Is your small business in tune with the frequency of today’s world?
Not sure what we mean?
During this week’s episode of Do The Damn Thing, Shannon Mackey picks the brain of Bronkar Lee, a successful mindset coach and public speaker.
Bronkar reveals how innovation and creativity can make a huge impact in our lives by just utilizing some of the tools that we already have in our possession. This drive for success has landed him on many popular television shows.
But how did Bronkar get started and discover his new view on maneuvering through life’s detours? And how did this motivate him to help others thrive?
Be sure to watch our video now to find out how he did the damn thing!
Read the script:
Shannon: Hello everybody. I am so excited to award Bronkar Lee – our next person that we’re going to be talking to today – our HipCat Society Marketing with Love award for bold authenticity. Let me just tell you a little bit about this guy before he goes on because we are all going to enjoy that.
Bronkar is receiving the award for bold authenticity because we all know it takes courage to be truly ourselves and to put ourselves out there. There are so many different ways each one of us can accomplish this to the beat of our own drum.
Bronkar is so open about his life, his struggles, his wins, his love for mindset and consciousness, and most of all, his family. So becoming an inspirational speaker and a coach that has reached so many humans and so many hearts, we’re so grateful to have Bronkar on our virtual stage today and breathe a little bit of this greatness into our society and community. We award you for your marketing with love and bold authenticity.
And now that you’ve had this amazing award that we’ll be giving you, I want to just let our audience know who you are. You have been an amazing keynote speaker for the past 20 years.
A few of the stages that you’ve been on include TEDx, Google, Facebook, Disney, and GoPro. Go to his website… opens in a new window to Bronkar Lee website… and see the amazing companies that he has inspired and been a part of. And that has just really made him such a well-rounded person to reach our hearts and to reach the hearts of so many of his audiences.
Bronkar’s unique background includes touring Europe as a ringmaster to a world-renown circus, appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, starring in a Super Bowl commercial, and beatboxing with his son, which became a viral video with over 200 million views.
Bronkar also plays 42 instruments and counting. I’m sure he’s messing with their few more while traveling internationally and grabbing some really cool instruments along the way. Bronkar is also a velocity coach and the author of BAM: Bold Achievement Method.
Throughout all of these experiences and realizing his superpower, he married them together with education and entertainment. I think that’s just such a good lesson for all of us. How do we find out what our genius is and what our talents are? And instead of trying to be somebody else or doing something else, we need to really come to grips with how we can be absolutely amazing and serve our audiences, especially now in the world that we’re living in.
So, without further ado – Bronkar, I am going to zip it, just ask a few questions, and hear from the master.
Bronkar: That was a heck of an intro. I’ll see if I can live up to the expectation that is now set by all the viewers.
Shannon: Oh, you’ll exceed it. Just look behind you. How fun are you? Look at all those instruments. Look at that perfect t-shirt you chose for us.
I have a really super-duper important question that needs some serious attention before we start playing here. I need to know the story of the necklace that you are wearing on your website.
Bronkar: I’ve had on for a year and a half now. That is by far the longest I’ve ever had a piece of jewelry on in my life. It was made by my five-year-old son. He made it at a birthday party. I don’t know how it survived for a year and a half.
I don’t usually wear jewelry. It gets in my way. So, it has to be something functional for me to wear it. That necklace had my son’s energy in it when he made it for me, and so I kept it on. I got so many compliments on that necklace. When I was doing keynotes and things like that, I would always have my necklace out and showing, so I got a lot of compliments on that.
Shannon: Isn’t that funny, what brings us energy like that? As you said, it had his energy and his love in it. And that carried through with all of your accomplishments and what you were doing. That’s really cool because I think that that’s what we’re all trying to harness. It’s what gives us energy every day to do what we need to do to accomplish our passion, our mission, and everything else. So that’s kind of a cute story. Thank you for sharing that.
When people are asking us about marketing with love, we’ve been getting a lot of eyebrow raises and also a lot of excitement. It’s just a little bit different. Introducing that into business after having been in marketing for 22 years, people think it’s so cool because there’s an awakening to it.
But we always came back to this question: Why? And the answer is that we’re all humans. And then I saw your tagline: Instrumental Humans. Can you tell us a little bit about your tagline and what got you there?
