We’re talking today about how to move like a maverick, how to spark some serious momentum in life and business by way of rediscovering what it means to really become the most original version of you. To do that, you’ll have to adopt a whole new set of beliefs and mindset shifts. But that won’t be the end. You’ll also have to decide which new modes of operation you’re taking with you today.
But first, can I keep it real with you? I didn’t go to school to become classical music’s No. 1 maverick! Seriously, my parents paid a lot of money on piano lessons for me to become a world-class concert pianist. All I wanted to do was play the world’s best classical music, wear the world’s best designer gowns and impress audiences with how beautifully and powerfully I played.
The problem was, I started playing piano at a very late age — the ripe old age of 8 years old. In the world of classical music, that’s practically over the hill. In most industries, you don’t need to start by the time you’re 5 years old, but that’s not the case in my world. The other problem was that by the time I’d gotten to my first piano lesson, I already had incredible music swimming around in my head. I thought for sure I’d leave my first piano lesson playing Mozart, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven, of course.
So imagine my disappointment at my first lesson, back in my hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, when a man named Mr. Wise pulled out this awful red and white, Level 1, John Thompson piano book. Aha, I see some of you were tortured by the same method! The only thing I got to play sounded like this. [audio] It was just awful. I didn’t think I could go on like that, so I took the book home and learned the entire thing. I brought it back to the second lesson and told Mr. Wise, “Look! I’ve learned it all. Can we please move on to some real music?” And he told me, “No, no, Jade. We must go one page at a time.” He wouldn’t budge, and that torture went on for about eight or nine months until, unfortunately, Mr. Wise died. I don’t know why you’re laughing; it was a very sad occasion. But if I’m being honest, I was sort of happy because I knew I’d get a new piano teacher.
So, I go to my new teacher. This is Dr. Green, and he’s not just a classical pianist; he’s also a jazz musician and an organist. [visual] Now I’m imagining that not only am I going to leave playing Chopin and Beethoven, but I’m going to learn blues chords and how to work foot pedals. Yeah … no! That’s not what happened. Instead, Dr. Green whips out a green and white, Level 2, John Thompson book. I mean, I guess I should be grateful because now at least I get to play this. [audio] OK, so I’m panicking a bit here thinking that I’m never going to get to play real music. So I try the same thing. I take the book home, learn the entire thing, bring it back and beg to move on to more advanced stuff. But Dr. Green refused. “No, Jade. We must go one page at a time.” That went on for about five or six months, and then he also died.
I know, right? Things are getting a little weird. I’m wondering if I’m cursed. My parents are freaking out. They’re wondering if their daughter is the Black Widow of piano students. But I’m thinking ahead as they’re getting ready to take me to my third teacher, Mrs. Kay Whitehead —this was still back in Charleston, South Carolina. I was a nice girl, so I figured it would have been irresponsible of me not to tell her what had happened to the two teachers who came before her. I’ll never forget; I told her, “Mrs. Whitehead, my first two teachers insisted I play out of these John Thompson books, and they were dead within a year!” And I’ll never forget her reaction. She leaned down and said, “Now Jade, what would you like to play?” And the rest is history. Kay Whitehead is the reason I’m standing in front of you today.
You see, one of the first things you’re going to have to do to start moving more like a maverick is embrace endings.
Section 1: embrace endings
You’re going to have to believe now that something has to move on in order for you to break into your biggest possibility. Hopefully, no one has to die, but you get my point. You see, my new piano teacher had to decide right then and there to move on, to move away from how she usually taught piano lessons.
Your new mode of operation now will be to look to get rid of everything that has ever held you back. Kay Whitehead would have to throw out all the John Thompson books. She’d have to get rid of her preconceived notions of how children learned best. Now, I like to believe that she saw before her an opportunity to teach a rare child, but it’s quite possible she was worried her life was in danger, which is also good motivation. Either way, the principle remains.
We’re here at MDRT because we’re all obsessed with getting to whatever our next level is. The last thing we want to do is throw up our own blockades, and the quickest way to block ourselves is to start by saying, “I already know how to do that. This is how I’ve always done it.”
