Managing vs. Leading w/ Jesse Eker

Leadership skills are so neglected in today's world. There's a difference between managing something and checking the boxes and being a leader where people want to follow you.

Leadership is not about what you say, it's about what you do. People need to feel that you are on the front lines with them, not in the back. That you're willing to go to battle for them and with them, own your future.

Because if you don't, someone else will. Welcome back to the Own youn Future podcast. I am so freaking stoked for the guest I have for you guys today. But first, I want to say thank you. Thank you for making us the number one podcast in the world. In our category, there are millions of podcasts you can listen to and you listen to us. I do not take that lightly. I promise you to bring the best guest. I will do my absolute best to ask the right questions, to empower you to own your future, to own your marketing, to own your freedom, to own your life. Now, on to today's guest. Now this is someone you might know, might not know. I feel honored that we've been friends for about a half a decade now, and he's done so many things to support Tony and I in our businesses, in our partnerships. Right now we're working together in Tony's company to take it to the next level. He is one of the smartest marketers you will ever meet. Simultaneously, he's got the biggest heart, and that's one of the combos, if you follow me. You know that that is the secret to success that most people miss. Care about your clients or your future clients or people in your life so much that they know like and trust you and then figure out how to get them to say yes so you can both grow together. He is a master at that. And now he's going deep on building teams, building culture, and so many other things. If this is your first time, it's going to be a treat if you already know him. You know what I'm talking about. Welcome, Jesse Ecker. Good to have you here, man. How's everything going?

It's going amazing. I mean, working with you and Tony and the whole team has been an absolute bless.

So I think for those of you that don't know you, you grew up in the personal development world. I mean, that it's been probably since diapers, right?

Yep. So for anyone who doesn't know me, my dad is T. Harv Eker, wrote the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, had at the time one of the largest personal success companies in the world. You know, a little under Tony.

You know, hey, he was a good, solid second place. He was a solid second place.

But, you know, you know, I was in my first seminar, like, when I was under five and grew up in this atmosphere of, you know, inspiration, development, always trying to grow myself, but really had the right mindset as I was going through to just keep pushing through, keep going, you know, into places that I felt uncomfortable and made myself comfortable, so.

Well, I want to tell you, I met your dad about 20 years ago. When I first came in this industry, one of the first stages I ever spoke on, which was horrific, was on one of your dad's stages. He invited me to Palm. Palm Springs, and I. I would never want to see that video ever again. Okay. And then about five years ago, I got to meet you, and Tony and I were doing a big launch, and you wanted to support it, and you were one of our top partners and so grateful. And I just want to say something as this starts. Your dad's amazing and accomplished a lot, but you are your own man. And what you've accomplished and what you've done in your personal life, your professional life, who you are as a man, how you grow as a human, I am beyond impressed. I get to say this a lot. I get to bring my friends on and have a conversation. One of my dearest friends. We're going to spend some time in Florida in a couple of weeks. But what you've contributed to the world, what you're now contributing to me, to Tony, has been unbelievable. And I think there's so many great lessons we can learn from you today. So thank you for tuning in. But you'll. You'll thank us when we're done. I promise you. This is going to be the. This is going to be the surprise podcast of the year. I believe that.

I'll take it.

So let me just share. I like to start out by saying, what does it mean to own your future to you? Right. And the only reason I've been asking that to each guest, because it's never the same. I thought it was going to be so similar that I'd probably ask two guests that never ask it again.

Yeah.

Because when I think through that lens, I feel like, for me, it's like if I don't own my decisions, my calendar, my time, someone else is gonna. It almost takes my breath away when I think that. So maybe it means more to me in certain ways than others or different way. But I'd like to know for you, what does it mean you work hard, you're smart as hell. You do what you say, you get it done. What does it mean to own your future to you?

It's a great question, and I could see why there's a lot of different perspectives around this. And so, you know, I think internally is the first place that I go. Owning my future is all about owning my standards, owning my values, owning, like, being in charge of that person that I truly want to be. So internally, owning my future is just owning what I can control. Right. And so I look internally for all the things that I. How I show up externally. Right. Because if we're internally, not the person we want to be externally, we're not going to get the results that we want to have. So owning my future is all about owning the standards and values that I bring to the table. And then the second part to that, which I would say is something that I dealt with before, which was when I was trying to go more about the money than trying to, like, necessarily, like, be more in alignment. And so owning my future is all about aligning my future. And I think that is really powerful and where I see the most mistakes people make.

Aligning. When you say align, do you mean aligning with the right people, with the right business you're in with the right conversations? When you say aligning, what do you mean?

Yeah.

Or all of those?

