Lois:

Hello everybody, welcome to Building My Legacy. Today I have with me Corey Jahnke. He is a pharmacist and a leadership trainer and coach for various people in organizations, particularly in healthcare, but in other organizations as well. One of the things that I love about Corey is because of his work as a pharmacist, he’s taken the time to observe people and observe life. So before we get into things and in our discussion Corey, I’d like you to share a little bit about who you are, what you want people to know. If you’d just take a minute or so and then we can begin our discussion.

Corey Jahnke:

Oh fantastic. Lois, thanks so much for having me. So when I got out of pharmacy school, I was 25 years old and I was just wild. I just wanted to go and just totally take the world by storm. And so my first day I walked into the pharmacy, and you know when pharmacies were busy, busy, busy, no one has time to train you. So they more or less put me at the register and they said, you talk to customers and we’ll work on training you on other stuff when we get a chance. And so the first day I stood there and I said, “Ma’am, take this medicine with food. Ma’am, take this medicine on an empty stomach.”, and “Joe, go ahead and don’t take these two medicines together.” And at the end of the day, I went home to my apartment and I looked in the mirror and I said, dude, if you got to do this for 40 years, you need to jump off a bridge.

Corey Jahnke:

So on the second day, I went back, same scenario, you’ll be up front. So I decided I was just going to have fun with it. You know, when you’re 25 and bulletproof, you’re not afraid of anything. And so I would just look at people and say, “Man, what did you do to your leg?” Then the guy would say, “Oh wow, you couldn’t believe it. I had one foot on the dock, one foot on the boat. They started going apart. And before I knew it, I was face first in the water, and my wife and son were laughing at me.” And we just had a ball. And so then I started asking everybody I could think of every question I could think of. So at first it was like, “Oh, I really love those earrings. Tell me about where you got them.” And the lady would say, “Oh, I got to tell you. We were down in Florida and we were at this island and…” And so forth.

Corey Jahnke:

And what started happening was that people would wait in line to talk to me. And I didn’t really understand that at first, you know? I didn’t put two and two together. People would call the pharmacy and they would ask for me. Here I am the youngest person in the room, and they’re asking for me. And Lois, I think that’s because we now call it relationship marketing, but it was really about trust-building. I’ve come to recognize that people trust people who have an interest in them, because quite frankly, most people are walking around wearing a sign that says, “Hey, please make me feel important.” So then as my relationships with these people would build, I would ask them better and better questions.

Corey Jahnke:

So sometimes I would say, “Hey, can I ask you something? You look like a really successful person. What is it that you do? And tell me what makes you so successful?” And then I would ask them, what made you unsuccessful? Or when did you fail and what did you learn from it? And what I came to find out is that people who are successful love to share their secrets.

Lois:

Interesting, yes.

Corey Jahnke:

And people who have failed generally like to tell you about it because most people don’t want you to make the same mistakes that they made. Right? And so what happened was that over the course of a few years, I began to kind of take notes and I began to develop a library. And one of my customers told me the best thing that you can do is read a book a day. And if you can’t read a book a day that at least read a chapter a day. And if you could read a chapter a day, you can read a book in about a week. And if you read a book a week, you’ll have read 50 books by the end of this year, you will be light years ahead of your other pharmacists.

Corey Jahnke:

And the guy was so successful and so nice. I said, “We’ll give it a try.” And I began to get hooked on reading. And as we were talking about before the beginning of the recording, one of the first books I read, and one of my all time favorite books, is called The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So the key is to not only read the book, of course, it’s to implement as well. And so what happened was that things began to happen for me that I could never have dreamed at 25 years of age. And I began to notice that for every successful customer I had, there was like three customers that were getting crushed by the world.

Corey Jahnke:

And so I developed a passion for wanting to share that between the two. Take what I learned that I knew worked and I give it to the people who were struggling. And I’ll tell you, it’s been a lifelong passion and writing and reading and doing all these things just really, really lights me up. So I get to live a life that most people only dream about.

