Become Unstoppable, with Alden Mills – Episode 451 of The Action Catalyst Podcast

Alden Mills, CEO of Perfect Fitness and Founder/CEO of GoalBud shares lessons from his time as a Navy SEAL, and chats about why trust is like a boomerang, putting on your “Terminator glasses”, finding your swim buddy, closing the C.A.R.E. loop, seeing possibilities in the impossible, hitting the positivity gym, and how to lead with love.

About Alden:

Alden Mills is an Inc. 500 CEO of Perfect Fitness, has been awarded 40+ patents worldwide as a founder of multiple businesses, is a three-time Navy SEAL platoon commander and Division One athlete, a bestselling author of “Be Unstoppable” and “Unstoppable Teams”, has been recognized as the #1 top virtual speaker by Entrepreneur magazine, and serves as an advisor to chief level executives and board members.

With more than 40 years of experience failing and succeeding in a vast array of different environments from sports, military, and business to nonprofits and community action groups, he learned success is driven by one vital factor—leadership—of oneself and others.

As a weak child with asthma, doctors insisted he limit physical activity and avoid sports. Instead, with the mindset instilled in him by his mother that “no one defines what you can and can’t do, but you,” he went on to become a National Collegiate Champion rower, earning Gold and Silver medals at the Olympic Festival, and a Navy SEAL who was top of his class.

As Alden achieved personal successes, he repeatedly grew into leadership positions. He became captain of his collegiate rowing team, was promoted three times to Navy SEAL platoon commander, and ranked #1 platoon commander each time.

From a young age, Alden amassed notebooks of invention drawings. One of those ideas became the wildly popular Perfect Pushup and today he holds over 40 patents worldwide. He turned a single invention into a global fitness powerhouse in over 70 countries with multiple products, leading Perfect Fitness to become the fastest-growing consumer product company in the country, with over $95 million in sales in just three years. He has since founded and served on multiple companies’ boards in retail hard goods, consumable products, and service-based businesses.

Along the way, Alden cultivated a methodology that develops people into congruent and authentic leaders who successfully build teams and create cultures that are unstoppable regardless of the situation, industry, or environment.

Today Alden Mills is known as one of the leading business thinkers in America and spends his time helping others learn and implement the three levels of Unstoppable Leadership. Through speaking, coaching, writing, board advisory, and teaching, Alden helps people acquire the mindset, tools, and actions required to accomplish more than they thought was possible.

Learn more at Alden-Mills.com.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

LISTEN:

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR RSS FEED: https://feeds.captivate.fm/the-action-catalyst/

SUBSCRIBE ELSEWHERE: https://the-action-catalyst.captivate.fm/listen

__________________________________________________________________________

(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Alden Mills
How are you?

Stephanie Maas
I’m well, how are you?

Alden Mills
I’m doing great. It’s a little crazy over here. But it’s an honor to be here.

Stephanie Maas
So I’ve got a silly question to start. How many pushups did you do this morning?

Alden Mills
Ha, oh, you know, probably five.

Stephanie Maas
I appreciate the honest answer.

Alden Mills
Yeah, I didn’t do a lot this morning.

Stephanie Maas
Well, first of all, thank you so much for spending this time with us. Obviously, as you know, an incredibly impressive background. Thank you for your service. And this idea of discovering the vulnerability that you can’t do it alone. I think so many of us are trained that asking for help is a weakness. Can you talk to me a little bit about where that came from with you, etc.