Yeah, I think it's a combination of all of them, and it depends on the season of life that you're in. So for me, in that specific moment, aligning my. My actual business to, like, my own personality, like, who I am. So, you know, we now work together. And so my personality that I found out really, probably 18 months ago is I don't necessarily consider myself a star. I consider myself more of a creator. And I get a lot of flow when I'm creating for other people. And so when I get to create for Tony, when I get to create with you, when I get to create. When I was doing my dad and stuff like that, that's where I was flowing the most, in the most alignment. And so being able to step into that and recognize that and being in alignment with that is where I got to show up the best. And when I was misaligned from that, my future felt out of control for me and not. I didn't own it anymore. It was like some facade of who a person that I was not. So I think when it comes down to it, having an alignment in whatever phase.

Yeah. Figuring out who you are and then.

Pick that swimming lane and that's where you can really own your future.

Because that's a really good point. And owning your future, to me, might be, I need to work for myself. I need this independence. Simultaneously, if you're listening, you might be the person that needs to align with someone else and be this collective team, and then that fits your wheelhouse and you own your future, you own your emotions. Right. Because I just feel so many people. Again, that phrase hits me hard. It's like my catchphrase whenever I want to push harder is we just feel so lost when we don't feel in control of our future.

Yeah.

And a decade can go by of not owning it. And. And we don't get those decades back.

Right.

I want to ask you something. What has. I always talk about going upstream.

Yep.

Some people talk about, you know, what is the tactics to do a big two and a half million person live training. There's a lot of strategy, a lot of tactics, a lot of layout. But the truth is, I was just on a live this morning when people. People always ask me, how did you do that with McConaughey? How do you do that with Tony? How do you do it with your brand? Well, if I go upstream, there was a time, and I don't know when it was, that I truly fell in love with my clients. I fell in love with their results. And when you come through that lens, you just make different decisions for sure. It's just nothing you can do about. You don't make the next, oh, I saw this guy with a blue arrow, and this is the way he did his webinar. This is the way all that kind of blends away. You need to use fundamental direct response or whatever marketing you're using. But when you fall in love with your client, fall in love with your career, fall in love with the people you work with, fall in love with your team, things change.

Yep.

Same way I feel if I didn't work on my own personal development upstream, none of these businesses would have worked. Doesn't matter how good I am at marketing, I. I still have the crap in there of my parents being married nine times and. And my mom moving away when I was little and my dad couldn't handle it, so he was a bit crazy and used to break stuff in our house all the time. I had a bleeding ulcer at 10 years old. I could fall back to this guy that probably doesn't believe in love because my parents were married so many times. Could fall into not being a connected dad. My dad was a good dad, but he went years. Not really connected. I know I could fall back to that. It's just a fact. I need to feed myself. It's probably why I'm in this industry. I need to feed myself every day. And when I do, I like the man I am and I like the man I'm becoming and I like the husband I am and I like the father I am. I don't mean to make this about me. I'm setting up a long thing for a quick question. How important has personal development been in your life?

I can't give you the tangible, like, parts of all aspects of my life because I don't know any different. Right. My situation is a bit different than most others when I grew up in this. So, like, my. No. Is personal growth. Right. Like, that has been ingrained in my life. But when. And I'm not a comparer, but when I look at my mindset of how I approach things, the conviction that I have the confidence to be able to, like, come into a situation and just like we say, own it. Right. All comes back down to, like the preparation that I've put myself through, the experiences that created the breakthroughs that I needed and doing the work of just, you know, self awareness of. Of knowing that I am the only person that's going to stop me from getting what I want.

Yeah.

And so you have no one else to blame. No one else to blame.

Person in the mirror.

Yep. So knowing that and not knowing that, like, if I looked at, like, if I didn't know that, I could see a world of, you know, why me, really? It's hard. This is not right for, like, why do they always get this stuff and not me? And I still go down those traps too. Right. When a campaign maybe doesn't do as well. Beat myself up about it. I'm. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this. Maybe I should be doing something else. But that's a very short period of time and I've learned to overcome that very quickly. Just like a professional athlete, when they drop a pass or they don't. They don't score in an open net. Right. You got to be able to overcome that stuff quickly if you want to be great.

Yeah.

And so most people just dwell and they dwell on the past and they dwell on what could have been and they dwell on all the things that could have happened instead of just changing what they need to do to make it happen.

Yeah. Right.

And that's not actually the actions it takes. It's more about what they believe, how they show up the standards that they values.

Standards, just like.

So, yeah, going upstream is really going in stream.

Yeah. I think that's. That's a really good point. And. And I hope you don't mind. I want to share what I see in you. And the reason I wanted you to be on this podcast and I wanted more of the world to meet you, is that foundation that you've created that I always inspire people. I want to teach marketing and strategies and skills and business. But if we don't go upstream or in stream, we don't go in to find that. Then we stop at the first barrier.

Yeah.

We blame someone else. It's the last president. It's the current president. It's the marketing. Google changed. Facebook changed. This changed. Ah, I should just stay where I'm at.

Yeah.

And we're not realizing we're not leaning into or meant to be. We're leaning who we think we should be.