Lois:

So Corey, tell me, when you share your learnings from successful people to people who are struggling, what’s their response to that?

Corey Jahnke:

Well, it’s really critical, I think, the way you share that information. One of the things that people do in our society is they give unsolicited advice. So they just sort of walk up and say, “Lois, you need to…” That’s one of my favorite phrases, right? You need to, and then Lois’ immediate response is, “Don’t go telling me what I need. I’m all over that.” Right? But what you can do is first of all, lead by example. When I, one of the first things that John Maxwell teaches is that the number one leadership skill is to lead by example. So you start showing people what a success looks like.

Corey Jahnke:

The second thing is, especially if you’re an influencer in a given area, so before long I became a pharmacy manager. So I had a lot of people working underneath me and I began to tell them things about themselves that they didn’t know before. Like, wow, you are really good at dot, dot, dot. I like to call that catching people in the act of doing something right. So as soon as you start showing people that you trust them and you believe in them and you point out all the things that they’re doing right, they begin to perform better. And so sometimes when people are struggling, I will say things very gently like, “You know, that was happening to me once when I was 33 and what I did, and this is how it worked out.” And then that’s it. So then you make it about yourself.

Corey Jahnke:

And one of the things that I’ve come to learn, and I’ve gained some really great friends in the storytelling space, one of my favorite people is called Kindra Hall. And Kindra taught you how to tell a story. People learn from stories. So sometimes I could say, “Well, you know…” I had a guy, and this is a true story, guy came to me one day and he was picking up a bunch of medicine and I said, “You seem like you’re having a tough day.” And he said, “Well, you know what?” He said, “Last week I woke up and I couldn’t get out of bed.” And I said, “Well, what happened?” And he said, “Well, I always thought that the way to be successful in this world was to work 16 or 18 hours a day. And just to really go after it. And then I find I couldn’t get out of bed, and I’m anxious and scared and so forth.” So I remembered that. So when I had a friend who was trying to work 16, 18 hours a day, I say, “You know, I remember this one customer, he was telling me, and I just felt so bad for the guy.” And all of a sudden it’s a different perspective, right? All of a sudden you get their attention because they don’t feel like you’re attacking them. Does that make sense?

Lois:

It makes a huge amount of sense and so often, you’re absolutely right, Corey. We tune, people tune us out because of how we approach something and our advice may be really important, but if we don’t deliver it with the right tools it doesn’t get heard. I think of at, you’ll appreciate this as a pharmacist, when you’re trying to give a child medicine, right? Depending on how you give it will make all the difference in the world as to whether it’s spat back out at you and it’s all over the floor or it actually goes in the body.

Corey Jahnke:

Exactly. I mean you grab them by the back of the head and take the spoon at them, they’re going to fight you all the way. And so finding ways to influence people requires a little bit of creativity, but at the same time, if you really do want to influence somebody, it’s worth the work.

Lois:

What have you found are some of the biggest challenges people have?

Corey Jahnke:

Well, I think the number one problem that people face today is relationship issues, so that most people don’t look at their life as a series of relationships. So you have a relationship with yourself, you have a relationship with your money, you have a relationship with your health. But most people are so busy reacting to the world that they’re not actually actively involved in responding to their relationships. So for instance, when you feel like you’re broken and you have no money and you feel like you’ve got no opportunities, you start acting out just like that toddler who you’re trying to put medicine in. Right? Instead of actively stepping back and thinking through, okay, what does this situation require of me? Who do I have to become if I want a better outcome than I’m getting right now? So when I wrote the book The Successful Thinker, what I did was I really just tried to establish a scenario of a person that I knew very well who is failing in their relationships with other people, and we wrote out in story form, the way my favorite book The Go-Giver is written, to show what can happen if you actually take a different approach and really give people the space to be great, just like you do on this podcast, right Lois?

Lois:

Well giving people a space to be great is huge. And I think one of the things that I see is as people move through life, one of the questions you begin to ask is, so was I great and what do I leave behind relative to that? So it’s that whole piece of legacy. I want to just pull some of these two pieces together, because I think they’re so intertwined in terms of what happens. And so with what you’ve read and you’ve experienced and you’ve seen of people, what’s your experience in terms of legacy building?