Mavericks take a new look at how they’ve always done things and intentionally decide to throw out the things that are no longer bearing new fruit.
I’m going to play for you now one of the pieces that I’m only able to play because Kay Whitehead took all the roadblocks out of the way. [audio]
Section 2: re-understand purpose
That was pretty good, right? No, really, like that was really good, right? I know. I thought I was really good, too — until I went to college. There I realized everybody and their grandma was good! And I’d believed all the lies, too, like the one about practice making perfect and the one about the cream rising to the top. Nobody tells you what to do when everybody’s cream!
Let me tell you about my industry. We have three demographics: On the one side, there are these really annoying little child prodigies. They are 5 years old and play the same music you just heard me play, except they wear these cute little puffy dresses with bows on the back and these silly little ponytails. They’re just so much cuter than the rest of us. And then on the other side are these old guys, I mean really old. These guys are like 150 years old. They didn’t just play Beethoven; they played golf with Beethoven! And they just won’t die and get off the stage. Then, in the middle, there’s me, an African-American female concert pianist.
Oftentimes, I would play to audiences where no one in the room looked like me or was the same age as I was. And I felt like every time I walked on stage I was competing with the invisible child prodigies and the living legends. The only way I knew how to survive was to compete. I’d play bigger, louder and faster than everyone else. I’d be Super Classical. That’s when I started programming these samurai recitals where I’d march on stage looking all serious. And you better not smile in the audience because classical music was serious business. You weren’t allowed to have any fun — no laughter, no moving to the music, no talking, no going to the bathroom. You were to just sit there and take it. And I’d sweat through my gowns during these marathon concerts to the point where, after a year or so of this, I was tired. I was losing the enjoyment of performing because I was so focused on impressing the audience. My purpose was to play the piano. My entire identity was caught up in this instrument, so every mistake, every memory slip cost me confidence in who I was as a person.
The big epiphany came when, in order to get through these samurai concerts, I started telling stories in between the music. Between you and me, I was just trying to catch my breath, but the audiences started falling in love with the stories. They’d line up after a concert to tell me how much they liked the music, but “Oh my gosh,” they would say, “I loved the Beethoven, but the story you told about the Beethoven reminded me of my grandma. She’s passed away now, but she used to bake cookies to Beethoven.” And I’m thinking, Really lady? You want to talk about cookies and your Mee-Ma? Did you not just see me play the heck out of that piano? But then the next person would tell me how the Chopin made them remember their own creative side and how now they were inspired to go unleash that in other areas of their lives. But do you know what? With all those compliments, I was offended. How dare they not focus on how awesome I was. I worked really hard to be awesome.
But what it took me a while to catch onto was what they were really saying. They were saying, “We came for one thing, but we got more than we were expecting.” They were telling me something was happening within them; how they saw themselves was beginning to shift because of something I’d said in between the music.
And all this time I thought my purpose was to play the piano. Listen, if you don’t remember anything else, remember this: Your purpose is not the thing you do; it’s the thing that happens in others when you do what you do.
Once I got outside of the music, I could see that the magic was happening in between the notes and in the hearts and minds of the people in the audience. I had to go beyond merely impressing my audiences to impacting them instead.
It’s time for you now to get outside of the music of money. Your purpose is not to be a financial advisor. Your purpose is to speak into lives in such a way that an alignment can occur between people’s finances and their dreams. You guide people who are ready (because, Lord knows, they must be ready) to have a new relationship with money to a place where they are in a position to leave a legacy. Because of that, you’re not financial advisors; you’re legacy lifters. Your words, your expertise and your guidance lift dreams and plans that have been grounded for lack of strategic planning.
You see, even having to understand purpose differently in this way requires some serious change. And let’s get something straight. I don’t believe that change is hard by nature. I don’t believe that we are meant to despise change or even to resist change. In fact, what I believe is that we are designed to look for, expect and embrace change. We’ve been changing since we were in the womb. Change is biologically a part of who we are as humans, and it should be an intentional part of our everyday lives.