Yeah.

And I feel at the end of my life, I feel the pain even just saying that. But I want to tell you what I see in you and the reason I pushed so hard for us to work together and. And give you so much, wanted you to have all the responsibility and the. The. The strength behind you, the support behind you, to do the magic that you do. Because there's two things I saw with personal development, being a part of your life, with working on you, going internally. One is the leader that I'm watching you become.

Thank you.

It's unbelievable to watch. And I want to talk about that, because leadership is not just leading others. It's being empowered, where people want to follow.

Yeah.

A bad leader says, you follow me. I'm your boss. A great leader, everybody goes, it's Jesse. Wow. I want to follow that man. I'd follow you into war. But two, I hope you don't mind. Can we talk about the father you are?

Yeah, sure.

You know, I believe God, universe, whatever you believe, I believe in God prepared you for the amazing father you are. You have Jordan and Brooklyn. And Brooklyn was born with a little couple challenges. And I have to tell you, you got me in tears. About two weeks ago. You sent me a picture of Brooklyn walking. Yeah. And I literally cried in my kitchen. I had tears coming down my face. I believe the same things that you've prepared for mentally. To be a great leader, to be a great marketer, to be a great husband, has prepared you to be the father of Brooklyn.

Yeah.

And watching your commitment and dedication when if I have this wrong, please. You could tell the stories. Not sure if she'll ever walk. Not sure if she'll ever talk. Is that true? Yeah.

I'm very uncertain with everything.

Yeah, yeah. And watching your commitment, you and your wife Jen, on saying I don't give a shit, excuse my language, what anybody says or what the universe says. So many people are stuck on statistics. Most businesses don't work. This won't work. Why would it work in this economy? The doctors say my daughter, because of what happened, she won't walk and won't talk. Ah, why would this happen to me? Where you guys just what you said earlier, like, screw that, I'm not taking that. So maybe you could just share a little bit of how your life has led you to that little girl walking in your kitchen the other day.

Yeah. So. And I'm happy to share. Brooklyn had a stroke pre birth. And we don't know exactly when it could have happened right as she was coming out or could have happened in the womb. And it was on the left side which made her whole right side unfunctionable coming out. And so we started noticing this and obviously the uncertainty going to all the doctors. And it was a, it was a probably like a 7 out of a 10 stroke. So it was pretty severe. And it went through the part of emotions, it went through the part of language and it went through the part of like gross motor obviously. But one of the things that started to happen was vision was fine, hearing was fine. And then we started to realize like, hey, there's statistics here, right? So we started looking at statistics and the statistics are really scary, but there is those statistics of things that don't go wrong, right. Of the people that are okay. And then we started to like get involved of knowing who is functional versus not. How do we make what patterns do they have, what things. And we started to just do the things that we know that we would do if we did whatever it takes to make it happen. And so even things that cost a lot of money or a lot of work for a 1% improvement. Because we know 1% over time can make compounded just like your business, just like health, anything double growth can make all the difference in the world. And we'd willing give up anything for 1% because that could mean opening the hand versus not. Right? That can mean taking a step versus not. That can mean, you know, talking or not. And so we just kept going and just every single day doing something, talking to different people and not taking one answer as the answer and taking all the answers as opportunities to go and learn and grow and test Things out just like business. Right. We don't look at one way as the right way. We look at all ways of the right way. What's the most priority thing right now that we want to work on? And so this opportunity of us pushing and pushing and just going in and together and also just not being victims in the situation. Of course, we went through ups and downs and it was hard to do.

And you'd have every right in the world to say, why us?

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

Yeah.

Why us? This isn't fair.

Yeah.

And it's not fair. Or. But if that's your circumstance, you can look at the obstacles or the opportunity.

Yep.

Right. You could look at what's wrong or what you have.

Yep.

Right. There's no way in a million years you would ever choose not to have Brooklyn.

Right.

That. True story. Or not.

Of course.

Right. So you could say, I wish she didn't have this, but what if I didn't have her at all?

Yeah.

I'd rather take her this way. And wouldn't. Wouldn't you say that challenge is making you and Jen better parents, better people?

Way better.

Right.

Way better parents. Better. More compassionate. And what we do.

I see your compassion with everybody else you're around, and I know that it's probably been magnified. I'm sure you always had it.

Yeah.

But it's being magnified by this amazing little girl.

Of course.

And I'm sure Jordan will grow up to be an empathetic young man because he's looking after his sister.

Looking after his sister.

Yeah.

Yeah. And. And, you know, and we bring Tony in to a lot of the stuff that we do. But every challenge is an opportunity or is a gift, Right?

Yeah.

And we really started looking at as the gift in our life of, like, what do we learn from this? How do we. How do we re. And it's such a hard thing to get through.

And when it's your child.

Yeah.

