And I would say 60 percent of the time it’s, I want you to hear this,
Marc: you know, agree with me, right.
Or just like, take my side on the situation. Yeah. I think that’s human. I think it’s very human. Yeah, I think we need to feel like we have backup, right? And we have to feel like we have people that are in our corner. So we’re going to move again
Parker: and work. I think there’s also an element of once people. Get to that point where they can clear the energy.
They can solve the problem themselves.
Marc: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Like, the emotion is often the most pressing need, you know, so we’re going to move to our 1st commercial break. Um, when we come back, we’ll just keep riffing on this topic. I like the idea of talking about, we chatted about before this interface between mental health and personal development, um, and also talking [00:17:00] about, I’m curious, like, what you see in your groups as far as modern solutions, um, and modern problems, because you made a reference to this idea that the things from 30 years ago, just, you know, Do not work.
So if you’re listening, hang on in there. I will see you on the other side of the commercial break.
Intro: Follow voice America at facebook. com forward slash voice America for juicy updates from your favorite radio shows and podcasts. Men’s Therapy Online is now accepting new members. Men’s Therapy Online offers a solution to the lack of outlets for emotional expression, positive role models, and access to meaningful milestones.
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Marc: Welcome back to the show.
I’m sitting here with Parker Harris, the founder of Gen Global, who does mastermind groups for entrepreneurs and leaders, and we were talking about. Community building, you know, and something that I really experienced, um, in the field of therapy, and I think a lot of people that work in healthcare, mental health can probably relate with this is when I was coming up, I got a lot of these messages around, you know, you have to pay your dues, um, don’t charge too much, you know, um, you have to work with people that are struggling the most.
It’s kind of like martyr caregiver thing. And when I was talking about trying to do more innovative things with my company or talking about, um, wanting to charge what I feel like I was worth, right? Or wanting to branch out and do things like this podcast. [00:20:00] I get a lot of naysayers, a lot of people being like, Oh, yeah, well, that’s just not the way that we do it.
You know, like, that’s what coaches do. And there’s, they kind of like judge coaches in the therapy world, you know? Um, and I had to do what you talked about in the first segment of take this audit of my colleagues and be like, Oh, you know, who’s, who’s All my side and who’s not, who sees the vision and who doesn’t, who’s supportive of it.
And I just noticed in my industry, there’s just a lot of like staying small. Um, and I’m curious if you see that in the groups or if you encountered like naysaying or haters or whatever it may be as you were trying to build this company.
Parker: Yeah, I think it, you know, it’s, it’s hard to be a winner without having haters.
I think it’s that ludicrous song. Like my haters have haters. So I don’t, you know, I’m at a point in life where that I don’t really think too much about that. I think I’m still human. And when, you know, people post, you know, comment on my posts and in negative ways, I think it’s, it is interesting and there’s some emotional [00:21:00] charge around it, but.
You know, I, the question that I asked is like, does this serve me more? You know, I’ve learned to ask that question more and more, but, you know, I, I think personal development is, is an interesting, like, I’ve been really interested in personal development for a long time and I’m at a point now where I don’t think personal development is an individual journey.
I think having a community and a success team that supports our success in the different areas of our life is. An essential part of the personal development journey.
Marc: Yeah, I think that’s true. I think it’s 100 percent true. Like, and I like to use success team because it’s everything, right? It’s like having the personal trainer.
It’s having a therapist. It’s having a coach. It’s being part of a group. It’s joining a low community organization, right? It’s connecting with teachers. If you have kids, right? It’s like, it’s the whole thing because if we’re trying to do bold things, we can’t do it alone.
Parker: I mean, I think it’s, yeah, I’m trying to think of someone that has been able to do it alone.
And I can’t, I can’t really think of [00:22:00] anyone. Um, there’s a kind of a, a cliche in the personal development world that we become. We become the some average of the 5 people we spend the most time with. And so, you know, for me, I grew up in an environment where I didn’t want to become the some average of the 5 people I was spending the most time with.
And so it caused me to move out my senior year of high school to. You know, let’s figure out where people that were thriving were at and to learn how to add value to those people and build relationships that were, were long term sustainable.
