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Steve's New York Times best selling book: What is Your What?

Peter King: You're listening to the PK Experience podcast, my name is Peter King, I'm the host of the show. Today I sit down with New York Times best-selling author Steve Olsher. Steve wrote a book called What is Your WHAT: Discover the One Amazing Thing You Were Born To Do, which is what hit the New York Times Best-Selling List. But he's also into many other things. He hosts a conference called the New Media Summit, which is something that helps podcasters grow their podcast, obviously something I'm interested in myself. He's also the host of a radio show called reinvention radio where he helps businesses and people reinvent themselves to maximize their potential. He's also the host of another podcast called Beyond Eight Figures which speaks to entrepreneurs and business owners that are at or beyond eight figures in revenue and/or has exited at eight figures or beyond.

Peter King: So it's my pleasure to share this conversation with you today. He's got a lot of things to say, but specifically really dive into the What Is Your WHAT aspect of it so that you can find that one thing in your life that is most meaningful to you and so you're not just spending your entire life going, going, going as we tend to do here in America here, anyway. Culture is so driven to achieve success, but as a mentor friend of mine once told me, "Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure."

Peter King: So this is a book about fulfillment. This is a book, and a conversation about finding that one thing that you were born to do, that you were called to do, that really fulfills your soul and ultimately contributes to the greater good in society. So I hope you take that into consideration as you listen to this, but with that let's dive into the call. Here I am with Steve Olsher.

Peter King: All right. I'm here with Steve Olsher, the New York Times best-selling author of What Is Your WHAT amongst many other things. Steve, thank you so much for taking some time today.

Steve Olsher: Yeah man, appreciate you having me on.

Peter King: Yeah, so the very first podcast episode that I did was with Simon Sinek, the start with why. I feel like there's this battle going on between, well where do I begin? Do I start with my why, do I start with my what? I haven't talked to a how guy yet, but I need to talk to a how guy. I feel like it's a little bit of an Abbott and Costello game going on here.

Peter King: So explain to people sort of what your approach is with your book What Is Your WHAT, and then why that is so important.

Steve Olsher: Yeah. For me, and it's interesting, so I've had conversations with Simon over the years. He was a guest on our show, Reinvention Radio. That was a fun little why versus what kind of conversation. But the best way to think about it is, and I love the work that Simon does, don't get me wrong. I mean, it's important work. It's super important work that he's doing.

Steve Olsher: To me though, your why is something that you can choose. Right? It's something that is external. If you think about it from the standpoint of, "I wanna feed starving children in Africa," or, "I wanna provide clean drinking water around the world," or, "I wanna have this nice school district for my kids," I don't know, whatever it is, right? It's like, it's something that you can choose and it usually has something to do with ... it's external, right? Again, it's just outside of who you are. It's usually about helping someone else in some way or doing something for someone else, and I get that, and I totally can appreciate that.

Steve Olsher: For me the way to think about it is that your what is really ... it's kind of that which has chosen you, and it's not that which you have chosen. Right? So it's internal. I mean, you could spend a lifetime in denial about what that is, but reality, if you look at the cover of the book there, you'll see it's just, we've got the DNA strand on there. It's like the only graphic element that we have on there, because I do believe that your what is really that which is in your DNA. It reflects how you're most naturally wired to excel.

Steve Olsher: When you are clear on the What Is Your WHAT framework, which is comprised of your core gift, the primary vehicle you use to share that gift, and then the people that you're most compelled to serve, I mean, that's truly where the magic happens. Once you have clarity around the What Is Your WHAT framework, it not only becomes of course this incredible gift that you have within but also becomes this really incredible gift that is of value to the world.

Peter King: That's a very fascinating take on that, 'cause I have often felt inversely that the what seems very tangible and that the why is the inner calling. But I guess depending, either/or you call it a what or a why, there seems to be a calling and then obviously that results in a tangible product or service or legacy, ultimately.

Steve Olsher: Yeah, and I mean, Simon and I had a little discussion around whether it's just a semantical debate and we're really just saying the same thing. But you know, I do ... I don't think so. It's like, if you ... ESPN has a special that they're doing right now, I don't know, some sort of documentary where they sit down with all of these really amazing basketball players. You know, Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd and LeBron James, I mean, you name it right? This one woman, she looks so familiar but I can't ... I don't remember what her name is.

Steve Olsher: But this one woman who was a pro ball player over a number of years, basically what she said, something to the extent of, "It chose me." That's just kinda how I look at it, is your what really does choose you. You can choose what your why is. I believe that you can choose what your why is, I don't think that you can choose your what.

