In a 2015 speech, American actress, producer, and entrepreneur Reese Witherspoon launched a campaign to support women and their aspirations with the battle-cry, “Ambition is not a dirty word.” In 2018, Oprah Winfrey interviewed Reese Witherspoon and American actress, comedian, writer, producer, and director Mindy Kaling to talk about that moment.
Growing up in lower-middle-class Texas, Influence Ecology CFO Darryl Anderle was raised to think of ambition as a negative word—it had selfish connotations. It seemed as if the standard for success was to get noticed for being independent, self-reliant, and hard-working; waiting for someone to consider him for advancement . . . which never came.
In our interview today, you’ll hear how his life is now very different; how a little ambition can go a long way to satisfy our aims.
Here’s the interview.
Below you’ll find a transcript of this podcast episode that has been edited for your reading pleasure. You’ll also see links at the bottom of this post where you can find more information on the people and ideas mentioned in the episode.
Produced by: John Patterson & Tyson Crandall
“Businesses don’t do business with businesses. People do business with people. And until we all learn how to people, we will not be successful at business. “
John Patterson: Today on the podcast I have a special guests with me. It is the CFO of Influence Ecology, our own Darryl Anderle. So Darrell, it’s a pleasure to have you with us today.
Darryl Anderle: Thank you John. It’s really nice to be here with you there in surfers paradise Australia.
John Patterson: I know, the power of technology, so you’re in Ventura, California and I’m in surfers paradise Queensland, Australia. It’s fun. A couple of things, if you would, can you just introduce yourself, say a little bit about, so people know something about you.
Darryl Anderle: Absolutely. I am the chief financial officer of Influence Ecology. The third person to join the company, or as I like to say, the first person not called a co-founder.
John Patterson: That’s right.
Darryl Anderle: And so I’ve been with the company since early 2010 and it has been a treat.
John Patterson: It has been now you and Kirkland and I happened to share several things, but one is that we’re all originally from Texas.
Darryl Anderle: Yes.
John Patterson: And you’re originally from Texas and you grew up where?
Darryl Anderle: I grew up in Houston as I like to joke, the biggest city in the country, no one cares about. And you being from Dallas. You’ll agree.
John Patterson: Well, yes, I mean from Dallas’s perspective, Houston is a little bit like, Oh yes, those people, but Dallas is kind of got its own little entitlement problem, we’ll call it that. And the Texas people do too, right?
Darryl Anderle: Yes.
John Patterson: Anyway, we won’t get into that. Texas we love you and, goodness. A few things here today, you’ve offered some really great notes for us to work with, but before Influence Ecology, we all have what we think and, so just tell us Darryl before Influence Ecology. And by the way, I know that you’re the CFO and people might wonder, have you done our programs? And yes you have. And you’ve been involved with the programs for quite some time now. You’re currently in the middle of which program?
Darryl Anderle: MAP2, about two thirds of the way through.
John Patterson: Perfect. So you’ve been a participant in our programs as have I. So life before Influence Ecology, what was that like?
Darryl Anderle: It was fine. It was a good hearty middle class, Texas up upbringing. Before I came to work here and learn the stuff I did, I had been a COBOL programmer, had a magazine ad sales company, multiple jobs where I was either the finance guy who could talk to the tech people or the tech people who could talk to the finance people. I had just operated from the ethics of depend on being reasonably smart, be dependable, be respectful of your elders and your employers and coworkers, work really hard, et cetera. And in hindsight with my mom, after I started working and I’m starting here, I asked her, why do you always hint? Why don’t you just ask for anything? And she said, well, we were taught not to. It was rude. We were literally taught, never ever make invitations, offers or ask the help of other people. We were taught that ambitious, it was actually, we grew up with the word ambitious being a negative adjective or a negative trait.
John Patterson: And so ambition is a dirty word then?