Alden Mills
The very first place that I discovered that you definitely can’t do it yourself. I had been diagnosed with asthma at the age of 12. Well, that I should lead a less active lifestyle. And mom had totally different ideas on that. And she would say things like, no, no one finds what you can do. But you you decide what you can do. And as I went down that journey, and at the time, it was a physical goal that I was really out there. I just wanted to be good at something physically. Well, I was terrible at every ball sport I tried. And then I find the sport of rowing, where I could sit on my butt and go backwards for long periods of time. And I was like, Hey, I could do this. But it was during that time period that I realized it was such a hard training evolution, I really needed support. It was only because a senior came down when I was a sophomore. And he said he wants you to come train with me. And it was because of him that I saw the power of what it was like working together instead of alone. Fast forward seven years. I’m in basic training and SEAL team. And we had this seal instructor, the thick Boston accent. And he would say there ain’t no Rambo’s and SEAL team, you think you’re a Rambo, we’re gonna weed you out, every one of us got a weakness, we got to find each other to take care of each other’s weakness. And he would keep going after us on this no Rambo concept. And it’s the polar opposite in SEAL team. Seal Team is designed SEAL training, it’s designed to find your weakness exploit it, you confront it. And then you find and surround yourself with people who don’t have that weakness. And I found a lot of those weaknesses was another seven years after that I’m sitting in business school. And I find a whole bunch of weaknesses. There were engineering and spreadsheets, I couldn’t even figure out what a spreadsheet was at first, and how quickly I needed to build teams and teams that were based around my vulnerabilities. And I had to be vulnerable enough to let them know, this is what I am terrible at, I suck at this. But here’s the one thing I can do really well. And the faster that we would come together, you were breaking through this vulnerability layer of ice that all of a sudden, everyone felt so much more comfortable. And from that I’ve built multiple companies really based off of the vulnerability of being self aware enough to know I can’t do it all then you got the opportunity to be on stop altogether.

Stephanie Maas
Part of it is that being confident enough in themselves to become vulnerable. I also think the other part of it is trusting other people. I mean, a lot of folks, especially in leadership positions, they have this reputation of being control freaks. So how do you build that trust? And we know I mean, people are human, they’re gonna let us down. When they do. How do you keep going with that?

Alden Mills
You can’t have any team without trust. Trust is the absolute number one single fundamental, when you are meeting somebody for the first time, I want you to think about the fact that they’re all wearing a pair of Terminator glasses. At one point the camera switches to be what you can see from the terminators point of view through those classes right and now you’re seeing a heads up display for the first time and, and facial recognition as she’s walking into the bar looking for Sarah Eric honor that his Sakana. Right, and then all hell breaks loose. That’s what people are doing. But it’s not Sarah Connor now. It’s Can I trust this leader, and the number one filter they’re looking at is, can I trust this person? Can I be safe enough to be vulnerable enough to tell this person, this isn’t the way we should go, or I have a better idea or, you know, let me give you this suggestion. And the reason they’re going to be doing that is they’re waiting for you to take the first step on trust. And here’s how I want you to think of trust. Trust is like a boom array, you’re going to have to put out a bunch of energy, send it out into the universe, sometimes it’s going to come right back to you. And it’s going to be overwhelmingly positive energy. And sometimes that Boomerang is lost doesn’t come back. But if you can get comfortable with the fact that if you lead with love, as your main driver of emotion, you’ll always give more trust, because you know that those that send a boomerang of trust back to you, the force multipliers for you, those that don’t, they’re wounded, they’re insecure, they have stunted their own gross, they will only always be about themselves, they won’t ever be able to team up to the level that you’re looking for. And maybe over time, if you remain consistent, they’ll come to the light with you. But if you always grow freak, that’s leading with fear. And when you lead with fear, you are much more apt not to take the risks, you’re going to be worried so much about getting just the next thing, right, you’re going to miss the opportunities that are around the corner, because you’re too concerned about what is going to happen to you, you must be concerned about how to help others. When you add those components together, then they’ll understand. And they’ll start daring, a little bit more. I use the term daring because trust is built off of care, I developed what’s called the care loop. I made an acronym out of care, which is connected Qi and respect and power. And it’s a loop and I think of it like a flywheel. And to get the flywheel up and spinning. You have to give Forrest your care to others when they may not care if you do that consistently enough. And people feel cared for may feel like Hey, Stephanie has gotten her back. It’s okay, if I go out and try something I’ve never done before. Because I know if I fail, she’s got my back. And she will take care of me. And that caring leads to daring, builds the trust that allows people to dare for you.

Stephanie Maas
Going in a little bit different direction. So one of the things I learned in your background was from a young age, you’ve always had this invention oriented mindset. But your first I think major launching was the perfect pushup, right?

Alden Mills
No, I had two companies before that, that were fantastic failures.

Stephanie Maas
Okay, well, let’s talk about coming back from failure.