Peter King: Got it. How did you discover this? Walk me through your awakening to the value of this and your desire to share it.

Steve Olsher: Yeah, it's interesting, right, because in author land they say you write the book that you most need. For me that's really been the personal journey that was captured here in the book What Is Your WHAT is my own personal journey of trying to figure out how I'm naturally wired to excel. I've struggled with that question, how am I naturally wired to excel, for most of my adult life. Having taken the Myers Briggs and the What Color Is Your Parachutes and Strengths Finders and those sort of things, I mean, all those modalities are great. But for me personally they really left me with more questions than answers.

Steve Olsher: As I began having this sort of personal awakening, if you will, of moving from what I would call commodity oriented businesses where I'm just doing something to make buck to doing something from a career perspective that actually provides more fulfillment, and is more than just helpful to me and those closest to me but really helpful to others as well. As I began teaching a lot of what I had found to be ... let's just say that it works in the real world, right? The strategies that I had learned how to leverage and formalize to help in my world, either personally or professionally.

Steve Olsher: As I began to teach some of those strategies, what became increasingly evident as I began working with people is that they too were searching for a solution that could really help them hit the ground running and be able to do something with the information that goes beyond just simply, you know, "Hey, I like sports," or, "Hey," you know, "I really just, I'm a teacher," or something of this nature. The fact of the matter was that as I began working with these folks, it just became so clear that there truly are only three things that you need in order to find fulfillment, and to achieve what some would call success. Right?

Steve Olsher: Which is again just understanding what your natural gift is, whether it's teaching or healing or communicating or enrolling or protecting, et cetera. I mean, we all have a core gift. But knowing what that gift is isn't enough. I mean, you need to know what to do with that gift. So that's where it then became clear that okay, there's more to it than just that. You gotta understand how you're going to share that gift.

Steve Olsher: So what I call it is the vehicle. What is the primary vehicle that you're gonna use, then, to share that gift? In this case, if healing is your core gift, and let's say the primary vehicle that you're gonna use to share that gift is massage, I mean, that's a step in the right direction. But to really hit the ground running and be able to start serving and start charging, you need to have clarity on the people and who the people are that you're most compelled to serve.

Steve Olsher: It's really just that simple as once you have clarity on your gift, on your vehicle, and the people, now we can actually start doing something. You can actually begin moving down a path today once you have those answers. That was the journey that I was on, is really trying to figure out those pieces of the puzzle so that I could start with something and dig into something that would not only be personally fulfilling but also could be monetarily fulfilling and lucrative as well.

Peter King: That's a big part of it, of course. My gift might be I can make intricate basket weavings, you know what I mean? But can I make a living on that, I don't know. So how do you-

Steve Olsher: So I would actually say that creating is probably then, in that example, probably your core gift. Right? So you're more of a creator, you're a creative type person. So creating would probably be your core gift in that example. Basket weaving would be the vehicle that you use that gift. Then the question is, you know, who are you most compelled to serve? You're gonna be a basket weaver, maybe you're doing picnic baskets. But you could also be doing hot air balloon baskets, right? Those are two very different markets.

Peter King: I'm actually only a very modest basket weaver, so I don't wanna mislead you. How do people find their gift? What's the process through which they discover that calling within?

Steve Olsher: Well, look, I'm not gonna sit here and try to make this into a 30 minute or 40 minute or an hour long advertorial for the book, but I will say that finding that gift is a lot more difficult than a lot of people realize. So there is a specific exercise in the book called the Seven Seeds of Your Soul, which helps people bring to the surface exactly what that core gift is.

Steve Olsher: A lot of people get hung up on the gift part of the equation, because they're good at a couple different things and they feel like they have more than just that one gift and what do you do in that case? So as an example, you may find that communicating is definitely a gift of yours. You also may find that teaching is a gift of yours. But when you really sit down and you think about it, I believe that even if it's just a 51/49 type edge, I do believe that one of those gifts has a slight edge over the other, even though it may be very, very close and you may be very good at both. I do believe that there is still one core gift that is even perhaps just a wee little bit more dominant.

Steve Olsher: In some cases it's just completely dominant. But in some cases it could be just slightly dominant over another gift, but the answer is you find that gift, at least in my process, by going through the Seven Seeds of Your Soul.

Peter King: Got it. Which, you know, understandably is not something that we could potentially extrapolate over the course of just a short podcast episode, but are there categories of gifts? So you had mentioned so far like teaching, healing, communicating, creating.

