Change your Thoughts, Change your Life with Francois Lupien

Kathi: Hi everyone, thanks for joining me on the Organized and Energized Podcast. Here today we're going to talk with Francois Lupien. Francois is a business performance enhancer. I'm going to enhance my performance with this podcast and let Francois tell a little bit about the background of why he's here and how he came upon being this performance coach.

Francois: Excellent. Well, hey Kathi, first, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. That's an interesting question. Let's dive right into it. You were mentioning that I was privileged enough to work and be with some of the top in the top, and one of them is Tony Robbins. And so people said, "What?" Working with Tony on stage, facilitating his material. But how it all started is that one day I was with a company and they asked us to write down our goals. I write down the goals. I says, "That's not what I want to be with them." Then I says, "Who's good at writing goals?" Tony Robbins. I look in the phone book. I find his office. I call them up and I says, "I'm coming to work for you." They say, "We're not hiring right now." I says, "I'll be there Monday morning, 9:00 a.m." "We're not hiring." I says, "We'll see you then." And so here I am, 9:00 a.m., suit and tie, and they look at me: "What are you doing here?" I says, "I'm here for the job." They say, "We're not hiring." "It's okay. I'll wait." 9:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. The manager passes by, says, "You're still here?" I stand up. He says, "Not yet." At a quarter to 12, he passes by. I stand up, I shake his hand, and I say, "Let's go into your office." Long story short, within 25 minutes, I'm hired. I'm with the team and playing with Tony Robbins's team, all his material. It was absolutely life-changing. All this to say, if you have a goal, if you have a dream, don't take no for an answer. You want it, go for it. Make it happen, and it will happen. This is one of the reasons why I'm now doing performance enhancing. I say, "Hey, what's the performance that you have? Do you want to enhance it? Let's make a plan and make it happen." And so that's a quick thing on how it started with Tony.

If you have a goal, if you have a dream, don't take no for an answer.

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Kathi: That's fantastic. And I think that it's so true that you just have to wait, but you have to be prepared for the opportunity. And you putting your butt down in the seat, you're just there, you're prepared, you're ready. It does come. I think it comes to people who are prepared and ready. Would you agree with that?

Francois: Absolutely. And one thing is also, Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad, said never get a job except if you're going to be paid to enhance the skills that you do. Hence, I went with Tony Robbins, and I went with Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, for 13 years, and Bob Proctor as a personal coach and mentor for six years. God bless his soul, he passed away last year. But because of those personal acquaintances with these people, I was able, not all the time but many times, to get my yearly income to become my monthly income. And that was awesome. And I teach others to enhance their life so they can do it as well.

Kathi: I love that. So for people who are looking to do this, everybody wants to enhance their life. Everyone wants to enhance their bank account. What would be step one for them to take?

Francois: Oh, that's an interesting step. Desire. Do you have a desire? And let me explain this. People say, "I have an aspiration of this. I want this. I want that." Yeah, but want, want. If it's not a desire… You and I both know, Kathi, that life comes at you, and sometimes it comes at you really hard and it could flatten you. And unless you have a deep-rooted desire, you will not get up. But that desire, that you really want something, will help you to overcome. So I would say that's the first thing: people need to have a desire. And don't worry if people are not making money at what your desire is. It doesn't matter. If it's a burning desire, we can talk and change it, or others can help you to make it a reality.

Kathi: Yeah. I think it makes you unshakable. If it's a deep-rooted desire, you would become unshakable and not waver, just like you sitting in the office of Tony, just waiting. You're unshakable. You know that that's what you want, so that's what you get.

Francois: Absolutely. Yes.

Kathi: I love that. Okay, so we start with the desire. So you know what you want, you have this deep-rooted desire. What's the best course of action for step two?

