Break and said, hey guys, guess what?

We've got a chance.

He was my fraternity brother.

Have people prosperous communities of healthy environments.

Trust me.

She lived in Traficant for four years.

I really felt for a lot of reasons, I felt.

But I didn't have the guts to stand in the Andrews has gone from ordinary to down and out to extraordinary.

In his youth, things were pretty normal.

But as a young adult, family tragedy plunged him into a bad place.

Perhaps better said, no place.

He was homeless for a time, but that was not the final chapter.

In fact, it was the beginning of a career that would make him an internationally acclaimed author and speaker.

His books include The Traveler's Gift, The Notice for the Little Things, and The Bottom of the pool.

You can add to that an array of children's books and a most impressive speaking career, with clients ranging from fortune 500 companies to professional sports teams.

We welcome Mandy Andrews to Conversations.

Thanks for coming back to see us.

Have solutely.

Yes.

It's great to see.

You bet.

You bet.

You haven't changed a bit.

Well, I got a little older.

You got you.

You look great now.

You haven't changed.

Yeah, we can say that to each other.

Yeah.

That's right, that's right.

Look how old you look.

That's the power of positive thinking right now.

That's right.

Take me back.

How did Andy Andrews become the Andy Andrews?

Where did it?

Where did it start?

Well.

That's assuming that is anything but, you know, you mentioned it in the intro.

You know, I was 19 when my parents died and my mom died of cancer, and my dad was killed in a car accident.

And, which is, you know, tough time, obviously, but I've always had the ability to take a bad situation.

And make it worse.

And and I did.

I made some bad moves and ended up literally homeless before that was even a word, you know?

I was, sleeping under.

Appear here on the Gulf Coast and in and out of people's garages, which is not safe for smart, right?

But I did, and, met an old guy during that time.

We called him Jones, not Mr. Jones.

Just call him Jones.

And we didn't really know where he was from or where he stayed when he was here or where he went when he left.

We didn't know what was in the suitcase.

He carried around, but, he called himself a notice there.

He knows the first time I'd heard that term, he said when?

When God was passing out talents, I didn't get the cool ones.

I can't run fast.

I can't sing great.

But I notice little things that make a difference in people's lives.

And so he's the first person I ever really kind of tell me the truth about myself.

Sometimes without much tact and, but, you know, and he he made me angry a lot of times, but I'm thinking, where am I going?

You know, I'm living under a pier and nobody else is paying any attention to me.

And so he got me started reading.

And, I'd always been kind of a Sports Illustrated field and stream kind of person.

And he got me reading biographies, and I ended up reading over 200 biographies during that time.

And, really kind of identified seven things that I felt like all those people had.

And I called them things at that point, I didn't know, you know, I had not if they were ideas or theories or any.

But I finally figured out these were seven principles.

And of course, principles work every time they work, whether you know him or not, right?

You know, the principle of gravity was was, there long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head.

Right.

But once it did, and once he understood it, we as a society were free to harness that principle to create, suspension bridges and airlines, flight and all the things that gravity held sway over.

And so my thought was that why shouldn't we learn these seven things?

Why, why, you know what happens to people who know these seven things?

What happens to kids whose parents know these seven principles and teach them to their children?

And so those seven principles were the things that I started using to yank myself out of that situation.

And years later, they became the seven decisions in The Traveler's Gift.

And what are those seven?

You know, I always hate answering that question.

Okay.

And I'll tell you why.

Okay.

Fair enough.

You know, when the book first came out, you know, obviously you're trying to sell the book.

And, and so I would be on some things that I'd say, so tell me the seven things and I would be like, oh my God.

Because most times it's not a long form like you and I have here most time.

Yeah.

Four minutes.

Right.

Okay.

And so I'm thinking, man, if I tell him these seven things, nobody's going to buy this book because it's just like, you know, because until you dig into them, they sound.

Normal, average.

You know, because it's like, the first one is, responsibility.

The buck stops here.

The second one is seeking wisdom.

Third one is action.

Being a person of action.

Number four, I remember, you know, number four is, I'll have a decided heart.

Number five is today.

I will choose to be happy.

Number six is.

I'll greet each day with forgiveness, with a forgiving spirit.

And number seven is I will persist without exception.

So you can see why I hated answering that question early on.

Because I just imagine people going, wow, persist.

Never heard that.

Yeah.

You know.

What?

Okay, okay, okay.

You're right.

But until you get to to explain in I mean, of course, the story of the traveler's gift is, a family going through a tough time, and the dad gets to travel through time, meeting with seven historical figures who are also going through a tough time in their own.

He gets to be with Harry Truman while he's trying to determine how to end the war.

