David Williams:
This is David Williams. I’m here this morning with Ralph Henderson. Good morning Ralph.
Ralph Henderson:
Good morning David, good to see you.
David Williams:
Good to see you as well, virtually. We generally connect around this time of year face-to-face, but this year looks like it’s going to be a virtual connection. What I want to do starting out Ralph is give me the brief introduction about who you are, what you do and then at the very end we’ll dive into a deeper dive of closing it out with some more details about who you are and what you do. So briefly let us know who you are and what you do and then we’ll dive into this session.
Ralph Henderson:
Well thank you David. I really appreciate it, really appreciate being here. Trust is something people know about but few people really dive into. One of the things I do is I help people understand trust by developing business with my clients, with their prospects and their clients, by bringing them together and creating programs and content and connections that allow everyone to have a better bond. And therefore have a better relationship, which ultimately helps everyone do business and trust one another and be more profitable.
David Williams:
That’s awesome. I’ve known you for years, so I know a little bit about what you do and I’m glad you could be with me this morning. One of the things I want to dive into and I’m going to grab me something to maybe jot a couple notes about things that you’re saying, but what I’d like to start out with Ralph is, obviously we are going to try to keep things as positive whether we’re going through good times or bad times. You and I talked a little bit before I started this recording and I was enjoying what you were saying then. Now that you’re going to expand on it and kind of repeat some of that for the listeners to hear, I’m excited about what you’ve got to say today about things that people can do when things are going well and when things are not going so well.
David Williams:
And like you were saying before I started recording the call, sometimes things are right in front of your face and you can’t see it. So if you would go ahead and talk for a moment, I may jot a couple notes or maybe some things that I’d come back to based on what you say, but I’m going to give you the floor Ralph, go for it.
Ralph Henderson:
Well, thank you again, David. I really appreciate that and it’s really interesting. First and foremost, I want everybody to know I’m a business owner. I understand developing business, I understand profit, I understand cashflow, I understand clients and funnels and prospecting. I understand all the things as it relates to business. I don’t want anybody to lose sight of that, because a lot of times when I get into my topics people think that I’m somehow this independently wealthy trust fund person who doesn’t have to worry about any of those things, and that could not be further from the truth.
Ralph Henderson:
But the things I talk about David, is I talk about things like courage and trust and hope. These are all things that when times are good, people sometimes just, I don’t want to say they overlook them, but I don’t know that we appreciate them as well. What we were talking about before the broadcast was, a lot of times when we’re going through really crazy times we’re trying to cling on to the past, or we’re trying to cling onto what we were used to. When in reality, what’s happening most of the time is something’s being formed right in front of us and we just can’t see that.
Ralph Henderson:
In addition to working in the supply chain and working with executives and talking about what’s happening with disruptive technology and labor, we also talk about things like volatility and uncertainty and complexity. It’s really interesting because when you get into those things, you can talk about the dark days. And we can read a book and we can appreciate how somebody got through the dark days to come out to the bright light. But when we’re going through the dark days, sometimes we just don’t see that.
Ralph Henderson:
One of the things I love to talk about is courage. So the definition of courage for your audience is doing those things that you know are right, even though you might be afraid or there might even be a consequence, but you just know it’s right. Here’s what I would love for your audience to know is the opposite of courage and the opposite of courage is conformity. And what happens a lot of times is we start to conform and then when that conformity gets whacked, we get nervous but in reality it’s necessary because there’s a change that has to happen.
Ralph Henderson:
And so sometimes I’ll talk to an audience about the alliteration of courage, conformity and change. People will then talk to me about how powerful that is because it’s not until sometimes that we’re forced into change that we get knocked out of our conformity, where we’ll have the courage to do something about that. And I just want your audience to know that all of this is possible even when times are good, but especially when times are tough, to remember all of those things.
David Williams:
I love the way that you close that out, and I had somebody on the other day that kind of made three points and what’s interesting they were a different three points, but they were three points you can apply just like what you just said about change and courage and conformity. So conformity, I take it as kind of like you get stuck in a rut, you kind of fall into what’s happening at the moment. I think conformity can happen when things are going well and going not so well, right? Because we can get complacent and just kick back and kind of conform to everything going so well we’re not thinking towards a future, just like when things are really bad I think we withdraw even more, right?
