Today we’re simplifying the steps to getting into the TOP 1% with inspiring guest, Brandon Burns!
Brandon grew up as a passionate gymnast raised by a single mother and has stepped outside the box of being ordinary. He is an international keynote speaker, elite athlete, and entrepreneur dedicated to helping OTHERS follow his lead into the top 1%.
I spoke with Brandon about his journey and his hacks to personal growth including topics like consistency, identity, and mindset. He shared exciting stories and solid guidance that you can apply to your life TODAY!!!
My main takeaway: everyday means EVERYDAY! You don’t wanna miss this episode; listen now and share with a friend to keep yourself accountable.
Brandon’s Links!
Website: https://www.iambburns.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iambburns/
ALL social platforms: “iambburns”
Listen HERE or watch on Youtube!
TRANSCRIPTS
And if you don’t go put it into practice, you never get the real life feedback to say, oh,
I mean, people talk about consistency all the time. Like you said, people give it lip service, but it really is,
That’s what we do, right? When we start to become adults, we say you cannot succeed in life and have fulfillment as,
Hello, my fellow Ripples, this is Chris Miles, your cashflow expert in anti financianal advisor. We, Michelle, it’s for you. Those that work so freaking hard for your money and you’re now ready for your money to work harder for you. So you become work optional where you work because you want to, not because you have to, where you’re able to live that life that you love with those you love. And most importantly, it’s not just by getting rich about living a rich life because as you’re blessed financially, you have a greater capacity to bless the lives of those around you. Thank you for tuning in today, guys. I appreciate you allowing me to create that ripple effect through you for the fact that you guys have been binging on these episodes like crazy you’ve been sharing with other people, and we really appreciate that by putting us in the top one half of 1% of all podcast worldwide.
Thank you so much. As a reminder, guys, if you haven’t done so recently, be sure to check out both YouTube channels. We have not only the Money Ripples channel, but we have the Money Ripples podcast or shorts channel that we have as well. Be sure to look that up today. Hey guys, so I’m excited for this guest here because if you’re ever wondering what’s that real secret mindset hack that the top 1% of all successful people use, that’s exactly what I’m interviewing Brandon Burns about today. Now, if you guys dunno who Brandon Burns is, this guy was an elite athlete gymnast. He actually coached a national championship team twice in that space. Interesting story, you’ll hear about that too, about how things came full circle with him coaching there. But this guy is incredible, teaches people how to really create success and especially at that elite level, which I know for many of you, you don’t want to live that ordinary life. You want an extra ordinary life, and that’s exactly what we’re going to talk about today. So Brandon, welcome to our show today,
Man, with that intro, I feel like I’m on a, B, C or something like the Today Show with an intro like that, so I’m super excited to be here, man. I appreciate you having me,
Man. It is such a pleasure to have you too, man, because I mean, I know when I had a conversation with you, we were introduced by a mutual friend that’s former NFL player and man, it didn’t take long to realize you had to come on my show, right? There’s some cool stuff. It might be. I also just read the book Wooden again for the second time, so I’m all about good successful coaching mindset stuff that I know for me personally, that’s where I created more of my wealth was not from this, just the strategies of investing in real estate, although that helps, but it was more the mindset that went with it, that one, two punch that helped me be successful. And I know many people on this show that are listening right now would agree with
That. Yeah, I would agree with that because if you think about it, if somebody gets introduced to content like yours or a podcast like yours, you can learn, I mean you said it during the intro, people are binging these episodes. So if you get introduced to that type of content and information and wisdom of people who have been there and done that before, within the span of seven days a month, if you take your time, you got the strategies. It’s not like these huge players in the industry that we all look up to know that much more than what you could know. You can read the same books, you can listen to the same podcast, you can take the same courses. So the information can’t be the X factor. It doesn’t even make sense because the information has been disseminated to everybody. We live in the information age, so it wouldn’t even make sense for information itself to be the differentiating factor between success and failure. So there’s got to be something else that you pair with it, which is do I know how to execute? Can I do it consistently? Can I do it consistently over time? And that’s it. So if you don’t have the mindset behind it or you don’t have you under control, you can have all the best strategies in the world. It’s not going to make a difference.