Bronkar: Instrumental Humans is my business. I’m the founder and president of it. It’s really all about looking at our bodies, our minds, and our energy as an instrument, and then thinking about our internal instrument, our internal tuning, and what type of frequency are we vibrating at? Are we running really sharp? Are we running flat?
Think of a guitar or a stringed instrument. If you think of it as being too tight, then it’s sharp. It’s too tense. It’s too stressed. It’s too overwhelmed. It’s too anxious, right? Or it’s too flat where it’s too loose, too low, and too low energy. But if it’s just right – that Goldilocks effect – then it’s in tune. It’s vibrating at the right cycles per second. Then, if we are in tune, and we’re able to show up and play beautiful music with peers, coworkers, colleagues, family members – whoever we want to connect with in the world.
So the core of Instrumental Humans is viewing our bodies, minds, and energy as an instrument. And so, we need to ask ourselves, “Are we being instrumental humans in the world?” And ultimately, what that is about then, on a slightly deeper dive, is really managing our health, joy, and power. Having that in tune is key. Then, we need to morph into our joy, which is like a filtration system.
Do we have our gratitude glasses on? Are we seeing the world through the lenses of optimism, which is going to then manifest more joy in our lives, no matter where we’re at in the world?
And then, finally, our power. So health, joy, and then power. And power is ultimately how we put our energetic signature on life. It’s really how we show up and play that music with the rest of the world.
But it starts with the self. As we know, many great philosophers have said this. It starts with that self. Then it starts to radiate out. And then once we get to that place of being an instrument of influence or an instrumental human, then we’re truly radiating positive energy, which is going to make the world a better place.
Shannon: I love that so much because it’s such a neat way of thinking. Like, I’m just feeling a little out of tune, whether it’s the stress or the fear that’s kind of in front of us.
And what I think is encouraging is that we need coaches in life. We need those mentors because a lot of times, we don’t know why we’re out of tune or how to get ourselves back in tune. And as entrepreneurs and small business owners, we have to check ourselves first. We have to take care of our family. Then we have to take care of our team. Then we have to take care of our clients. There’s a lot on us to really show up.
And, the ultimate goal is to create a connection. If we’re out of tune, then we’re going to miss connections, or our connections are not going to be great. Tell me a little bit more about that and how that’s playing in the people that you’re helping right now.
Bronkar: So, ultimately, the first part of that answer is if we’re not in tune ourselves, then we’re going to create the opposite of harmony, which is disharmony or discord. So, when the vibrations aren’t sinking up and blending together, then they’re fighting. They’re lapping over. It’s math and science. It’s just like the vibrations aren’t lining up, and so it creates a cacophony of discord, which is what a lot of the world is operating in.
Outside, it’s very noisy, and there’s a lot of different opinions. It’s very polarized, and there are so many things going on. But, when we’re in tune, then we can radiate and broadcast the types of energies that we want to also attract to us. That’s why you and I are here having an interview. The people that we know that introduced us know the vibrations that we’re hitting. We’re hitting 440 cycles per second. That’s our tuning, so we’re in sync. So that’s the first part, the importance of that internal tuning so that we can project that beautiful music and create harmony as opposed to disharmony.
In Speaker Magazine, they were quoting me on the importance of utilizing different tools in order to build bridges of relatability with people, to build those connections. And that’s why I use music as my metaphor. Music is the primary performance tool that I use.
If I’m playing saxophone or drums or bass or guitar – whatever it is that I’m playing – I’m always consciously using it as a tool to build a bridge of relatability with people, even down to this shirt. The shirt says, “More Cowbell.” It doesn’t say some abstract musical tuning quote that nobody gets. This is a simple shirt that is designed to create a smile on somebody’s face.
If I’m ever playing an instrument, it’s always to build a connection. I’m not wanting to play some holier-than-thou thing that people are gonna want to worship me about. That’s not what I’m about at all. I want to play something simple that everybody can latch onto, that everybody can sing along with. If I start singing the song, “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” you might start singing along.
And, if I go, “Daddy Shark, doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo,” you get it. If I sing, “Happy birthday to you,” you’re going to sing along with it. These are all tools to bring people together to unify humanity. And so, when music is used, consciously engineered, and consciously played with clear intentionality, then it can be a powerful tool that transcends all barriers and builds that bridge of relatability instantaneously.