Steve Olsher: Entertaining, enrolling, protecting, exactly, yeah.

Peter King: Okay. So are there ... it's helpful for my mind to think more macro as we start to zoom in. Is there a handful of gift categories that people could start to think of themselves within?

Steve Olsher: Yeah, I mean, we don't really have it broken down in categories per se, but some of them are going to be a little bit more cerebral, so to speak, and others are gonna be a little more tangible and implementable, so to speak, right? But again, when you look at it from the standpoint of the vehicle, the vehicle could be very esoteric or it could be very hands on. Right?

Steve Olsher: So it is an interesting framework to work with people on, because as I've watched them go through this process of discovering what their what is and then seeing how it really breaks down into these specific categories, what ends up happening is more often than not the vehicle that they ... I don't wanna say select, because I do believe that at some point it selects them as opposed to them selecting it. But the vehicle that they end up moving forward with, in some cases really helps them to define then what their core gift is. So in other words, you don't have to start with the gift to get to the vehicle to get to the people. Sometimes you could start with the people that you're most compelled to serve to then figure out how you want to serve them, which will them help you back into understanding, "Oh, wow, this actually is my core gift."

Steve Olsher: Right? So it's not like you have to start with one to get to the other. We don't throw them into categories per se, but yeah, of course they kind of run the gamut from again, sort of esoteric-ish to cerebral to more hands on and so forth. But even teaching as a core gift, as you can see, can take on a number of different iterations as far as the vehicle is concerned.

Peter King: Sure. It occurred to me a couple summers ago when I went to work for a friend who was a logger, I wanted to do something to get out of the ... behind my desk and get my hands dirty and sweat and all that. He said, "Yeah, you can come on and help me cut down some trees," and that kind of thing. I got out there and after I had broken, I think my fourth or fifth adjuster on this chainsaw, I went to him and I said, "Look, what am I doing wrong?" And he just looked at me and he was like, "I don't know what to tell you 'cause I've never done that. I've been doing this for 30 years. You've broken more adjusters than I have in decades."

Peter King: It occurred to me that he just has a natural gift at his hand, like he can build things. He just gets it. I'm more of the intellectual space and the, you know. And at the same time he said, "If you can come over and help me with my computer, 'cause I have no idea how that damn thing works." Right? So that illuminated, at least for me, these different sort of categories of strengths or gifts that people have in their ability to work with their hands, their mind, or their heart. You know, with their passion or their social, they're good with people, that sort of thing.

Peter King: So as far as the people goes, and who you're serving, do you have any tips on how to narrow down that group of people?

Steve Olsher: Yeah, you know, it's interesting. In the book part of what I step people through is the creation of what I call an ABP statement. Apple, Boy, Potato, ABP. An ABP statement is really all about helping you understand what your attributes are, what your beliefs are, and what your perspectives are. What I often find is that the people that we are most compelled to serve are the people who most reflect who we inherently are. Right? I mean, as a man, you could serve other men in a way that a woman can't. Right? Not that a woman couldn't, but you know, as a man we just have a certain understanding of how things are in the world of being a man, right?

Steve Olsher: So you know, if you've been diagnosed with cancer and you survive cancer, you could talk to people who have been afflicted with cancer in a way that others simply can't. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine, Jonny Imerman, who started out as a commercial real estate broker, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Ended up beating it, ended up going into remission, and ended up beating it again. After having gone through everything that he went through and seeing in this hospital ward how people were suffering alone and yet he was always surrounded by friends and family, he swore that if he was going to beat this he was never going to let anyone who-

Steve Olsher: Was going to beat this. He was never going to let anyone who is afflicted with cancer suffer alone again and he started something called Imerman Angels, which matches cancer sufferers with cancer survivors and allows them to support one another. But, reality is, and I'm giving you a long story here, he would not have created Imerman Angels 12, 14, 15 years ago if he hadn't been afflicted with cancer. Now, it's interesting because as a commercial real estate broker the core gift that he is using now and used then is enrolling. His core gift is enrolling. He had to enroll people in the vision of seeing what could happen here in this commercial real estate space.

Steve Olsher: Whereas now, he's enrolling people in terms of supporting Imerman Angels and providing donations or enrolling cancer survivors to support cancer sufferers and enrolling cancer sufferers to be open to working with someone and being mentored by someone has beat this. The vehicle and the people can change over time. Because in that example if you look at John and the people he was serving at that point as a commercial real estate broker, were like developers and office building owners and so on. Now, the people that he's most compelled to serve are those who have been afflicted with cancer. The vehicle and the people are more organic. That's more evolutionary. That can change over time, but I do believe that the core gift in fact stays the same throughout.