Marc: Trying to find people that were your peers and that had the same values.
I’m curious, you know, I guess one, how you found it and two, how other people can find that, because I know it can feel really lonely out there, um, for a lot of entrepreneurs or people that are just trying to, yeah, like you said, do something bold, do something different in their industry or in the world.
Parker: [00:23:00] Yeah, I, I’m big on like intuition and like, sometimes like, I’ll say like, follow, you know, follow my nose or follow my toes, like find environments that, that light, you know, that light me up and build relationships within those environments. And that can be within, you know, an organization, um, it could be, you know, even within a sport.
You know, like, I, I, I think there’s always circles within circles. So if we find like a circle that we’re, we’re getting value from, they’re taking on leadership roles, finding ways to contribute to other people’s success, asking for introductions, I think. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger were introduced to each other by common friends, and they’re like, you guys just need to meet.
So I think being more of who we really are, finding places and experiences that serve us. You know, in, in whatever way that is going to [00:24:00] conferences going to, you know, wherever, wherever we’re like, called to go and maybe uncomfortable to go showing up anyway, building those relationships. I think 1 of the hardest things is not necessarily just.
Meeting the person like, like start, like starting the relationship, I think for me, one of the hardest things is maintaining that relationship. And that’s where a mastermind came in for me. It was like, yeah, I could grab coffee with you every week. But if I try to do that with 10 people, usually that would fizzle out over time, like a week.
But if we’re inviting everybody to a mastermind event, it creates a lot of value for everybody. That’s not just like a dyadic. Relationship and and so that was that was my strategy. That was my approach. And it wasn’t like, uh, like a conscious strategy, like, where I was like, oh, masterminding, like, like, thinking about how to do this.
It was it was more accidental and, you know, it, it, it created a lot of favors in terms of, I think a lot of [00:25:00] people would do a lot to support me now, because they got so much benefit from an environment that had. That wasn’t like, oh, Parker did this for me. It was like, oh, the introductions, the relationships that I formed within this space is like, fundamentally changed my life.
And, you know, whatever, you know, if I, if I make a phone call, someone’s going to answer it. So there’s a lot of, I think. Power for the lack of a better word in doing things for other people without the expectation of return, learning to add value to other people and kind of be abundant with introductions and networks and, and, and doing things for other people that maybe they’re, they’re not even expecting and maybe their family
Marc: wouldn’t even do for them.
Yeah, that’s really, that’s really powerful. What you just said, right. Of like being that connector and being that community hub. You know, we were chatting a little bit over the break about how lonely it seems like modern culture is. And I think they need people [00:26:00] like you. They need people that are out there that are drawing those lines that are making those introductions.
But I’m curious what you, what you see out there as far as loneliness goes. What do you think is happening right now? I mean,
Parker: people, you know, connection can show up in a lot of different ways and whether it’s, you know, some people think that social media is connection and, you know, maybe there is some sort of there is connection on Twitter or Instagram.
Um, you know, I think at the end of the day that humans. There’s a certain value in conversation. I think there’s also sometimes a value in like, proximity and like, actually being able to shake hands or something energetically happens when we’re around each other. So. I think that there’s a lot of attempts.
Even mastermind is a word that gets thrown out around a lot. A lot of things get called masterminds that aren’t actually masterminds. There are group coaching environment or a conference, you know, a speaker on stage speaking to 100 people and they call it a [00:27:00] mastermind. Um, I think 1 of the challenges that I see with people.
Getting the connection is showing up, you know, I call it showing up for life. Like if we don’t show up, it’s very difficult to build those relationships. And I think I also see a certain level of judgmentalness where it’s like, Oh, well, this person has this thing wrong with them. I don’t, I don’t want to talk to them.
And it’s like, you know, I probably have 10 things wrong with me, you know, or a hundred, like, so it’s like, am I really in a position to judge another person? Um, so. You know, it’s what I’ve experienced is I’ve made judgments to around other people and like thinking that they couldn’t do anything for me or that, like, oh, I don’t like the company that they work for or, or something like that.