Darryl Anderle: Yes, it was absolutely for decades. And so I was a very well-respected, very well-reviewed employee. But I was always wondering why no one considered me to move up beyond being a very well reviewed employee. And so I was a bit frustrated that as I had, being I was reasonably smart, dependable, respectable, worked hard, things weren’t working out as I imagined that they were supposed to, it wasn’t advancing up the chain as I intended to, hoped to and was supposed to. So what I also got to is that when I would work later in life, like I’m trying to figure out what a future could look like and so forth. Even once I could identify what I wanted to get to because I was much better at describing what I did not want my future to look like. It was hard for me to describe what I did want it to look like. And then once I did had no idea how to chart a path to actually get there.
John Patterson: Right. And I’m going to get to that in just a minute because I think that’s a fun topic for you and I to address and share a little bit about. I’m the inventor in this transaction for Influence Ecology. And you are the-
Darryl Anderle: Judge.
John Patterson: The judge in the transaction. That’s right. Let’s go back to ambition for just a moment because I think it’s a fantastic thing because I was wondering, even as you said it, if that was the difference between Dallas and Houston, because Dallas is rather ambitious, Dallas is oil and well in the old days and all of that. But Dallas seems to be a rather ambitious place. Was Houston not an ambitious place or do you think that was just your family?
Darryl Anderle: I think it had a lot to do with my family because both my dad and my mom grew up about halfway between Houston and San Antonio, my dad and the big city of 950 people and my mom on a farm. So it was a very old German, old Czech culture and it was very much, you will be self-sufficient. And back to the Dallas thing, you may have been an ambitious, we just saw you as weighty 20.
John Patterson: Yeah. I want to say same thing, but anyway, no, that’s not appropriate. Not for this conversation. Well, if we can spend a minute there, just you and I talking a little bit about ambition as a dirty word because you bring up something really, I think a bit fascinating because if you did live on a farm or if you did live rather rural and it was 50 or 75 or a hundred years ago, then I think one of the most important skills might be to be self sufficient because you didn’t know if you had access to anything or anyone, which is really powerful.
Darryl Anderle: Absolutely. And so you had to be Jack of all trades, master of none.
John Patterson: And that’s environment specific as well. So something to account for and then it will have that environment. Yes, of course. So here we are in a different time, in a different age, in a different world, a global ecology, global marketplace and the like. And so we’re training people to move ambitiously towards the satisfaction of their aims. By the way, I think it’s useful for our listeners especially, accounting for that there are people who may not know anything about us and people that have been studying with us for quite some time. Ambitious or ambitious adult is a state of mind that we talk about.
We teach and we point to different states of mind, like naivete, despair, adult and ambitious adult, and ambitious adult is a kind of state of mind that we address where by people act in accordance with their aims. First you got to know your aims. Got to think aggregately about them and then make invitations, offers and requests that facilitate your aims being met. So that’s what we mean by just for the clarity of this conversation. And at the same time I recognize that there’s a lot of, there is a negative connotation in some cases in the marketplace that ambition is a dirty word.
Darryl Anderle: Well, for us it was because money was the root of all evil and obviously you’re only going to be ambitious if you’re in the pursuit of money. Therefore, it was very easy to equate ambition and evil. The desire for money, not thinking about how it is simply a tool to achieve things, but don’t be greedy.
John Patterson: Don’t be greedy. Because of the great note about ambition. I looked up a little bit on the online, to do a little research about the notion that ambition is evil or is ambition of virtue or is it a good thing or a bad thing to be ambitious. And one of the things I discovered as well is that in some cases, and there’s a lot in the rhetoric about women, and when a woman is ambitious, they’re not seen in the same light as a man who is ambitious, which is just terrible. But, and in any case, there’s a lot of baggage about that word. Just a ton of it.
Darryl Anderle: Absolutely.
John Patterson: So you were trained to wait to, do good work, show up, labor, get her done.
