Welcome to another great episode of Entelechy Leadership Series. This is the first time in our podcast that we have brought back a previous Guest. Today we are joined by John David Mann, who was here on episode 87 talking about the Go-Giver series & Who Moved My Cheese. He is joined by his co-author and wife Ana Gabriel Mann and together they have written the book Go-Giver Marriage: A little story about the Five Secrets to Lasting Love. 

Ana is a clinical psychiatrist and a licensed family therapist and now an author, while John is the author of the Go-Giver series. John and Ana have been together for 25 years, 10 of those were when they working together and 15 of them have been in Marriage. Their new book the Go-Giver marriage has been in the works since 2005 and has followed the same structure as the Go-Giver series. The book combines parables and practical steps to achieve your goal. 

At the same time the book has now evolved into a training program for not just married couples but individuals too, with coaches accessible to individuals or teams where the 5 secrets are discussed in depth

In this book, Ana and John give their readers 5 secrets of how to have lasting love in their marriage and relationships with other people. 

This book is both a business book as well as a personal growth book because many entrepreneurs want to know how to balance their work and have a healthy, happy marriage and family life. It focuses on the daily steps that you can apply to change the negative habits, and shift your mindset and behaviors so as to change the dynamic of your marriage. With a focus on letting go of past baggage, communicating apologies, and having a spirit of generosity towards your spouse.

A Philosophy that comes out in the book is the way to change your marriage, isn't by working on the marriage per se, but it's by working on yourself.

In conclusion, marriage isn't a zero-sum game where we think that if I give you this, then I won't have it. By using the spirit of generosity, it means if for example by giving your partner time in your busy schedule it means you care for them, therefore making your relationship richer.   It can be viewed as a rising tide that floats both boats. 

Ana Gabriel Mann, M.A., holds a Master’s degree in clinical psychology and dance-movement therapy from Antioch New England, where she specialized in working with adults and family therapy. She went on to train and work with renowned Israeli-born therapist Dr. Ruth Holt, a marriage and family specialist who taught couples to identify their patterns of dysfunction and cultivate “love maps” based on Dr. John Gottman’s landmark research. Together they led a highly successful series of therapy groups that gave couples a window into the dynamics of the other marriages in the room.

Following her work with Holt, Ana served as clinical director for a New England–based program providing county-wide therapy, education, and services for family members caring for individuals with Alzheimer’s disease; and as adjunct faculty and student trainer for Antioch New England, utilizing movement therapy to draw on long-term memory in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease to facilitate emotional connection and wholeness. In 1984 she cofounded the New England Institute for Integrative Acupressure, New England’s first college of Chinese medicine, where she co-led programs through 1997.

For the past two decades, Ana has worked primarily as a corporate consultant, speaker, trainer, and business coach in both profit and nonprofit sectors. In addition to coaching and teaching the 5 Secrets to Lasting Love, she is the creator and lead facilitator of the Go-Giver Marriage Coaches training program.

She is married to John David Mann, her coauthor for “The Go-Giver Marriage.”

John David Mann is an award-winning author whose writings have earned the Nautilus Award, the Axiom Business Book Award (Gold Medal), Taiwan's Golden Book Award for Innovation, and the 2017 Living Now Book Awards “Evergreen Medal” for “contribution to positive global change.” He is co-author of the worldwide classic “The Go-Giver” with Bob Burg (more than 1 million copies sold) and 4 New York Times bestsellers. His books are published in 38 languages and have sold more than 3 million copies. His first novel, “Steel Fear” (coauthored with Brandon Webb) was released in July 2021; iconic author Lee Child called it “sensationally good—an instant classic, maybe an instant legend,” and Publisher’s Weekly hailed it as “one of the best books of 2021.” You can read John’s thoughts on entering the world of crime fiction at https://crimereads.com/whats-a-nice-guy-like-me-doing-in-a-homicidal-place-like-this/

John has been creating careers since he was a teenager. At age 17, he and a few friends started their own high school in Orange, New Jersey called Changes, Inc. In his teens, he forged a successful career as a concert cellist and prize-winning composer. At 15 he was recipient of the 1969 BMI Awards to Student Composers, then their youngest award recipient ever; his musical score for Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound” (written at age 13) was performed at the amphitheater in Epidaurus, Greece, where the play was originally premiered.