And then 2 or 3 or 4 years later. Whatever time, you know, period of time, something fundamentally shifts for that [00:28:00] person. They grow, they evolve, they move into a new position, they start their own company. And now they’re in a completely different place where they could do so much to help me. But because the way that I treated them, they’re not, they don’t, they didn’t show up for me.
They’re like, didn’t take that call in that example. So it’s, it’s sometimes hard to see the long game. I love Simon Sinek’s. You know, book and talks around, like, the infinite game where there are no rules and there is no, you know, and it’s, it’s, it’s can be challenging to live that, especially if I’m in a place of survival.
Like, if I’m if I’m living in survival, living in scarcity. Thinking very short term, just trying to get, get by day by day, or we’re just looking at the next month. It’s really hard to play a long term game in that infinite game. But I think the more long term I am about relationships, about business decisions, about life decisions, the better decisions that I’ll make.
And the better that I’ll show up for [00:29:00] other people in my life.
Marc: Yeah, you’re saying a lot of really good things that I want to just, I guess, focus on the last thing you said about this survival mentality. And it’s always like, I feel it. Right. And I also do acknowledge that we live in, like, a lot of privilege.
You know, we live in a lot of safety, at least I do. Right? Like, I live in a lot of like, abundance, but there is a survival mentality that comes up where I can get so narrow focused. And I feel like a lot of people, a lot of guys, a lot of leaders, entrepreneurs get that where we get into this, like, very much, um, killer be killed feel and it just, it cuts people out.
Right? It kind of like, it puts on the blinders to community and real connection.
Parker: Yeah, I. I think there are seasons of life where, you know, sometimes that being focused on the critical path, being focused on what’s in front of me serves me. Um, I also think that there’s like, there’s a hunter mentality, but there’s also a farmer [00:30:00] mentality.
And sometimes I think that farmer mentality, you know, depending on the business can be a little bit more advantageous and accurate. It’s a different pace. Um, That potentially is more long term thinking, you know, again, back to seasons. Right. So I, I don’t have any judgment around it. I think I think that I having a survival mentality was beat into me by my father.
His advice to me growing up was plan a is to survive and have a good time. Plan B is to survive, you know, and so it caused me to look for another way. Okay. To, to figure out how to thrive, but that’s very built into my, you know, deep into my subconscious. And it took me to a point where I had like a 5 year, 7 year runway where I could make all the mistakes in the world and still be okay for a long period of time.
So to really energetically start shifting out of it. And I [00:31:00] think that all started with moving out of a victim mentality. I think that’s an interesting thing is like. That victim mentality versus a hero mentality and, you know, being able to assign meaning of the things that are happening in life where there’s so much power and that ability to assign meaning and the meaning that I would assign something is different if I’m a victim of a situation versus if I’m the hero of the situation.
Marc: Yeah. Can you say more about that? Because I think that is, it’s pervasive about that victim mentality and what steps you took to. Get out of it and transition to the hero mentality.
Parker: So I think the simplest way to describe it would be a victim thinks things happen to them, where a hero thinks that they happen for them.
And as the hero, I have responsibility to To accept the things that happen and [00:32:00] to harness them, take the energy from them for my benefit versus my detriment. When I had a victim mentality, I was very comfortable escaping, hiding, numbing, uh, versus looking the thing in the face, accepting and seeing my part in that situation and, you know, moving forward.
Right. Success is on the far side of failure. So going through that failure to achieve the success for me, the way that I got out of it is I was triggered. Multiple times a day. So what triggering means to me is, you know, I’d have a plan for how I wanted to the day or how I wanted the week, how I wanted the month.
I’d have this like goal and this plan and then fires would come up things that I didn’t want to happen. Happened. Mike Tyson would say I got punched in the face, right? Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And then the way that I was dealing with those punches in the face as I was getting mad about.
It. [00:33:00] I was getting mad at everyone around me. I was blaming them. And then I would hide, escape, and numb from, from those fires. And then I’d wake up and they would be worse. They would still be there and I’d still have to deal with them. And I got, I received a tool and I’m really interested in tools. Like I’ve heard it said, you can tell someone something they’ll ignore you.
