The Master Connector and Why the Biggest Heart Wins: Jayson Gaignard Talks World Class Networking

Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart and we're here to interview the game changers, the future makers, the co collaborators and creators who are here to collaborate with one another towards a better future for all of us. Enjoy the show. We've got a great guest coming up for you right now. Welcome to Make More Marbles. My name is Brad Hart, and today I am freaking stoked. I'm kind of pumped. I'm going to do a little bit of a happy dance because I got the master connector himself, Mr. Jason Gaynor on the show. What's up, Jason? How you doing, dude?

I don't know if I can keep up with that energy. I have to stand up and start dancing around as well. I don't have enough cord. Let's do it.

Oh, man, I'm so, so grateful to have you on the show. If you guys don't know Jason, I mean, he's got a great book that changed my life, Mastermind Dinners. You should check it out. It's really a wonderful book. But more importantly, he does one of the best, most intimate events, and all my friends rave about it. It's called Mastermind Talks, and once a year, Jason gets 150 people Dunbar's number in a room and brings amazing speakers and just makes it custom and bespoke for every single person at the event. Jason could tell us a little bit more about it, but I'm just fascinated by the level at which he operates both from a relational aspect, but also from an integrity aspect and just getting it done and adding that value to everybody he meets. He's an incredible human. I'm just so grateful to have you, Jason. Thank you.

No, I appreciate it, man. Like I said, fan of yours as well for quite some time. And we share many mutual friends who, unfortunately, we haven't had an opportunity too many times actually get to know each other and see each other. We see each other in passing at events and those kind of things. So, yeah, looking forward to deepening our friendship in the future for sure.

Yes, sir. And we get an opportunity to do that a little bit right now.

We do. Very lucky.

Jason. Let's start from the beginning, right? Let's talk about your hero's journey that has created the wonderful man that I see before me today. What are some of the things that you've learned and struggles as you overcome to be where you are today?

Well, I don't know if I'm much of a hero yet, but.

But the movie's not over yet.

As of right now, no. I'M still midway through, but yeah, I mean, in essence, I dropped out of high school, started a service based business. I realized that service based businesses can be a little difficult to scale. So I pivoted into an online product business, which I grew to about $7 million a year over four years. With nodes on investments, I was living the whole four hour workweek. That's what I was pursuing, at least at the time. I was traveling the world, making a ton of money. With all that money and all that free time, I start to ask myself questions like, why am I here? Will I be remembered? How many people show up to my funeral? And I was not happy with the answers I was giving myself. And around that same time, I discovered I was earning 22 times the national average income. And in most business circles, that would be celebrated. But for me, it was bothersome because I was like, I was not 20, I'm not 22 times happier than the average male. I'm not 22 times healthier. At the age of 23, actually had kidney complications because of stress because I had a failed business partnership. So I realized that money and happiness scale very differently. And you know, after being an entrepreneur for seven years, it really felt like I built a business I hated to enable me to buy things I didn't need to impress people I didn't like. And I felt like I was stuck on that hamster wheel. So ultimately I decided to get out of that business. Now, I could have sold it, but it would have required me to stay in that business for probably another year to position it for sale and then hand it over and that kind of stuff. And I'm the type of individual that once I have clarity around something or once I see or have awareness or I see the truth or my truth, I can't sit on the sidelines. I have to like, make a decision and move in that direction right away. So I decided to scale that business down to zero. And it was a smile because it was like a death of a thousand paper cuts. I automatically detached from the business. I had B level players in the business who had C level players under them. So the culture in the business wasn't all that great. There was probably theft going on. I didn't care. I just wanted out. And on the way down, two things happened that were beyond my control. That landed me a quarter million dollars in debt in August of 2012. There's a saying that one door, one door closes, another one opens. But it sucks to be stuck in the hallway. That was a very dark hallway for me at the time and I didn't know what I was going to do next. But a few months later a friend of mine posted on Facebook that he had a ticket or sorry, she had a ticket, an extra ticket to go see Seth Godin in New York. And I've always been a big fan of Seth's work, but I've never had an opportunity to see him kind of live in person. And I had no other obligations at the time. So I took advantage of that ticket. I got there and turns out the theme of it was the connection economy and how there's huge value connecting like minded individuals. And at the time, again I felt very kind of isolated as an entrepreneur. So I started these things called Mastermind dinners where I'd invite eight entrepreneurs out for dinner with core focus of connecting them. And the first one I did, I almost canceled two hours prior because I'm like, nobody's gonna see value in this. They're gonna think I completely wasted enough time. But thankfully I couldn't cancel. People are always already on their way into the dinner. It's out of integrity. I couldn't be like, ah, dinner's off. So people showed up and it turned out to be a big success. I mean, conversation didn't skip a beat for four and a half hours. And I got clarity that connecting people was something I want to do to some capacity for the rest of my life. Not necessarily as a business because I wasn't monetizing these dinners. I mean, I mean, yeah, I was, I was paying for them out of pocket. People thought I was crazy for doing them. But for me, the way I rationalized at least at the time, was the bank could take my car, they could take whatever measly assets I have left, but they can't take my relationships. Investing my relationships to me was the safest investment I could make. And I still think the same is true today. So kept on doing the dinners, then had an opportunity to do an event with Tim Ferriss who is somebody in 2011 and this is late 2012. I'll give you this little story, I don't always include it, but it's an interesting one. Tim was coming out with a book called the Four Hour Chef and he was a two time New York Times bestseller up until that point. And obviously the expectation from the publisher is that the third book is going to be a bestseller as well. Well, three weeks before the book came out he discovered that he was going to get banned from all retail distribution. Barnes and Noble, Walmart, everybody, Costco. And the reason is because he was the first big name author to publish through Amazon. And Barnes and Noble specifically want to make an example out of him just because Amazon was becoming too big in the publishing space and Tim is one of the best. I was going to say book marketers, I know, but just marketers in general. What he did was he did this book bundle deal that if he bought five books, you get additional resources. If you bought 25 books, maybe he'd do a webinar. He had this Hail Mary package. They didn't think anybody would buy that. If you bought 4,000 books. He'd do two speaking engagements. And at the time, I was one of the first people to see this offer and he was only doing one of them. I thought of a friend of mine named Scott who does these big events in Canada. They do nine events a year. They have thousands of people that show up at these events. And I said, you know what, dude, this is a great opportunity for you. Because Tim doesn't speak that often, he's never spoken in Canada, and you can easily move the books the minute I click send on that email. Like this is actually a great opportunity for anybody. So I ended up reaching out to Tim directly and I said, you know what, I'll take the package. The tricky part was again, not only was I quarter million dollars in debt, I had to come up with $84,000 in three days.