Steve Olsher: Yeah. You got to go through that ABP statement and really look at those attributes and those beliefs and those perspectives and in a lot of that you will find that subset of the population that you're most compelled to serve.

Peter King: Got you. That's super helpful. Do you have other examples of people who have gone through this whole process and have discovered their what and in what ways are they impacting the world?

Steve Olsher: Yeah. For sure. I'll share one of my favorite stories, which is a gentleman by the name of Joe Amoya. Joe and I met, God, my word. It's been about 10 years since I've known Joe. When I first Joe, he was a chiropractor. He had gone through the whole process of becoming a chiropractor in terms of going to school, investing heavily to get his degree, and then invested even more to open up his own practice. He had this thick book of paying clients who would come in week after week and week after week. Just people that he worked with who's making great money. On the surface, you'd look at him and you'd go dang, he's got it really, really good. He's got this great business of being a healer, so healing is his core gift and the vehicle that he's using to share that gift is chiropracting.

Steve Olsher: The people that he's most compelled to serve are those who want to live better, more comfortable lives without pain. Those are the people they were serving, but he woke up one day and he said "I just can't do this anymore. I'm making good money doing it, but my heart is just absolutely not in this." After he really sat down and thought about things, he knew in his hearts that the core gift of healing wasn't going anywhere. He was just a natural healer, but the vehicle had to change and the people that he was serving had to change. What he realized in having a lot of conversations with people who often asked him about his relationship with his wife because they had a really nice relationship and been married for, I think, 20 years or so when I had met him.

Steve Olsher: He found himself answering a lot of relationship questions and the more that he answered those questions and the more that he worked with people on getting to having a similar type of relationship as he and his wife had, the more he realized that he really wants to help single women find love and give them insight in terms of how do you attract a man and what is it that men are looking for and so on and so forth. He realized that he had this gift of helping women heal that part of themselves that they wanted to be in relationship, but couldn't for whatever reason and to be able to help move them through that. Fast forward now and now he helps single women find love. It's what he does.

Steve Olsher: It's his business. A lot of people looked at him and said he's crazy for getting out of the world of chiropractor where he's making great money and moving into this world where he was making nothing. But over time, he's been able to build up a really nice book of clients and is doing really well for himself. Again, the vehicle changed and of course the people that he is most compelled to serve changed, but the core gift of healing remained the same. At the same token, if you look at the people, people were in physical pain when they were dealing with him from being a chiropractor versus being in emotional pain of not being able to find love. The pain component of this is still very much the same, just physical versus emotional and the vehicle just switched out.

Steve Olsher: It's just interesting to see how all of this really ties together and plays together, but he's never been happier. It's just such an interesting story to me.

Peter King: I was just going to say the trajectory of someone's life who is doing something that they feel fulfilled doing and that they feel called to do versus doing something that technically still, as you mentioned, is still within his core gift, but wildly different day to day experience, it's no wonder why so many people are unhappy. They're just not ... I forget the statistics are, but most people, most Americans anyway at least, are just unfulfilled. They're not happy. There's a book. I think it was Five Things You Must Know Before You Die or something like that. One of those things that they talked about or one of the regrets that a lot of elderly people had was just not doing the thing that they felt called to do that they love doing.

Peter King: It's such an important conversation and something that we hardly give time to to really think about, so the work that you're doing, I think, is really necessary and needed work.

Steve Olsher: Yeah. I appreciate that. Reality is I do think that from a societal perspective we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to find that fulfillment and a lot of the modalities that are out there right now unfortunately just exacerbate a lot of that frustration because they don't give you what you need to really hit the ground running. I'll say it to you from this standpoint, which is look I'm not one who's going to sit here and tell you to up and quit your day job simply because you figure out what your what is. You have to be willing to move into the state of transition where you're able to replace the income that you're currently generating from what it is that you don't want to be doing with income from what it is that you truly do want to be doing.

Steve Olsher: A lot of people just don't have that patience, but I want you just to really embrace the notion they're a lot of hours in the day. You can work on bringing your what to fruition, wake up another hour early, put an hour in before you go to work, rather than turning on the TV and watching Dancing With the Stars and Monday Night Football and whatever else, put those three, four, five hours before you go to bed into working your what. The weekend, lets get in this Saturday, Sunday. At the same token, you could just volunteer and just kind of immerse yourself in that particular field to see if it's something you actually do want to do because a lot of people find that I want work with the homeless.