His diverse career has made him a thought leader in several different industries. In 1986 John founded and wrote for Solstice, a journal on health and environmental issues; his series on the climate crisis (yes, he was writing about this back in the eighties) was selected for national reprint in Utne Reader. During the nineties, he built a multimillion-dollar sales/distribution organization of over 100,000 people. He was cofounder and senior editor of the legendary journal Upline and editor in chief of Networking Times.

He is married to Ana Gabriel Mann and considers himself the luckiest mann in the world. You can visit him at www.johndavidmann.com

John

www.johndavidmann.com

instagram.com/johndavidmann

facebook.com/johndavidmann

twitter.com/johndavidmann

linkedin.com/in/johndavidmann

Ana

www.gogivermarriage.com

instagram.com/anagabrielmann

facebook.com/anagabrielmann

twitter.com/anagabrielmann1

auto generated transcript

Welcome back everyone to our podcast, Entelechy Leadership Stories, the podcast for conscious leaders. Well, Kirstin we're at a first for our podcast. We've never had a repeat guest. We've never invited a guest back. And if you dial back to episode 87, we had John David Mann , he's back today with his co-author and better half Anna Gabriel Mann. Glad to have you

I'm honored. I had no idea. We were making history here. That's exciting.

That's right.

So glad to be here.

Kirstin when we think about leadership, you know, clearly our podcast talks about work life balance a lot, you know, but we focus a lot of times on the results at work. Isn't it good to bring in the other side of life as well?

Oh, it is so good to bring in the other side of work, because this is really what people wanna understand. How do you have success, marriage, a life fulfilled, right? Purpose goes now beyond just achieving a financial success or particular position. It's actually, they look to keep their marriages intact, have happy relationships with their family. Right? These are not things we talked about 20 years ago.

Yes. Well, that's the subject of today's show and John David man of course is the co-author of the go giver. And now with his wife, Anna, the go giver marriage is the name of the new book. It's so exciting to think about marriage as in the go giver light. Tell us about that.

Yeah, well it is exciting for us too. We've been dreaming about this book for years and years. In fact, the go giver, the original book came out in 2008, so it's almost 15 years ago. And it was three years before that in 2005, but the first rough draft, very rough draft of that book slid outta my desktop printer. And Anna was the first reader because she's the first reader of all my books. My first and most insightful reader in the sense that she gives me the critical eye I need. She knows when things work and when things aren't quite there yet need adjustment. So she's, my go-to resource for making books better. She read the book and said, this is fantastic. And it would make a great book about marriage. And this is her deal. This is her thing. Her passion, Anna is a licensed family therapist. She's a clinical psychologist. This is her professional path since the day she walked outta grad school. So for us to be able to bring this to the world is just been incredibly thrilling, a go giver approach to marriage. Yeah. So over use sweetheart.

Well, the subtitle, Anna, the little story about five secrets to lasting love. I mean, again, the framework of a parable, a story that's probably a combination of a lot of your experiences in counseling, and therapy, isn't it?

It absolutely is. And in fact, there's a character in the book called the professor who actually closes her practice as a family therapist and starts coaching individuals in the marriage because she feels the way I do, which is that giving people skills to shift the tone of their marriage and to shift how they're bringing themselves to their marriage is sometimes more powerful than spending months in a therapy room, trying to divide the argument down the middle and help everybody to make changes that each person obviously needs to make. And we all arrive at a marriage with a lot of suitcases and miraculously, when the honeymoon's open over, they start unpacking and all our material, all our history comes with us not to mention the slings and arrows that life throws at us. You could have a child with special needs.

Like the two main characters in the story could have all kinds of things that suddenly put your marriage kind of on the back burner. And now you've got a crisis on the front burner, and those are the things that happen to people. And we consider this as much a business book as a personal growth book, simply because every corporation in America and every entrepreneur in America, as Kirstin said earlier, wants to have a healthy relationship. Wants to go home to a marriage that's working. Wants to have a family that's whole, and that's happy. So, you know, HR departments all over the world are clawing to have workshops that bring value to their employees.