And.

I never raised money before in my life. All my other businesses were built on credit cards. Plus I also had the limiting belief from my dad is like, never ask anything from anybody. He was a very proud man. But I called three friends that morning. The first one said, sounds interesting, you know, can you come back to me with numbers? And I'm not a numbers guy and this is an industry, I don't know. So I'm like, I'll try my best, but probably I'm not going to be able to come up with anything. The second guy said, sounds awesome. Let's start a business together. 50 50. And I was like, that sounds wicked. I have one more person to call. I called the third person. He said, come to my office tomorrow morning and pick up the check. Didn't ask about really much about the opportunity of the business. Didn't talk about repayment terms and I didn't question him. I just like, I'll see you tomorrow morning. Exactly. And I just, I picked up that check the following morning, wired the money to Tim and that's how I had Tim as a speaker. Ultimately, I never thought I'd be in the event space. But for me, I saw as a chance for what I do in these dinners on a larger scale. And I never thought I'd make a business out of it either. I was just planning to do one event and sell off the other. Speaking engagement. Because I'm like, if I have one event, at least that gives me something to focus on for the next four to six months until I figure out what my next business will be. But I always say that ignorance, confidence, and hard work can go a long way. And because of that, the event turned out to be unconventional because I didn't know the rules of how to do an event. Yeah. And then, yes. I mean, we did our first event. It turned out to be a huge success. So we decided to do a second one to prove that the first one wasn't a fluke. Second one was a success as well. So we just wrapped up our fifth one in Carmel in May, and we have our 2018 event in September, which I can't announce the location yet because our alumni don't know. But. So, yeah, so that's how we got. I got into the community building space and the event space, and that's my story in a nutshell.

That's beautiful and crazy because that's exactly what happened to me with Tim. Almost exactly to a T. So go back a little bit further. We meet at a gym in 2009, just randomly on my lunch break. I'm out working out, and I'm like, oh, that's Tim Ferriss. Hey, Tim Ferriss. For like, 15 minutes, he's like, you know, really cool and affable. He made some really nice quips. He was like, you know, I'm 14 minutes into my 15 minutes of fame and four hour workweek phenomenon. Pre four hour body phenomenon.

Sure, sure.

And one of the things that Tim did that I was really grateful for and kind of showed me who he was is at the very end, he came up to me and he said, hey, listen, it's really chatting with you, and I hope we get to see each other again in the future. And he didn't need to do that. We'd already finished the conversation. He could have just went on with his life. But I thought that was a really classy move. So, you know, I didn't really keep in touch with him. But then the Four Hour Body came out and he had this land rush where he would give away all these. You do all the different trips and books where I had an opportunity to go to Africa with Tim Ferriss for 10 days and you know, I purchased the books and I got the trip.

Did you do it really?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I did it.

No way. I didn't know that.

Here's the funny part.

So this is 2011.

I call up Charlie Hone, who's a mutual friend of ours, and sure, sure, Charlie was Tim's director of special projects at the time. So, like, Charlie, what's the deal with these trips? He's like, oh, you know, he's getting a lot of requests, honestly, but he just doesn't want to spend time with any of these people. But he's met you, and you guys are cool, and you're both from Long Island. I think he could have a lot of fun. What trip do you want to go on? So I was like, well, Africa sounds amazing. I'd never gone there before. So we ended up going to Africa with Lila, Jena, and samisource. So it's Charlie, Tim and I, and lila jannat@samisource. And I just went to their gale on Thursday, by the way. So I've known Lila for many years now, too, and she's doing amazing things in the world, helping a lot of people lift out of poverty through giving work. Anyway, so long story short, I took physical delivery of 100 copies of the four hour body, which has literally blocked my entire garage coming in. The UPS guy's, like, cursing under his breath, breath. And I ended up donating 900 copies to. To Books for America, which is a.

You bought a thousand copies?

I bought a thousand copies.

Okay. I thought you said you bought 100. I'm like, that's the deal of a century. 100 copies to go to Africa.

Oh, yeah. So it was like 16 grand or whatever it was, and I took away 100% of it. But that's so funny. That's the way I connected with Tim is the same way you connected and you went big. 84 grand is a lot, you know.