You can show someone something they’ll forget, or you can give them a tool and you’ll change their life forever. And I was given a tool. We call it the stack and it’s essentially a series of questions to explore the, the darkness to release the rage to go through like a drift and then to lift and, you know, find the light or the gift from it.
And it’s essentially a way to. Explore the story that I’m telling myself based on the trigger or the stimulus and to analyze that story of whether it’s true or not. And then to rewrite that [00:34:00] story and find the lesson in it that applies to the different areas of my life. And through doing that a number of times, eventually I initially started doing it multiple times a day because I asked my team, when you see me triggered to tell me to stack it and I would have to do it.
And I was being Triggered multiple times a day. And what I realized was I was telling myself this story that because of decisions that I had already made in the past, I couldn’t be who I wanted to be in the future, which is kind of a victim mentality, you know,
Marc: history. Yeah.
Parker: Yeah. The past determined my future.
And then I was able to rewrite that story. And I had a mentor who also helped me realize that those mistakes did not disqualify me for leadership. They actually qualified me for leadership. So again, assigning meaning to mistakes and these things didn’t happen to me. They happened for me and you know, I can now decide to make new decisions based on my experience and wisdom and [00:35:00] power that I have today.
Marc: Yeah, I love what you’re saying there, you know, and I think, you know, to dive into that, I think of this like learning mentality or the student mentality and realizing that, you know, being bad at something is the first step to being good at it. And I think we just launched this incompetence, right? Exactly.
Right. It’s like being like, okay, I need to learn this. Here’s the mistakes. Okay. It wasn’t catastrophic. Let’s kind of get back and do it. And I really try to encourage that in the people that I work with too, and listen to the podcast where it’s okay. You know, I know as a, as a millennial, like I didn’t really get.
A lot of that knowledge. I somehow believe that if I wasn’t good immediately, if I wasn’t talented, then I just shouldn’t do it. You know, I should just walk away or it’s not for me or it’s not my passion or it’s not my gift or whatever, rather than I think what I hear you really talking well about is like, you can learn tools and you can build skills and you can get better at stuff.
You know, the human brain is incredible about the ability to learn and pick up new things.
Parker: I think that’s something entrepreneurs inherently, you know, they usually have a big goal. And [00:36:00] most of the time their parents weren’t entrepreneurs. And so they weren’t born into that environment. And, you know, there’s so many tools that are required to be successful in entrepreneurship that, you know, that they’re willing to learn those tools, find those tools, deploy those tools and, you know, rise above their limitations to achieve a larger goal or mission.
Marc: Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to move to our final commercial break. Can we come back? We’re going to share some of those tools with the listeners, things that you all can do right away and think about and implement to make some of these changes and start to thrive in your life. Start to move forward. Um, especially if you’re feeling stuck.
So if you’re interested in that, hang on in there and we’ll see you on the other side.
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Marc: Welcome back to the show.
I’m here with Parker Harris and we’re talking about tools, um, to kind of make bold things happen. So I’m curious, Parker, we got to start with vision, right? That’s the goal. That’s why the, the mission that entrepreneurs can get behind, how do you [00:39:00] help cultivate that in the guys and people that you work with?
I
Parker: think there’s different ways to go at it. Um, I love the Japanese term angaki, which, you know, brings together three different ideas. And there’s a lot of frameworks around figuring out our why a lot of questions, uh, that people can ask, you know, sometimes it’s visceral people, people just get it. I think there’s also some ways to, to get in touch with the senses.
Right. Like there’s a, there’s one part of it is intellectual, but I think there’s a lot of power in, you know, what do we want to see? What do we want to feel? What do we want to hear? What do we want to experience on a daily basis? So I like the idea that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our questions.
And so there’s a series of quality questions that we would ask an entrepreneur to come up with a compelling vision for their life and for their business. I think there’s also some ways to come at it, like from a qualitative and quantitative basis. So [00:40:00] there’s a tool in personal development called the wheel of life, where essentially it breaks out the different areas of a person’s life, their health, their relationship, their significant other, their friendship, their team, you know, their career, their fun, their impact, you know, the, you know, there’s different ways, different wheels of life that have been created.