He gets to be with, Anne Frank in the annex and talk with her and ask her questions.

So each of these seven historical figures give this man a different decision, a different principle, that if you put this in his in his life, things will change.

Had you been a writer, like in high school or middle school, was that something that you enjoyed, or was that something you took up after you decided, I'm going to go?

You know, I gotta tell you, the writing thing, it's it's very obviously a God thing with me, because when I was in high school, I could not do that.

You know, the diagraming the sentence is the indirect object and the object to the preposition, and then the subject and the predicate and I could not get it.

And they, they told me in high school, they said, well, you're going to have a hard time in freshman English in college because it's all composition.

So I was terrified because, you know, the stories about people failing freshman English are, you know, everywhere.

And so when I went, everybody else is making seasoned D's.

I made A's and I did I didn't know, I didn't know this the structure, how to identify the structure.

But somehow I knew how to write it.

Right.

And, and, and to this day, the publisher, Harper Collins, says, oh, you hand in the cleanest drafts of of anybody that we have.

And I'm like, oh, thanks.

Because I don't really know how I'm doing it, but but it's, it's it's a discipline for me.

Writing is a discipline.

You know, I hear people say a lot of times that, well, I want to write a book sometime.

I'm like, really?

When are you.

When are you going to do it?

You know, say, well, you know, I'm waiting to be inspired.

And I'm like, you know, I've written 26 books.

I've probably been inspired 26 times.

It's when I think of the idea, the rest of it's work.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes people say, well, you must.

What?

What a great profession, you know, because obviously you love to write.

And I'm like, no, I don't really love to write.

I, you know, I, I love being an author.

I love giving books to people.

I love signing books.

I love talking about books to people.

But do I like to write?

No, I think I like having written because.

Because anytime I sit down in front of a computer, there's only 50 things I can think of.

I'd rather be doing right.

But.

But it's a discipline, you know?

And and I feel like when you have something inside you and I feel like everybody does that.

If you if you have the idea of a book or whatever, sit down.

Right.

The world is different now.

You know, when I started, you know, self-publishing was just like the poor man's way out, you know?

But today, I mean, because when I started, you know, my first book was self-published, and I would be on a show like this, or really not like, not this good.

But I'd be on some local radio show or something and they'd say, well, tell us where we can get the book.

And I'm like, lay, meet me outside.

I got some in the trunk.

You know?

But but there was no internet.

And so there was no way self-publishing people could get their books in the book.

So you can get them in a local bookstore, but not around the world, around America.

And and there was no way that you could hit the New York Times bestseller list with the self-published book.

And so but today that's different.

If you got a book in your head and in your heart, get after it.

Because you can you can be on Barnes and Noble's website.

You can be on Amazon's website just like anybody else can.

Right, right.

And there's so many other ways to promote yourself as well.

Exactly.

Exactly how many how how long was it when you between the time you self-published and you got with a major publisher?

It was a process of about 7 or 8 years.

I self-published three books.

I think.

And then when I wrote Traveler's Gift, I thought, I gotta have a publisher on this.

I can't just mess around with this one.

And so I feel like it was pretty good.

Yeah.

But then then I couldn't get it published.

And when I'm saying I couldn't get it published, let this be, an encouragement to all you people who are struggling with this right now.

When I say I can't get it published, I'm telling you that, and not not that 10 or 12 publishers turned me down.

51 publishers over three and a half years said that what I had written was not worth putting on paper.

And so then finally, the 51st, 52nd publisher said yes.

And, I had a one book deal.

They printed 10,000 copies.

It went into the bookstores, and 6 or 8 weeks later they all came back.

They all went, you know, back to the warehouse, because bookstores are not, you know, bookstores are consignment stores.

And so so they told me, you know, it was it was over.

And I was like, wow, okay, well, what what are you going to do with the books?

And I said, well, when they go into remainders stores, you know, like $2 a book, places and, and and they said and we'll eventually Burnham I was like, really?

Well, can I have them?

And they said, you can buy them like, well, thanks a lot book.

Yeah.

And so I did I started buying them, just as many as I could afford at a time.

And I started giving them away.

I figured there's got to be a reason for this.

And so I started giving them away on airplanes and, you know, and I would I would tell people, hey, this this is for your next crisis.

And they say, how do you know I'm going to have a crisis?

And I said, well, that's you know, we're all either in a crisis coming out of a crisis or headed for a crisis.

That's part of being with us on this planet.

And I said, I think you'll like the book.

My wife loves this author.

And and so.

I would give them away.

And, and so, after a couple of years, somebody gave it to somebody gave it to somebody gave one to somebody else.