Darryl Anderle: Well, back in childhood, the perfect example my friends wanted to go to Astroworld and it’s six flags type of a park. And I was told you may not ask to go with them. So if they ask you, if they invite you, you may go, you may not ask to go. So a lot of hinting went in to try to get asked to go.
John Patterson: Do you remember what you did? Sure. Just hung around stuff like that. I bet you y’all are going to have fun. It would be nice to be able to go along. Just that sort of stuff. As an eight year old, my goodness. Well I know full grown adults that do that as well. It’d be really great if the dishes were done. It’d be nice if the trash just took itself out, things like that. I’ve, I actually do hear people talk in those kinds of ways as opposed to Hey can you take out the trash for me? Right.
Darryl Anderle: Well that’s just far too direct.
John Patterson: It is just way too direct. All right. But part of what we’re dealing with and part of what we’re teaching here is, you do got to know your aims. Listen, it’s so funny because we put Texas in the beginning. I’m going to go little honky-tonk on this now here, but we do have to know our aims and we do have to act in accordance with him and we do have to make invitations, offers and requests. Totally. Great. All right, well, so, and you were respected in your occupation, prior to influence college, you were respected, you were liked and did you observe other people around you climbing the ladder so to speak, but you were not, or how did that show up then in your career?
Darryl Anderle: I did. It was partly that and also partly I would from time to time team up with another person. A friend of mine had started a magazine ad sales company, and so decided I would pick up from Texas and move to Beverly Hills adjacent West Hollywood, and so did that whole make the trip from the South out to Los Angeles and we had some success and yet we’re not ever able to take it up to a level of consistent, comfortable achievement. And so then went back into the corporate world to work again with that history. Then under my belt started out with just accounts receivable and then manager and then worked my way up in a publishing company, but still had a few couple of people under me. But I’m certainly not to the degree that I thought I was capable and as I looked around at other people wondering what are they doing differently, they don’t seem any brighter than I am and I don’t think my stutters that bad, so there must be something going on that I just don’t understand. And I went for another couple of decades, not under standing and not moving up as I thought I should.
John Patterson: And in that frustration, did you then think it had to be, what did you do think? What did you say about yourself?
Darryl Anderle: Whether it was being unable to identify an aim or whether it was being able to identify an aim and then unable to chart a path or being unable to move or advance in the company as I wanted to. I thought there was something wrong. I thought I was somehow broken. There’s something not quite right here. One of the cogs is missing. That began a bit of a journey to figure out what that was. More fortunately, I got lucky and a couple of my friends started a company called Influence Ecology.
Yeah, no kidding. So this is really good though, Darryl, because you’re talking about what I think many people do when they don’t understand transactional competence. They, you could say don’t know how their personality shapes their value in transactions, how their role seems to somehow be limited by, could you say, we could call it skillset, but it’s much, much more than that. And we bring in personality, there’s a limitation there. And you in the absence of finding out what that’s all about, you then just go, all right, well I must be broken. Something must be wrong with me. I must be, something, right? And you go searching for the missing thing. And I know a great number of people that go looking for the missing piece, the missing link, the thing I don’t get the thing I don’t see about my brokenness. Right. And so they go about for many years trying to resolve all that. Anything else about that?
Darryl Anderle: Well, not about that part, but the realization once I started to study how much more to say about that at the end of it.
John Patterson: Well, yeah. Well, so tell us about that. Once you to started to study here then what happened?
Darryl Anderle: I learned hinting is not the best way, is not the best pathway to achieving one’s aims.
John Patterson: Intent. I need a raise. Right? Okay.
Darryl Anderle: It would be nice if someone would appreciate me around here, that sort of stuff. But once I really began to understand, unlike the working on the farm where one needs to be self sufficient and so forth, working in a tribe, whether small company, big company, small town, big town, you’re working with other people and whether you’re in a city of a million or a city of 100,000, you’re probably going to really work with sort of the same number of people. And transact depend on the same number of people, whether it’s a department in a multinational or a small company, and regardless of the size and the number of people you deal with, you have to deal with the people and effectively communicating with them, effectively designing an aim, effectively coming to a common understanding of what our communal aim is is the way to finally get there.