It’s funny, I just had this weird analogy pop in my head when you said that it reminds me of vitamins. You can get the vitamins of all the best stuff in the world, but if it doesn’t, the capsule doesn’t release to the right point in the right parts of the body, then you’re just having expensive p. And it’s kind of like that with information. If you just bingeing on a bunch of information and then it doesn’t really go anywhere, or maybe that information has been secondhand taught, right? It’s like, I won’t mention names in the space, but there’s a lot of info marketers and influencers out there that will teach you stuff, but they’re not really teaching from experience. They’re just regurgitating somebody else’s crap, and so they just spew it out and you don’t really pick up on it. You don’t really get those nuances that help you really get that information to become applicable and really internalize where it changes your behavior as well.
Yeah, I think that is definitely a huge critical portion of it. And the other piece is actually putting the information into practice and into action. Exactly right. Because I’m just thinking about even with gymnastics, we were talking about athletics earlier with gymnastics. If I had read the code of points from start to finish and I memorized every single skill in gymnastics, and then I went to some of the best coaches in the world and asked them, Hey, how do you do all of these different skills? I would have theoretical knowledge of how to do every skill in the book, but I could also simultaneously be 400 pounds overweight and sitting on the couch watch and Netflix and never be able to do any of it. But I would know how, and it’s like sometimes I think in this industry we almost get a high off of, oh, I learned this new thing. I feel so accomplished, and it’s like it is an accomplishment, but that’s step one of like 37. And if you don’t go put it into practice, you never get the real life feedback to say, oh, here’s the nuance that you need for you to be able to do it because you just tried it and then the world gave you a little bit of feedback. A book’s not going to give you that.
That’s right. Yeah. I call those professional philosophers, right? They’re great philosophers, but they’re still broke.
Right? Right. You’re not Plato. You’re not Socrates. You might want a career change.
That’s right. Well, tell us more of your backstory, Brandon. That’s interesting. I love your career you had through college and everything and even get to that elite level, but even just how it came full circle in coaching as well. Tell us more about that.
Yeah, yeah. I usually do about a 45 to 60 minute keynote on that topic. So the 92nd version would be born and raised, small town, Huntsville, Alabama, 900 square foot house to a single mother. Never really had a lot to look up to in terms of success, certainly financially, but just big opportunities. I never saw a whole lot of that. One day when I was about 10 years old, I just went to my mom and said, Hey, I want to do gymnastics. No rhyme or reason, never saw it on television. Nobody in my family had ever done the sport. I was just like, mom, this is it. This is what I’m going to do. And I think she was off put by that a little bit. She was like, okay, where did this burst of inspiration come from? It’s a dangerous sport. I don’t know about this.
So it took a few months of convincing. Eventually she signed me up for a trial class and just fell in love immediately. So started when I was 10 years old when I was 16, was when I first started competing, which for anybody who knows, gymnastics is just ancient. Most guys start competing when they’re six. It was part of that financial situation entered into that situation as well, because we had to move gyms and pay for competition fees and uniforms, so we really had to wait until I was old enough to work so that I could offset some of the cost. So that took a little while to get there. Did level 10 for two years in high school, which is the highest level that you can do in the sport before going on to college. Ended up being a walk-on at the University of Michigan, committed sight unseen, had never been to the state of Michigan, couldn’t afford to take a trip out there.
So the first time that I showed up in the state of Michigan was on campus during orientation. I was a walk on that first year was a red shirt freshman. Then I was cut from the team the next four years in a row for a variety of reasons. They had the number one recruiting class in the country for a couple of years in a row. So they just had a ton of talent. Get in there. I had some injuries, had my wrist reconstructed. A whole bunch of stuff happened. And to be honest with you, part of that was mentally I wasn’t where I needed to be at that point either. There was a little bit of imposter syndrome. I knew that I didn’t really love competing. I actually liked to coach better, but I felt weird about accepting that I wanted to be the star athlete just from an affirmation perspective.