And so a question that I have Ana, and I'm really grateful that we're speaking to this, right, because there is somewhat of a shift coming out of the clinical psychology, if you will, more into a developmental practical application. And I know a lot of my clients they're in therapy, but they're trying to understand how do I change my behavior real time in the moment. So we're not continuing to cause more damage than it's already being dumped, but they don't know how to stop the breaks when it starts coming out of their mouth, the behavior.And I think that's what I hear you speaking to, how do you in your marriage and ultimately the book. Really navigate those real time moments. I mean, Mark always talks about action in the moment, right? It's great to, to talk about it, but how do we apply it?

It's a great question because people get emotional, they get triggered, you know, they have those moments where, you know,

Wait, are you talking about me? Wait, you must have been on my podcast before

Some people, nobody here, but some people we've heard about

Yep. Some people we've heard about. And you know, the hard part is that sometimes the words are outta your mouth before you catch them. And then the only thing you can do is say, I'm sorry, that was not appropriate. And when you do that, even that when you are in the middle of any kind of conflict with your spouse and you make any gesture to fix something in that moment, besides trying to fix them,you are, you are doing reparative action and reparative action is, is just as powerful as the kinds of things that we're suggesting for the secrets, because you're gonna have moments where you slip, you're gonna have moments where you put your hands on your hips and say things like, I did the, there's just three of times this week. What have you done?

And those are scorecard moments. And we really believe that one of the core elements of the book that we feel strongly about is learning to drop the scorecard and like the original go giver. What we're really interested in helping people to understand is that you got into this marriage for better or for worse. And there's going to be days that it feels like worse, but if you're adding value to your spouse's life, by acts of generosity, you're gonna be really bringing something that they're not accustomed to. And that they aren't expecting from you. And there's so many ways you can do it. So for me, , it's a really, not just a toolbox. It's a really seriously practical toolbox based on developmental theory. What did you need as an infant? What did you need as a child and adolescent, and now an adult, because believe it or not, the spectrum continues. Everything you needed as a baby use still need as an adult. And that's why we break out into those baby behaviors where we're like, w you know, taking it out on our spouse.

Yeah. John, what are your thoughts on that?

Wanna Piggyback on that to say I love the question, the way you phrased it Kirstin it's like, yeah, theory is great, but what do I do? That's the reason that we wrote the book in the form that we did. The book is structured. You know, for those of you who haven't read the book, the book is structured in two halves. And the first half is called the parable. And it's the story. It's the kind of thing you expect. If you've read another go giver book. And the second half is called the practice. And first half was primarily my job. And the second half is really Anna's work. So you kind of get us in the book, the storytelling side and the practical, how do you make this work in your life?

And it's this interesting dynamic where one way, the way you change your behaviors is by changing your mindset. And we talk about the mindset of lasting love, but interestingly, one doorway to changing your mindset is through behaviors. It goes both ways. So the five secrets that are enlazed on the cover of the book and that Anna mentioned are simple, practical, daily actions. They're not some big dramatic life shifts. They're not some, Titanic change you have to make in your entire...simple daily actions that when you simply practice them, even if you practice them awkwardly or poorly, that's okay, they will shift your mindset. They will shift the way you bring yourself to the marriage. And by doing that, they will shift the dynamic of the whole marriage. One of the beautiful things for us about the book and about the approach. Anna mentioned that the professor in the book shifted from her practice of dealing with couples in therapy, to dealing with coaching individuals, which is exactly what Anna did. What do you know? The beauty of that is that, our philosophy and our approach in the book is the way you change in marriage is by working on yourself, the way that you shift the marriage, isn't by working on the marriage per se, it's by working on you. And when you do that, you change the marriage, you shift the marriage.