Francois: Interesting. Many people say, if you don't like the results that you have, change the actions. But I say this is an erroneous way of going at it. Let's back up to deeper-rooted things. If we say we have a desire, then my thinking is, what are the thoughts that are with these desires? As you entertain those thoughts, they will create images. And these images will form a desire inside of you that's going to be fanned with a fire. And that feeling is going to put you into action. And those actions will create results. So people say they want to change their actions to change the results. It's short term. It's too tough. Go and change your thoughts. As you change your thoughts, you're going to change your feelings, you're going to change your actions, you're going to change your results. To me, it's the ultimate way. Thoughts, feelings and actions create outstanding results, the ones that you want, and we can constantly tweak it.

Go and change your thoughts. As you change your thoughts, you're going to change your feelings, you're going to change your actions, you're going to change your results.

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Kathi: I love it. So what type of projects are you on right now? What's making you fired up and excited?

Francois: Actually, we were just talking about this. Daily, the word I use is I'm playing with ChatGPT-4. And the reason I'm saying it is because there's a lot in it. And I have some coaches that are helping me with it. But if I say I'm going to master it, I'm going to get frustrated. I don't want to be frustrated. Life's too short. So I'm purposely using the word playing. So every day I'm playing with ChatGPT. And some days I'm almost discouraged, but some other days I'm blown away by what it can do. Not to replace humans, but to enhance. You know what? Sometimes you want to create something. You have a white sheet and you don't know what to do. Well, you can dump some things into ChatGPT, and there are prompts that you can put in to accelerate this, and then it starts to spit out things, and then you have a foundation to start working and putting yourself into it. So that's the thing that I'm doing right now, evolving. And ladies and gentlemen, I suggest you do the same. Don't get left behind. You don't like ChatGPT? It's not going away. And so let's embrace it even though we don't like it. And like anything, the more you do something, the easier it gets. Not that the task is easier, but that your ability to do it has increased. So bit by bit, every day, do a little bit, and you're going to be amazed after a month, after six months, how good you are compared to when you started. That's my suggestion.

Kathi: Yeah, I love that. And I agree. It's not going away, so we might as well just check it out. And it's fun. Anyhow, it's fun and entertaining. Play with it and see what it comes up with. Sometimes it's quite humorous, and sometimes it's profound. So yeah, I love that. So you've worked with so many people. You've had a lot of success. Tell me about some points in life where you've had challenges that you've had to overcome. I'm sure things didn't go smoothly from Tony to whatever. So talk about your ups and downs and how you came out of them.

Francois: This is interesting. You get ups and downs every day. Every day there's a challenge, but that's okay. As you overcome it, you get stronger. But one of the challenges that I had: after working with Tony, after being top, actually there were 15, I was top three in there. I loved it. And so then I went with Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and we had big territories. At one point, let's go to some numbers, $850,000, $5 at a time, was the target, and we had 10 months to do it. After five months, more than half, I'm only $100,000 in. My manager calls me and he says, "Hey, you know what? I need to talk to you tomorrow." I said, "I want to meet you there." I says, "Well, you're not here." He says, "I'll take the plane and meet you." I knew I was in trouble. He comes to me the next day and says, "You know what? Shape up or ship out." And then I start the blaming game. "Well, it's not my fault. It's because of this, and it's challenging, and you closed this office." He goes, "No, no, no. The day you take responsibility is the day you're going to turn it around." I say, "How can it be my…?" He says, "Be responsible and turn it around." And so then I told him, "Okay, I'll take responsibility. I'm going to do President's Circle this year." And he goes, "Ha ha, just finish your numbers." And he left. President's Circle is adding $75,000 to your target. So now that's big, and I only have half the year to do it. So what I did is I went and sought a coach, sought a system. I called the guy up. I said, "I want to hire you." He says, "Get the course online." I say, "No, I want to hire you as a coach." He says, "I don't do that." I say, "Well, you now do." He says, "Well, I've never done it." I said, "I'm going to pay you." He goes, "What?" I said, "I'm going to pay you." Long story short, I finished the year at $950,000, $100,000 more. And so the lesson from this is that we need to take responsibility even though life is going haywire all over the place. When we take responsibility, we can do something. If we blame other things, we have given them the power and we have disempowered ourselves. But by taking responsibility now, we can take steps, even if they're imperfect, to get something better. So I'm saying, how to accelerate? I went and got a coach and I paid him, and he turned his career around. He did more and more coaching from that afterwards, which is absolutely great. But all this to say, listening to the wise here, because I know at one point you wanted to touch on this and maybe now is a good time: one thing I learned, you can't do it alone. There's too much. You need to have a team. You need to have other people. And so find out from referrals, friends, people that you know. In this thing of business and entrepreneurship, when you ask people, "How are you?" they say it's going great, but in the background sometimes it's pretty hard. And so I say get some help, and it's going to shortcut your way to success. It's going to enhance your performance.