I never realized that being unwilling to make a request of others or make a suggestion to others or make an offer to others, I’d never realized that not doing that was actually completely making my being reasonably smart, being dependable, being respectable, working hard. I didn’t realize that that four thing made the first three impotent. I mean, I got the job done but was never going to move up because in business it’s all about working with other people. Businesses don’t do business with businesses. People do business with people and until we all learn how to people, we will not be successful at business.
John Patterson: That’s well said. We’re preparing for the conference today, the surfers paradise conference, and if we look around at some of the students, there’s a theme starting to show up amongst those that are here. They’re really studied, some of them, they’re smart people, savvy people, some very successful people, but some of them continue to deal with the same kind of issue over and over and over and often is the case that those people have not utilized the team in the way that we teach. So for example, you and I share this wonderful sort of history where the very early stages of our working out, our personalities and our roles, in this transaction called Influence Ecology. You said to me something I’ve never gotten over it and I remember being moved to tears on the day that you said it to me. And you just said to the effect of John, hey listen, I know that you think you should do everything, but we only need you to do what you do best and that is take care of our future.
Just take care of the future. I remembered that day that it was as if the weight on my shoulders of decades of working myself to death melted away. It was as if, wait a second. You mean there are people that want to, just do the doing and people that want to just do this selling and people that just, it was a little bit, I know, it’s funny saying it now. It sounds, gosh it sounds a bit naive, but it was a surprise to me that I could work with other people who would happily embolden my role in the transaction, while I embolded there’s. Anything you want to say about all that?
Darryl Anderle: Yeah. And we don’t want to do what you do. Our brains aren’t built to do the strategic longterm planning. It hurts. I’ve tried. It literally hurts.
John Patterson: Glad to hear this, funny you do have that visceral sort of like, I can’t think about the future.
Darryl Anderle: They’re in like in, now. I love to play in the future with you. I love to play enhancement or what if? I will never though walk to a beach for the first time and imagine a sand castle. However someone else has started building a sand castle. I’m like, Oh, I have these other experiences that I can draw upon to enhance this sand castle. What about this thing called a river? What if we make it into a circle and make a moat and keep people out of our sand castle? Maybe there’s a better construction technique for building that tower, so I love to play in the future with the imaginative creature. I just won’t go imagine it all myself.
John Patterson: Yeah, that’s very good. Good example.
I did a podcast interview with Liz also working with implants ecology just recently, the producer in the transaction and she and I were talking a little bit about how it has become more evident to Influence Ecology over time that the producers and the judges or the more objective minded to people in the transaction tend to thrive when involved in other transactions underway to your sand castle example, here’s the sane castle, can you help me build it or can you help me protect it or shore it up? It seems as if those personalities tend to thrive when they’re responding to the transaction underway or where they’re invited to participate in the transaction under way. Any comment about that?
Darryl Anderle: It speaks to I think a biological predisposition to us to be adult versus and vicious adult. It lets us re-respond, which is a very comfortable spot for the objective side, the non dreamers if you will. It also is an area where we can look for a little bit and figure out what to do before jumping in. It’s an area that maybe we’ve done it before so we know exactly what to go do. Whereas dreaming up something brand new is scary and if we haven’t done it, really don’t want to go do it that first time and there’s a song from the show of Vieta that resonates with me significantly. Something to the gist of it is hard when it is you that you are following. So it’s difficult being the leader or it’s lonely when it’s you that you are following. There’s something like that and we can can look it up. But it is much easier over here to have someone else point to the moon and at the same time to realize that what we bring actually helps everybody get to the moon. That without our side there’s would be a lot of pointers and no one actually getting there.