For anybody who's listening. He doesn't do those book bundles anymore. I've got a lot of friends that are like, hey, I know he's coming out with, you know, Tribe of Mentors. Is he doing that book bundle thing? I'm like, no, he can send a tweet now. And his book is in, like, the top 50 of Amazon, so he doesn't need those book bundles, but that's hilarious. I did not know that.

Yeah. And, I mean, we've kept in touch a little bit over the years, but he's obviously very busy, so.

Sure, sure. That's amazing, dude.

To be able to spend that much time around somebody who I really admire. You know, I definitely bought that four hour work week line, hook, line and sinker, man, I read that book seven times and it changed my whole idea about what life could be. And for that I'm always going to be grateful. So Tim, thank you for giving us both a shot. And you may never listen to this, but we do appreciate it.

The amount of impact he's had on entrepreneurs is incredible. Like absolutely incredible. Whether they were already existing entrepreneurs and completely shifted and shaped their mindset like he did with me. I mean the one fables to fortune story like the Mexican fisherman in the book changed everything, changed my life. Or friends that have started businesses specifically because they read the book. I have a ton of friends that have like seven, eight figure businesses now because they read the book back in, you know, 2010, 2012, 2015. So he's made a huge impact. So yeah, he's a, he's an awesome dude.

So Jason, now that you're five events in to mmt, can we talk about kind of how the event has evolved and what you'd like it to continue to evolve to be in the future? Like what's your. I know there's, it's always a moving target, but what do you, what is your next highest and best goal or mission with that?

Yeah, it's actually. I have more clarity on it now than I, than ever. I mean for me, I mean there was a vetting process in place for Mastermind talks. I didn't know necessarily. So there was a vetting process in place of Mastermind talks. Not because I want to build community, but because I didn't want to serve people I didn't like. And the byproduct of that was there's this incredible community that kind of came out of it. But initially we were trying to be almost like the TED talks for entrepreneurs where we'd have 15 speakers. And the one thing we did is that we, we wouldn't pay the speakers. The best talk is voted by the audience would win $25,000. So we'd have these big name speakers compete with these no names and all that kind of stuff. And it was great. But the one thing that kept on coming up time and time again, I remember this, the first event, end of day two, I'm on stage doing Q and A with a guy with a billion dollar business and I'm in the room doing the Q and A. And then the other, other room like the runs parallel to the room that I'm in is like this kind of almost like it's a lounge. It's like a lobby area. Well, half the people are in that room and they're talking so loud and like connecting that I can't even hear the Q and A I'm doing with the guy on the stage. And you know, I always say, like, people may come to Mastermind talks for content, but we got some coming back year over year as community. So we've really shifted towards the community side of things over the years, and we're really doubling down on it. And I mean, and there's been a ton of signs over the years. I'm not good at a lot of things, but one thing I am good at is paying attention to feedback, taking it seriously and taking action on it. And also mastermytalks. Thankfully, we've created a culture of feedback where people feel comfortable to kind of share what they truly feel and those kind of things. So, you know, our first event again was very content focused, very speaker focused. Same second event, but every year we start to lean more into the peer to peer model, more into community. And when we did our first event, we had 15 speakers. 10 of them came back as paid attendees the following year. A lot of people in the audience are thought leaders on other stages. So for me at this point, like, if I could pull down the essence of Mastermind talks to anything, it's great people, great food, great experiences in a beautiful setting with learning intertwined throughout the event. Because my belief is that the best learning doesn't happen in the conference room. It happens over dinner or it happens over yoga session in the morning and those kind of things. And, you know, if you want to listen to Tim Ferriss speak, Tim's great guy and a brilliant man. It makes very little sense to invest four or five days out of your calendar to sit passively in a room listening to a speaker when you can listen to that on a podcast or listen to that on a TED talk. So, yeah, we've shifted significantly from content to community. I mean, we spend less than 90 minutes a day in the conference room generally. So the rest of the time is a lot of peer to peer stuff. A lot of community building, a lot of experiences. So that's the. That's the event in a nutshell.

Yes. This idea of scaling interactions that are deep and meaningful and intimate. Right. That's something I struggle with myself. And I guess my next best question for you is, what have been some of your learnings about the best way from a process standpoint or a Workflow standpoint to consistently be able to create those experiences and also that community that you guys thrive with. Right. And having that stay consistent because when you're not immersed in it, it's really easy. So like, you know, out of sight, out of mind.