Shannon: So, this is really big. This is huge. What we’re trying to tell them is that we need to raise our vibration higher. We have this scale of energy – low energy and high energy. And if you don’t have that, then you’re gonna attract the same or lesser than, right? It’s a science. It’s numbers. We’re all vibrations. We’re all energy. So if you’re coming at it low, and stressed out, and in fear, then that’s what you’re going to get in your business and even as a human.
So, if you can come every day and figure out your brand intelligence and resonate that migration, then you’ll get the people that you love to do business with. And then your marketing is easy because you’re yourself, you’re authentic, and then you’re at this higher vibration. Every day you’re like, “How can I get myself up?”
For example, this morning, I was teaching my son. He’s 14-and-a-half. We’re sitting there, and we’re breathing, and I’m like, “Yeah, we’re going to make it a great day!” And, just like you would expect a 14-and-a-half-year-old to react, he’s like, “Mom, you’re so weird.”
Literally, every single human needs to do that every morning to check themselves. But it’s science. It’s humans. It’s weird energy and vibrations, and this is just what you taught us.
Bronkar: I think I just want to talk some more about this, cause that’s beautiful. The vibration and the energy isn’t weird. The only reason why it’s weird or taboo is that our society has made it that way.
If I were to choose to do something totally inappropriate right now that is not on par for elevating the quality of life or picking humanity up or rising the tide; you would cut this interview off. It comes down to the moment right now. I’m choosing to show up and to radiate. You’re choosing to show up and to radiate. So we’re radiating together and harmonizing. So, one plus one doesn’t equal two. It equals three because there’s you, there’s me, and then there’s the entity of the combination, right? That’s the math and the science, that harmonic collaboration there that creates another voice.
It’s just like a pot of soup. You bring all those ingredients together, and suddenly you have this delicious soup. It’s the same thing with us and raising that vibration.
Now, what does this really mean? These morning routines or morning rituals are important because we’re essentially doing reflection and projection. We’re time traveling. We’re creating a moment where we’re giving ourselves permission to pause. We pause the music, listen within, adjust the tempo, and then press play again.
Once we do that, then we’re able to time travel. We can reflect on yesterday. We can reflect on the past. And then we can say, “Okay, I was really proud of that thing that I did. I’m going to choose to recreate that and do it again tomorrow as I project in the future.” Or I’m reflecting, and I’m saying, “Ooh, that was not cool. I could have done better. I am going to improve. I’m going to choose to recalibrate there.” And now I’m going to project that into the future of the recalibration process.
So again, we’re bringing it into the present moment where we pause the music, listen within, adjust the tempo, and press play again. We’re giving ourselves permission to pause. We’re reflecting on the past, either by recreating or recalibrating, and projecting that in the future. So it’s simply checking out from the rest of the world to check in with the self so that we can retune and recalibrate our internal instruments first.
Shannon: I love that. That just makes me feel so good. That just recalibrated me. It gave me chills. Thank you. We all need that.
I would love for you to tell us a little bit of your story because life happens in the detours. Here we have this nice, handsome guy. He has all these instruments, and he’s so talented. It must be easy for Bronkar, right? He has this beautiful family, this cute kid, and all this stuff. But everybody’s not there, and everybody’s on their different journeys. So, how do you gain from wherever you are in your life and on your journey?
Bronkar: I’d like to reflect on the fact that you said you got the chills as I was speaking there. I call those truth bumps. And the reason they’re truth bumps is because something that I’m saying is resonating within you. It’s called sympathetic resonance.
It happens in music all the time. When one note is played, and something else in the world is tuned to that note, then it starts to actually vibrate. And so I believe that that happens with human beings, maybe through a word that someone says or a phrase through the English language of how the consonants and vowels are articulated.
Or through a particular tone. It could be the music that I’m singing, the melody that I’m singing, or the phraseology that I’m using. But depending on my tempo, something that I was doing resonated with you and created that sympathetic resonance within you, which I call truth bumps.
We are, as human beings, all musical beings. We’re not all trained musicians, but we are all hardwired for music. We walk in rhythm. We talk in rhythm. We do business in rhythm. We text in rhythm. We email in rhythm. We keep time in rhythm. We do business in rhythm. Motors operate in rhythm. Refrigerators run in rhythm.
It isn’t just an elite group of people that are trained musicians that are entitled to understanding music and being tapped into it. We are all entitled to tap into our internal rhythm. Our heartbeat, our breath, and everything that we do is rhythm and is music.