You can't even compare it to anything else in the world. When it's your child, it's. It's an extension. I have a friend that said to me before, when my. Before my daughter was born, who's now 16, he said to me, when you have a child, just know it. Your heart comes out of your chest and it walks around in the outside world without you.

Yeah.

Like. Like your heart's there and your heart's there. It's true, right?

So true.

It's like beating over there. It's like. Oh. Protected.

Yeah. So true. Yeah. But, yeah, I think. I think overall you know, she. She started crawling late, which was fine. Right. And we looked at. Crawling means she's putting pressure on her right arm, which means that's good. Like, good.

Yeah.

You look at things differently. And, you know I sent you a video of her walking.

Yeah. You literally could have said, I can't believe she's only crawling. I wish she was walking.

Yeah.

And I know I'm not trying to oversimplify things, but how many of us look through that lens? We forget to look back at where we were.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

I mean, it's like Gap versus.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's like. It's like we're chasing the horizon. It's like, she'll never walk. She'll never crawl. She's crawling, but she's not walking.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, she's walking. Yeah. But she'll never play sports. Yeah. Like, your brain could mess with you big time. Or you could say, wow, yeah, look how far we've come.

Exactly.

And I think that's. That's so important in everything in business and life. You know this podcast, one of the top podcasts in the world, in business and in marketing. But all of that, when people say to me, what's your best strategy for marketing? I'm like this.

Yeah.

The human connection.

Human being, a human.

Fall in love with people. Have tenacity, be innovative, be creative, have resourcefulness that you don't take no for an answer. I already see that in you, and I want to transition some of those. And now I get to watch you. I saw you as a marketer. I saw you as a great businessman. So he's a great husband and father. Now I get to see you evolving as a leader.

Yeah.

And I'd love to share. A lot of people watching today, whether you lead a family or lead a small team or you have partners or you're leading a bigger team or you're launching a company. Leadership skills are so neglected in today's world. I'm not talking about being a project manager.

Yeah, there's.

And thank God for project managers. That's not a dig, but there's a difference between managing something and checking the boxes and being a leader where people want to follow you.

Yeah.

So what have you learned in the last four or five months about leadership?

Leadership is not about what you say, it's about what you do. And people need to feel that. People need to feel that you are on the front lines with them, not in the back. People need to know that they can link up with you and that they know that you have their back in the good times and bad times, that you're willing to go to battle for them and with them. And I think most people think of leadership as direction. I think of leadership as just being a role model in showcasing the direction.

I love that. I love that if someone's gonna look in the mirror right now and say, I'd like to be more of a leader, not a commander. Yeah. And I really. I don't even know if I know the right words to describe it. I've just been in business for myself since I was 17. I'm 54. Yeah. And in that journey, I've been blessed to be become a leader. And I led five football players, one in 18 years old. I had a firewood cutting business and I hired all football players. Because I was little, I couldn't even carry the wood. These big monsters carried all the wood. And it was awes they made extra money. I've. I've seen it so many times. And I watch sometimes a good tactician, a good artist, a good cook.

Yeah.

Say, it's time to do my own thing. I'm the chef, I'm going to open the restaurant. I'm a good marketer, I'm going to start the business. I'm good at this. I'm going to start that. And that transition from the good tactician, the best in their field, best cook, best marketer, best salesperson, best at whatever it is when they transition up to be the leader because they're the best. I think sometimes they think those skills will play a part and they don't. And I watch a lot of them fail. Through the years we've had sales, the best salesperson in the department, we promote them to leader and they implode.

Right.

What would you say if someone's going to look in the mirror today and say, hey, how do we, the person you see in the mirror, start this evolution of being a better leader?

Yeah. I think when you like, look at the different archetypes of those people, right. There's like the artist or like the person who like is the creator. And then they bring those skills of creating to try to be the leader. They bring a lot of those like very hard perfectionism pieces to the leadership. And what I have found, and this is my own opinion, is when you're leading other people, you got to kind of let a lot of that go so that they can be empowered to grow, be the artist, be the creator. Right. And so if you're constantly trying to use those skills, you're going to downplay what people are doing and not bring them up. And then you lose that kind of like, trust of, hey, we're in this together, versus, like, I'm. I know what it is. You listen to me. Right? And so I think, you know, in again, the very short period of now leading a team of 25 right now, um, I. What I've found to be very helpful so far is using your experience and skills to show, not tell. And this is the same with marketing, right. I think it's just everything in life is holistic, right? So like everything that works in one place, it works, works everywhere. We look at marketing all the time. We're like, this works, testing works, do this. Same with health, same with relationships. Same with all parts of life and business. Like being a leader is all about again, like using other parts in your life that work well. Discipline, you know, work ethic, being compassionate and being kind to other people, like showing up for other people. It's like it's. It's basic life principles, I think.

Yeah.

And it's like when you overdo it in one area, what ends up happening something else area.

Some other areas, sacrifice.