And. One of the things I like to do is really figure out where I’m at now. Like, how would I rate my wheel of life now? And what was the journey to get to where I am currently? And then where do I want to go in the future and what would that path look like? So I think there’s, there’s a lot of different ways to accomplish it.
And I think like most things, there’s no, like, it’s not about doing it one time. It’s about doing it, you know, maybe every three months, every six months on some sort of regularity, because. Normally we, we change, we evolve, or we get new understandings of what we want as we start [00:41:00] accomplishing it or by figuring out what we don’t want,
Marc: right?
By getting to be like, I don’t want to walk down that path. Is there a
Parker: question or I want to build, you know, I want to build a business that doesn’t have a team. Right. So low partnership is, is a, is becoming a bigger thing or, you know, I don’t want this type of business. I know I want this type of business or, you know, I think there’s just a lot of different subtle ways, um, of, you know, figuring out what we do want by knowing what we don’t want.
I think it’s always about like starting with what we, what we know, starting where we’re at. There’s a lot of power in that.
Marc: Yeah, we talked a lot in this episode about like auditing right? Like the, the bold, um, just kind of brutally honest auditing of life business relationships. Um, the life wheel, right?
Just being like, okay, where am I? What resource do I have? And how can I start to play this game with the deck of cards that I have? Um, is, is there a question that kind of encapsulates this that our listeners could ponder over something that might start [00:42:00] to dig at this mission and vision aspect? Yeah.
Parker: I don’t think there’s 1 question, but I think it depends.
Sometimes people learn in different ways. So sometimes it’s their visual learners. I would, I would recommend, like, the wheel of life. Um, some, you know, sometimes people are a little bit more intellectual. So they, you know, I think that. There’s a framework of like, you know, what am I really good at? What does the world need?
What am I passionate about? What could I get paid for? Like the intersection of, of those, um, some people are more like sensory. And so really exploring, like, you know, what would you want your day to look like? What would you want to hear? What would you want to smell? What would you want to see? You know, like, I think coming at it from that point of view could, could bring up some interesting truths that wouldn’t just happen if I was like, Oh, what’s the vision of my life?
Marc: Yeah, yeah. So I’m curious, do you have a tool around execution or around discipline? Right? Because, you know, taking the [00:43:00] next step, a lot of entrepreneurs, I think, have these big lofty ideas, but then when they sit down to computer, they hit a wall of dissociation, you know, or they procrastinate, or they self sabotage, they struggle to kind of Drive the bus forward.
I’m curious if you see that in the work that you do and how you help people. Yeah.
Parker: Well, I think there’s the there’s a mindset side of that. And then there’s actual like tool or strategy side around that. I think the mindset 1 for me was the hardest part. So I think it’s letting go of the idea that this needs to be perfect and then beating myself up for for failure or not getting everything done.
I also found. I see with myself and, and a lot of other people is we’re unrealistic with what we can get done in a day or in a period of time, and so. Rather than feeling feeling guilt or shame around that, it’s like finding truth with it. It’s like, okay, well, I can only really get this much done. So it’s more important that I choose that I prioritize [00:44:00] and work on things that will actually move the needle.
So I think that’s, that’s part of the mindset piece and simplifying as well. Like, like. Just making things as simple as possible, but not not simpler. Um, that’s 1 thing that travel is done for me. My wife and I are traveling the world for an extended period of time and we’re moving to a new city every month.
And so, you know, that’s. Back at home, we’d have a lot of stuff. And now that we have a lot less stuff, it’s created a lot more space for us to focus on the most important things to us. Um, so I think that’s where minimalism and essentialism and just being very intentional about the things in our life can, can, can really support striving for the goals.
Marc: I think I’m curious what’s come up in your life with that, with having that a lot of stuff, what values have arrived or what you’ve found that’s more important.
Parker: I mean, it’s just, it’s just created simplicity to focus on [00:45:00] things that, like, I’m not spending a lot of time cleaning or taking care of stuff or taking the car.
Like, like, it’s interesting how much stuff can, like, how many commitments. Can stack up when we have to, you know, it’s the fight club idea, right? It’s like the things we own and end up owning us, right.