David Williams:
Having that courage and this is what I want to have you expand on a little bit more. Having that courage, let’s talk about what that looks like because courage when things are well and the cash flow is going. And I appreciate you sharing all of that at the beginning because I’ve known you for years and I appreciate you wrapping that up to say, “Hey, I’m not this independently wealthy guy, I understand all this stuff.” Courage when things are well looks different than when things are not so well. And having the courage during difficult times to me is something that can be challenging because we fall into this conformity, which is what’s so cool about what you were saying. And then obviously we’ve got to change, we’ve got to change.
David Williams:
So let’s talk about, give some examples of what courage looks like, what you see courage looking like. And you can be courage when things are great and courage when things are not so great. But I’d love for you to talk about a couple of examples to maybe help the audience realize, “Okay, wow, that’s a good example.” Because I know one of the things we talked about before you got on this morning as you were on Fox 46 news, which is there in the Charlotte area, right?
Ralph Henderson:
That’s correct.
David Williams:
So you’ve already done a newscast, a local newscast before diving in here with me. But talk about courage for a moment and what that courage going into change looks like.
Ralph Henderson:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. And two examples come to my mind, but what really comes to my mind is how when we’re younger and your audience may not know but I’m not a young man, so I’ve had some experience. And while we’re younger it’s like change and courage go hand in hand and we don’t even think about it. And I’m thinking about two things that happened in my life. So I’m former military, I was in the United States Navy submarine service back in the eighties once I got out of college. And I remember going into that and I remember how all my friends and family they would say, wow, that’s so courageous, that’s a lot of courage. And I just thought to myself, “You know what? You’re supposed to defend your country. You’re supposed to do these things.”
Ralph Henderson:
And so I went through the training that was necessary in order to transform me into a military person and then to transform me into somebody who could serve on submarines. Because I assure you for your audience who has served on submarines, we are a unique breed. So, that was one time when the conformity got knocked out of me and I had to have the courage to change to turn into that person. But I was younger and I didn’t think anything of it. The other time that I can think of is when I was recruited by Hanes hosiery in North Carolina and had to move from New England where I had lived for the last nine years. And I remember doing that and all my friends saying, “Wow, that’s a big deal. You’re just up and you’re moving and changing everything you’re doing.” They didn’t maybe use the word courage, but they kind of said that you’re being courageous by doing that.
Ralph Henderson:
Well, in my mind it was necessary for me to change at that point in my life. Now what I want your audience to know and to feel right now is we should always have that in us, right? We should always have this transformation. And that’s what I love about what I do with my clients, right? We talk about transformation and everyone knows you are what you eat, but that includes what you put into your mind. And so when we’re transforming, everybody thinks of physical fitness and I work part time with the Carolina Panthers in their entertainment division and it’s a blast. I love working with these folks because they see a lot of what I do and talk about very clearly. And one of those things is transformation. When you talk about an NFL player and you see the transformation that those folks go through, well I think that’s the same for us in the business world.
Ralph Henderson:
And it’s normal when we’re young, we’re always transforming. Well then what happens at some point in time in our lives, we think we’ve become the butterfly and we’re done. So the metamorphosis is complete. And I would argue that it is never complete, that it is a journey of transforming. So going back to the transforming your mind, we need to constantly be thinking about who we are and who we want to become. Right? So one of the things I talked to Jason Harper about the anchor of Fox 46 is I have this acronym called ddoc D-D-O-C. And it’s daily discipline obedience and consistency. And really all that means is that we become what we do every day. Now, I paused there for a reason because I want your audience to think about that for a second. We become what we do every day.
Ralph Henderson:
So that’s really cool actually, because if you think about it now all I have to do is think about, well who do I want to become? And then what is the daily discipline, obedience and consistency that I need to do in order to become that person? That’s the transformation. So now you say, well, how do you transform? Well, that’s a great question and a couple of the ways that jumps out is you can read, you can listen, you can watch, you can memorize things. These are all ways to transform so that now we take that change that we got from the courage to break out of our conformity to jump into this transformation and now we’ve got the ability to on a daily disciplined, obedient and consistent way become that person that we aspire to become.