Sacrifice. And I think the same happens with leadership. If you try too hard to be one way, then you're going to sacrifice another way, which tends to sacrifice. Like either, you know, a way or perception of the team or it's the work that's done or it's just growing to the next level. Right.

So I geeked out on Ronald Reagan speeches and JFK speeches and Martin Luther King speeches. I went down this years ago. I was going down. And when you read these speeches, there's. Some of them are so amazing. Abraham Lincoln just all through the. The time, right? And there was a. During the, the. I was reading one on Ronald Reagan and it said one that he didn't write and he was talking about being a leader right at the time. For those of you old enough to remember, and if you don't, Ronald Reagan was the first president. And I think, well, maybe the only. He turned the entire country red. He was a Republican, right? And California, New York voted Republican. Illinois voted Republican. The one state voted blue, and that was Ramondale, who was running against the only blue. And I say that because it wasn't about politics. I don't think at that time it was. It wasn't about left or right. Liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat was like, hey, think this guy.

Yeah.

Could do a good job for us. People felt out about Bill Clinton. They felt that about John F. Kennedy with John F. Kennedy. Nobody cared. Republican, Democrat. This is the guy that's asking us to do more for our country. It's going to take us to the moon. I'm in on that guy.

Yeah, right.

But anyway, long story short, Ronald Reagan said a speech that he read, he said he was addressing the nation. Now he's running the world, running the country. And he said, speech, wrote a hand on the speech and he read it and he said, I could write a better one, but I'm going to read this. And that was so telling to me. You can't run.

Yeah.

The leader of the free world at the time. Right. Is what they would call him and write every single speech. And that to me was leadership. Meaning I hired the best writer I could.

Yeah.

And I'm. In my mind. All these things went on my mind. I'm teaching them to be a better writer. But if I wrote this, I take away their power. I don't have time to do it all. To be a leader and have scale, we have to find a way to trans transfer what we know to other people. Let them fail. Let them see that you have their back. Is it any different than parenting? Yeah. I mean, if you read Love and Logic, Parenting, It's a great book to you probably read it. But love and launching parenting, it talks about the drill sergeant. Yep. Yell all the time. They end up resenting their parents and say, screw you, I'm out of here. Helicopter. Oh, no, no, I got this. Johnny, don't. No, no, I'll twist your bottle up and you can't. Oh, no, let me make your thing. Let me cut the crust off the bread. No, no, I got it. Oh, no, don't do that. You might fall. And all of a sudden they turn into teenagers and have no clue about life.

Yeah.

And then love and Logic, parenting is more like Montessori kind of feel.

Yeah, right.

It's like, you need that. My wife is intuitively like this. It's unbelievable to watch. My wife, she hasn't read a million books about parenting, but her mom is the same way.

She.

My wife is the oldest of five. They're all successful. You know, parents migrated from Mexico and their. Their children are all massively successful and the best family I've ever met. And their mom is intuitively like that. And I watch my wife raise our young ones who are three and seven months, and everything that my kids go to do, I go to do it for him. My wife said, no, no, Luke will figure it out. And I watch him struggling, trying to get a bottle Cap or trying to do something or in the pantry. It's above them.

Yeah.

I'll go. I'll grab it. She's like, no. All of a sudden, I see him pull over a chair and gets up on the chair. She's like, good job, Luke. And I'm like, how do you know that? Like, I do that at work, but with my kids, I want to. I want to just do everything for them. Right. So I could be the helicopter.

Yeah.

But that doesn't serve them. And I think a great lesson today, and I watch you do this, Jesse, is we have to empower those that we work with. If we want to lead, if we want to partner with, we have to find their core competencies, empower those core competencies and let them fail and succeed and let them fall. And when they fall, as a leader, you're there to catch them, brush them off, and say, hey, we can get back in. Let's do this. Actually, I'll be alongside of you this time. And I'm watching you do that, and you're earning the respect of 25 people. Enlightening speed, and I think it's just. Just a testament to the way you've grown up, you know? I got a question for you. Okay. Yes. You grew up. Some of it could have felt like the shadow of your dad.

Yep.

Right? So it's like, oh, you're T. Harv's kid. It's like, no, I'm Jesse Ecker. Like, I can see that. Right?

Yeah.

You know, and you have beyond proved yourself as. As your own man. You grew up in personal development. You've had incredible success in your life. You got an amazing marriage, and we talked about your kids. Sometimes when people see that from the outside, they're like, God, I wish I had that with no worries. Yeah. No limiting beliefs.

Yeah.

