How much you want to accomplish a goal has no impact on things like whether it's going to rain on a day when you need to train, whether you get injured, whether maybe the issue of a lack of motivation, potentially, you know, resolve could be a part of that.

But typically the bad outcomes that could ultimately affect our goals aren't things that we can in any way limit by wanting it.

We have to actually use our creativity

to identify what are the bad outcomes and how can I make them less likely.

Step into the world of success with your brand amplified, the ultimate podcast designed to

unravel the intricacies of thriving businesses. I'm your host, Onica Jackson, and I'm on a mission to uncover

the stories, strategies, and secrets that have propelled entrepreneurs and business leaders

to success.

Kyle, Austin Young, you are an author, a journalist, and a strategy consultant. And you have a book that was just

released that I'm really excited to dive into because this is the, it's always the perfect time,

but right now is really the time when people are thinking about what does my life look like.

How can I reimagine it? So I very much appreciate you coming on your brand amplified

at this time. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit

about your origin story and your book Genesis. Walk us through the moment that you realized that

success could be systematically approached as a probability equation. Because this is

such interesting framing. What happened in your life or work that really crystallized this

concept for you? Sure. Well, what ultimately happened is I was laid off twice in a span of about

13 months from fairly prestigious leadership positions, jobs where I was making quite a bit of money, and I found myself in a position after the second layoff. I was very fortunate. I had four different people offered to hire me the day after that layoff, and I needed to make a decision, but I was tired of losing my income because it takes time to get these big jobs, even though I still had more offers. I now knew that I might lose them no matter how things were going, because in both cases, things were going pretty well. It was just some external circumstances. So I needed to make a decision about what I was going to ultimately do, and I decided to diversify my income. My wife and I were in the process of adopting, famously expensive process, and needed to be in a position where we could rely on my income. I

couldn't keep losing it. So I decided that I was going to consult, diversify, and ultimately,

ultimately that put me in a position where I was working on a long list of different projects,

different goals at a time. And I needed to find a way to keep myself sane. I needed to find a way

to grow my consulting business. This was over a decade ago. And ultimately, what I discovered was that what all these projects had in common is there was a desired outcome. There was a goal. There was something that we wanted to accomplish. And there were bad things that could potentially happen instead of what we wanted. And so I tried to make that the backbone of my consulting work, getting really clear on what was the goal that my client was trying to achieve. And then what could I do to make them more likely to ultimately find success because what the layoffs taught me was it wasn't just about showing up, doing a good job, having integrity. At the end of the day, if there were financial troubles in the organization, even if they stemmed from another department or mismanagement here, there, wherever, it was still going to have the potential to negatively impact my life.

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