David Williams:
Wow. That was a good expansion on courage because you opened up a lot of new things about transformation. You used transform, transforming, transformation. I love your acronym and some good advice because one of the things that I think is important and critical in what you said, it’s daily. So it’s not like something that okay, once a month I’m going to do X. Right? Because if you want to become something, if you want to transform your life, if you’ve got a goal of I want to become this or I want to do this. Somebody the other day talked about running a marathon when I was talking to him and just brought that up. And a good example is you can’t get yourself in a position to run a marathon by doing it once a month, right? It’s daily actions and so daily discipline I think is a huge thing that the audience can take away from this in order to transform during difficult times or good times, it doesn’t matter.
David Williams:
I think that’s good advice for all times that we have to set some goals of what we want to do, right? And what we want to transform into. And I love the part because you and I both I’ve got gray hair to prove it as we’re not young guys anymore. I got two adult daughters that are married and so I’ve got to the point in life that yes, things were different 30 years ago when I was much younger. And I think your advice when you said it’s continual and for me as a guy that’s not 21 anymore, I get motivated when I start thinking about, I’ve still hopefully got some time to become, to transform, to continue working in that direction. So you’ve shared a lot of great stuff in this short amount of time.
David Williams:
Before I have you close out with a lot of details about how to find Ralph Henderson online and things of that nature. I’d like for you to share any closing thoughts that you have, anything that may have come to mind in these last couple of minutes that you’d like to share with us before I give you the opportunity to share how to reach you. So go ahead, share some final details, some final thoughts to leave the audience with and then we’ll wrap up.
Ralph Henderson:
Well thank you David I appreciate that. And just to prove to your audience, these are final thoughts on what we’ve talked about today. I’m going to piggy back on what you’re saying as far as our age and the joy that we have inside of us to continue doing what we’re doing. And I believe what you’re referring to is your purpose. And again, going back to the beginning of my talk, trust, love, hope, purpose. These are all things that when times are good, people tend to maybe overlook or take advantage of a little bit. But when times are tough, love, purpose, joy, direction, grace, those are things that matter now. And so talking about purpose I just want your audience and I want everyone to know we all have a purpose. If you are right now watching this and breathing in voluntarily, I promise you you have a purpose.
Ralph Henderson:
And so now what I would implore you to do is to just do what’s necessary to find out what that is. You’re wired for something. I promise you you’re wired for something. And I would just say that when you find out what that is, that’s when you’re going to find that joy. I tell people all the time, I want to be happy, but happy is temporary and external. I would prefer to be joyful because joyful is internal and eternal. And both of them are great I just liked the eternity and the internalness of the joy. And then finally, what I would say to everyone out there is what we’re really striving for is success. And when I say the word success, I know there is as many different definitions of that word as there are people watching or listening to this program. So let me help you. Success is not comparing yourself to someone else. Success is comparing yourself to what you were designed to do, which is that purpose we’re talking about. And when you find that you will be extremely successful.
David Williams:
Great way to close us out Ralph, I really enjoyed this time with you. What I’m going to do here at the end is give you permission so that the audience knows that this guy is not trying to do a sales pitch, but I figure for you taking time out of your day to share these thoughts. I want to give you an opportunity to share a little bit more about Ralph Henderson, who you are, how to find you, so close us out. Don’t feel like you’re doing a sales pitch because I’m giving you the opportunity to share that freely. Anything that you’d like to share about how to reach you and how you might be able to assist people with what you do. So go ahead and close us out with that information.
Ralph Henderson:
Well, thank you. Again, going back to the very beginning, it’s all about trust and what I would like your audience to hear is I help people find out why somebody would want to do business with them. It’s really important that we uncover the why and so the best way to get ahold of me is on LinkedIn. You can go to LinkedIn, look up Ralph Henderson. My tag is actually HRalph Henderson, but I also have a couple of websites. I have a website called omni-channel productions, that’s Omni channel productions and it’s plural. And I also have another website called optimize supply chains, optimize supply chains also a plural. You can find me through any one of those and please by all means reach out I’d love to connect with you. Happy to be here today David, thank you so much for the time and being able to just share with your audience and I just appreciate the hope that you’re giving people and knowing that whether we’re in a good time or a rough time we’re together and we can work together on helping each other be successful.
David Williams:
Ralph, I really appreciate you joining me today. Thanks for closing us out. Have a fantastic day.
Ralph Henderson:
Thank you, David. You too.