No imposter syndrome. This guy Jesse just oozes confidence, and he's got it dialed in. And now he's working with Tony and Dean and running these big departments and taking the company next level. Oh, I wish I had no worries like Jesse. So I'd love to ask you, what are still some things you worry about when no one's looking, when no one's around? The stuff that might keep you up that no one would think is still there. You might have fixed it. You might not let it stop you. Yeah. But unless you're superhuman. Yeah. I would bet to say there's still that thing that taps you on the shoulder and says, hey, are we good enough to be in this room? Or whatever it is, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean I think it's, it's, it's, it's pretty relative to every other person is like, you know, doing something new is uncomfortable. And I just think that at a certain time and experience when you've gone through it enough times, it's, you go through it faster, you get through that uncomfortableness just much quicker. Right. It just, it goes, it goes through. So a tangible example would be like when I first started interiming as the you know, CMO of Tony. Right. So I basically was like, wow, like this is like this is a really big deal.

Especially went from owning your own business to now helping run another big business. Right.

What we you know, consider one of the most iconic brands in history.

Yeah.

And so that question of like probably being the youngest person in this position. I don't know, maybe in history. Right. Like I'm not sure they're true story is, is am I the right person to do that? And I did have like some struggles in my own brand when I was trying to find alignment and I kept asking like, am I just not really good at this? Like am I not a good marketer? Am I not the right person to do this? And I would question a lot of the things I was doing based off of money, like how much money we made, how much did the campaign succeed or not. Right. And so I think what ended up happening was again, you know, coming from the place of alignment, of understanding what I'm good at and what I'm not good at, was able to showcase a lot more of it's all in your head. And you know, we're, we know when we're good at something, we know when we can improve in places. We know when, you know, fear is popping up and we just need to move through it. So I would say just like any other person, any time I'm doing something new, I'm feeling my good enough. Yeah. Am I good enough? And I think also like what you said, my dad, there's self inflicted pressure there. Right. Like I always, it wasn't really a stack up against but I was, I always wanted to be my, my own guy. Right. But then I put myself in position of like well building his brand and so it was like still the T Harv Eker show. And it's like who's this Jesse Ecker kid? And I'd get hate emails all the time of like you rich kid, like you don't need to do anything to, to be successful. And you know, we both know that there's just like the farthest from the truth at the same time, from the outside, it's much easier to, you know, look in and say you got everything handed to you than actually try to understand another person and also understand what it actually takes to, to make a buck. Right. To make a sale. So there, there's always been that, like, like, am I good enough? Type of. Yeah, of course. Thought process. And, and I think, you know, I don't know if it's ever going to go away. And I'm okay if it doesn't.

I was just going to say, but maybe you don't want it to.

Yeah, I think it's a good driver.

I still have those things that, you know, I. Dyslexia in school and I. Mrs. Thompson in seventh grade, I think she told me every day I was dumb because I. She's like, just sound it out. Don't be stupid. I'm like, if I could sound it out, I would, like, talk about old school. You know, I. That was a long time ago and she was old. So it's. It's Probably a, an 80 year gap of how people teach now, right? It's a little bit different. I see people sometimes getting like, sensitive over little things. I'm like, I Wish you had Ms. Thompson for a week. You wouldn't let any of that bug you. Yeah, right. But they're still there. Yeah, but I think, and this is, you know, we're talking about Tony today. It's like, but I learned to dance with it. So instead of it controlling me, I just go, oh, you're still there. Look how far we've come. You go sit back in the closet. Right. And I think that's what we have, that we all have to do, because they're there and it's okay. Like I tell people, you know, they'll say, hey, when I get successful, the problems, do they go away? I'm like, no, you get better at handling bigger problems.

Yes.

You want to be more successful. You're growing right now and helping grow a massive brand because you're solving bigger problems that weren't solved in the past and you're tackling them.

Yep.

And we're solving problems, and that's why we're growing. We're not growing because you're doing all the fun stuff. You're doing the hard stuff too.

Right.

But the hard stuff actually becomes, as we said earlier, the stuff that you do on your own, the stuff that makes you grow, right?

Well, yeah, and it's the same. I mean, again, like we talking about kids a lot here. Right. So it's like, when a kid starts walking, it's very hard to do, but after a couple months of walking, you.

Don'T even think about it.

They're not thinking about it. When you're starting your business, it's very. A lot of energy, a lot of time, like, very confusing. You're doing everything. I've now been doing this for 13 years. Right. It's very natural for me now to, like, just step up and know, like, we. We speak. We speak the same language. You obviously have 30 years more of experience as far as, like, being a marketer and a business person. But, like, we see the same.

Absolutely.

Because of the.

We have the same prescription.

The same prescription. Yeah.

That's the best way to look at. And someone else might look through this lens and go, that's blurry, but that's okay.

Yeah.

All right. I want to switch gears a little bit because we are the number one podcast in. In. In. In marketing and one of the top podcasts in the world in business. And because I feel marketing is marketing yourself. Marketing other. It's storytelling. It's what we need in every area of your life, and none of it works. I mean, I could just do a marketing campaign. I mean, a marketing podcast on every campaign I've ever done and write it on a whiteboard, and most people wouldn't do it. So what I hope is to plant seeds, to disturb people with inaction, to get out the clutter, to find a new path, to be inspired by amazing people like you of what you've done in your personal life and with your family and with Brooklyn and. And. And Jen and Jordan and all that. So I hope all of you see. I hope you. I'm glad. I think you do. We. We've been the top podcast in our category, and I thank you so much. But if we get the right mindset.