Mavericks choose change on purpose. In my first example, I had to change. Change was a dire necessity in order to get through my concerts. I had to start speaking to give myself room to breathe. But obligation and necessity are only one side of change. Mavericks see the benefit of the change and then intentionally get out ahead of it because they see the possibility in it.
We change initially because our industry requires it; the survival of our businesses demands it. But after the changes, we agree with the adjustments being made or being pressed upon you, like those pesky Department of Labor changes we had in the U.S. a few years ago. Those changes were forced, but even though you were trustworthy before those changes, and you knew you were already working in the best interest of your clients, what if now they trust you even more?
I saw what was happening to my audiences because of this simple change of speaking to them. They were trusting me more now with the experience they came to receive. My purpose now was to make something happen within them in the minutes that they were being gifted to me in this concert experience. My purpose now was no longer locked up simply in the piano, just like your purpose now is no longer locked up simply in the role of being a financial advisor. Now, we decide to look for more possibilities to change before anybody asks us. That, my friends, is what we call “reinvention.”
Section 3: always be reinventing
Mavericks decide to always commit to reinventing. Mavericks are always looking for a possibility to grow into the next version of themselves, one that is going to be slightly ahead of the curveball, slightly ahead of required change. When they do this, they are one step closer to being more of an original.
That person you’re evolving into by way of reinvention should always be a bigger, bolder version of who you are now. In order to always be reinventing, you’ve got to adopt this new belief that you have no ending here on earth, that you are never finished, that you are never done becoming the next you, that there is always a unique change that only you can make, and not only is it going to change you, but it’s going to change everything about what you offer to the world.
How do we do that? Very simple. You’re going to decide now that you’ll boldly accept the invitation to reinvent every time it is presented. People say, “Jade, it’s easy to talk about change, but how do we really go about enacting change? How do we really go about getting other people to change?”
First, you start with something familiar. [audio]
See, you don’t even go to school for classical music, and you knew that was “Flight of the Bumblebee.” It’s a very familiar piece, and we made a connection with that commonality. You even felt smarter because you recognized it.
Whenever you’re trying to bring about change, connection will always need to precede the change. A lot of times I spend the majority of my time focusing on connecting to the audience I’m wanting to help transform.
And then, when you’re connected, the people whom you advise really believe that you’re there not just to impress them but to impact them, that you’re there to effect their legacies positively. When they truly believe that, they’re more ready now to try something they hadn’t thought of before, something a little riskier.
When you’ve connected more deeply with this more powerful sense of purpose, you can push yourself, or push others, to stretch beyond the norm and into something a little more unexpected, but something that guarantees delight and will yield really groovy, tangible results. [audio]
When you’ve got people on the edge of their seats truly believing now in what you’re capable of doing for them, they’re ready to take more of a ride with you.
So, once you’ve stretched your audience, the people who come to you for transformative experiences, once you prove that their connection to you is valuable, you then have room to really go outside the lines. It’s one thing to change things up a bit; it’s a whole other thing to remix it entirely. I believe not one of us was put on this earth to do exactly what somebody else has done before them. I believe that within each of us mavericks in the room is an opportunity to remix things in powerful ways, in ways that are going to yield life-changing results for the people connected to you.
I believe none of us is called to play “Flight of the Bumblebee” like every other little annoying prodigy that’s come before us. Why not intentionally decide to be the remix? [audio]
Wasn’t that fun? Yeah, easy for you to say; I’m the one up here doing all the work. You just got to see me reinventing in real time.
OK, listen, here’s a prophetic announcement. In about two weeks or so, you’re going to be presented with an opportunity to reinvent, an opportunity to do things differently. How many of you are excited about the possibilities that abound outside these doors of MDRT? You’re going to leave here after hearing about reinvention, and you’re going to get the chance to say yes to something that excites you and scares you a little bit. Would you say yes to that big moment if it came in two weeks or so? Who would say yes to that today, if you were to walk out these doors and opportunities to be the remix came flying at you? How many of you would say yes if that opportunity to be the remix happened to be right now, right this minute?