Steve Olsher: Well, you start working with the homeless and you find that you just don't love it for whatever reason. Well, if you just up and quit your day job to make that happen rather than just going and volunteering for 10 hours a week to really put yourself in that environment, you could be cutting off your nose to spite your face, so to speak. You could also just immerse yourself in that world, even just on a very, very, very part-time basis first and you may find that, yeah, this is absolutely something that I want to be doing or you may find that there's a parallel track next to it, which actually makes even more sense. Maybe, it's not even working with the homeless so much that it's creating housing for the homeless.

Steve Olsher: You never know until you get into that world and you immerse yourself.

Peter King: This just came to me. Why do you think that it's not natural? Why is it not something ... Why are people often so compelled to do something that goes against what their deeper calling is?

Steve Olsher: Because it's a slippery slope and the slippery slope pretty much starts right out of high school. That slippery slope is okay you go to go on to college and you got to get that piece of paper. You got to get that degree. You'd go and you get that degree and now you got some debt, so now you got to take a job to start paying for that debt and a little bit of money comes in and you're like this is pretty good. I'm going to move out of this dump and go to a nicer one bedroom over here. I'm tired of taking Ubers and I'm tired of taking public trans, so I'm going to get a car and I'd like to go on some dates. I got to get some nice clothes and so and so forth. You got to pay for the dates. Before you know it, you got $5,000 a month in expenses.

Steve Olsher: That job that you took, which was just going to be temporary until really started digging into what your what is and finding that fulfillment. Now, you've got this $60,000 a year nut that you got to cover every single year. It's pretty hard to do get out of that, man, unless you're willing to really shake things up, which once you get comfortable, it's really hard to go to a place of discomfort.

Peter King: Absolutely. Absolutely. Enter midlife crisis. That seems to be the time when some people come back, get above water, so to speak, because often times in your 30s you're in the rat race and you're dealing with kids and it's kind of the first time you can kind of come up for air and go wait and reassess where am I. I have no experience in that whatsoever. I've heard people go through something like that. This is a little bit of a tangent. What was your upbringing like? Where did you grow up?

Steve Olsher: I grew up Skevanston.

Peter King: Skevanston?

Steve Olsher: Which is ... Yeah, it's the combination of Skokie and Evanston just outside of Chicago. We called it Skevanston because we lived in Skokie, but we were in the Evanston School District, so go figure. Yeah, so I just grew up just north of Chicago. The Evanston School District was very, very mixed and so our high school was basically half white half black. I found myself pretty immersed in black culture from a very young age and I got into house music and DJing and played the drums and the whole nine. The upbringing was, for lack of a better term, kind of lower middle class. I never went hungry, but we didn't exactly have all the luxuries that a lot of people had, but reality is we had enough.

Steve Olsher: Yeah, man. It was an interesting childhood. Like typical kids, we got in our fair share of trouble and did our fair share of good things as well. But, my folks got divorced when I was seven and my mom remarried at 10 to a guy that for the better part of 12 years, 14 years or so I really did not like and that made for an interesting childhood from 10 to about 20, 24.

Peter King: One of the reasons why I asked you that was how connected to one's upbringing do you feel that one's what is, that their calling is?

Steve Olsher: Yeah. I think that there's definitely a corelation there between the upbringing and how quickly one is able to get into what their what is. Some parents can work with their kids to help them find it right away by exposing them to a lot of different things. By exposing them to all these different walks of life and different vocations and different activities and so on, they may find something that really sticks for them. Others don't have that ability to expose them to a lot of things. If that's the case, then you got to get older and figure it out on your own. At the same token, there's also conversations around the dinner table and a lot of families don't talk around the dinner table at all and certainly a lot of them do not talk about what their children's what is and how to help them understand what it is that they might be compelled to do.

Steve Olsher: It is interesting how one of my favorite expressions is what we don't transform, we transfer. You see that a lot generationally. Fortunately now with access to information and everything that's going on online, we've got access to more content and data and entertainment and education and information that ever before, so some people in spite of themselves are able to get access to the information they need to make powerful decisions.

Peter King: Yes. One of the fears I think that a lot of parents have is that they can potentially hurt or damage their children in ways that they weren't even aware that they were doing, which is kind of what you were talking about with respect to knowing ... I'm sorry, earlier in your book when you talked about the four stages of learning. Can you explain what those four stages are?