So I kind of battled with that for quite a few years. So cut from the team four times in five years, came back as a coach of that same team, two big 10 championships back to back, and then got into commentating from there. So I actually just a couple of months ago, commentated that same meet that I wanted to compete in so bad. I won the meet as a coach and then ended up commentating it on live television just a couple of years later. So I don’t know if I fit that in 90 seconds, but that’s the full circle story.
And there’s going to be more questions with that too, obviously. So here’s fascinating, right? I mean, one, you just knew gymnastics. I think that’s fascinating, right? Is it just something in your gut, you just knew that that’s what I’m going to do?
Yeah, I think that a lot of times I got a friend of mine who calls those whispers of the soul, and you could think of that as the universe giving you a nudge like myself, if you’re spiritual, you think maybe that’s God saying, Hey, come over here, man, I need you in this pocket, however you choose to view it, or maybe you just call it a gut feeling. You call it an intuition, however you choose to view it. Those are the things that we tend to listen to when we’re children, and we dispose of those as we get older because we start to process things through a logical, practical perspective, which is not bad. You need that to survive in this very competitive world, especially in this industry. However, sometimes you got to be willing to just say, you know what? I feel something. I’m convicted by it.
Let’s just see. Let’s just explore it. Because that’s what we do when we start to become adults, we say, okay, am I going to commit the next 10 years to this? You don’t have to make that decision right now, just go explore it. If something’s whispering to you, something’s calling to you. Just go check it out. And I did that one class and that was the confirmation again, the hunch is good. The book is good, the information is good, take action on it. Then you get the feedback to say, oh, bro, you misread that entirely. You need to run as far away from this as possible, or you are in the right pocket. I need you to stay here for the next five, 10 years, and then you make that commitment. So it was just something that called to me. I took action on it, and man never looked back.
And you mentioned another thing too, so you feel called to it and you’re going in there. And then you mentioned that you said you kind of had this imposter syndrome even though you worked hard, and I guarantee you were working a job when some of these kids were just literally, that was their job as gymnastics, and somehow you rose through the ranks even to compete with them. I mean that alone, and maybe I hear some of my own story because I did the same thing in ballroom dancing. I started late when I was a grandpa at 18, and then I was able to compete with the nation’s top dancers by the time I was in my early twenties. Right. And same with you. You kind of worked your way through that. Where do you feel like that imposter syndrome came? Was it more of an identity you kind of never really truly identified as a gymnast, or what was it that you felt like really attributed to that?
Yeah, so for me, I always loved coaching. Even now when I speak and when I keynote, I think of it as coaching from stage. I’m really not interested. I never wanted to be a speaker. I never wanted to get into the industry. It just unfolded and really organically happened. I’ve never been interested in leaving you with this great feeling inside, but then you don’t change. That makes me look bad. You came, I heard me speak, and then you didn’t change at all. You just felt good, and then an hour later it wore off. That’s not good for either one of us. That was a waste of your time, and now my reputation’s messed up, so I’m not really interested in that. I’m trying to figure out from stage or one-on-one, no matter what it is, how can I coax you through a step-by-step process, here’s what you need to adjust.
Adjusting this variable will lead three things down the chain of cause and effects to an adjustment in this. That’s what’s going to get you the outcome that you want. That type of analytical thought process was always me. From day one. My mother would, if she was on here, she would tell you right now, he was always an overthinker. He was always trying to be deep. He was always this, that, and the third. So I love that process of just figuring out what tweaks do we need to make and then how does that show up later on down the chain? I think that’s the coolest, most fun thing ever. What I realized in college was that that is the personality of a coach. It’s the skillset of a coach, and it came naturally to me, the athlete thing, I hated all of it. I loved training.