Yeah.

And I call. Like to call it marketing stamina. Business stamina. Like, you just don't give up if it doesn't work. You just keep going. You need everything we talked about up until this point.

Yeah.

But now let's transition a little bit into marketing.

Okay.

I'm not going to seed and tell you which way to go, but what do you think at this phase of your life is the best way for someone to look at marketing? Right. Whether you're just starting as a solopreneur and you want to launch a coaching business, or you run a team of 20 or you're doing 100 million a year, and you want to go to 200 million. I believe the philosophies are all the same. Yeah, but what's some advice you would give in today's world?

I think people look at marketing as selling and I look at marketing as communication. And it's communication of a showcase of transformation. Right. You are showing someone the outcome of what you can deliver to them. And so many people don't understand that. And that's why their marketing isn't very good. Right. They're showcasing the wrong stuff. They're showcasing the wrong people. People. They're showcasing the wrong elements of what makes someone actually believe that their unique system, their mechanism, their whatever they have to offer is actually going to help someone make a decision. So. Or help someone get a result. Most people have two blocks. One, are you the person that's going to help me do this? Two, can I do this myself? And if you can overcome those things in your marketing and showcase that, then you're going to do a good job in your marketing. And so I think people put too much pressure on like the actual lag result of the sale and don't really think about the person that they're talking to. And this is like so common in a lot of the feedback that I see so many people make. And even, you know, what we do is we're talking at them instead of with them. With them, we're, we're not talking to the person. Like we're not putting ourselves in their shoes. We're just putting stuff out there and expecting them to take action. And so one of the big stress tests I always give the team is like, would you buy this if it was your own hard earned money? Would you take action if it was your own time and energy doing this? Would you?

Yeah, as simple as that sounds.

And, and most people, when they really answer that question, like honestly when they're looking at some of the stuff they put out, the answer is no. And so if the answer is no for you, why would it be for some stranger that doesn't even know you?

Doesn't even, that has, that I saw recently, I think you, if someone's online three hours a day, they see up to 10,000 ads.

Wow, that's wild.

Like, just think about that. Like maybe that's a week, but it was a, it was an astronomical.

No, it's probably right.

And how do you stand out? Yeah, I just got asked this today. I was on a live earlier today. That's why we're shooting this in the afternoon and everybody was asking what's your secret? How do you get 2 million people? How do you get that? I said I think I do something, and then I want to hear your. I think I do something. Most people don't.

Yep.

When we do a challenge or an event, I'll stay up three nights in a row and I'll read thousands of comments because I want to meet people where they are. I could forget. Listen, most of the time, especially when you're in the self education industry, we're marketing to the person we used to be. Yeah, Right. We're trying to solve a problem for somebody else that we once and already solved for ourselves. We know how to market, we know how to be in. We know how to lose the weight. We know how to fix the relationship. Right. That's what coaches do. That's what course creators do. Content creators. Really? We're just saying, hey, I'm. I'm a chapter ahead of you. You. Yeah, Right. But sometimes when we get a chapter ahead now, I have to manage hundreds of people and multiple companies and. And hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm not saying that to brag, but it's a different life than when I was a broke kid working in the collision shop during the day and trying to sell my course at night. Right. So I always want to live inside of the mind of the person I want to serve. Of course. But how do I do that if I forget a little? I think one of my greatest gifts is I want to stay in that pain.

Yeah.

I want to know what it's like to want to lose the weight to. Or whatever it is to fix the relationship, to have real love, to get the first sale, to impact others, to speak on stages, to do your own podcast. I don't know what it is, but I want to live in there and I want to be reminded every day. Yeah. What are the challenges you're facing now? Because they're a little different now than when I was 19 years old. And what are your dreams and goals now? And if I could meet you there by talking with you. Matthew McConaughey said it so well. We were sitting right here at this table.

He said, was he sitting here?

Yeah, right there. Right where you are. He said. He goes, I don't have all the answers, but if I could ride shotgun with you, I could help direct where we're going. I like that. It's like that's kind of without him realizing. He described really good marketing is you're with them, you're riding shotgun. I've been there. I know what it feels like. So for me, if I don't think I'm meeting people where they are, Jesse, I literally stay up all night and, and read thousands of comments and I'll find these common threads like, oh, my God, I didn't even know. During COVID so many people felt alone, and now they're having trouble going back out into society. Or when they were home during COVID they realized, I don't want a 9 to 5 job, but what the hell do I do at home? Like, you find these trends that if you get stuck in this hypnotic rhythm of talking at people. I have the best product. You should buy what I have. You're One of the 10,000 people are going by a hundred miles an hour. So what do you got to say about living inside the mind of your. Of your future client?