Steve Olsher: Yeah. Basically, if you're familiar with the conscious competence learning stages model. That's what the four stages of learning are. It's built around just ... I'll step you through it briefly here. Basically, the conscious competence learning stages model is built around the understanding that there are four stages of learning. The first stage of learning is when we sit in our stage of what we would call unconscious incompetence, where we just don't know what we don't know. A lot of people will spend their entire lives operating from that as their general state of mind where things happen to you and just don't know why. It could be good. It could be bad. But, we're just kind of that state of blindness, so to speak, and reality is that when you're in that state of unconscious incompetence, you just don't really have the ability to kind of put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Steve Olsher: Again, those pieces of the puzzle could from the standpoint of really understanding what you do well and having clarity on how you're naturally wired to excel in what it is that you do well. It could also be what don't you do well and what works to your detriment and it's kind of that definition of insanity where we continue to do the same things and expect a different result. That's really living in a state of unconscious incompetence because we just can't see it or either you're just too close to it or you don't see the correlations or whatever it might be. That can be very frustrating and a lot of people spend the majority of their life in that state of unconscious incompetence where they really do feel like things are completely out of control.

Peter King: And that the world is against them and that kind of thing.

Steve Olsher: Exactly.

Peter King: Yeah.

Steve Olsher: Exactly. Yeah. Once you move to the next stage in terms of conscious incompetence where now you at least recognize that you have deficiencies in certain areas of your life. You can now at least have that sense of awareness that allows you to move to stage three, which is now having what we would call conscious competence, which is basically where you can give thought to I want to make x, y, or z happen and you can make it happen. But, you really have to feel through and be consciously aware of that process. It's like if I want to, let's just say, play a sport and I want to make a layup, but I haven't played for ... If we're using Malcolm Gladwell, if you haven't played for 10,000 hours and you can't just layup the ball anytime you want and make it go in.

Steve Olsher: Then, you really just have to think about the process versus like a Michael Jordan, who has reached ... Or he's older now.

Steve Olsher: ... who has reached or ... he's older now, I know. He probably has to think about him more, now. But back in the day, and it's like Game 6 against Portland, you know, you drop six threes in the first half and you're trotting back towards half court just kinda shrugging your shoulders going, "I don't know," you know? "I just threw the ball and it went in, man. I don't know." Right?

Steve Olsher: So that is the final stage there of the conscious competence learning stages model, which is unconscious competence where you're literally able to create your desired results without having to think about the process, and when you are operating in your zone, your zone of genius ... whatever it is that you want to call it, that's really where you're working in that stage 4 there of having unconscious competence.

Steve Olsher: And very few people will arrive at stage 4 in any era of their life outside of just breathing and walking and talking, right? You don't really think about breathing; it just happens. You don't really think about talking; it just happens, right? But outside of those core basic functionalities, a lot of people will just never reach stage 4 in any area of their life. In order for you to really be able to fulfill what your what is, I do think you need to be aware of what works to your benefit, and what works to your detriment and have a clear understanding of how you're actually wired to excel.

Peter King: Yeah. This ... I believe I heard this model explained to me before, and they were talking about addicts. Somebody who's, say, addicted to smoking, they are in that conscious incompetence space where they know it's bad for them. They're trying to quit, they're trying to move that level 3, but they really haven't identified level 1, why they're addicted in the first place, because the addiction is really just a symptom to the psychological void that they haven't really addressed yet.

Peter King: And then somebody, as they were sharing this, somebody said, "Well, I haven't smoked in five years, so I'm in level 4." And the person said ... the trainer at the time said, "You're really not in level 4 yet because you're still identifying as a non-smoker. You're still a smoker who hasn't smoked as opposed to somebody who doesn't smoke, who doesn't have an addiction to smoking." We don't ... I don't wake up thinking about, "I really"-

Steve Olsher: I'm not gonna smoke.

Peter King: Yeah. I need to not smoke. I embody a non-smoker. I don't even think about ... I'm 42 years of non-smoking.

Steve Olsher: Yeah. It totally makes sense. And for those who want to look up the conscious competence learning stages models, Dr. Thomas Gordon, that's who created that.

Peter King: Okay. You mentioned something at the beginning of this explanation where you talked about not necessarily knowing what you really do well, and I think that is actually something that is a very powerful awakening for people because if they are naturally competent in something, they may devalue it. It just may be so easy to them. And we've come across those people in our lives where they're just naturals at social settings, at sales, at numbers, at whatever that thing may be. And yet they go, "Oh, you know, I'm just ... I'm not happy." And it's like they're unwilling to accept that what they actually are gifted at is truly genuinely valuable, and that can be very very difficult for other people to accomplish the same sort of thing.