John Patterson: Well, and in that, I think there’s some youthfulness and us beginning to talk about the value of the producer and the judge in the transaction because your ambition gets satisfied when you know your value in the transaction. So going back to our earlier conversation, if you think there’s something wrong with you and you’re trying to find out what that is, that things are turning out or things aren’t, you’re not climbing the ladder like everybody else, then recognizing your own value in the transaction and then making that value really known is an opportunity to move ambitiously towards your aims because you can now accept and decline to, no, no, no. I know I’m valuable in this transaction.
Nobody else wants to do what Darryl Anderle does. By the way, I don’t ever want to do what Darryl Anderle does in the transaction. I mean, and thank God for you, for all that you do in the transaction. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, Darryl Anderle is accountable, he may not do all these things, but he’s accountable for many things that are enterprise, from all of our business affairs to everything there is to do with accounting and taxes and finance, tech and everything else. A brilliant mind. So any comment on that about knowing your value in the transaction and then moving accordingly?
Darryl Anderle: Yes. Just that learning, just like you felt the relief to not have to be burdened with anything from the moment backwards, that you are free to design our futures the same relief is what I feel. Knowing that you’re handling that, and that I get to work in the area where I’m best suited and built for and comfortable and effective and fit. Yes. And so everybody understanding their role, understanding that the salesperson actually does need to be talking and no, you should really not try to pin the contract on their jacket anymore. Figure out how they’re going to hand that phase of the transaction off to the appropriate person actually results in a lot more contracts. And having the inventor know that they really shouldn’t jump into action without going through the performer to help kind of vet some of those ideas and the remainder of the team spares you from wasting lots of time on false starts and having you help design a future that then I can tap into gives me the security that my future is working out.
And it’s not to say that I never have an idea or never offer a suggestion, something we could do. It’s simply that it’s not all up to me and I can hand it off to you and you’ve got the big picture in mind and some ideas fit, and yes, you accept some don’t and you’re like, Nope, that doesn’t work for what we’re up to. And there’s on my side, no recoil. Just because an idea doesn’t get accepted doesn’t mean as bad or anything like that is just not in the now and maybe next year, maybe not. But it’s simply we are where we are. We’re fit for what we can do right now, we’re growing more and more fit and our inventor has his eye on that up sky high view.
John Patterson: One of my favorite things about our work together, you and I, is the opportunities that we have to plan because as we teach it, the inventor and the judge get together for planning. And the PSTI of MAP2, PSTI. It’s the planning, strategy, tactics and implementation. So that planning I love because when we get together to do that, it is often, lets look at the facts. Let’s look at the resource. Let’s let’s pull all this up on a spreadsheet or an inventory. Let’s look at all of these things. And my dominant need for happiness is certainty. So I am now in partnership with you, certain about these facts, certain about these calculations, these formulas, these projections. And it gives me the ability to check my… some vendors will sometimes say, Oh it’s easy, you just do a little of this and a little of that and poof, you’re done. Right?
And you’ll ground all that in a way that I think is really effective for me and for our company and I have seen that where ever you and I get together to do that kind of work and do that work well, then all that happens after it, the strategies, for it to fulfillment, the tactics, the way that those things turn into actions, all of that is very powerful. When you and I did that great work together
Darryl Anderle: And the dominant need for happiness for judges is security. Knowing that the future will be okay. And I colored misconstrued your need for certainty. I originally, for the first few years heard your need for certainty as you need to be certain it’s going to work out. And a big aha for me was like, no, no. You’d simply need to know, you need to be certain that the facts are accurate. You couldn’t figure out what to do with the situation as long as you know the facts are accurate.
John Patterson: Correct.
Darryl Anderle: You don’t need to know that next month is handled. You need to know exactly where we are and what you need, what’s missing between now and where we need to be next month. And that was a huge aha. Like for you, I won’t say that there is no such thing as bad news, but you primarily, it’s information, data points.