Alden Mills
Well, let me tell you, my first big failure that I thought I had done so spectacularly wrong was leaving SEAL team, you know, when you leave SEAL team, they have you stand up in front of the entire team, and they say, Hey, Bailey, I cried. That day was awful. And about a week later, you know, I jump out of a helicopter for my last day. And then a week later, I’m sitting in a quantitative skills review program at Carnegie Mellon University, and it looks Greek on the board. I’m like, Oh, my God, what have I done. And I went back into reserves. And my wife says to me, she’s like, well, you know, I’ll support whatever you’d like to do. But if you really want to be this entrepreneur that you keep talking about, now, it’d be the time to do it, we don’t have kids just have a dog. At that point, is when, you know, I turned my first big failure of this civilian experience into something where I figured I could make it. And that turn was making the shift from Oh, it’s all about the money to know what’s really important to me. And what’s really important to me, is the joy I got from serving others. I then was sitting there as a civilian and I was like, Well, how’s the best way I can serve others. And that became helping people take control their bodies, it was the summer of 2006 when we invented the perfect pushup.

Stephanie Maas
Very interesting. You know, you often hear people say, hey, you know, you learn more from your failures and your successes and so forth. And I think that just speaks to that quite a bit.

Alden Mills
I failed way more than I’ve succeeded. But if you ain’t failing, you ain’t trying.

Stephanie Maas
Talk to me about this idea of a swim buddy.

Alden Mills
A swim buddy is a Navy SEAL term, or the smallest team in SEAL team. You know, you never go in the water by yourself. There’s always another person who even developed a stroke where you can look at each other. It’s a modified sidestroke and then you can switch sides. If one side of your party gets more tired than the other But you never do anything without your swim buddy, the swim buddy concept, the real important element of the swim buddy is the the emotional component of the moments when you’re not thinking you can make it. And the other ones putting their arm around you going, No, no, we got this. That’s that’s typically how SEAL teams started was, hey, we’ll take the missions no one else wants, and we’ll figure out how to get it done. And so you’re constantly looking at the impossible. And having somebody there to find the possibilities in impossible is really critical. And no person is a fort. And yes, we get scared. I get scared and forgive every public speech I get.

Stephanie Maas
Well, you did a really good job of hiding your nervousness and talking with me today. So I appreciate that.

Alden Mills
Well, you know, that laser focus you’re giving me right now in a terribly beautiful smile…terrified.

Stephanie Maas
Yes, I could see that. Oh, my gosh. Okay, let’s talk about mantras. Talk to me about some of the mantras when you need a little mental motivation.

Alden Mills
Let’s talk about the positivity gym. Um, first of all, I’m a visual learner, I think of everything and kind of visualize the thing, whatever that is. And so I have this idea that we all have a positivity gym. And if you think of it as positivity as a gym, it’s actually a great metaphor. Because, you know, I’ll stand on stage and ask people, Hey, who’s done 23andme? Or some genetic testing like that? Lots of hands go up? Who got the positivity gene? Did you get it? You asked to God? And I can tell you’re smiling. And they’re like, no, nobody got it, because there’s no screening for it. Because there’s no gene that exists for it, or positivity comes down to us. It’s up to us to drive that. So how do you do that, we got to go to the gym, we got to exercise, one of the key exercises in the positivity gym is a push pull exercise. So the push pole exercise is really what I call playing the opposite game, or in the opposite games means that the moment you got something negative that you decided to switch your focus on, you have to understand all of human nature, all of nature is designed to meet at homeostasis, which is a balance, which means for every negative there is a positive every time a failure occurred. Well, there’s some positives to that failure. And the positive is, you know, like Thomas Edison, I learned 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb. So you do the push pull again, another one is getting deeply curious about whatever the issue is, if it’s with another person, and you’re struggling, give me three ways that you can love that person. Now that person may have done something really bad, but you get to drive that kind of curiosity, it will flip a switch and force the brain to get off of whatever the negative thought is you’re attaching to, and shift your focus to where that positivity is. Now, before I give you a third positivity gym example, I really needed to explain Focus. Focus is like a funnel, that funnels your energy into taking an action, we control it. And we all have a focus funnel. The key thing about dealing with any kind of negativity is it’s up to us what we’re deciding to take our focus model in funnel energy and do attach to that thought that’s an either hurtful or helpful until we take our energy and attach to it. And we do it by using this focus funnel of ours. Now, give me a third positivity gym exercise. And that’s really dealing with perspective. When you find yourself in a position. Where are my gosh, we you know, we failed again, look, look what’s happened. That’s the reason you keep a workout log. As you can see, over time, oh, look, I’m actually getting stronger, or I’ve lost weight or getting faster, whatever the metrics are that you’re doing. But perspective is so powerful over that time period, if you can track your progress, no matter how slight it is, that is your fuel to always move forward. Your progress is your fuel for persistence.