It's so interesting. You say that because we were talking before we came on John, about, our listeners being these entrepreneurs, they might be on boards, they're middle managers trying to move up the corporate ladder, or even at nonprofits, and to say in a marriage, look, I'm really busy. I'm trying to grow a company. I'm trying to change the world over here. I don't have time to think about this. I just, you, I need you to understand where I'm at in my either career development, but this is where the go giver approach comes in. Isn't it?

It is. Yeah. And yeah.

And what's remarkable about it. What's remarkable about that is that you can, with every secret, you could complete the secret in three to four minutes a day. So honest, the goodness you could take just one secret this week and practice that one secret three times a day, and you'd be shocked at the difference, the change that would happen in the marriage, because when people get the very things that they need developmentally, there's some sort of magic to it. And I've had clients, because this is the kind of homework that I used to give clients. And I've had clients that would say, I didn't realize it could be that easy. I mean, I really just, I've found three ways every day to practice this one thing. And it made such a difference and so people need emotional food in a marriage, but it's hard to understand what it looks like because you look at the commercial holidays and whether it's Christmas or Valentine's day or whatever, you're supposed to jump out there. You're supposed to get her diamonds and roses and all kinds of so-called gifts. Well, those gifts are really meaningless in the end. They really don't build the marriage. They're lovely. And she might feel very emotional and flattered in the moment, but it's not the kind of food that each one of us needs and women, as well as men need the kind of nourishment that these secrets bring.

I love that, you know, I'm in a working group right now, as we are joking around, I'm in the dating field, trying to figure this out and over almost 50.So we're in a working group with men and women. And I just remember when a male in the group said, I have sacred wounds too. And I almost fell outta my chair. I was like, you do? I just thought I had them. Right. But you know, and one of the words you used was generosity, right? You brought that in, into the conversation early on that we had. I'd be curious to know a couple of things. One, how long have you both been married? Right. Just to give the audience some context, but when did you apply this straight out the gate? Has it been an evolution? Because it's always easy to talk on and ontological level, but relatability is really important that the audience is no, we're not just, this is not just the practicality of study. This is also experience.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'll jump in. I'll jump into that. If I may, yeah.

Go for it, go for it.

And say a couple different and things there first is about the generosity and I'll get to the personal, how long have we been married in a sec, but let me first say, here's a mindset shift and when you single gut, the word generosity for years, we've been together for about 25 years. We, worked together about 10 years before we got married and now we've been, a married couple for going on 15. So that's our context. I had been married before. And so I came at this with both the trepidation of battle scars in the same way that I came to my most successful business after a business that failed. I mean, it's good to, I think some, some failure failure in your background, it builds character and gives you, wariness that allows you to find true success.

And that was true for me in marriage. There is a shift in mindset that has to do with generosity for years. People ask us, what is your secret sauce? Why are you guys so in love? Why are you guys after 10 years still act like you're newlyweds. And we've been through stresses. We've been through catastrophes and difficult times.We don't live a fairytale life. We do live in the real world and still those stresses and difficult times, rather than making us bitter, we seem to come through them, just being more in love and be crazy about each other than ever. And so our friends would say, what is it with you guys? And we think what it is is we both come to our relationship with that spirit of generosity. And here's how that works. It's really easy.

Like Mark, in the situation you described, an entrepreneur says, I've got this pressure going on. I'm trying to create this company. I dont have time to think about whatever issue you're dealing with. We tend to default to a position of zero sum gain where we think that if I give you this, then I won't have it. If I give you my cord of wood, now I won't have that cord of wood. You have it. If I give you five gold coins, now I'm five gold coins out. If I give you 15 minutes of my time, Ooh, I've lost something. But in human interaction that doesn't work that way. It's like when I give you something it enriches me as well as you. It's not a zero sum game. It's one of those rising tides that floats both boats. And that's the spirit of generosity. If I give you a little time, I give you a little care. If I put your interest first for a moment here, instead of thinking about what I need right now, it doesn't make me poorer. It makes me richer because it builds us. It builds the marriage. It builds the relationship, not just you or me. And I've said enough, Anna, you should take it from there.