Even as we speak, looking at our bodies again. Just like a guitar, this is our soundhole. We generate these thoughts in our minds. We have this energy that we project out. It comes out of consonants, vowels and is organized in words that are in a language that we can comprehend.
But at the core of it, it’s really music. It’s really tempo. It doesn’t even matter what words I’m saying. It’s about the way that we’re saying it. And we can use this awareness and this tool in business.
Also, for any parents out there – is parenting the super-skill or what? There is no other skill that is anywhere near as complex as parenting because it’s always changing. So we’re forced to improvise with the jazz of life as our tiny humans develop. So, it’s infinitely complicated, with tons of sub-skills inside of the super-skill. But having that awareness of our internal tempo and what we’re broadcasting as an instrument makes a huge difference.
Everything that I speak about, everything that I coach people about, and everything that I keynote about are all stuff that either I have worked on and overcome, or they’re things that I’m still working on. I am not some perfect human at all because I have been down many detours in life. It’s just the process of embracing those detours.
Everyone has experienced this. For example, we’re going to the grocery store. And then, all of a sudden, you see that detour sign. You’re like, “What? No, they closed the highway! I don’t believe it.” And then you get rerouted. I don’t think there’s anybody on the planet that’s like, “Yes, a detour! It’s going to take me 10 more minutes to get there. I’m going to go on the shady back road. There are going to be lots of bumps. My car is going to get dirty. It’s just going to be super frustrating. Alright!”
But, if we can reframe that situation and say, “You know what? Now I’ve got an extra couple of minutes to listen to this podcast. I’m going to make a phone call real quick on my Bluetooth device. We can reframe that as a positive opportunity. We have 10 more minutes right now. We just got a little space carved there.
So, we can use that metaphor in our lives and say, “My plan was to go there, but then all of a sudden, this happened.” And I have thousands of stories that have developed from people that I’ve coached and worked with, and even from my own experience.
I’ll share one just to put it into context. Years ago in 2008, I went on America’s Got Talent. This was like a huge moment for me. I was so excited to be on the show. I was going to be famous. I was going to be this rockstar performer. And then I got totally Xed off the show. I absolutely failed. And I failed at the thing that I was supposed to be good at, the job title that defined me as this performer. I completely failed in front of not only celebrity judges, thousands of people in the room, millions of people in the world, but more importantly, in front of my colleagues, my family, my peers, my mentors, and my coaches. I had failed in front of them at the thing that I was supposed to be good at.
Now, my expectation for that show was very clear that I was going to win that show, and that I was going to be famous, and touring, and making money, and influencing people, and all of this stuff that didn’t happen.
So I went down this detour, and luckily I had an amazing coach, Brian Poyer, who changed my life. I’m still in touch with him, and he’s still my coach from a distance. He told me, “Look, little bro. Life isn’t a snapshot. Life isn’t a still photo. That one experience that you had was one moment out of billions in your life. Now that doesn’t define you, but you have an opportunity here. You have an opportunity to reach, stretch, and grow yourself based on this experience. What are you going to do with that information? What are you going to do with this opportunity? And quite simply, the choice that you make today is going to dictate the person you become tomorrow.”
And when he threw that at me, it resonated in this deep way where I realized that suddenly I have some power here. I have some control. I had been feeling powerless because I had just lost to the authority figures. The judges had not validated me. They said I wasn’t good enough. I gave them my power. But at that moment, it was time for me to take my power back. I needed to then take that experience and be catalyzed internally by that.
And so I rose to the occasion of the challenge. The same thing that I did on that show and completely failed with on America’s Got Talent, I then went back in the studio and refined it. That same piece took me to Madison Square Gardens, Super Bowl commercials, GoPro commercials, and The Tonight Show. And I’m not saying that to brag about all the things that I’ve done. I’m saying that because by my coach simply instilling that one phrase in me and giving me that perspective, suddenly he showed me that there was a possibility of reframing the situation and embracing that detour. My ultimate goal was just a little bit further down the road. I just had to take a detour to get there.
Shannon: And, you know what? There are so many detours right now. We have entrepreneurs who are pivoting, rebranding, restarting, and putting the gas on. And a lot of it’s scary. But just like you’re saying, it’s all about how you envision it. By helping individuals when it comes to reframing things, you have helped thousands of people on such a deeper level.