Stephanie Maas
And I really like that that fuel for persistence.

Alden Mills
That’s the name of the game, Stephanie. It’s getting up and taking the next action. That’s the whole point, not 10 actions from now just the next one. It’s all you have to do.

Stephanie Maas
These seem logical. You simplify them, which is great. People still don’t do them. Why not?

Alden Mills
Well, my very first season instructor from the Deep South. He walked with a limp because he was missing his left buttcheek, because it got blown off by a rocket propelled grenade, called instructor half-butt. You know, what my job is, is to create a conversation and here that’s going to drive you to make a decision are what you’re going to focus on, you’re going to focus on the pain and train it, or you’re going to focus on the pleasure that training can provide you. Now I know for a fact over 80% of you, you’re going to focus on the pain, you know why? Because you’re all focused on being a seal on a sunny day, your country, she don’t need seals on sunny days, she needs them aren’t scary days, when it’s cold, and it’s dark, and it’s wet. And that crack over your head. Where that a thunder or somebody warning you did a bad you want to see on that day, you all want to be a seal on a sunny day. So the secret here is deciding what you got to focus on it in complicated. It’s just hard. It’s hard to lead yourself to decide what you’re going to focus on. It ain’t complicated. It’s just hard. I think people get things way too complicated. And then they get overwhelmed and I can’t do it. I don’t have enough time for this. Forget about it. Every person that I coach, all about just giving them the confidence to take the next action. That’s the only action that matters. It’s this present moment, present moment. For instance, you and me being together, everything that I can give that can be helpful to you. It’s this moment that matters. When people decide they can’t do it. Most of the time, they’ve made a decision to focus on just the sunny day, and realize the moment and anything comes down to the Heart Day. Well, that’s I’m not here for those days, I only want to sunny days, you know who doesn’t want to be the head of sales on a sunny day, who doesn’t want to be an entrepreneur on the sunny days. Those aren’t the days however, that gives you the greatest growth. The days that give you the greatest growth are the days with the greatest friction, right struggle builds strength, that’s the only way we grow. And until people flip the switch to realize, Hey, I gotta go to the gym. Right? The gym is a friction home, it’s there to give you the resistance, metaphorically and literally, to build the muscle strength that you need to be able to overcome the obstacles. And then eventually, what I’m really after is training people to look at the obstacle, the celebration, because those are your opportunities. And when we start getting that now we’ve got an unstoppable mindset. Because every obstacle becomes an opportunity. Every problem is a possibility. The struggle builds the strength, the mindset is then bringing on. That’s what we’re after. But that’s hard. That’s hard to get people to embrace the idea that they need to do the hard things that they need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And when we get people to make the switch to enjoy the struggle, well, then we’ve got the real opportunities for building success. I wouldn’t go just willy nilly for everything.

Stephanie Maas
Right.

Alden Mills
We also need to recharge, putting yourself in areas of friction is exhausting. And you need the energy. And if you’re out of balance on the physical side, because you think well, it’s not that important that I get sleep or good nutrition, or exercise, which is what I call how you see sleep, eat and exercise in that order, then your physical platform isn’t optimized, or the stamina, or the struggle, and the struggle will come from the mental emotional side. And from the spiritual side, you really need to be able to practice faith because the world has too many things coming at us. We can’t handle all the things coming at us. And if you start to focus on all the negatives of everything that’s out there, then you’ll be so overwhelmed with fear that you’ll never push yourself beyond your horizon of your potential. So you have to learn to practice faith. And I’m not here to tell you which faith of religious doctrine practice that’s second definition in the dictionary. I’m after the first definition in the dictionary for faith in that is having 100% confidence in someone or something other than yourself. And when you have faith in someone else, then you can let go and when you’re able to let go and only focus on the things that you can control and have faith that the others have your back or some higher power has your back and that you will deal with whatever comes down your way. Then you can walk through the deepest shadows was valleys of doubt. And you were like the way to your success.

Stephanie Maas
You mentioned earlier in the call your mom being very influential in helping you decide that, hey, we get the doctor said this, I disagree, we’re going to do things differently. Did you grow up with this strong sense of something bigger greater than yourself? Where did that come from?