Yeah. So how we keep the community kind of going and throughout the year. So that's actually. Yeah. I mean, one thing we've been good at. We do have a close Facebook group and that's worked incredibly well. And a lot of other events have close Facebook group. I've never seen one remotely as active as ours. And that's not coming from a place of ego. It's just truth of the matter. Like the people in our community really invest into the community and the relationships throughout the year. And I've seen, to me, when you have that live experience and like a really cool live experience for three days and then you pull those relationships online, you can usually kind of keep that going for a while. Now you can't keep it going forever. That's why we have a cadence that like, we have. We pull those relationships online and then when our next event happens, we remove people who aren't allowed to come back or who aren't coming back and then infuse the new people. So we've kept this community going and it's worked. Yeah, it's worked really well. Really, really well. Plus, we do. I mean, the thing is, I do a lot as well as far as investing in the community. Like, I did lunch with somebody from the community today. I was in Park City, Utah with Garrett Gunderson, who was doing an event. He's an MMT alumni. We had another eight or nine alumni in Redondo beach. For Taki Mara, who's another alumni. He has his own little program. He had nine alumni there. So they took a photo and that kind of stuff. So we do. My wife and I do a lot of investing into the community when it comes to our time. And then other people are always kind of meeting up behind the scenes and those kinds of things. But there's a culture there. I mean, that's the biggest shift I've had in the last two years is that up until recently, when people talk about culture and business, I've always. My eyes would kind of glaze over because I'm like, I have no desire to ever build a big business ever. Like, I wanted like a small kind of Navy seal sized team. I don't want a big team at all. But a friend of mine's like, well, you have a culture. It's like Mastermind talks like the community is a culture. And I'm like, you know what, that's actually, that's actually a really valid point. And I've come to realize like how you manage 150 employees at a business and how you manage 150, you know, people at an event or in a community is identical. Like, it's absolutely identical. Like you need, you have core values in place and you need to hire and fire based on those core values. And there needs to be, you know, when you're considering somebody for, for a company, the first thing you consider them on isn't based on their skill set, but their core values. Do they match the, the core values of the community? And if they don't, they're not a good hire. Same thing with us. If somebody doesn't meet our core values, I don't care if they have a hundred million dollar business, they're not a good fit for the community. So looking at it from that perspective, that's given us the ability to really kind of double down on the community and make those relationships kind of deepen and keep it going on throughout the year.

And I really like what you talked about and you actually answered one of my questions with that was you kind of remove people from the community over time that you feel like aren't going to be invited back or aren't a good f based on, hey, now I've actually spent time with this person, I just don't feel like he's a good fit or she's a good fit. And then you infuse the new members that are more aligned with those values. So from a team perspective and from a community perspective, the value shine through. Is that right?

Yeah. I mean, our philosophy historically was that when you have success in this industry, the common strategy to scale is bigger events or more events. And neither of those things we want to do. Instead of scaling in size every year, we scale by raising the caliber of people in attendance and scale by raising the price point. So just because you were invited last year and you came last year, doesn't mean you're allowed back per se. And we would only allow a third of the people to come back year over year for the first three years. Then we started allowing, yeah, a third and then now we allow half. And I think it's important because for those that are alumni and they're coming to their fifth or sixth event, we have a lot of people that have been with us since the beginning. There needs to be that infusion of new people or Else clicks start to kind of form. But at the same time, it's important that you don't have, like, a turnover of, like, 90% and only have, like, 10% old people, 90% new people, because there needs to be. The old people carry this culture and this tone with them that is priceless. So for us, the current makeup we have is 50, 50. 50% new, 50% renewals. And that's the way we've kind of balanced it, and it's worked really well for us. So.

Awesome. And then, obviously, you're gonna have people that are relatively butthurt about not being included. How do you kind of deal with some of the relational aspects? Like, let's say you really do value a relationship with somebody. It just. You had to make the cut somewhere. That person is upset. Maybe they don't make a big deal out of it, but you could tell they're upset. Do you do anything on the back end to just kind of remind them that, hey, I don't hate you? It's just.

It's tough. It's. It's tough on many levels. Like, it's tough in a sense that, like, I have a hard time keeping track of who's interested. Like, I have a lot of friends who are interested in coming to MasterMyTalks, but they don't always remember. And, yeah, I don't always kind of remember. And then there's also, like, space issues. Like, a lot of people know. Usually what I try to do is say, like, you know, we can't accommodate you this year, but we'll put you on the consideration list for next year. Problem is, we've had 16,000 entrepreneurs apply for mastermind talks since our inception in 2013 for an event that's capped at 150 people. So it's not. The selection process is definitely the hardest thing. And we have a new way of vetting, I guess you could say. I mean, the old vetting process worked really well for us, which was literally, it was like, the least scientific method of all, but it worked beautifully, which was when I had an interaction with somebody at the end of that phone call, at the end of that meeting, I'd ask myself, would I want to have dinner with this person? If the answer was no, I didn't care how successful they were. I wouldn't have them at. I wouldn't have them at the event or part of the community. And that worked well for the first couple years. You know, they had to be an entrepreneur, and they had to be somebody who was fascinating on some level. But now we have 150 people who are entrepreneurs and fascinating. So what is that next kind of evolution? So our next evolution to that and something we started implementing last year, we're really starting to lean into this year and it's going to take a few years. But my own personal goals as an entrepreneur, just as a human, is to I'm a firm believer that and I got this from Joe Polish, all problems can be solved with the right peer group. And my goal is to build the best peer group for seven and eight figure entrepreneurs. So the way you do that is to me the whole Jim Collins viewpoint of like right people on the bus. So for me I'm mapping out like what are all the potential pain points you run into as entrepreneurs are the type of people you need in your life to not only solve your problems but also help you take advantage of opportunities. So I basically am building out a map of people like so that ultimately when you come to MMT or you join the community, you tap into a peer group that meets all your wants and needs you could ever imagine. So if you need somebody, you need help with, you know, partnerships, we have a guy that has great successful partnerships. Our culture, we have two or three people in that space if you need some help with a book. Tucker Max is a three time number one New York Times bestselling author. So that's kind of what we're building out which will be, it's going to be again a hard process, a difficult process. But my goal again is like three years down the road when people join, they're going to tap into a network that meets all their wants. They're in essence outsourcing their networking to us.

Yeah, and that's an issue that I also had and I know you're a little bit better at it than I am. So I'm going to ask a selfish question is how do you manage all of those relationships? I know you have a big spreadsheet. Do you have a CRM system? Is it super low tech? Is it getting more high tech? Are there other people on your team that you feel like you can outboard brain relationships to or not? And why those questions I have around that because it's just, it's such a big problem to solve in your 24 hours in the day or.