John Patterson: Right. I think in the conversation it started off that insight. You said something like, I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news. And I said, Darryl, it’s just news to me. It’s not good or bad, it’s just the facts. And so to your point, yes. Once I know the facts, I’m ready. I’m ready. Yeah.
Darryl Anderle: And So that also then takes pressure off over here. Like, Oh, I don’t have to solve everything before I go report, I can go report and work with you in solving it.
John Patterson: Yup. So life is pretty good now, huh?
Darryl Anderle: It is. I continue to learn. I have that ethic still that I have to fight, that I want to be the Jack of all trades and I can do things faster. And more accurately and so don’t want to let go of anything and at a point now where if I do something weekly I probably shouldn’t be doing it myself, and developing staff to hand off to so that we can go do more of the things that are brand new first time work with you and planning the future, figuring out what may or may not work and so forth. I now identify and work towards longer term aims with others. I use the inventors to help map the pathway to get there. I don’t wait for life to hand me my just rewards because I’ve learned that it won’t.
The universe is indifferent in spite of the billboard or two that I’ve seen along the way, and I have learned to be ambitious, that I do have to make and we’ll make invitations, offers and requests and all in all life is good. Now I am a 92nd walk from my front door to my little boat and we take that out and go play with dolphins and whales out next to Santa Cruz Island. And work is satisfying. I know the value of my judgeness and judges can be a little prickly. So I also know to mitigate the prickly for the most part.
John Patterson: You do a good job though. I mean you did a really good job for those who’ve, for those that… well I know people who have met you and you strike fear in their bones, but then there are those who have met you in social situations and may think, Oh, I think he’s a performer. He’s like a people guy. So you do have those qualities about you as well. But, yeah. Do you have any other notes about what you’ve learned about yourself as a judge or what you’ve learned about judges? For our judges?
Darryl Anderle: Okay. So for us, past based thinking assessment machines, I suggest we remember two things. Just because we have an observation, correction or judgment in our brain, it doesn’t mean we have to spout it out. It can stay in our brain and that might hurt to begin with. As we begin to exercise that muscle of keeping our mouth shut. Because as shocking as it may be, people around us are not a constant requests for our assessments and instructions or how they can do their life better or should have done it differently, especially when it’s too late to change it anyway.
John Patterson: That’s how funny because it is, you’ve exactly expressed one of the ways that a judge can mitigate their costs in transactions. So while their value, your contribution to transactions is to offer your judgments. So if unchecked, then it can be quite costly to other people. But when you do hold your tongue, it’s really valuable. It’s great.
Darryl Anderle: And when we’re in a structured transaction, our observations, corrections and judgments are invaluable, respected and appreciated.
John Patterson: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Darryl Anderle: And then the number two is, the future quite regularly doesn’t just work out and we are not broken if we can’t map the pathway, it takes steed design. So two parts there. Take time to learn what goes into identifying aims and designing what would be satisfactory in each domain and then team up with those who can help you get there. Bring your skills and value to offer along the way and work with people. It’s great.
John Patterson: Good. Is there anything else for you Mr. Darryl Anderle? Thank you for embracing the future. This has been a fun ride. I appreciate that. Almost 10 years ago you marched into Kirkland’s office with a company name and the starting class roster and got this parade going. It has been an exceptional experience and the people that I get to meet and people that I get to study with are people that I would never have met otherwise. And every time going to conference people once again become more than a name and a balance. The stories, the achievements, one of the biggest joys I get is having known people for six years and having them gone from being full time mom, part-time yoga instructor, part-time operations person in their company, to being on the cover of a magazine for their specific trade because they are like known as the top notch, top tier company. And to see transitions like over the course of six years or so is astonishing.
Darryl Anderle: It is.
John Patterson: I love it.
Darryl Anderle: And me too.
