Welcome back, the Wise leader understands the way of cycles in change. And I put a great old quote here for you. Nothing is so constant is change. Many people want things to stay the same. It gives them comfort, it gives them security. A lot of people think things are the same.

That art. I'm teaching you this new belief, this new philosophy. Literally, when I finished this one little section, and you have this new concept, you are not the same person that you were five minutes ago. Why? Because you have a whole new belief system added to you. So you're the person you were plus this new belief system, which is different, it's change.

So nothing is ever the same. Second, by second You're one second older, your business is constantly changing. Your market is constantly changing the way people market is constantly changing. Everything in business is all about change. So those who adapt, survive, and those who adapt quickly, thrive. There's always a way that if you understand how the cycles work, you can adapt and not only survive, but gain a massive strategic and financial advantage.

Think about the cycles. The one that I classically like to talk about is the business cycle. These are just statistical averages. but hear me out, typically businesses, the market, the economy is on a 10 year cycle, seven years of growth, two years of decline or recession, one year where it's kind of flat, and then what comes next cycle starts over again. Seven years of growth, too. of decline, one year being flat, and then it takes off again.

Let me ask you a question. What comes after Up, down? What comes after down? up? The only alternative, right? So as you understand these cycles, you can learn to anticipate them and use them.

Say your business's real estate. You've got a seven year cycle, things were flat for a year, but then you saw the upturn. You said okay, I'm gonna jump back in now, somewhere between 5678 910 years, that cycle is going to go up. You can buy and sell, buy and sell, buy and sell, even buy and hold for a little while and then sell you can flip houses, you can do virtually anything and you will make money in real estate. Perfect. But there's going to be a downward cycle.

You can still make money there. What's happening in the downward cycle if you think about it. homes that were very expensive are now getting cheaper and cheaper. cheaper and cheaper, what a great time to buy, especially foreclosures, where there's huge discounts 3040 5060 70% you're getting them for pennies on the dollar. So buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, and then because you can't make any money selling them because the price is still gonna keep going down, rent them out very cheaply. And the more they go down, the more you buy, right?

Rent them out for a couple of years, prices will start going up, you're going to quickly pass the price that you paid for it, you can make a profit and you sell, sell, sell, then go back to selling for other people too. And I got two streams of income, and that's going to go for 5678 910 years. Perfect. Now you figured out how to make money in up economy and a down economy. Therefore, you are always going to adapt. You're always not only going to survive, but you're going to thrive.

Any idiot can make money in an up cycle. It takes a genius to figure out how to make money in a down cycle. But it's easy to do. If you sit and you take time, and you reflect if you put a plan in place. Now, people that don't understand the way have cycles and change, what they do is when things are going up, they're making money. They're expanding, they're buying more things are adding more steps.

They're going nuts because they say I want to maximize this. Then when things suddenly turn around, they hit a brick wall. They kid themselves about cycles. They say, Oh, this is just a little tiny dip. It's going to start going back up again. No, it's not you're in for 234 years of bad times, you should be adapting but instead of adapting, they just stay Pat.

And they end up with too much staff too much expense, too much inventory too little sales, diminishing profits, and they can lose a fortune or end up going bankrupt. And that's it, their company's over. I've seen companies do this that were over 100 years old and they crashed. Why? Bad leadership bad management, they refuse to see the cycles. Not very smart.

Think of it in the stock market. You can go long, you know things are gonna go up or you can go short, you know, things are gonna go down. If things go up, you got a strategy for making money. If things go down, you got a strategy for making money. Matter of fact, people that trade the stock market, you know, they hate when the stock markets flat, it barely moves. They like big swings up and big swings down because they know how to make money on the upside.

They know how to make money on the downside. There's no money to be made when things are flat. Investors like those slow steady upticks. Now traders love it when it goes way up and way down. Because they understand and they love, they love cycles. They love change changes how they make their money.

So you can learn a lot from somebody that works the stock market or Words commodities, they love change, and they make money consistently, because they understand how the changes work. That's why other people that invest in the stock market or do commodities, they lose, lose lose. Matter of fact, nine out of 10 people that invest in commodities lose money. That's where the other 10% gathers up that 90% of their money and shoves it in their pocket. Nine out of 10 people didn't understand the cycles they thought they did, but they didn't. One in 10 did.