Marc: You got to maintain everything.
Parker: Yeah. I mean, it’s just, there’s a six and it’s just part of its mind share too.
And then we get in this like comfort flow. Um, I realized I was capable of a lot more. And I think planning for like moving forward with a wedding also did that where it was like, no longer were evenings just about relaxing. They were about moving things forward. And I was like, wow, what if we do this after the wedding’s over with, like, we’ll be able to move forward a lot of things.
So we’ve gotten like our financial house in order and really have our investments and our money working. For us, we also work out with a trainer multiple times a week, virtually on the road. And, and it’s, it’s really amazing to see the body transform, um, different, you [00:46:00] know, social media things, you know, moving forward, the brand and, um, kind of some of the strategies around that spending more time learning.
Um, so a lot of things that I’ve been wanting to do for years and years when I was at home, we’ve been able to do in 7, 8 months of being on the road, like all of it, just because there’s less stuff and more, more, more energy and time to focus on those things.
Marc: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. And one of the tools that I give to my guys is this idea of shifting your environment.
You know, I’m going to a coffee shop or going on a retreat or running an Airbnb for a week to get stuff done. I think we’re talking about is so powerful for the human psyche that changing the environment. It opens up all this new possibility space, right? So easy to kind of get stuck in those ruts when we’re just at home, especially post COVID when a lot of people work from home and their life and their job have blended into 1 thing.
Yeah. You know,
Parker: I think space is 1 of the, the, the aspects or the foundations of personal development [00:47:00] and self actualization and mental health that get the least amount of attention and more and more, you know, I think space is getting more complicated where. You know, we can understand our physical space, although that was the kind of the starting place for me was space was realizing, you know, I needed, I didn’t take ownership of my space and I had these boxes of files that had so much energy around them, uh, for a variety of reasons and really clearing that out.
And, you know, if you think about the movie limitless and when he takes that NZT pill or whatever it was called, the first thing he did was like clean his apartment. You know? And then once that was clean, he was like, He could write his book, you know, um, I think, I think there’s also an element of digital space that is more and more, you know, interesting in our, in our time of like computers and smartphones.
And 1 of the things I did on this trip is I, like, I had, like, 55 screens of apps on my phone [00:48:00] and I cut it down to only having 1 screen because I, like, I just so many apps and the. There’s something, you know, it’s, it’s like, it’s just a small change, but it compounds over time, cleaning out the desktop of my, of my screen, you know, clearing out my emails, clearing out my Spotify, you know, I actually got rid of Spotify and I just use YouTube music as part of just simplifying things down.
But, um, which I never thought I would do. So I think, and I think, so that’s, that’s kind of the space outside of us. And then there’s also this, like, Inner space of like our own minds, you know, our own, our own emotional space, um, you know, the physical space, our body is a temple, right? What is a temple? A temple is a sacred space.
So our body is a sacred space. So I think really living that and understanding it and, you know, stops like not toxifying that. I think one of the biggest challenges for me was like, I’d move things forward. It’s like that three steps forward, two steps back, or two steps forward, three steps back. It’s like that moving.
Uh, [00:49:00] backstepping was, was an element of self sabotage, staying comfortable, victim mindset, you know, and just probably pleasure seeking, um, getting, you know, getting that dopamine and in cheap places or in places that didn’t. Help me build momentum and consistency. So as I’ve, as I’ve taken more ownership of, of my space, time is also an element of space.
Our calendar is our space, you know? This, this can become like a really like a rabbit hole, but I think space is a foundation for self actualization.
Marc: I agree completely. You know, I studied Buddhism and there’s this concept called drama, which in the Buddhist kind of lore, or at least like little, like, spiritual beings that rest on your shoulder and like, whisper to you.
Right? But what they talk about it is that different space has different drama. And it’s the energetic thing that, that I hear you speaking about. I would encourage our listeners to pay attention to the drama. So for instance, you know, if you have a bag of leaves that you haven’t thrown away, right. [00:50:00] Every time you see it in the garage, you’re going to get this like, like feeling right.