I loved practicing. I loved doing the sport because I fell in love with it. I was passionate about it, but you want me to go out there in front of 500 people and I might fall. I’m taking a risk, and then these judges are looking at me, critiquing everything I do, miss me with it. I hated it. But again, because of the peer pressure of no, this is who you’re supposed to be. You’re kind of taking the easy way out. If you want to coach, you don’t want to be the star athlete. What’s wrong with you? And I wasn’t mature enough at that time in my life as a 20, 21-year-old to understand what my validation comes from my own success and me doing what I feel like is in alignment with my purpose, not what everybody else expects me to do. So once I’ve matured enough to get there, I would love to tell you that I worked just as hard and had more success. I worked the same level as a coach as I was when I was an athlete, and then had more success, but it wouldn’t be the truth. I was 10 times lazier as a coach and still won two back-to-back championships far easier than when I was ever an athlete, because the athlete thing, again, it wasn’t quite in alignment. And so I was pushing against something the other side, I had a tailwind with me. So it’s just about all that exactly
I thought was exactly the question I was going to follow up with, but you just answered it right there. And I think that’s key, if anybody picked that out, is that it wasn’t about, like you said, when you’re not aligned with who you are, when you’re not aligned with your own, I call it like your divine genius. When you’re not doing that, then what it ends up happening is that it almost feels like you’re going against a lot of headwinds. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not headwinds when you’re a coach in your case, right? I guarantee there are still challenges, but it almost feels like you said, there’s that win at your back also pulling you through because you have that vision, you have that mission that goes with it, and those natural gifts and abilities that carry you through. Correct.
Yeah. I mean, I always tell people, life is a game that you’re allowed to rig. If you’re five foot five and you can’t jump, you don’t have to try out for the NBA, it might not be the environment for you. You can rig the circumstances and situations that create your life’s journey in such a way that it actually plays to your natural strengths. So if you can rig the game to make it easier for you, why wouldn’t you? And I think the challenge is to answer that. I think most people are either afraid of stepping into who they really are because they fear that judgment or how other people are going to perceive it, or just it is that assumption, that assumption of, oh, I’m supposed to do this. I’m supposed to be that. It’s like, no, you can succeed in life and have fulfillment as a second rate version of somebody else.
Matter of fact, I’ll add this to the story. My fifth year, my final year of eligibility in the NCAA, we actually had a guy get kicked off the team for behavioral issues. So the head coach came to me and said, Hey, man, we can give you what you want if you want to be on the team so you can complete your comeback story of red shirt, freshmen cut four times, and now you made it on the team finally for your fifth and final year. I can give you that, but truth be told, you’re far more valuable to us as a coach, so I’ll do what you want, but I would prefer you stayed with us as a coach instead, so we can go get another championship. You’re going to ride the bench. And so most people, they’re not willing to take the ego check and say, actually, this is what was meant for me.
Well, it doesn’t help when you have Jack Black in School Rock saying those that can’t do teach and those that can’t teach, teach pe. But what you’re talking about here is really, it was just aligning more with your genius. And it seemed like the coach saw that in you, didn’t he?
A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And he was very supportive of that entire transition, and he mentored me a lot. So I had great people to look up to in that process as I was stepping into my own as a coach. Yeah, and I wouldn’t have it any other way either. Right? I mean, I’m glad that I learned that lesson because what that four years of getting cut from the team over and over and over again taught me was that I can outwork everybody else in the room for absolutely no reward. And most people don’t get that experience. Most people listen to David Goggins or ET or whoever it is that you listen to, you get fired up and you’re like, yeah, I’ll outwork everybody. And then when it comes time to test it, if you don’t have a carrot dangling in front of you, you’re not doing anything.
You need something to chase. You got to have a reward or else you’re just going to check out. I don’t have to wonder. I got proof. I went four years, two a days plus a third practice. I was practicing with the club gymnastics team as well, and I didn’t get jacked to show for it, but who I became in that process, scared of no man after that because I know what I’m made of. And I proved it in real life, not on a podcast, no disrespect, but I’m not just talking about it. No, I proved it. So that level of confidence, and unfortunately, most people quit before they get there. So yeah, I have absolutely no regrets of how it all went down. I’m glad I finally found the lane I was supposed to be in, but man, it was such a growth journey the whole way through.