Corey Jahnke:

Oh, I’m so glad you asked because one of the things that comes to mind is, there was this guy named Vernon, and I was only out of pharmacy about three years, and I’ll never forget it. Vernon was dying from ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and what he did was he allowed it to make him so angry that he alienated everyone that he knew. And I’ll never forget it because his wife came in one day and she said to me, she said, “He looked at me and said, ‘Why can’t this be you and not me?’.”

Lois:

Wow.

Corey Jahnke:

And the reason I say that story is because Vernon left a legacy. And what I was wondering is, is that really the legacy he intended to leave? Or was it a legacy that was controlled by his own fear, emotions, and so forth. So we leave a legacy no matter what we do. The question is whether or not we want to leave that legacy the way we want it to be left. And so as a pharmacist, one of the things that I’ve seen is people going from 50 to 80, and people that really want a smart legacy actually put some serious thought into it. So sometimes people want to do something very tangible, like a college scholarship fund. Sometimes they want to leave a piece of architecture, but the smartest, most intelligent people, the most successful people I know, and John Maxwell included, leave a legacy of kindness and love and respect for the world. And they leave the people that they meet better than when they found them.

Corey Jahnke:

And so here’s what I mean. John Maxwell, when I was studying in his course, one of the things that he said was, “Look, it doesn’t take any money at all to create an amazing experience for the people you love.” What it costs you is the time it takes to think out, what would Lois really like? What would really turn her on, and to make that happen? So if it’s a particular concert that she wants to go to, or a movie she wants to see, or a place that she’s been wanting to try for dinner, it’s up to you to just go ahead and make that an event for her. Right? So most people, they go through life with their significant other or their children, and one of the things I think that is so sad is they take it for granted.

Corey Jahnke:

I saw so many customers that would say this, they will go, “You know what? My kids grew up and I just missed it. I was so busy trying to feed them that I forgot to experience them.” And I think this is why you see so many grandparents who are so into their grandchildren because they totally missed it with their own children. So the number one thing about your legacy is you’ve got to realize that your legacy starts with who are you as a person and what do you want to be remembered for? Because people are going to remember you, but it’s not up to them to remember you in a certain way. It’s up to you to determine how you’re remembered. What would you say about that?

Lois:

You know, when you talk about that, I’m thinking of an old, old book, some research that was done by Charles Garfield. And one of the things that he talks about is, think of who we remember, who’s legacies we remember. Most of us can’t name more than one or two pharaohs, for example, and yet there were a lot of pyramids that were built. Most we don’t recall. Other leaders, we don’t recall. We do recall, everybody knows a Mother Teresa, a Gandhi, Martin Luther King, right?

Corey Jahnke:

Yeah.

Lois:

People who do good and have given of themselves, we tend to remember. And there are so many rich, rich stories of how people’s lives were changed because somebody served them as a leader. So I think also, I used to do a lot of work with terminally ill cancer patients. And one of the things that is sad to see is when people are at the end of their life and they’re dealing with their regrets, and usually it’s regrets in relationships, right? What was not created? What was not built?

Corey Jahnke:

Oh, absolutely. I’ve seen so many people who say things like, “I can’t believe I held this grudge over this stupid thing and now she’s gone and I don’t get a chance to fix it.”

Lois:

You said something early on Corey, and that was about starting with the end in mind. Can you say more about that? When if you’re going to build a legacy, you’ve got to start with the end in mind. And I think of that just plain as leadership success overall. Also, if I’m going to do something in my company and manage it, it helps if I know the end goal and what it is that I’m trying to get to because then I can communicate that to everybody. Right? [crosstalk 00:16:45] So, but say more about that in terms of starting with the end in mind.