Alden Mills
Mom was definitely my first leadership coach, no doubt about it, Dad was close behind. He just had a different tact. And it happened through a series of, of challenges where I wanted to achieve something, but I kept falling short. And then I got to this point in every one of these challenges where I saw the opportunity, but I had to let go in give all of myself to whatever the challenge was, in the first challenge, it would have been rowing where my hands got so infected, and I had to tape them up and came down this one last big race, or this final seat as a sophomore in the pain was so overwhelming that all I could do was cry, because I couldn’t let go the or I taped my heads and circles. When you’re going through SEAL training, you get to this point where you’re like, oh, my gosh, I could die right now. And I remember flipping the switch going, well, this is what I want to do. So they’re going to have to kill me, because I’m not going to quit. And I don’t think I was alone there. I think there are lots of guys they get there. You know, and I looked at bankruptcy three different times. With my business, you get to this point where you’re like, there has to be another way I just am not going to go bankrupt. And you get to that point, three different times. I mean, could God we had 2009, which was some of the height of perfect push up years. The bank decides they want to call her loan in $15 million loan and I was personally guaranteed. I don’t have $15 million house. Yeah, and tend to that. And they sent people out to value our home be like, well, how quickly can we liquidate things with wall wall, whoa, we’re gonna figure out a way here. They wanted 30 days, I wanted 300. And they thought I was crazy. 293 days later, I pulled him back, I paid him back in full with interest. But that was a trust game. We got him to trust us. If you get a banker to trust you, you’re doing something, right. So you practice this, this faith, practice these opportunities every time you keep pushing for something outside your grasp beyond your horizon of what you can see to where you believe. And I often talk about this horizon. And we’re all the captains of our own ships. But we can’t see that far. You know, you’re a six foot tall person acting like Jesus standing on a dead calm day looking at the sea, you can only see two and a half 2.9 miles for the horizon drops off. But your goal is way past the horizon. And most people are like, they won’t even dream there is like, well, I can only see you know, seeing is believing like No, no, it’s the total opposite. You have to believe in first, that you can do something before you can see what you really want, which is way past that horizon. That goes back to practicing that faith, and you get yourself into that process. And over the years, it will help you cement your confidence in your capabilities. Great question, Stephanie.

Stephanie Maas
So in the time we have remaining, just give me a quick kind of preview on your books, the training that you do the speaking that you do, because this has been really good. And I can see a lot of our folks saying, Hey, that was a great introduction. Where can I get more?

Alden Mills
Well, I feel my highest use of helping others is helping them be unstoppable achieving something they’re not sure they could do. I early on a catch myself to the word unstoppable because to be unstoppable means you’ve been stopped. You’ve been stuck. You can’t be unstoppable. If you haven’t been there. You gotta be there. Right? You need the struggle of being stuck, to get unstuck, to go from stop to unstoppable so I have two books they’re called Be unstoppable. The essential actions to succeed in anything and unstoppable teams, four essential actions to high performance leadership. And I’ll have a new book called unstoppable mindset, how to use what you have to get what you want. I’m all about the three levels of leadership leading yourself leading teams and then leading the cultures of your organization. And you can find me at Alden dash mills.com and I’m also the creator with a dear friend of mine have a free app called goal bud and it’s a place where people can enter in their goals quickly form a goal team and create commitments to help each other stay on track to take the next action goal but that’s where I hope to help 100 million people achieve goals and success.

Stephanie Maas
This has been so awesome, thank you so much for your willingness to come and spend some time.

Alden Mills
Thank you. And, you know, I just want to say, I’m really excited to come on this podcast. I love the messaging that you do for this podcast. More people need to hear and get motivated and inspired, that it’s inside of them. It’s their habit. They were built to be unstoppable. They just need somebody’s I love it. Just remind people that unstoppable is a choice. That’s their leadership decision. They get to decide every day, all they got to do is take one action, they can actually download in gold bug building their first gold buddy swim buddy team, and then creating a commitment to like, hey, let’s do this. Just 15, 20 minutes, 30 minutes a day and watch how that will build their momentum.

Stephanie Maas
Thank you.

Alden Mills
Thank you. Keep caring, Stephanie. Go forth and be unstoppable.

Stephanie Maas
Yes, sir. You got it.