John Patterson: Well you’re welcome. And back at you, you know Kirkland and I met in Austin, Texas, by the way, for the record. We’ve actually talked about it and he’s clear to Austin, but the joke is funny. So anyway, way back in Austin, I didn’t meet you until I moved to Los Angeles in, I think I was visiting in 07, 08 or something like that maybe. But in any case, I met you and you and Kirkland had been doing some work together when I met the two of you, you were already in a working relationship and I was the new guy, now officially for Influence Ecology. You came on, you were the first non founder as part of the group, but ultimately I walked into your little club and you have been an exceptional man to get to know and to work with and you have… a little skeptical at first.
That’s your job, about who’s this guy and what’s this future he’s pointing to. But I really appreciate you have embraced my role and my value in this transaction and it’s been a pleasure to get to be around you personally. You’re one of my close friends, business partners, I love working with you. You’re a fantastic human being. So glad we get to share your story with other people.
Darryl Anderle: Thank you very much. I really appreciate working with you and here, and it’s a good little team we built.
John Patterson: Yes, it is. I guess it is. All right. Thank you so much.
Darryl Anderle: Thank you. Have a good day.
John Patterson: In today’s talk, you’ll hear a segment of a webinar where co-founder Kirkland Tibbels and I speak on the subject of common adults and how this contrasts with ambitious adults. Here’s the talk
Kirkland Tibbels: Adults are sensitive to their own needs. They’re responsible for taking care of their needs. They know they have needs, they know they have wants and they are moving in some way to take care of their future. Adults rely on offers from other people. That is what you are for the most part going to confront when you are transacting day to day, especially in your day to day work environments internally and in the marketplace, adults tend to wait. They will wait. They’ll react, they’ll stay open. They will often respond to offers that they can accept to satisfy their conditions of life. They are waiting on your offer. They are conditioned to wait by the current. They are taught to wait and in fact they will require that you produce the consequential environment. They will require from you the kinds of moods, the kinds of environmental stimuli, the use of weapons to have them move.
They will require that of you. They tend to let the invitations, offers and requests of others, guide how they think and act. I hope you’re listening to this, because this is the majority of the folks you will need to engage to satisfy your aims, adults. And if you didn’t hear me say it, let me say it one more time as clear as I can. They are waiting on you. So if you are waiting on them, you got a problem. Adults are waiting for the environment to move them to situations and others. Maybe it’s their mood, maybe it’s the clock, maybe they have a narrative about the universe. Maybe they have a narrative about their gut. Maybe they have a narrative about their move. Who knows? Whatever it is. In that package of things we’ll call the environment that stimulates, agitates and excites people to move. That’s what I’m pointing to. And too many adults wait on the environment, those situations and others to do the deciding for them. And this is mostly what you will be confronting.
In my civic organizations I’ve been working in, in my social experiment. This is who I deal with almost on a constant basis. And I am shocked at how few people move ambitiously and how many people are simply just waiting to be moved. They are waiting to be motivated, they are waiting to be sold. And some of them are bold enough to even call me on the phone and go, listen, I’d like to do that, but I need you to give me the features and benefits. They know they’re going to do it. They know they want to do it, but they need to be sold. And I’ll tell you sometimes I’m that guy, I recognize it. Most of you will move in conditions of life where you’re indifferent, where are you kind of, eh, yeah, I’m probably going to do that. But I’ll just wait. I missed an opportunity at a conference that’s coming up to save $20 on a room and, kind of disappointed about that, but I just didn’t move and it really didn’t stimulate me or agitate me. And that’s how most people move.
I invite you to consider that, your money, your satisfaction, and the aims you have and the conditions of life have a lot to do with how you hold this state of mind and observe others holding this state of mind. Learning how to frame your invitations, offers, requests, and I mean this in very specific terms. Framing the dialogue is critical when you’re dealing with highly accomplished adult. Someone who is moving as as an adult will require from you some ambitious move, use of weapons, understanding that it’s their lizard brain that needs to be addressed first, for example, framing it with what you know about biology, language and the competence required to transact. Now listen, adults will respond to threat far more than they will opportunity. I had an opportunity to save a little bit of money, but I wasn’t threatened with the conference itself, so I was indifferent to it. Adults will in any situation be far more likely to move because of threat. Even if they’re accomplished adults, if they have some surplus, they’re going to be moved by threat. The opposite of that is the ambitious adult. The ambitious adult is more likely going to move toward opportunity.