Sure, yeah. So a couple things. One is here. Let me share a story. So a friend of mine, you know, John Levy, influencer dinners. No, so phenomenal guy wrote a book called 2am Principle. But basically he was telling me, I think was him he was telling me a story once about museum curator friend of his out of New York that in his mid-30s, was starting to lose his memory. And he would see the top, like, neurologists in the city to try to figure out what's happening. And the doctor sat down with him. He's like, well, what's one of the cues you're using to, you know, believe that you're losing your memory? And he went through a few. And he's like, you know, I also. I don't. I don't remember names like I used to. And the doctor said, okay, how many people will you meet on average in a year? And the guy's like, I don't know, maybe three to 4,000. The doctor's like, that's the problem. The human brain, to what you said, Dunbar's number. You can only have 150 stable social relationships. Some can have a little more. It's based on IQ level, but some a little less. But it averages out about 150. And I think a lot of us are under this illusion that we can have 5,000 Facebook friends or we can have 20,000 LinkedIn contacts, and we can manage it. So to me, the key to a strong network is subtraction and not addition. I look at my network almost like the Spartans. It used to be said that one Spartan was worth several men in another state. So that's the way I treat it, ultimately. So I'm always looking for ways or reasons to eliminate people or kind of refine that list because there's an opportunity cost there, right? When I'm connecting with somebody who is, you know, a B or C person on my list, it's taking away time. I could be investing in an A level relationship. And A level does not mean somebody successful, somebody who has X amount of Twitter followers and none of that kind of stuff, but just a better quality relationship. So I'm in a prioritization phase of my life. I mean, I think I used to always say, like, subtraction and not addition is the key to a strong network. And there's also a quote by Warren Buffett that the difference between successful people and very successful people is a very successful people say no to almost everything, Right? And I treated that almost the same thing with relationships. But you have to say yes to everything before you can say no to anything, ultimately. So I did the. I spent my time doing the networking rounds and going to events. And that's the same with you. I know I've seen you a lot of them as well. And you Know, I'm at a point now where, again, refining and reducing is, is my kind of core focus. I have little desire to meet more people. My desire is really to kind of go deep with the relationships that matter at this point in time. So, yeah, subtraction and not addition is a huge point for me.

You're a couple years ahead of me on that. But I just recently entered the stage of my life where I'm like, I'm done being the yes and I'll do everything Guy, and I'm starting to be the no and here's why, Guy. You know, I'm trying to be cognizant of not hurting people's feelings. It's just like explaining to them like, this is my life now, this is life I chose. I'm not upset. This is what I wanted. But now I got to really make choices and get more clear on that. So, like, I've settled down. I'm not traveling the world anymore for two years. I got this house in San Diego and we're really getting deep on the thing, right? Here's the mission and here's what we're going to do, and here are the people that align with that mission and don't. And like you said, you only have so much time, so you got to make the choices. And it's not because you hate anybody. It's just because, you know, I have a lot of issues around belonging. So that comes up for me a lot. And I hate to make people feel like they don't belong because I struggle with that my whole life. So when that shows up for me, I'm like, I'm doing the thing that I hate as much. But now I realize, like, oh, wait a second, hey, put on my adult hat. I'm not a five year old kid anymore in the swing set, you know, trying to fit in. I'm an adult who has to make priorities and choices for the best and highest good, including himself.

Sure, yeah. No. And I'm a people pleaser by nature. I mean, I did a behavioral profile test with a friend of mine named Steve Sisler, who's just a genius at this stuff, of breaking down disc profiles and those kind of things. And he's like, your profile is all about being liked. You want to be liked. That's why it's so hard for me when people reach out and that kind of stuff to not be super nice and not give them my time and not hop on a call and give them advice and those kind of things. It's difficult, but I mean, Again, at least at the point we're at, and not everybody can relate. Again, you. You do have to do the work. You do have to kind of meet everybody.

It was about 10 years of the first phase of being the reach, a.

Point where, again, the difference between successful and very successful people is very successful people say no to almost everything. So.

And that's just a huge thing. It's like, what life do you want, right? Do you want to have your message die inside you? Do you want to have your best work done inside you? And that's the piece that I was kind of hinting towards earlier is like, who can I train up to think like I do? And that's a really hard question to answer. So I think it's like the Spartans, right? It's like finding those people and aligning with those people that already have that capacity, and then just flag and banner and mission.

One thing that clued in for me kind of recently, and I've always kind of known this unconsciously, but really making a conscious effort at it, is connecting with connectors. Meaning, like, for example, I live in a city called Waterloo, which I don't have a great kind of network in, and I can do dinners and meet all these people and all that kind of stuff, or I can. There's two guys in the city that know everybody. I'm much better off investing in those. Those two relationships and becoming their best friend, because I know through them I'll have access to everybody in the city. So basically, again, thinking of Dunbar's number, Instead of just 150 kind of random people, I have 150 connectors in different industries. Like one guy for tech, one guy for, you know, you got a guy who knows all the guys, health and those kind of things, then that's a way to have a small network with a big reach.