Yeah, I love it. And before I get into, were are those mindset hacks to be able to get to that successful top 1% really quickly, how would people be able to follow you?
Yeah, I am B burns on all social. We try to keep it simple, so it’s all the same. I am B burns on all social media. And that’s the website as well. I am b burns.com.
I am B burns, right?
Yes, sir.
All right. Awesome, man. Okay, so let’s talk about this mindset hack. See, that’s basically where we’re going with this right now. You’re getting to coaching. I know you’re already learning or already been applying some of this stuff, but what are some of these things that our listeners could also apply for themselves?
Man, the biggest thing that I tell everybody, and it’s kind of become my mantra or slogan, is every day means every day. That’s the biggest thing. It’s the big, and you’ve got to understand, I’ve been around a lot of really, really impressive people at this point in my life, and I say that very humbly because again, I didn’t grow up around any type of success. Now that I do what I do, and I’m in some of these circles and some of these networks, I’ve been able to look at an Eric Thomas and see how he operates, or a Jesse Itzler or an Inky Johnson or a Russell Brunson, as we were talking about earlier. I’ve gotten close to these guys and I can kind of watch how they move, watch how they operate. And the thing that struck me the most is that while they’re all very smart and they’re all clearly in that zone of divine genius, like you mentioned, they’re in alignment with who they are and their purpose and their natural skill sets and abilities.
The biggest thing is they’re just consistent. And I know people are like, oh, okay, we brought somebody out a podcast to talk about, be consistent. I’ve never heard that before. But the truth of the matter is, it’s the compound interest. Just like you talk about finances, it’s compound interest. That’s what moves the needle. If you sit there and save $20 a day for the rest of your life, it’s not the $20 that adds up. It’s the interest on the $20 a day that adds up your efforts and your intention is exactly the same way. The compounding is what makes it work. So I mentioned that I do some commentating work and sports broadcasting. I was leaving the studio at Big 10 Network maybe two years ago, and I walked out and somebody asked me, how often do you work out? I said, I work out every day.
And she almost seemed taken aback, and she was like, okay, but what does that mean every day, Monday through Friday, you mean every day except holidays, every day, except when you’re not on the road. I said, I don’t understand the question because maybe every day means something different to you. For me, every day means every day. Like I said, what I said, it means every single day. Now, what that taught me was that the vast majority of the world in every industry, I don’t care what it is, they expect mediocrity. That’s just what we expect. When you tell somebody, I do something every single day, and they say, yeah, but what does that mean? They’re expecting you to have a concession. They’re expecting you to have an exception to the rule. And it’s like, no, if you just do one thing every single day, I promise you the compounding will be out of this world.
So for me, I’m still able to do a lot of the skills in gymnastics that the current athletes can’t do because I’ve just been doing it every day for the last 16 years. It’s like you don’t lose stuff when you do it every day like that. So financially, what are some of those things that you’re going to look at every single day you wake up and look at your bank accounts every day? Because that’s the other thing that I think people miss is they think that these guys are working 22 and a half hours a day every single day. And that’s not the secret, because anybody can work hard for a day. Anybody can work hard for a week. Anybody can push themselves and work hard for a month. But the consistency for a decade now we’re at a different level of results. So for me, I work out every single day. That doesn’t mean I do a three hour insane CrossFit workout every single day. Some days I do that. Some days I’m on the road, I’m traveling, got gigs here, got gigs there, 10 minute stretch, we’re going to walk a mile. And then maybe before I go to bed, I’ll do a hundred pushups, a hundred squats, and then we got to go to bed. The whole thing takes 20, 25 minutes,
Which is more than what most people do on a normal day.
Exactly. Well, but the point is, what are you doing daily? Again, looking at your financial statements. Are you shopping properties? Are you like whatever it is that you’re into, if you can do it every single day, you’re going to get to such a level of mastery where it’s just automatic. That’s the secret.