Ambitious adults make plans, they do the proper inquiry, accurate thinking, the proper planning, and they move strategically and tactically to satisfy specific conditions of life. They make invitations, they make offers, they accept and make commitments. They accept and make requests. They clearly articulate the consequences to do or not to do things. They make judgments, they make assessments. They make assertions, that when accepted, give them the very best opportunity to satisfy their unavoidable conditions of life. They accept the constraints and limited resources available to them in the environment and they do not argue with or deny their understanding of biology, linguistics, and transactional facility. The facticity of life does not escape an ambitious adult. They know the clock is running. They are willing to move in order to produce the consequential environments that they must to have others comply, ethically in a moves of cooperation.
Transactionally, they know their limits, they know their liabilities and they know their assets and ambitious respond. Ambitious adults respond to opportunities. You are more likely to move a highly accomplished and ambitious adult to an opportunity. In fact, good luck getting their attention any other way. Ambitious adults tend to have surplus in specific conditions of life, areas of life. They tend to have time. They tend to show up and to give evidence to that. They don’t run around with their hair on fire, always busy and in a mess. They could be counted on. They’re the people that you call when you know, you know you’ve got to have the right health.
I want to be known as that kind of person that when push comes to shove my MAP2 people know when they’re in trouble. I’m the guy to call and if I know, I know and if I don’t know, I will tell them. That’s what an ambitious adult will do. Ambitious adults move in a way that is specific to satisfying their conditions of life ethically and making sure that the folks involved with them are meeting their aims at the same time. Ambitious adults do not ask people to make commitments that they cannot demonstrate they can make. In fact, an ambitious adult will ask you to prove you can keep the commitment before they accept a commitment from you.
John Patterson: My special thanks to our guests Darryl Anderle, in our show notes, you’ll find links to connect with him and all the links to websites, books or downloads mentioned in this podcast. The Influence Ecology Podcast is produced by Influence Ecology, LLC in Ventura, California. This episode was recorded July 31st, 2019 and was produced by Tyson Crandall and John Patterson. You can find a transcript for this and other episodes at InfluenceEcology.com. This episode is made possible through the assistance of the Influence Ecology Faculty, Staff, Mentors, and Students around the world. Co-founder Kirkland Tibbels and our colleagues comprise an international collective of professionals who are active in the development of the philosophy of Transactionalism and the discipline of Transactional Competence. Kirkland is considered a leading philosopher and authority in the field and he has authored more than 500 papers on the subject, study, and discipline.
This episode includes contributions by Karal Gregory. The podcast theme is by Chris Standring and titled ‘Fast Train to Everywhere.’ You can subscribe to the Influence Ecology Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or via email at podcast@influenceecology.com.
If you haven’t yet offered a rating or review, I ask that you take a moment go to iTunes or your podcast app and let us know what you think. This helps us more than you know.
Podcast Bonuses:
Darryl Anderle on LinkedIn
Ambition is Not a Dirty Word on the OWN Network
Influence Ecology
Influence Ecology is the leading business education specializing in Transactional Competence, having published and contributed to the only comprehensive text on the subject, Transactionalism: An Historical and Interpretive Study by Trevor J. Phillips. Co-Founder Kirkland Tibbels has authored more than 500 papers on the subject, study, and discipline of transactional competence and is a sought-after lecturer at universities, major corporations, and civic organizations around the world.
Influence Ecology’s curriculum includes conferences, webinars, online tools, podcasts, and mentorship utilized by men and women in over seventy countries around the world. Our membership includes an international assembly of accomplished professionals, faculty, and peers from a variety of countries, industries, and cultures.