Maybe to build on, well, there's a great quote on your website and from the book that says to say, love is what makes a marriage work is like saying it takes oxygen to climb a mountain. Yes,oxygen is necessary, but not sufficient. I think you're describing these things that are above,"well, I told you, I loved you. What more do you want?" Yeah,

Exactly, exactly.

What else do you need?

And men and women have very different interactional styles. And that's one of the things we address in the book as well, because, I think there are plenty of men in the world who might think, "oh, I told you, I love you. What else do you want?"You know, that's a great line.

I've heard that one.

But I also think it's very amazing that this man in this group that you were speaking of, said he had sacred wounds because I believe we all have sacred wounds. Every one of when I said, we arrive at a marriage with a lot of suitcases, everybody comes into a marriage and there are wounds and some of them are deep. You might have had a father who was punitive and who dismissed you and who criticized you.

And guess what? You're probably gonna marry somebody who's at times, punitive dismisses you and it times criticizes you and criticism is the very opposite of the secret that I'm gonna talk about. Because honestly, if you're in the pattern of criticizing all the time, it's a pattern that gets really ingrained. It's like a loop in your brain and you're looking for reasons to criticize your spouse. And it's a really destructive habit, but it's a habit. So what we're suggesting is change the habit, change the groove because it's just as easy to program a positive habit as it is to program a negative one. It's what you focus on. And again, it's that whole idea of like, if you want to expand your life, then practice some gratitude. If you want to shift the whole tone of your business and your entrepreneurial adventure, then get clear that you need to learn and study and maybe take on some new habits. ThIs is what we're suggesting and in years now of coaching and, in our experience directly with clients, it really works. It's a really powerful,

That's terrific, well listeners in the background, John and Ana both have a tree, you know, in a green field. And what's the significance of the tree. Tell us the story behind that,

The tree, in the parable, the first half of the book, there is a story. It's a story about a young couple named Tom and Tess. And it opens with Tom in the most important business interview of his life and Tess struggling with the challenges in her life. They have a child with special needs and she's going through various struggles as well. So they both have their individual journeys, but in the course of this story, someone tells another story. It's a story within a story. It's like, a fable within the parable. And we think of it as like the candy center at the middle of the totsy roll or something. And then the story is about a young man in a princess who live in this little house, not a rich princess. It's like they have to work for a living.

The man goes out and builds roads and bridges every day. And the princess goes to her living room and paints picture and sells them. So they thereby make a little living for themselves and out front there's this little tree that begins to grow. And I don't wanna say too much about the tree, except that it represents on, some level. It represents the usness of the two people. There's this lovely diagram in the back of the book, which Anna drew, which is this circle, which is the one person and another circle, which is the other person and their overlap. And then little overlap section is each circle is still a whole person as we are each whole people. You don't give yourself up when you relate to another, but there's an overlap, which we think of as the us. And it's like a third life in your home. It's like a third person. It's an entity unto itself. It needs to be nourished. It needs to be fed. And the tree is the us, it needs to be to be fed, watered cared for, and it's never stationary. It's almost either growing or it's under threat. So you're either every day feeding the us or you're starving the us and the habits we talk about, the secrets we talk about are all about feeding the us.

So good. And, we'd love to talk about the business side here too. We've been talking about the personal relationships, but let's talk a bit about the business and Ana, you've developed an entire training program around this go giver, marriage concept. How is that going for you and how did you decide to really sort of build a business offer? Not just write a book.

You know, I feel like this is such an important book in terms of the skill sets and people all over the world need it. In fact, we just got a good reads person who went crazy on Twitter talking about this book because she had read it as a pre-ordered book, you know, that was offered to good reads to get reviews and to get people to know about the book. And, she was very upfront that she doesn't normally love parables, but that this book just blew her mind and that she loved it and that it was just, hit every note for her. It's not just for, , it's not just for marriages, it's for people. And, that's actually one of our core principles for the book is that it applies to everything and everybody, it's going to make a marriage a hundred percent richer, but practice the same secrets on your coworkers.