There's a hub and spoke model there. I think that's what you're talking about. The connectors are the hubs. You know, I'm one in my little niche and you're one in your niche. And, you know, I'm sure there's, like you said, one in tech and one in finance and one in this and one in that. That if we all just kind of are part of the same little tribe, right? Or you could be the Nick Fury for this. Like, there's all these Avengers running around trying to be superheroes on their own, and you just got to bring them this banner and Nick Fury and be like, hey, guys, you're Avengers now. They'd be like, oh, super rad. We're in this event. Let's go save the world.

Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yes. That's. That's. I mean, if it's still a struggle for me. And in all honesty, sometimes I just find myself too thin and I have to kind of pull back and reassess and follow my own teachings. So. But yeah, that's. That's what's been working for me.

That's a great question to lead into is how do you recharge when you feel like you're hitting the overwhelm button? What shows up for you? How does it show up? And then how do you reset?

I think habits falling back into healthy habits is a way for me to recharge. I'll give you an example. You kind of talked about traveling and how you've curbed that same thing with me. In July, I had no travel plan for August, and that was going to be the first month in, like, three years. I had no travel by the end of August. I did five trips in that month. And September, I just hit a wall. I'm like, I can't do this anymore. Especially my daughter was starting to go to school and those kinds of. So I clear my calendar from September to February. The only trip that I had planned was last week, and we're mid November now. So that's been a pretty big kind of shift for me. And the one thing I did was I kind of wrote out, like, all the healthy habits. I want to incorporate them in my life again, like yoga and those kind of things. Getting in the sauna daily, those things. And I have a checklist. Basically. Yesterday was a travel day. One of the. Again, the only travel day in the last couple months. And I didn't click one green thing on the checklist. Everything was spread across the board. I wasn't able to do anything that really kind of recharges me or makes me happy. So, yeah, that app, which is called Way of Life, which is. It's been great again, to, like, you can kind of fool yourself to, like, how much on track you are or how you're not. But being able to kind of check in every day and putting in the app has been super helpful. But recharging, yeah, falling into those. Those habits. I'm lucky that, like, people see me as a super social guy and I am on some level. But any. Both extremes. I can go. I could be super social for a little bit. I'm not like a Dan Martell. Dan can go like social for the rest of his life. I'll do like dinner, after dinner, after dinner. I'm not like that at all. I can go super social and then I need to go back and recharge. And we live on like 30 acres so it's easy. Like I don't know who my neighbors are. So like it's easy to recharge back at home. Home. So that's, that's been a kind of focus of mine.

And how has your family supported you or how do you support your family? How do you keep the family unit going when there's so much going on? Has it just been eliminating the travel in favor of that or has it been because I don't have a family yet, I'm not married, so I don't know what, what other levels of, of extra things and plates to spin that, that I have ahead of me. So I guess it's just a really good question to understand, you know, what that looks like.

Yeah, well, I try to take the family and wherever I go, like Probably I'd say 70% of travel, I make it family oriented. So for example, in July I had to go to a two day workshop in Laguna beach and then realized that Disneyland was around the corner. So my wife took our daughter to Disneyland for like three days while I went to this workshop. And then we added like, you know, buffer day on either end of the trip. So I usually try to incorporate family into that. My wife is involved in the business so that helps a little bit with the buy in of like the travel and long hours and those kind of things. And it's one of those, I think it's. Dan Martell did a talk, actually a mastermind talks year one called Balance is. And his philosophy, which I believe is true and I've heard from a lot of other people, is that you can, you can only focus on one thing at a time and other things you'll have to put in kind of maintenance mode. So sometimes you're 100% focused on family and business takes a back seat or business is a focus and family takes a little bit of a backseat and those kind of things. And you're kind of throttling because you can't be even keel across the board. So I think it's like what's that Randy Zuckerberg saying that like you can have family fitness or work does. She gave like five things. She's like, pick three. Right? Like you can't have it all ultimately. So, so yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a fun balance. I don't think I Have it perfect. I don't think anybody kind of has it perfect. But for me, what. What tends to be working is like, focus 100% on business, scale back a little bit on family, focus 100% on family, and kind of go back and forth, because when you try to do it all, none of it works.

And when you have a partner that supports you, both in your business and in your life, that really helps to kind of balance, I think, two of them, at least. You know, we talk about health, wealth, and relationships. Those are the three. Normally, I pick two. Right. And the third one is struggling and my own life relationships are struggling because I'm so focused on the mission. I'm so focused on my health, just staying sane while I do the mission. And it can kind of really throw you for a loop. So I think anybody listening out there that has a family or has, you know, other obligations besides their business, they still want to be an entrepreneur, investor, or philanthropist is just realizing that you can begin to combine some of these things in creative ways. Right. There's no excuse to just let it all fall by the Wayside.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And it's, you know, there's also staying in check. Like, I did a season of my podcast on scale, and, you know, Gandhi has a great saying that there's more to life than increasing its speed. I mean, as entrepreneurs, we rarely question the notion of scale. It's always bigger, faster, you know, more employees, more revenues, all those kind of things. But what I'm trying to always at least keep in the back of my mind and cultivate in my own life is space and simplicity. So I'm just at a different phase of my life in that regard. And I. I could be doing other businesses and making a lot more money and those kind of things, but I know if I do that, it'll be at the expense of something else. It'll be either at the expense of my health or the expense of my relation, my wife or relationship, my daughter. Relationships in general. So, yeah, comes down to two choices.

It's almost like we're adults now, Jason. It used to be we could do everything and the world would give us everything we wanted.

I know, I know. At least that's what we're told.