Corey Jahnke:

Well, you know I think of it like a picture, right? So if you’re painting the picture of your life, you have to really get clear on what that picture looks like. So many people in business, they say, “My employees won’t do what I want them to do.”, and blah, da, da, da, da, but they have never painted that picture you just mentioned about, this is what success for this company looks like, and this is the part of the picture that you are creating, and I’m here to help you and I’m here to support you and I’m here to help you clean the brushes and I’m here to help you define the picture.

Corey Jahnke:

And so often what happens is that so many people are, even if they’re creating a picture, they’re so into their own picture that they forget that it’s overshadowing everyone else’s. What you really want to do is set your life up so that you’re creating a community mural, right? So that if you can think of your life as a giant billboard, because at the end of it, that’s really all it is. And where do people fit in to your mural? Where do they fit into your life? Where do you really want to make the most impact? We make the mistake of thinking that my impact should be the same as your impact, or comparing ourselves with people that have interests and skills and talents that really aren’t served by us trying to follow them in as much as creating our own legacy for the things that matter to us.

Corey Jahnke:

Because one of the things that I truly believe after watching people for my whole life is that people are so talented, and so many people do so many cool things that you would never ever have imagined. Until I started asking people, “Hey, tell me about your business.” This one guy I met, his business was teaching, believe it or not, Chinese businessmen how to speak better English.

Lois:

Well I can believe that one. That’s huge. Yeah. Because I do a lot of work in Asia.

Corey Jahnke:

Yeah.

Lois:

Yeah.

Corey Jahnke:

Okay. So yeah, he, they want to do business in the United States, but they want to speak well and you know, and so this, he made a business out of this. So what happens is that he created a legacy of possibility for his children. We would talk about that because, well the thing is that so many people, they want to prescribe the way it’s always been. And as you and I know the world is moving super fast and there is no, the way it’s always been because the way it’s always been is so fast changing that you don’t even have time to take a breath. So what you want to do is teach your legacy in terms of, you know what’s on, show me the picture that lives in your brain and then let’s talk about how to reverse engineer that picture so it actually shows up. And the really cool thing about canvas painting, mural painting, is you can always change it, but you have to start with a goal.

Corey Jahnke:

So many people, they, like for instance a, there’s a great book right now called The Latte Factor by David Bach, and it’s a financial book, but what he’s talking about is that the reason most people are broke is they don’t actually think about what would I do with money if I had it, right? And so then they just waste nickels and dimes here and there on their lattes and so forth instead of, in the book there’s a, the woman wants a $1,200 picture. So he’s like, if you just focus this energy on what it is you really want, you can make it happen. And that’s the way everything works. If you focus your energy on what you really want, you can make it happen. But you have to decide what is it that you really want? What do you want to be remembered for?

Corey Jahnke:

When you die, and this is the way Stephen Covey presents it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, imagine yourself sitting at your own funeral and just watching, just observing. What are they saying about you? What are they thinking about you? What are they believing about you, and what can you do right now to reverse engineer that opinion? Because most people make the mistake of thinking that, well, I’ve got plenty of time to figure that out. But after a while you begin to realize that, you know what? It’s 9:50 where I’m at and I might not be alive at 10 o’clock. We like to think that we will be.

Lois:

Right.

Corey Jahnke:

And so I think building your legacy is something that you do intentionally and I think it’s something that you do every minute of every day. And one, quite frankly, one of the things that I think is super important after being in business and being in life and being married for almost 28 years and having a 17 year old son is, I believe one of the things that we do is we take life so seriously that we miss it. We don’t have enough fun becoming the person that we truly want to be. We get balled up over these little details that don’t matter. Who dropped an egg on the kitchen floor? Who got footprints? You know, all of that stuff. When the reality is if, I love a quote I read recently, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this quote, but it said, “If you aren’t going to remember it in five years, don’t spend more than five minutes on it now.”

Lois:

That’s interesting. We do waste a lot of time, don’t we?

Corey Jahnke:

Well, and at the end of the day, that’s all we really have. You know, I want to tell you something. In the spirit of total transparency, I have been broke more times than I can count. I have gotten $100,000 tax bills that I couldn’t pay. I have been financially underwater for a very long time, but I’ve never been poor, because poor is an outlook. Poor is a mindset and poor is a legacy poorly left, where people are coming to your funeral and going, I’m glad he’s gone. And most people wouldn’t think that people would do that. But you’ve seen it if you’re honest.