Wait a minute! What happened to all the hands? Did you see that? They just dropped. I spend the majority of my time speaking at events like this where we get all hyped up, and we say we’re ready to do something. We say, “Yes, we can! Yes, I’m ready!” We say, “We’re ready to be bigger than we have been before.” But the truth is, when the moment actually presents itself, we tend to shy away from it.
Funny thing about opportunity; did you know men and women tackle it differently? This isn’t chauvinist talk; there is research to back it. A woman sees an amazing opportunity, maybe it’s for career promotion, something she’s been wanting for a while now. The job will require 10 qualifications. She’ll have seven out of the 10 requirements and won’t apply for it. She will even go back to school and get a degree in the three things she didn’t have! The man? The man says, “Aw heck, three out of 10 ain’t bad!” And he’ll toss his hat in the ring because he instinctively believes that he can figure it out. He trusts that he has enough of what he needs, that this moment was made for him.
Now, I believe that many of you in here are more ready for your big moment to reinvent than you believe.
Maverick leaders lead audaciously and never from a place of fear. They trust that as they are building their team, they can choose people of different skill levels, different backgrounds, different abilities, different passions. They can even put them in the same room and trust that something awesome is going to break out. Maverick leaders don’t micromanage, but they wait until the people they’ve trusted with their business start working.
I think that’s such an incredible example of audacious leadership in action, and I believe I’m speaking to a room full of leaders. You wouldn’t be in the top 2 percent of your industry if you weren’t designed to lead. The truth is, we must first be able to lead ourselves intentionally on a journey back to where we came from. Why? Because so much of life has been about forgetting who we are in order to become who we want to be. I think that’s backward. We’re supposed to be running back toward the womb to rediscover who we were always designed to be. And then we run into parts of ourselves that we thought were separate from our work, that we hid away because we thought they didn’t fit. It could be your humor, your faith, your background. I dare you to start.
Section 4: embrace resurrection
We’ve gotten so good at living as different versions of ourselves, compartmentalizing ourselves. We’ve got a home version, work version, church version, club version. We’ve gotten good at compartmentalization, but we’ve also compartmentalized our effectiveness. What if the warmth of your home life, the focus and strength of your work life, the passion of your faith life and the joy of your club life (your recreational life) could go with you everywhere as one unique, absolutely irreplaceable version of yourself?
You want to decide now to look for every opportunity to bring all of yourself to every table all of the time, and we do that by first looking back. When you start to take the journey back, you’re going to find that there are many parts of you that you’ve laid down. You didn’t even notice when you laid your creativity at the door or your inquisitive nature or your ability to encourage or to tell stories. Whatever those things are, they must come back to life. You want to look for clues about who you’ve always been.
To lead effectively, as you build teams, as you look to recruit and retain talent, you want people who are innately attracted to what you are innately designed to offer. And the only way that can happen is if you decide now to bring more of yourself — more of who you are when you are away from business — to your business.
I got very curious and started looking back to see where my obsession with rhythm came from. It couldn’t be a fluke because it’s been so persistent. I found a picture of myself as a little girl playing on some African bongo. My father tells me I was playing along to an African drumming record by an ensemble called Olatunji. He played the album relentlessly. And even though I’d never been to Africa, never met the generations of ancestors who, for them, rhythm was a crucial part of their everyday lives, somehow I’d still embodied their passion for it, their skill for it, and it still manages to be a powerful part of my life today.
You want to start to look back now and investigate your background because there are hints in your background about how you’re designed to help people. Maybe you help them find their own rhythm. Are you designed to help people who got offbeat get back on track? Are you designed to help them get a steadier rhythm in their habits? Or do you need to help them speed up and be more intentional, or take more risk? Whatever it is you’re designed to do for them, only you can do it.