If we blame other things, we have given them the power and we have disempowered ourselves.

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Kathi: Yeah. And I agree that when you blame other people, you're giving your power away. You're giving them the guilt or whatever, but you're actually not claiming your power. So you're diminishing what you have to offer anyhow by blaming other people, instead of just standing your ground. And I am in full alignment with you. Of course, you hire people to do what you can't do. So you going and getting a coach is like, I don't know how to do this, let's talk to somebody who knows how to do this. And I think it's pretty funny, your case in point: the guy's like, well, I don't coach. It's like, oh, you're a coach now. And he probably turned into a very successful coach, I bet, with your prompt. Is he now loving life as a full-time coach?

Francois: He passed away now, but he was a great guy, and we kept in touch for a long time. And it was something of a discussion. He says, "I can't believe this." It created so much more impact in other people's lives.

Kathi: Yeah. So you made it to that inner circle. You far surpassed your goals. What did you do to celebrate your success?

Francois: Actually, I was thinking about this. We have a big house and different things, but we spent the money that I earned as a family to create memories. That's what I did. How did I celebrate? I created memories, because money, well, you can always make some more, but time and those relationships with your loved ones is something that you carry to your grave and beyond. So I'll say to people, celebrate creating memories. Whatever it is for you, it doesn't matter, but you're going to see how fulfilling it is. When you put your head on the pillow at night, you have a smile on your face because you've accomplished something. Building relationships and building memories with the ones you love, to me, is irreplaceable.

Celebrate creating memories.

Kathi: Yeah, it's priceless. And I'm totally in agreement. I was reading a report that people are not buying things as much, they're buying experiences. They're creating experiences, because that's what lasts. And it's funny how the smallest little things will bring a smile to your face. The smallest little moments, like, ah, I remember that. It seems like an unremarkable trip, but then that happened. I can still get a warm buzzy just thinking about sitting underneath that tree, whatever. So I think that's where it's at.

Francois: It's funny you say that. Sometimes when we meet with the kids, and we can't meet often with all of them because they're all over the world, but when we do, they reminisce about these things. "Wasn't that great?" And so it's fun. It's awesome.

Kathi: I love that. And your children are spread all around the world, huh?

Francois: Yeah. So they're going to be all gone. We're going to be empty nesters in October.

Kathi: Wow. All right. So that's a new little chapter. You're going to have some fun enjoying other types of time. That's going to be fun.

Francois: Yes, absolutely.

Kathi: So if you had to turn back time and tell your 18-year-old self something, what advice would you give him, Francois?

Francois: My 18-year-old… I was crazy when I was 18.

Kathi: I can imagine.

Francois: If I would tell my 18-year-old something, actually, it's something that Jim Rohn said. He passed away a long time ago. The day you think you know it all is the day you start to fall. So learn every day, is my thing. But he said something: regardless of how much money you earn, the first portion, well, to me it's tithing, but then the second portion would be invest, even if it's a dollar, even if it's $10. And he says you're going to say, well, that doesn't make sense. It's just for the discipline it will create, so that when you get to have more money, the first thing you do, to me, thank God, is paying tithing, then investing, and then the rest for living. That's the thing that I would change, because we were talking with my wife. We spent a lot of money with the kids, and I didn't invest as much as I could have, but it was by choice, to create those memories. But I would change that. This is something regardless of how much, even if it's a dollar, even if it's $10. Of course, it can be five grand, 10 grand, 20 grand, go for it. But create that discipline.

Kathi: Yes. Yeah, I think that that's great advice. I would tell my 18-year-old self that as well. I'd tell my 30-year-old self that.