That somebody gave one to Robin Roberts on Good Morning America.

And, she really championed the book and made it good Morning, America's Book of the month.

And it just it exploded from that.

And, and, then 6 or 8 months later, they named it one of the five books you should read in your lifetime, which is just kind of amazing to me.

What a great lesson, though, on persistence.

Yeah.

And, and and also thinking outside of the box.

Right.

It didn't.

And you know, I guess it's just one of those things.

You know, the old Zig Ziglar thing is if you, you know, if you pump the well long enough.

Then that pump.

Yeah, yeah, eventually your private and it takes off from there.

Wow.

I didn't realize that.

Just so you would think almost by chance, that it ended up with Robin Roberts, but it was because of all that muscle work you did ahead of time.

Yeah, there was a lot of lessons I learned, you know, from from that, one of them, you know, obviously the last, the seventh decisions, I will persist without exception.

And so you're thinking, okay, I had to write that without exception.

Part.

Yeah.

In there, you know.

Yeah.

So I, I keep going.

Oh no no no, but I, but I, I learned during that time the quality of your answers will be determined by the quality of your questions.

If you ask good questions, you get good answers.

If you ask bad questions, you're going to get bad answers.

And and I realized at the end of that three and a half years that I had been asking bad questions for three and a half years, you know, because as that drug on, I would I would ask questions like, and I'm talking about even asking questions to yourself.

Okay.

And so I'd ask questions like, is this just not as good as I thought it was?

And then my subconscious says, of course it's not as good as you think it is.

I mean, if it was as good as you thought it was, somebody would have done it by now.

You're embarrassing yourself, and you're embarrassing your friends and family by sending this out over and over again.

No it's not.

And, you know, and so that would slow me down.

I would ask question like, is this God's way of telling me I shouldn't be doing this?

And then the inside me would get, what do you want him do, burn a bush for you?

Yeah, yeah, he's telling you that.

But but then then I would be overwhelmed with this feeling, like.

Like, okay, God doesn't.

He's not gonna teach you how to swim just to let you drown.

Right.

And and so the final thing that dug in with me on that quality of your answers can be determine the quality of your question is, I was so frustrated, and I finally, I finally asked myself, and imagine now this is 20, 22 years ago.

And I finally asked myself, man, is there anybody more powerful than a publisher?

Is there any any way you go around him and and just like that, I had the idea.

Yes, there is somebody more powerful than a publisher, a publisher, spouse.

And I, I did some digging, and I found out that the, the CEO of Thomas Nelson was going to be at some event.

And so with his wife and so I bribed somebody to let me sit at their table and, and I knew I knew that at some point during the meal, somebody was gonna say, so what have you been doing?

I said, I've been working on a manuscript about a family going through tough times.

Dad gets to travel through time, going through and meeting seven historic figures, and you can give him two different things that if he if he puts in his life, things will change.

And.

And the lady, Gail Hyatt, Mike Hyatt's wife, Gail Hyatt said, wow, that sounds excellent.

I would love to read that.

I said, I've got a manuscript for you in the car.

And everybody laughed.

And I said, it's not for him, it's just for you.

And and so I found out later that they stayed up all night long, but actually, she stayed up all night long reading it.

He stayed up all night long because she was going, listen to this part.

Listen to this part.

And and a week later we had a deal on the book.

Incredible, incredible.

Your other discipline speaking.

You speak some big venues and whatnot.

What are you telling folks today when you go out and speak?

Because I see your list.

You're talking to major fortune 500 companies.

You're talking to, NFL teams, Major League baseball teams, big NCAA college teams.

What's your theme today?

What are you telling them?

You know, I, I feel like people have your have you ever tried to explain something to somebody that you loved?

And they, they said, you know, I just don't want to think that hard, you know, like, really, you're just like, okay with how you are.

And and so that used to bug me and, and I believe that that is what we become is that's, that's what holds our future.

Right.

And so my, my greatest advice is kind of what I'm taking out there now is the greatest advice I got.

My oldest son asked me one time said, what's what's the greatest piece of advice you've ever gotten in your life?

Dad?

And I don't even have to think about it.

I knew what it was because when I heard it from the old man Jones, the notice there, when I heard it from him, it went over my head at first, but it was so odd.

I kept thinking about it.

What he said was, he said, you gotta remember, you can't always believe everything you think.

I was like, what?

And I just kept rolling through my mind for years until I finally begin to unpack it, understand it, and now, today, I use that with my clients.

We work with companies and coach other employees, and, I work I use it with my clients.

I probably filter every decision I make through that.

You can't believe everything you think.

And.

And here's the best way I can explain that, Jeff, is if I've ever known something.