Peter King: So I think bringing that level awareness is potentially very transformative for people who haven't done that yet.

Steve Olsher: Yeah. I think there's just simply a matter of getting past the guilt, right? And so there are folks who ... especially those who have had ... let's just say that their upbringing was less than supportive, and they heard things over the years about who they are and why they are and how they are and all of this, right? So if you think about it from that standpoint when you've been told you're not gonna be Jack, you're not gonna be this, you're not gonna be that, and then you find something that comes as naturally to you as breathing where you would do it even if you didn't get paid to do it because you're just that ... it just aligned with who you are.

Steve Olsher: Reality is that when it happens for folks, a lot of those people take a step back and go, "I don't deserve this." Or, "I should be working harder," or "There should be more of a struggle." Don't get me wrong: there is a lot to be learned through adversity, right? There's a lot to be learned through trial and tribulation and error and so on and so forth.

Steve Olsher: But at the same token, it doesn't mean that simply because ... let's just say that you are compelled to draw. You shouldn't have to succumb to life as a starving artist, right? You should be paid extraordinarily well for what comes as naturally to you as breathing. Most of us, however, feel guilty about ... "Why should I get paid for this when it comes so easy to me, when there are other people who are struggling mightily to be able to do anything in terms of making ends meet and putting bread on the table?"

Steve Olsher: And so that's probably a discussion for a psychiatrist chair, but it's true. It is completely true that if it comes really easy, then some folks will just stand up and say, "This isn't something that I should be able to do for a living because it comes too easily to me."

Peter King: Yeah. That's such a funny disconnect that we humans tend to have for some reason.

Peter King: How would you describe ... if somebody was to ask you, "What is your what?" how do you answer that?

Steve Olsher: You know, it's an interesting cop-out at this point. I've come to the conclusion of ... because my what truly at this point of my life, and again if you remember from earlier parts of the conversation here, I do believe that the vehicle that you use to share your what and the people that you're most compelled to serve, I do believe that that's more organic, more fluid. But my core gift is and continues to be communicating. And as I put all of the pieces of the puzzle together, really what my what is boils down to the people that I'm most compelled to serve, which are those people who are looking to either discover, share, or monetize their what.

Steve Olsher: And as an entrepreneur who has created four multi-million dollar businesses over the course of the 25-year-plus career as an entrepreneur, I will tell you that I am uniquely qualified of course to help people discover their what. But also to help them share and monetize it.

Steve Olsher: And that truly has become my what for the last 10-plus years, which is helping people discover, share and monetize theirs.

Peter King: So you've got the book. What other offerings do you have? Do you guys do retreats or ... if somebody wanted to work with you to discover their what, where would they go?

Steve Olsher: Yeah, I mean, the books is obviously the best place to start as far as discovering their what. Most of what I do from a monetization standpoint in terms of my personal business now is helping people share and monetize, right? So what I find is that once you are clear on what your what is, you have to then go through the process of really understanding how to reach people with your what and creating that visibility and creating that credibility and that authority.

Steve Olsher: And one of the ways that I've been able to do it and you've been able to do it is through podcasting, right? I've been podcasting since 2009. And so one of the core offerings that we have at this juncture is an event called the New Media Summit. And the New Media Summit is an event where I bring in 40 top podcasters, and I give 150 attendees the opportunity to learn from us and to pitch us on who they are and what they do, and to literally get booked on the spot because you get booked on those shows, you're gonna be able to get more visibility, more credibility, more authority. You're gonna be able to generate leads, highly targeted leads when you understand exactly what to do when you appear on those shows.

Steve Olsher: And then if you have clarity around what your offerings are, your products, your programs, your services, once you have those leads and you have those conversations you can then enroll people into what I would call the most relevant offerings that you have.

Steve Olsher: And so the New Media Summit is a great way for people to get massive visibility quickly by getting booked on top shows. And then if they come to the event, they want to work with me more on monetization, then we have something called our Icon Maker program. And our Icon Maker program is a year long, and it's an accountability done for you program where we really help people share and monetize their what, is the best way to put it.

Peter King: Okay. Where's the New Media Summit?

Steve Olsher: So we just wrapped one up, and our next one is February in Florida. So, yeah, February in Florida is the next one-

Peter King: The location changes, then, from-

Steve Olsher: It does, yeah. So September 2019 we'll be San Diego. February 2019 is Tampa. And so yeah, we move it around.

Peter King: Cool. What would you say are the three things that you want people to remember you by?