We started talking about Community Made, which is your new podcast, which I'm really thrilled about, because I feel like more than anybody in the industry, you have the relationships of the people that I really want to talk about. But just not just that, the rapport as well, because I've been guilty of this as well. I've had some amazing guests on my podcast, and I don't have a relationship with them beforehand. Sometimes it's just hard to know, like, what are the best nuggets for the audience. I want to serve at the highest level. So how have you approached community Made to make it relevant and what you actually want it to be?

Yeah. So, I mean, a couple things. And you touched on the importance of rapport. So I've launched podcasts before, and, you know, I remember I did a. Well, one podcast was kind of interview style. And I remember I was on the on call with Seth Godin, oddly enough, because I talked about him. He was obviously a huge impact and influence on my life. And this is really the first kind of conversation, one on one, I've ever had with him. And I remember asking him a question, and while he was answering it, I was thinking of my next question. I wasn't present to the conversation, and I'm like, I'm not. I could be a good interviewer. But there's a lot of great interviewers in the space right now. So if I'm not going to be a great one out of the gate, I probably should focus on. On something else. So I started doing solo episodes, and they've been really kind of well received. And then when I came out with the new podcast, I stopped the old podcast only because it always secondary to me. I wake up on the Thursday, I'm like, oh, shoot, I got to come out with a podcast episode today. And then once Mastermind talks came around, I mean, that four months out, I'm 100% focused on that, like, everything takes a backseat again. Getting back to that, that. That flow of things. Unfortunately, family takes a backseat, relationships, my health, everything takes a backseat to Mastermind talks and including the podcast back then. So when we decided, when I wanted to kind of relaunch it, because a lot of the people at our kind of level, we consume our content through podcasts most oftentimes. Right. I mean, I know a lot of people that buy a lot of books. I bought a lot of books, but I don't read a lot of books. And I just love the kind of story and the connection format of a podcast. So we decided to come back out with it. It's done in seasons, so I can commit to a season at a time but not be stuck on this, like, content creation hamster wheel where I have to do an episode every week or an episode every two weeks. So it's done in seasons. Every season is themed. So the first season was around scale and my view on almost anti scale and just really challenging the notion of why you need to scale your business on that kind of stuff. But the one thing I want to do with that season and all my seasons is that a lot of people in the thought leadership space speak in absolutes like this is my point of view and this is what you should listen to. So I had my viewpoint in the first three episodes and then I had Gary Vaynerchuk talk about his notion of scale which was, you know, he's going from 650 employees to a thousand by the end of the year. He has a very different viewpoint on scale than I do. Or I interviewed another guy named Jim Estel who went from zero to $2 billion a year and he. His view on scale is that more money he makes, the more impact he can make. And how I heard about him was that he sponsored 58 Syrian family families to come to Canada out of his own pocket. It was $1.5 million. Nobody knew, not even his wife. So like that's a completely like that opened up my eyes like I want to be ignorant and proved wrong and stuff like that. And I'm. My ego is not. Yeah, I'm not too worried about my ego in that, in that setting. So yeah, it's like an exploration of different themes and those kind of things. And honestly, selfishly, it just, it nourishes me to get this stuff out there. So I don't know how many seasons I have in me. I have like three or four planned. And then that may. I may be. I may have nothing else to say, who knows. But as of right now I'm enjoying it.

That's actually a really good transition too is because, you know, you talked about charitable giving and that seemed to resonate with you. We talk about how we need a way to generate money, we need a way to grow it, we need a way to give it back. What are some of the ways which you put your time and money to work in a non business or relationship capacity? Like how are you giving back? To just give back?

Yeah. So this is timely. It's funny they say giving back because I always said it and I still say it as well, but I remember it was Joe Polish who did Sullivan said like it's not giving back because I didn't take anything to begin with.

That's right.

It's just really giving.

We don't own any of this. It's just giving.

Yeah, I know. So but anyway, so the context of giving Or I mean, a lot of my initiatives have been around supporting charities that other people are close to. So, you know, Mastermind Talks, we've never had a marketing budget. Instead what we have is the biggest fan budget. So how can I be somebody's biggest fan ultimately? And then if they're an author, maybe it's buying a bunch of books when they're doing a book launch or, you know, if they're doing an event, maybe buy a ticket to an event. Like we have money aside for that. But one of my philosophies is that if you want to care about somebody, care about what they care about, or care about who they care about. So when somebody posts like a charity initiative that they're trying to raise money for, like, I'll come in with like, you know, X amount of money. So a lot of my charitable giving has, has been through that vehicle because it almost, it almost plays off two ways. You kill two birds with one stone. You're reinforcing, you're building value in that relationship. Plus you're giving to, to actually have.

A fun reframe for you. It's called feeding two birds with one seed. I borrowed it from a friend of mine, Mark Sherbakov, because every time I hear kill two birds, I'll like, yeah, two birds and one seed.

There you go. That's a better one. So, yeah, so that was my philosophy. And then I fell in love with an organization called the Five Ventures recently. And at our last Mastermind talks, you know John Rulin, by chance, John was on the show. Yeah, so John is sweetheart. He's been to the last couple events and he came up with the idea of doing a live charity auction at the event. And I was like, dude, I don't know how this is going to go, blah, blah, this on the last day of the event. And I'm like. So I said it from the stage, I said, listen, we're planning to do some kind of charity auction tonight. If a win to me would be like, if we raised $20,000, that'd be the goal. And then I kind of let John run with it. And within like 15 minutes, I think we raised like $380,000. Whoa.

Congratulations.