I think that anybody that really resonates with this interview, and needs that inspiration, then this is really going to help them. It’s just such a huge need right now in humanity, and that’s even why we’re launching HipCat Society from our 22-year-old niche marketing. We’re getting on the bike, and we’re doing some really brave things with my millennial children that are taking the lead.
There are a lot of scary things happening. But you’ve done the same thing. So, I’m really hoping people get to connect with you and reach out and learn so much more about you.
Bronkar: Thank you. I do too. I use all of my experiences as stories, metaphors, and examples. We see life as this macro transformation, but we forget that we can actually deconstruct it, unpack it, and make simple, achievable, micro choices and moments that last and lead up to that macro transformation. And so often, we overestimate what we can do in an hour, but we underestimate what we can do in a month or a year. If we just have that deliberate consistency.
Just like in music, patterns, and math – it’s all about consistency. It’s all about having tight beats. If you got that tight beat and you’re consistent every day, the transformation happens. You can look at it across the board.
I have a background in fitness as well. I was a hundred pounds overweight when I was an older teenager, and then I lost all that weight and got really obsessive in the other way. I started bodybuilding, became a personal trainer, and helped hundreds of people lose weight. That is one of the skills that I bring into my coaching, but it came from a series of choices that happened every single day.
Anybody that is ultra-fit or semi-fit or not fit or completely out of shape – it’s all coming from a series of choices. There are a few genetic things in there obviously at play. But most of it in my experience of working with thousands of people comes from the daily choices. For example, when we make that list before we go to the grocery store before we have the emotional impulse to eat the thing that isn’t good for us.
Our physical output comes from being deliberate and being consistent every day, even if it’s just two minutes a day. I do this thing because, as a dad, I have two young spirited boys, a five-year-old and a three-year-old. One of them’s a redhead, and he is the poster boy redhead. I call him my little red dragon. He’s a fireball. But, especially over the last couple of years here, with the boys being so demanding, I didn’t have time to go to the gym.
If we have sixteen waking hours in a day, then that’s approximately a thousand minutes. I can’t dedicate 120 of those minutes to getting dressed, and driving in the car, and parking, and going into the gym, and dealing with all the narcissism at the gym. I don’t have that time. I’ve got four minutes right now. The boys aren’t fighting. They’re plugged into something. Nobody needs anything. They’ve eaten. They’ve got clean clothes. They’re good. I’ve got four minutes. I’m going to do 20 pushups, 40 sit-ups, and 30 squats.
So, I’ve got yoga mats all around the house and dumbbells in obscure places. I always have to have something for them to plug into so that I can get my exercise in. But it’s not about these huge chunks of time that oftentimes people are looking for. If you take eight hours, and you deconstruct them, and you break that down into 30 short sessions, suddenly you have that consistency every day. And then after a week, a month, three months, and even six months, you see this transformation happen. The macro transformation always comes from those micro choices that we’re making on a consistent basis.
Shannon: I think we get overwhelmed, and there’s so much going on, but if we make these few little steps today – whether it’s our health, whether it’s doing four minutes of pushups, we can get inspired to be great.
Even in business, some get really big dreams, and they get motivated to thrive but forget to take care of themselves. So just put your sneakers out, even if you don’t use them. Even within business, make one phone call. Make two phone calls. Little by little, it does add up.
I just really appreciate that because I’m personally working on that every single day. I’m the same as you. Being in marketing for 22 years, you think, “Whoa, Shannon! Your company looks so cool.” And we’ve done some amazing things, but it’s just like, “Hey man. We put on our sweat pants one leg at a time.” We have our struggles, and we have our good days and our bad days.
My daughter is 25, and she was born on the 4th of July. We call her our little firecracker because that girl is crazy. But now she’s our producer for all of our videos, and just nutty, and just perfect for it. We found her genius. And that’s what we want to find within all of us. I really appreciate you inspiring us today, Bronkar.
Bronkar: Thank you so much!
Please like us on Facebook… opens in a new window to Hipcat Society Facebook page…, follow us on Instagram… opens in a new window to Hipcat Society Instagram page…, and connect with Bronkar on his website at www.bronkar.com… opens in a new window to Bronkar Lee website… or on his Instagram page… opens in a new window to Bronkar Lee Instagram page….