So true, man. I can’t emphasize that enough. I mean, people talk about consistency all the time. Like you said, people give it lip service, but it really is. You said even earlier on, it’s that habit. It’s something you actually have to go and do daily. You can’t talk about it. You can’t think about it. And I know this for myself, I was the same way before I became a marathoner, is that I was 30 pounds heavier, overweight and speaking and doing stuff and stressed out, and actually was in worse pain in my thirties, and I was in my forties and I was working out, but I wasn’t working out every day. Where now, other than one day, I can say since December 1st, I’ve worked out every single day. I missed one day. I got pretty badly sick, so I missed one. But other than that, I work out every day. It became part of my identity. And I think that’s when I’m here for you is that’s what you do. That’s just what I do, because that’s who I am,
A hundred percent. And it’s got to become your identity. A lot of people talk about manifesting, and 90% of what those people talk about is complete nonsense. This is how manifesting actually works. You envision to the highest level of detail that you can possibly conceptualize the person that you want to be. And then wherever you see that version of you, that person you, if you see them 10 years older than you are now, 20 years older than you are now, whatever, you envision that and then you pull them into the future and you start making decisions from that person’s mindset. How would that person act in the situation? How would that person handle this? How would that person communicate? How would that person make decisions? And then you do that in the present moment. And then over time, you have no choice but to become the exact version of what you envisioned because that’s the person that was making the decisions.
So it’s all about an identity. Even when I was in college, I quit drinking for, because college athletes, everybody, whatever, it’s the whole social scene. And my final year, I was like, I’m not going to touch anything because I don’t want to feel like I left anything on the table, not a single bit. And so I said, I’m going to stop drinking for an entire year. I’m not going to have a single drop, not one bit of anything. And I realized that it was kind of difficult when I was telling people that and I said, Hey, I’m not doing this for a year. I got this goal. I’m really trying to make sure I have no regrets, leave nothing on the table. And people would kind of push back on it. And then I would find myself in a situation where, because there was not an objective hard standard, I would make decisions in the moment and I would make myself vulnerable because I’m making decisions based off of the circumstance, the situations and the emotions that I’m feeling in that moment when I started just telling people, I don’t drink.
I don’t drink anymore. Now I know, okay, after this year, we will revisit it, whatever. But I’m just like, yo, this is my identity. This ain’t happening. This is not a decision. You take away the decision. There’s no decision to be made. The decision’s already made. It’s a standard. This is how this is going to go. Nobody says anything. And so whatever it is that you do, if you’re like, Hey, I want to be a real estate investor, stop talking about, yeah, I’m reading this book. I’m thinking about jumping in. I don’t know, I’m, I’m listening to a couple podcasts, I’m listening. I don’t care if you ain’t bought nothing yet. Start running around saying, I’m a real estate investor. Yep, that’s what I do. And you’re going to start to make decisions from that identity that you are creating. You’re not lying, you’re not making stuff up. It’s just a preview. But people got to, once you start getting into that identity and making decisions from that core identity that you’ve remade, the whole thing just unfolds so much more organically.
Man, right there, guys, rewind and let’s do it another three times at least. Just to get that down. That is incredible advice right there. I mean that, that’s gold. Well, Brandon, I appreciate your time today. This has been awesome. Again, thank you so much. It’s been so generous of you,
Man. Anytime, anytime. I might’ve gone a little long. I warned you at the beginning. I might be a little over talkative, but yeah, we did our best. But man, I really appreciate you having me on, and to everybody who’s listening, I just want to go back to that one piece of take action. Don’t listen to a podcast like this because Krista does such a good job of bringing you the right people, the right information, the right format, everything is there that you need. It would be a shame to get all of that game and then not do anything with it. Even if it’s just one little thing. You know what? I’m going to do five pushups before I go to bed at night. I’m going to start calling myself an investor. Whatever the one thing is that stood out to you, that’s that whisper of the soul that we were talking about earlier. You need to take action on it.
Yeah, you just wrapped up what I was going to say too. So with that guys right there, I’ll just say this. The thing that you hear me say on the show all the time is don’t just be a hear of the word, but a doer as well as Brendan. Just so beautifully said. So guys, make it a wonderful process week. We’ll see yo