Section 5: mavericks embrace resurrection
You have to now believe that part of you must come back to life for you to reach your greatest heights. Early in my career, I’d forgotten parts of myself and intentionally left some parts offstage — my humor, my penchant for telling a good story, my faith, my curiosity, my ability to rap. Yup, that’s right. I’m a classical pianist who raps! Sounds like the two things don’t go together at first. But now that you know my story — the pianist who started speaking, then started adding rhythm, then started to speak rhythmically — it all makes sense. But the actual act of getting up and doing something completely unexpected in a completely unexpected setting requires you to do something so dangerous.
In the spring of 2014, I was invited to play at the world-renowned South by Southwest Music Festival. They invite all the best musical acts from all over the world in every genre — except classical music. So to catch their attention, I put on the application that if they picked me, I’d play the piano, make my own beats and rap on top of it. And guess what? I got in. Awesome, right? Wrong! Because at the time I wrote that application, I had never done any of those things — except play the piano. Here’s the breakthrough move. [audio]
Section 6: true mavericks set arbitrary deadlines to evolve
Friday, March 14, 2014, at 8:30 p.m. CST was my arbitrary deadline to evolve. Come hell or high water, I’d be a rhyme-spitting, beat-making, classical pianist who took her audiences on concert adventures that went from Rachmaninoff to rap if it killed me. But it didn’t kill me. It changed me. It changed everything. As wonderful as Kay Whitehead was, she’s the only reason I’m playing the piano for you today.
It’s going to be accepting all of those invitations to reinvent, all of those opportunities to bring all of yourselves to every table that will shift you into spaces you have no business being in. But, you’ll be impacting in those spaces anyway. Some of you are looking to be in some surprising, completely unrealistic places by the end of the year, am I right?
Well, then you’ll have to trust that you have the foundation in you to be the next you. You have the tools, or you’ll find the solutions. I promise you, so many of the tools you need for your next level — to be a better advisor, to be a better parent, to be a better leader — are already in your possession. But you simply haven’t picked a date yet, a date to activate yourself into that next version. Let me tell you, once you get there, once you experience what it’s like to be 200 percent next-level you, to be You 12.0, nobody could pay you to go back to being only two-thirds you. If you don’t believe me, connect me with me further, and I’ll convince you over the course of the next few weeks and months.
I’m going to end now with a song. Can I rap for you? I feel like we know each other well enough for me to show you this side of me. Yes? OK, so I know you guys are in the top of the financial services industry, but word on the street is that some of you are considering a big career change. Some of you, I hear, are thinking about becoming professional rappers. Since that’s the case, I want to give you two things you must do to be a successful rapper:
- You must write a song about how you’re the best in the game even if it’s your first day on the job.
- Then you must write the story of your life. Because when you get to the next level, you don’t leave yourself behind. You bring your story — even the painful parts, the silly parts, you bring the lessons learned from the misunderstandings, the stupid things people said, you bring your passion — and you definitely lead with your purpose.
I’m going to perform this piece for you called “Black Beethoven.” It’s the story of what it was like to show up in unexpected places doing unexpected things. Sometimes it confused people, and sometimes they said stupid things because they were confused. But, audacious maverick leaders, we don’t waste time taking offense; we take note. We dust our gowns and our tuxedos off and we keep it moving, all the way to impact!
On this journey to becoming the biggest, boldest version of yourself, I dare you to take note of moments to educate and inspire, moments to change trajectories, break stereotypes wide open and push people to be, believe and do bigger. As I finish with this performance, don’t let this be the ending spectacle of the closing keynote speaker. Let this be the physical reputation of what can break out within you, when you decide to bring all of yourself to every single table every single time.
Jade Simmons, known as classical music’s “No.1 maverick,” has repeatedly defied expectations, delivered riveting performances and innovated at every turn. One of the most versatile concert artists on the scene today, Simmons doesn’t simply play the piano to impress audiences. She uses the piano as an instrument for providing inspiration, information and entertainment to profoundly move people. Listed as one of Ebony magazine’s Top 30 Leaders under 30, Simmons’ impressive musical background and diverse cultural experiences have made her a pioneer and source of inspiration for her legions of fans.