Such a. So like botched together, but it worked out. So. And that was in support of actually a friend of ours named Hal Elrod and Defy Ventures and Defy it basically is a fantastic organization by a lady named Catherine who basically what they do is they help formerly incarcerated men and women transition well. They teach them life skills and people skills and Those kind of things to get work, but more importantly in the future to start a business. Because a lot of people in prison have entrepreneurial traits, but I've just channeled it towards the wrong things. So that's an organization that, yeah, I. That's kind of dear to me. And we're really partnering with and doubling down on in the near future.

If people want to support Defy Ventures or learn more about what they're doing, where can they go to do that?

I think it's probably just defy ventures.com I believe. I mean, definitely, if you throw it in google.org yeah.

Defy Ventures. D E F. I'm sorry. D E F Y Ventures. So, Jason, this is the part of the show where I just want to say how grateful I am for everything that you've shared with us. And I'm sure there's a lot of great key takeaways that people have gotten. But this is the Make More Marvels podcast. So it's not just about what we're getting from you. It's about what we can give and support and help you move your mission forward faster. And the way we do that is we plant seeds and we grow crops. Crops is an acronym. It stands for Connect Resources, Opportunities, People and Systems Together. So what is a way that we can help you move your mission forward faster for anybody listening?

Yeah, I mean, I think. Well, I mean, the community podcast is the thing that's kind of most dear to me. I'm very kind of raw and open in that podcast and getting that message out to the right audience is always a focus. I mean, I'm definitely not doing it for ego reasons. I don't even know what the downloads are. My project manager, who runs a podcast, I'm like, don't tell me what the downloads are because I don't want it to shape my interesting content.

Yeah.

But I definitely know it's going well based on the, you know, emails and those kind of things. But getting that message out, I mean, anybody listening, if they listen to it and enjoy it, share it on Facebook, Twitter, whatever the case may be, I'm sure I'll see it. And I'm very, very grateful for that.

So thank you, Jason, and we'd be happy to support your community made podcasts. And everybody who's listening at home, please go check it out. Where can they find it on itunes? Just Community made.

Community made Calm. Yeah. And Community made on itunes. Awesome.

Awesome. And then, Jason, just as kind of an aside, what would be the number one best and highest piece of information or thing that you wish everybody knew in the world?

Yeah, I think, well, just because it's kind of top of mind. Gandhi has a quote that there's more to life than increase. Yeah, there's more to life than increasing its speed. And that's something I try to keep in the back of my mind. Again, as entrepreneurs, just people in general, I mean, we're always measuring ourselves to what we see other people on Instagram and all that kind of stuff. We're always measuring up. And that's one thing I've come to learn after being an entrepreneur for 14 years, is you don't have to scale or grow or whatever the case may be at all costs. There's no reason you can't scale back or be a little more content with where you're at and focus on focus in other areas of your life. So, yeah, Gandhi's quote, there's more to life than increasing its speed to me is what speaks to me at the moment.

Yeah, it's don't go big, go deep.

Right.

And scale is not always the answer, especially when it comes to human issues. Right. If it's just a product or whatever, you know, a new iPhone, sell it to a billion people, great. But if it's going deep, then sometimes that doesn't take scale. And I mean, not to get off on another rabbit hole, but I'm thinking about ways in which we can start to utilize new technologies that we haven't used before in order to solve some of these problems. Have you taken a look at AI and machine learning, VR and some of the things that we can do to maybe increase the availability of a deeper message for more people or a deeper experience for more people.

I have. I'm definitely not as up to date with a lot of these technologies as you are. I know you're very kind of passionate about that space. I'm not scared by it, but I'm also.

I'm scared.

I've come to realize I'm not that smart as an entrepreneur. So some things I get, AI kind of get lost. I was sitting next to a guy at dinner and he was talking about AI, and I'm like, you are just in a different lane. I love you. I hope you like crushing whatever you do, but it's just a little over my head. So I think obviously the future is very kind of promising, and there's a lot of kind of cool technologies on the horizon. It'll be interesting to see how they impact, you know, the fabric of society and all those kind of things. I mean, I think we're, we're more connected than never. But we've also shown signs, signs that we're more socially isolated than ever. And that shows up in mental health and physical health and longevity studies and you name it, depression, suicide rates, especially amongst, you know, younger people who grew up on social media and those kind of things. So it'll be interesting. I mean, I don't think anybody knows the answer. I think technology definitely is, is fascinating and there's a lot of benefits, but there's pitfalls as well. So we'll see how things unfold.

I love it. Jason, thank you so much. Where can people get in touch if they, if they have questions or they want to reach out?

Yeah. So I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Jason Gaignard, J A Y S O N G A I G N A r d and communitymade.com again. Is the podcast fantastic.

And check out Mastermind talks. Check out Community made subscribe on itunes. Thank you so much, Jason, for being here today. Really appreciate you. On behalf of all the marble makers out there, thank you for being. Thank you for being with us today.

Thanks, brother. I appreciate it.

Thanks so much for listening to the Make More Marbles podcast for more tips, hacks and strategies to create an amazing, abundant life in your health, wealth and relationships, whatever that means to you. Head on over to makemoremarbles.com, check out our cool explainer video about what we're about and join our community of entrepreneurial game changers. We want to help you level up your life in every possible way. And don't forget to subscribe to us on itunes, Stitcher or Google Play, wherever you listen to your podcasts. And please do leave a review. Thank you so much and we'll see you on the next podcast.