There’s like, kind of like downshift to like, Oh man, I need to do that. I need to clean that up. Or we see that, you know, box, you never unpacked from moving, right. You get this like negative energetic hit of like, Oh God, I need to do that. I’m not who I thought, who I want to be. Right. Not who I say I’m gonna do.
Exactly right. It’s like that broken promise with yourself that gets pink. And then similarly, right? Like if you have a clean house where you do the dishes and you walk and you see your dish, um, your sink is empty, you get that little like buzz of like, oh yeah, like I did that, right? Like, I controlled my space, I improved myself.
I’m investing in, in my space. And I think, you know, this Buddhist concept, but I think it’s true, right? Of everything has that energetic imprint. Um, based on just from looking at the 1st, kind of hit that we get when we interact with space, I think it’s really critical. And I love talking about it because I think there’s, there’s a lot there that isn’t quite explored yet.
You know, um.
Parker: Yeah, well said I, I actually developed like a wheel of space. So we talked about [00:51:00] the wheel of life, but it was like, just to really understand the different elements of space and how, you know, where I’m at on that and where I want to go. And I think sometimes, like, people think the space they want is the mansion or like this big, this big stuff.
And the more I’m. I’m exploring and traveling, like having, you know, smaller places and different places is to me like more interesting. So I think, you know, sometimes when we embrace the journey and dive into the unknown, we learn more about who we are.
Marc: Right. Yeah. I think as we mix it up, right, it’s just another mirror for us.
And I think travel is a great way and other people, right. Are great ways to bring those mirrors into your life. Um, so we’re moving to the end of the episode, Parker. I’m curious. Um, one, what is a takeaway you’d want people to walk away with around some of these topics? We’ve been chatting about, you know, mentorship, community, entrepreneurship, vision, and also where can [00:52:00] people find you online if they want to learn more about you and what you offer?
Parker: Yeah, I think. There’s so many things I’d want to say is from a takeaway. Some of the things like just show up for life is something that, that, but, you know, I think different people are at different places and the challenges that they’re dealing with are, are, are different. And so I don’t want to, like, try to oversimplify it.
You know, there’s a book. Called outwitting the devil by Napoleon Hill that really touched me around thinking accurately this importance of like thinking accurately being the biggest enemy of evil and the biggest obstacle to thinking accurately was drifting through life. So I would just challenge people not to drift through life.
And I think learning to. Build a rhythm around reflection, planning and execution can can be life changing [00:53:00] and it starts that unconscious. It’s how to break through that unconscious incompetence journey. And I think it can be very challenging to know what’s going to move the needle in our business, even moving meals in our life.
Like, if we don’t explore. You know, how it’s already going, like, the question that I asked myself was how would I rate this week on a 1 to 10 scale? And I did that for 52 weeks for a year and I didn’t get a single week above a 6. and then I looked back on all of my notes from from doing doing that. And then I saw these like patterns and then I went, I was able to start having multiple weeks in a row above a nine.
So, you know, a life worth living is a life worth examining. So examine, examine it, build a rhythm for reflection, planning and execution. And, you know, it doesn’t need to be overly simplified of like every week or every [00:54:00] month. It can, you know, it can be whenever it can be twice a week. It can, you know, there’s a lot of different ways to skin this cat, if you will.
Um, and figure out what works for you and involve other people in the journey. Sharing, you know, sharing that stuff, even if it’s on social media or within a close group of friends or a mastermind, uh, you know, sharing with a coach or family, there can be, there can be a lot of benefit and getting another person’s point of view on what’s holding us back or what they see as our strengths and our weaknesses.
That’s fantastic.
Marc: So, as you wrap up here, where can people find you online? We can learn more about you and global.
Parker: I’m active on most social media platforms. So, um, my full name is Zachary Parker Harris. If you look on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook, you’ll find me there. Um, and I go, it’s Zach Parker Harris on Twitter.
So wherever you are active, uh, find me. And, um, if any of the tools that [00:55:00] I shared resonated with you, you can DM me and I’ll, I’ll share it with you.
Marc: Okay. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks y’all for tuning in and we’ll see you next week. Another episode of men’s therapy podcast.
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