Francois: We learn, we learn, we learn.

Kathi: Okay. So I know that you have a valuable free resource that you're going to offer to the audience. Let's talk about that a little bit.

Francois: Well, one of the things is that, as we said at the beginning, sometimes life gets sideways and results are not what we expect, and we get discouraged. Even though I'm always enthusiastic like this, I do get discouraged sometimes. Believe it or not. We're all human, and it happens to all of us. And so I created this thing. It's how to help you get back on track fast when your results are going sideways and you get discouraged. And it is a short video course. It's mini. I think the videos are three minutes, four minutes. And it has a cheat sheet also with it. And I'm not going to say what it is. Have the people actually go and take a look. I promise you that this will turn any situation around on a dime, and it does not take time, which is absolutely great.

Kathi: Yeah, no dime and no time. There you go. That's an irresistible offer, Francois.

Francois: Well, it's something that's good. And inside, at one point, I go into the five plus five formula, just to create curiosity in people. That five plus five formula is going to change so many things for you. It's going to be aha moments. You go, what? Yes, absolutely. So go. I invite you to do it.

Kathi: Yeah. So I'm not even going to ask the question about your organizing hack, though, because I have a feeling you have something a little bit to do about that.

Francois: Well, actually, interestingly, I'd like to, because I know that since you're the pro organizer, there's one thing I'd like to suggest to people. I have three screens here. And this screen right here is only my calendar. That's the only thing that gets on this screen. The reason is, if I have it on my phone, I see it, but it's small. But if it's on a screen, I see the whole week, and it's easier to organize things, and I don't waste time. I recommend highly to everybody to have at least a second screen, and that screen is where your agenda goes. And I believe in not time management but activity management. Therefore, I block times with different colors. But having this thing here has organized me so much that I'm able to work less and create more impact, because this screen keeps me in line all the time.

Having this thing here has organized me so much that I'm able to work less and create more impact.

Kathi: Yeah. And I can testify that you get a lot done in a little bit of time. That's something I've always admired about what you do. What calendar do you use?

Francois: Oh, Google Calendar. That's all I have. Just Google, because it matches. I have GoHighLevel, and my GoHighLevel merges with it. And also, because of the Google suite, people can use what they want. But that's the one that I have, and it serves me well. And ladies and gentlemen, maybe this is going to help you: my wife is connected onto that calendar. So when she plans things, she looks: oh, he's busy here, there's a hole here. And she can actually spot herself in there. I said, "Hey, there she is." And she has taken some. But it's awesome, because she knows what's going on, and there's no frustration. She says, "I want to do this." It's booked and we do it. But these are little things. Life does not need to be hard and complicated. We can make it simple. Life hits us hard enough as it is. Let's make it as fun as we can and create results. And, time is running, one of the things I say is leaving everyone with the impression of increase. It's one of the things that turned me around so much more in my life. Everybody that comes into my life, whenever they leave, whether it's five minutes or many years, I want them to feel better and be better individuals because we have met. So because of that, I forget about self and I focus on the other. But guess what? As I forget about self, I get the rewards of seeing others increase. And that is psychic money, baby, that I absolutely love. Other people texting me, saying, "Hey, I did this and it worked." Right on. This is great.

Kathi: I love it. I love it. Well, you're always a joy to speak with. I really appreciate your time. And everybody, make sure to grab and watch those videos, because you're going to be surprised at what you're going to discover. And it's easy breezy, and I highly recommend it. So thanks, Francois, for joining me.

Francois: Thank you so much. And Kathi, you're a pro organizer. If you're not organized, you're disorganized. Therefore, it takes too long to do this, too long to do that. You're wasting life. You're wasting time with your family, and it's not happening. Be organized. Kathi is the pro organizer. Get a hold of her. She'll get you on track. I love it. Thank you so much for being here. And of course, if people want to enhance their performance, I'm here for you as well. Thank you so much.

Kathi: Well, that's fantastic. And this is speaking from someone who knows The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Have a good one. Thank you.

Francois: Thank you so much.