I mean, you knew it, and you could argue it and you could win the argument.

And then after six months or a year, you kind of thought, oh, that was not exactly right, or my information was a little incomplete.

Well, we all done that.

Okay.

Well, if you've ever done that, there's the possibility exist that something you know now your information might be incomplete and you would say, well, Andy, of course, something I know now, my information might be incomplete.

And I would say right.

But the point is, we don't know what that is, Dewey.

And we don't know how many subjects that may cover in your life.

And so there is this deep desire for people to achieve to their potential.

We want our children to achieve to their potential.

But there's a misconception in why people are not or why I am not achieving too much.

And that misconception is people believe it's because of something they're missing, something they don't know.

But it's not.

It's not something they don't know.

That's not what's keeping people from their potential.

Because when you don't know something, you keep reading, you keep searching, you keep listening, you keep talking, you keep asking, okay?

And so, so the biggest danger to achieving your potential is not something you don't know.

The biggest danger to achieving your potential is what you know for sure.

Because that's the point that you leave that alone and go somewhere else.

And, and yet you know there's a really famous football coach that I told one time, I said, you know, I look at you and you're in the conversation for the greatest of all time.

And, I look at you and I think, where do you go for seminars?

You know, what?

What consultant could you possibly bring in here?

Who would add anything to what you already know?

And and so I said, there is, there is, an advantage of kind of hanging with me.

And he said, oh, yeah.

And I said, yeah, I don't know anything about football.

I said, I know what a fan knows, but I don't know what you know.

I said, but I help people compete in ways the competition doesn't know what game is going on.

And your competition knows your game.

You know, every industry, they kind of rise and fall together with the economy, the rise and fall, you know.

But rarely do you see anybody like Fairway Mortgage that jumps out after 19 years to 5.4 million, I mean 5.4 billion 19 years to it.

In one year they went to 11.2.

The next year 17 six, next year 22 something.

And in seven years they've gone from 750 employees to 11,000 employees and $72.5 billion.

Well, that same thing can be done with football teams, with baseball teams, basketball teams, with small businesses, large businesses.

And it's a matter of thinking, and it's not just a matter of the CEO thinking, you know, I hear you can tell I'm passionate about this game.

Well, sorry I like that.

But that you hear people say, you know, everything rises and falls on leadership.

Really every because leadership is only 10 or 12% of a company or an organization.

So everything rises and falls on 10 or 12% of the people that, I just don't believe that.

But everything does rise.

And fall on culture, because the culture of an organization includes everybody, and the culture is a direct reflection of how they think.

You know, most CEOs, if they were if they were honest with themselves, which most of them are, but they never consider this.

If you look down at all the people in in the business or in the organization, a coach looks at his team.

Think of all the decisions that are being made every day, every hour that the CEOs there's that he ain't got any control over it any.

No there happen it okay.

And there's these general guidelines or a mission statement or some regulations or whatever.

But there's different decisions being made with relationships, with coworkers, with, you know, I mean, you know, you're a business person.

And so it's the same thing.

It's why there's a difference.

What I do is I coach, I don't train, my mike, my company creating measurable results is a coaching company, not a training company.

Okay.

And and it's like you look at Nick Saban.

Nick Saban is not a trainer.

He's a coach.

Yep.

And so what what why was he so good.

Well you could see the culture change at Alabama.

From the point I mean it was the time that he left to the time a new coach took over.

The culture took a dramatic hit.

I mean, all of a sudden, you got guys on the field refusing to come off, kicking the ball, throwing their their mouthguard across the field.

You got crazy things going on that never happened under Nick and.

And I know this new coach will probably get Ahold of it, but it's the thinking.

It all goes down to the thinking, you know, you remember your momma.

You say, what were you thinking?

That's what I unfortunately today a lot of people are right, right, right.

Anyway, I'm about out of time here.

I've got about one minute left.

Tell me real quick how do people find out?

And you?

I know you've got a lot of stuff going on.

You have a lot 20 some odd, but 26.

Books, 26.

26 books.

You have a podcast?

Yeah.

The coaching company, a bunch of other stuff.

How do people find you.

Andy andrews.com okay is the best way.

Andy andrews.com you put your email address in there.

We send you the podcast every Tuesday morning.

All right.

And Andy intercom creating measurable results.com and wisdom harbor.com.

Andy thank you my.

Friend.

Thank you buddy.

All the best Andy Andrews by the way.

You can see this and many more of our conversations online at shred.org/conversations as well as on the PBS video app.

And YouTube.

I'm Jeff Weeks, thank you so very much for watching.

I hope you enjoyed our program.

Take wonderful care of yourself and we'll see you soon.