Steve Olsher: More than anything else, just that I was a decent human being. There's a lot of bad people out there. So number one, if I'm gonna come up in conversation I just hope that people say, "Yeah, that was a decent human being." Number two, I want them to say that I was a good husband and a good father and ended well by my family. And number three, I'd love for people to say that I said something that at least once in a while was worth hearing.

Peter King: Well, I think you've already achieved that one so we can check that box. But when you talked about a good person ... there's probably a lot of bad people just for some reason in my head I went back to your ... What do you call it again where you grew up?

Steve Olsher: [Skevenston 00:47:04], yes.

Peter King: Skevenston.

Steve Olsher: Skokie and Evanston. Yeah.

Peter King: Just the horrible bullies in Skevenston.

Steve Olsher: Yes, right.

Peter King: Did you ever get bullied?

Steve Olsher: I did, actually, by a really mean girl once. And by a couple of other folks over time. Yeah, for sure I got bullied, and-

Peter King: What was the worst time that you got bullied?

Steve Olsher: You know, there was this one older kid. I think I was in third grade and there was this sixth grader because we went to a K-8. Then there was a sixth grader that just would not leave me alone. I don't know. Something happened on the park. I think I juked him on a game of football, and that was pretty much all downhill from there.

Peter King: It's so funny. It occurred to me, literally a month ago, there was a couple of guys that bullied me and I'm like, "I wonder what those guys are up to." And in the world we live in, I jumped on Facebook and there they were, so I shot them a friend request. I haven't heard back from either one of them. But you know, it's kinda interesting to see what a bully's life evolves into-

Steve Olsher: Yeah, turned out to be. Hey, you know, I will be the first to tell you I didn't peak in grammar school, I didn't peak in junior high, and then I didn't peak in high school, so fortunately I still had more runway. A lot of those folks peaked in high school or junior high or whenever. I think if you're gonna peak, that's not exactly the time to do it.

Peter King: Right. Listen closely, bullies. Yeah. I had a guy who used to ... I used to ride my bike by his house and he would stop me and he'd ... literally from his room in his house yell at me to stop, and of course I was freaked out so I'd stop, and then he'd come out with a baseball bat and smash my bike, and then he'd go, "Okay." It was like a toll I had to pay, and then I'd get on my wobbly, broken bike and kind of ... I'm like, "What is the point of that?"

Steve Olsher: Right. That's funny.

Peter King: Well, we are getting close on time here so I want to be respectful of that. But I do want the listeners to be aware that they can get a free copy of your book. Is that correct?

Steve Olsher: It is, yeah.

Peter King: "What Is Your WHAT?" You can discover the one thing that you were born to do. You can get that at www.whatisyourwhat.com/free. What other-

Steve Olsher: You don't even need the free at this point. Just whatisyourwhat.com. Yep.

Peter King: So just whatisyourwhat.com. Any other resources that you'd like to share for folks?

Steve Olsher: Well, I know we've been talking a lot about "What Is Your WHAT?" and so on, so "What Is Your WHAT?" is a great place to start. And again, we do give away the entire New York Times bestseller there. If you are interested in getting booked on podcasts or potentially coming to the New Media Summit, one of the resources that we give away is a resource called the Ultimate Directory of Podcasters, which actually features 670 leading podcasters, including their contact information.

Steve Olsher: So if you're in that share and monetize mode, if you need more eyeballs and eardrums on what you're doing, I'd certainly think that grabbing a free copy of the Ultimate Directory of Podcasters and following the steps that we show you there about how to connect with them could be helpful for you. So maybe go to myultimatedirectory.com and pick up a free copy of that Ultimate Directory.

Peter King: Okay. Very cool. Well, before I let you go I do want to ask you, do you know what your why is?

Steve Olsher: You know, it's interesting, right? I do think that my why is yet to really reveal itself. I've had lots of opportunities to do, for lack of a better term, bigger types of things, especially over the last few years as more of those opportunities have come my way. And reality is I'm fairly comfortable at this point. House is paid for, cars are paid for. I'm just able to spend ample time with my wife and my kids, and I don't really want anything to get in the way of that right now.

Steve Olsher: So I think my why is just this family unit at the moment and making sure that the kids and the wife are happy, and we'll see what evolves after that.

Peter King: That's a significant one of course. And obviously helping other people discover their what and their calling is very purposeful and why driven as well.

Peter King: Steve, thank you so much for your time today. It was great. I know the listeners are gonna get a lot out of this, so thanks.

Steve Olsher: Yeah, man. Appreciate you having me on.

Peter King: All right. Take care.