And they got to clean up the entire pot and stick it in their pocket. So amazing tip, very powerful. This can make or break your business. Very powerful for leaders also helped us help staff to understand this. I used to use this as an emotional way for people when as a therapist, because when people were feeling down, I would tell them what I just told you what comes after down up, what comes after Up, down? I said, Don't worry, just going through a cycle in life, you're having a down period, what comes after down, up, it's okay.

After down period comes up, then you're going to feel fantastic again. They said, I feel so much better, Mr. Paul. I said, Well, don't be too quick because you're gonna have a good time. You need to prepare because what comes after Up, down? If you're feeling great, don't worry, it'll go away. If you're feeling bad, don't worry, it'll go away.

I even helped my patients understand the cycles and not to take them too seriously because they're what they're just cycles. And I would teach them when I taught you that there's actually ways to take advantage of when things are going up. And there's ways to take advantage of when things are going down. Tip number 59 the wise leader understands how to teach by reflecting and questions. Questions are amazingly powerful. One of the ways I love to use them is to actually teach people how to think I've done this in therapy.

I've done this in business. I've done this with friends, I've done this with coworkers. I've done this in selling. There's a lot of ways to use questions. I told you in an earlier section that the human brains job, one of its functions, the primary thing that does is ask and answer questions. What does this mean?

And what do I need to do about it? So by asking good questions, you get good answers. Having said that, I'm going to warn you by asking bad questions, you get bad answers. Now questions can do two things. You can ask a good question, and it will give you a good answer a solution. So you can be problem focused, which means I asked a question about how do I solve this problem?

And I get a great answer, and boom, it solves my problems. So I'm using questions for problem solving. That's one way to use it. Questions will also determine where you Focus, so you can use it to alter feelings. If you ask yourself a terrible question, like what's lousy in my life right now, it will give you a long laundry list of every way that your life sucks. And you're going to look at that and you're gonna feel terrible.

Or you can ask yourself a better question. What do I love about my life? What's fantastic in my life right now, what's great about my life? Your brain will say Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. I'll get right on it.

Your brain is a dumb goal seeking mechanism, it will answer any question you ask. And it will make a long laundry list of exactly why your life is absolutely fantastic. And you should be excited about jumping out of bed in the morning, and then you'll feel great. So make sure you're using these strategies for yourself and not against yourself. Use these things to figure out how you can solve a problem. Not how to feel bad about a problem.

How to feel great in your life, not how to feel bad in your life. How to make your life fantastic. And not How can I get more trouble? As you share these strategies with your staff, they'll learn how to think better. One way that I used to use this is I used to tell my staff, you can always bring a problem to me. But here's what I'd like you to do.

First, try to come up with three solutions. That way, when you come to me, we can immediately start solving the problem. So if a staff member says, Hey, I'm having a problem, such and such, I say you're a pretty smart guy, you're pretty smart gal. Why don't you go out and think about it for a little bit, ask yourself some better questions and come back in the next day or so with three possible solutions to the problem. This would force them to go out, ask better questions themselves, think some come back, they would give me some solutions. And they'd either come up with what I was going to come up with anyways, but because now it's their idea.

They're much more excited about doing it and there's zero resistance or they'll come up with an amazing idea that I never thought of before, I'm immediately going to steal it. And I'm gonna use it over and over again in the future. And people think I'm a genius. I always steal from the best sources, right? That can be used, they may come up with something that's beautiful. Or they may come up with three ways that aren't going to work.

But now, because they came up with three ways that work weren't going to work. And you're able to show them, well, that's a good idea. But here's where it's gonna fall down. Or we tried this in the past, it looked like a good idea. But it didn't succeed. Once they see that their ideas aren't going to work.

They're much more open to hearing yours and to having a buy in. They're gonna get behind your ideas, but you're teaching them how to think and as they learn how to think then they're more likely to be what successful leaders in the future and better employees right in the here and now. So thinking and asking questions is actually absolutely huge. Remember, asking questions triggers advanced areas of your brain like the reticular activator and some other processes delves into your unconscious gives you access to resources you normally wouldn't even have. And you can come up with some brilliant answers. If you just ask the right questions.

This is also a good place to use the sentence stem completion that we talked about. Because that really after a fashion is just a way of asking a question. What are three ways I could make my life better in the next 24 hours? And then you fill in the answer. Isn't that a question though? Yes.

So between questions and sentence stem completions, you've got some great ways to ask questions, and to reflect, to improve virtually any area of your business or any area of your life. That's your tip for today, and I'll see you in the very next section.