And you'll be everybody's favorite person at work. I mean, it's that powerful. So you know, in terms of the business side of it, yes, we've created a coach, this training program because we'd like to duplicate coaches and have lots of them out there so that people have someone to bounce it of. When you're practicing the secrets and you're having those moments that we mentioned earlier, where, you sort of, sort of blew it. You need somebody that you can bounce off of to get clearer on what you're doing and to be able to really put the secrets into place. At the same time, what we're really focused on right now is we're doing workshops for eight to, you know, 30 people. And those are sort of group coaching group moments where we go into depth with all five of the secrets.

They're great for book clubs, but they're also great for just groups that wanna get together. What's really incredible about them is once we really go through the training portion, they're like two hours long on a zoom event. And when we get through the training portion, it gives people a whole hour to just ask our moderator all kinds of questions on the chat and get those answered. And so it really turns into a very rich discussion and it gives people a real opportunity to say, Hey, you know, anonymously the, is what's going on in my marriage. And I would love to,figure this out. What do you think?

Sure? I'm excited, like, sign me up. I'm coming to one of your group sessions, but you know, and I'm a firm believer in, I wanna know what I'm bringing to the table. So I have a high chance of getting it right when the opportu comes. And I'm really good at blowing stuff up. So I, that, you know, I have some things I wish to unwind before I do blow stuff up. So my question to you is how do people get involved? Cause I'm excited. I'm all in. You'll be seeing me registering for something.

So sweet thank you.

Go ahead,

Go ahead, John.

I was gonna say, yeah, thats awesome. We, don't have a registration available at this moment, but by the time this airs probably we will. I don't know when this show will actually air, but it'll be on our website. And right now, as we speak, you can contact us on our website and that's where we'll put all of our programs, all of our registration, all of our information and the site is gogivemarriage.com. That's where all the book information and the coaches training program that Ana mentioned and getting in touch with us, it's all there at that site.

That's great. And if you want your success story, Hey look, the single one got married on good principals.

Yes. And you can, and you will. And I really want you to know 50 is really young.

I know I'm having fun with it.

Yeah, exactly. Have fun with it. I mean there's amazing men out there and I just wanna say there's amazing men. There's amazing women in their 40s 50s and 60s. It's incredible the fields, but it's hard to meet people, but when you have a different skill set and you understand the dynamics of what makes people tick it changes your perspective and it changes your ability. It changes your skills. At the same time when you said you're good at blowing it up. I think that, that is a moment when somebody tells me they're good at blowing it up, sometimes I really wanna encourage them to do individual coaching even for four or five sessions because it doesn't take 10 years of therapy to get to some of your early wounds and understand how you get triggered in them because we all have these places where we're insecure. I mean, self-esteem, we have another line in the book. Self-Esteem is as delicate as a flower that inner child who's wounded is still with all of us and still needs time and attention. And so, yeah, that's stuff that if you can get clear on it can be unwound.

Exciting. Well, we can't thank you too enough for being on the program. It's been a fantastic discussion. Thank you so much.

Love being here. This is the greatest discussion chamber. It's so... Appreciate it.

Thank you. Well, our listeners, our guest has been John David Mann and Anna Gabriel, Mann . They are the co-authors of the go giver marriage. And it's the latest in the sort of series of franchise. I guess I can call it of the go giver principal. The go giver, go giver influencer, go giver leader. You've touched on sales. You have an educator book. So this principle of go and giving, you know that it's not 50 50, it's a hundred, a hundred let's give in order to receive better. So we thank you so much. And Kirstin it's been such a good conversation. We just continue to expand this idea of what it means to be living and working your soul's purpose to your full potential.

Yes, it is. It is. And I'm excited to see what these five secrets are. And I really encourage our listeners to go check it out because I have a feeling there's gonna be some juiciness in these five secrets.

Yes. And just like a good secret it, you notice we didn't list them all on the podcast. You kind of have to go find them people. That's why they're called secrets.

Where's my cheese had to throw that in there somewhere.

There you go. Oh go to the website, gogivemarriage.com. We're gonna pick up the book. We're gonna join the program and we'll learn more about it. Well, until next time for Kirstin Gooldy I'm Mark Stinson and we are Entelechy Leadership Stories. We'll see you next time.