Lois:

It’s true.

Corey Jahnke:

I had one lady, I’ll never forget it, she comes into the pharmacy and she goes, “Adam died last week.” And I said, “Oh Agnes, I’m so sorry.” And she goes, “Oh well, these things happen.” And that was her husband, you know? [inaudible 00:23:17] So don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because someone is in your family or has been a friend for a long time, that they really are absorbed by you if you’re not doing anything to make them that way, if you’re not creating magical experiences for them, if you are not a person who they are better off for having spent time with. I read, I wrote something on accident last week and you may have seen it on my Instagram account. I wrote that people generally are either energized or traumatized by your presence, which one is up to you. So that’s how I think about legacy. If you and I are going to meet for coffee today, are you going to be glad it’s done or sad it’s done?

Lois:

So tell me Corey, what will be your legacy? What are you building?

Corey Jahnke:

Well, what I would like to see happen in my life is that my son and my friends all say, “You know what? This guy was in hot pursuit to make the world and himself the best possible place. He was always thinking about, how can I create more kindness, more love, more happy, healthy people, so that he left the world a better place than it was when he found it.” And if I can do that, then I will be a very successful human being.

Lois:

You know what, Corey? It has been, it’s hard to imagine, half an hour since we started and this has been just so, so delightful. Before we close though, I want to, I have one last question for you on the legacy you’re building. For you as you approach that, having, leaving people happy or feeling better off, feeling love, feeling kindness because of what you’ve done, what’s been your biggest challenge in that journey?

Corey Jahnke:

Well, I think it’s that most people won’t believe in themselves. They have been told these lousy stories all of their life about, you’re ineligible. You can’t make it. You aren’t smart enough. And so what I try to do with people is, I try to ask them… Okay, question series that I heard from Jim Rohn, and Jim Rohn said this. He said, “Everyone should ask themselves this question. Who am I around? What do they have me thinking? What do they have me believing? Where do they have me going? What do they have me reading? And then you need to ask yourself the big, big question. Is that okay? And if it’s not okay, then you need to get around people that make you feel like you can.” And the thing about it is we have an amazing opportunity these days where we didn’t have before. So you can YouTube inspiration or motivation.

Corey Jahnke:

And I’ll tell you what I saw just this morning. So there is a young lady, she’s like 21 and I know nothing about her, but I just happened to see the video on someone’s LinkedIn feed. And this lady has one leg and she’s lifting a barbell and she’s lifting it up to her shoulders and then doing one legged squats with this barbell. And I shared this LinkedIn post and I said, “Every time I think I have an excuse, I catch a video like this.” So all you have to do is you have to ask yourself this question, is my excuse valid? And the way you’d know whether your excuse is valid or not is you just ask yourself, is there somebody that’s been in worse situations than I have? Is there someone who’s got it tougher than I do? And have they succeeded anyway? And I think you already know the answer to that question because as you and I have both discovered in our lives, there are people facing challenges that we can’t even begin to imagine.

Corey Jahnke:

So I ask people to really set aside their excuses and just consider the idea that it’s possible for them, because I truly believe that you have more potential in your little finger then you could use in a hundred lifetimes. I believe it’s true for you. I believe it’s true for me, and I believe it’s true for everyone we’re going to come in contact with today. It’s just that most people won’t accept that idea.

Lois:

Corey on that note, let’s end this podcast, and what a positive, wonderful challenge you have for all of us in terms of who is it that we are and what is it that we’re going to leave and what will be the experience that people have of us? Because that’s what they’ll remember. And so thank you so much for your time, for the wisdom that you’ve shared with us, and for those of you who are listening, if you have questions or would like to get further information about Corey or get in contact with him, simply email me and we’ll be glad to get in touch with you, with Corey for you. So thank you for listening. Thank you for your time today.