I even come back to the point that, you know, you talk about quite a bit is the dinner conversations. I love. Like, I always talk about that as, like, something that you. You hit me with a bunch of times. Like, what are the conversations that people are having in the dinner table? The recency of what's going on in their life. And once you understand those conversations and are in those minds, like, you just can't lose, really, because it's like you're relevant now.

Yeah.

You are recent to what they're doing. You can. You can pull to things that they're experiencing. And the more recent you go for someone's experience, the more likely they are going to, you know, say yes. So there's this really good formula, and I'll be a little tactical for some people here, is people will make a decision based off an experience. So if you just had a, let's just say a fight with your wife, and then you see an ad and it was like, better communication to diffuse fighting, you're more likely to say yes because you just had this experience of it. Now, the next part of this is the recency of that experience. If I had a fight six months ago, right.

You might not remember.

But if I had a fight 30 seconds or two minutes before, that makes the likelihood much better. Now, the third one is the frequency of that. If I had a fight once and it was not a big deal, the likelihood of a conversion is very low. But if I'm having daily fights and it's recent and it's a recent experience, it's a home run saying yes. So when we're talking to people and we're understanding them, and even like when we're talking to people one on one, if you can understand what's the experience that they're having, what's the frequency of that experience and how recent it's happened. And you can easily serve them and sell them, but serve them to help them. Say yes to what you're doing to solve that problem. And that's it. If you can do that on an ongoing basis and you can put that in your marketing and you can create, Understand those experience and talk to your prospects and understand how frequently people are having these issues and thinking about this, your marketing becomes, no, I love.

I love you. Got a little more tactical. And think about this. In today's world, we have access to so many people. Yeah. That you really have to have the courage to push away the people.

Yeah.

That you can't serve at this moment. Yeah. So many people are trying to get the person who had a fight two years ago, one time, it's like, no, don't worry about him or her. She'll come one of the times. There's enough people who are fighting on a regular basis.

Yeah.

And they just had a fight, and they had one yesterday. That you could say, serve and help. Go after them and narrow your marketing message to that one person. You know, I know this sounds crazy, but even through the years, so many people have worked on my marketing team, they'll come in and pitch me an idea, and I can tell they're excited, but young. They're. They're saying what they think people need and not living inside their head. And I was like, okay, name someone in your family. Think you could use this. And like, oh, I don't. Oh, my. My. My older brother, for sure. He's in his space. He could use it. I'm like, how would you talk to him? He's like, how would I sell him? And then, no, no. You sat down, you got coffee. He called you and said, hey, I don't want to be thinking about what's wrong with my life anymore. I want to find a way to see what's right. I want to live in gratitude, or I want to sell what I know, or I want to create a course, or I want to fix my relationship. How would you talk to him? What would you say? And I watch people stop and they go, oh, to my brother. And all of a sudden, it's the greatest presentation I've ever seen. It's like, I'd say. I'd say, hey, brother, you know, what you're currently doing doesn't seem to be working. And if it's not working, you can't. And all Of a sudden, they're like. I'm like that.

We use that.

Don't be. Yeah, don't be so creative. I'm trying to do a sales talk to humans, the human condition. Have a conversation, teach, share, show, enter conversations they're having, address the problem, show them a possible path to solve it. Yeah, And I'll watch young people, 20s there, and they go, oh, my God, I never thought of that.

Yeah, well, I mean, and this is something we talk about all the time. And you're always like, it's better to be clear than clever. Right? It's better to be clear than clever. And to me, that is where a lot of people, like, they see these innovative things. They see these, like, creative things, and most creative things flop. But most.

They do.

Yeah, they do. Like, you see this random billboard and you're like, I don't even understand. I don't get it.

Or when someone takes and makes a creative name and, like, merges it together. And I'm like, I couldn't Google that because I wouldn't know how to spell it right. I don't know the name and I really don't know what you do.

Exactly. So again, you know, marketing, there's so many parts here, but it's. It's like, just speak normal language, just speak clear. Just like how you would actually have a conversation. That's how marketing should be.

I love it.

That's where you win.

We're not done yet. But if people want to find you more, Jesse, where can they find you?

Well, they can find me on Instagram.

That's awesome.

Yeah, Jes, great dude to follow. Yeah, Instagram would be great.

Yeah. Jesse Ecker.

Yeah, Jesse underscore Ecker.

Great. Hey, what we've been doing since we started is I think the first couple of guests asked me a question toward the end. So now we make it kind of a common thread. You got a question for me?

I do. So, one thing, and I love this, because I get to bank off your experience. Right. Of the past, your past 25 years. What I would love to understand is the market shifting, sophistication shifting. Marketing is evolving. Where do you think a marketing is evolving to? Especially, like, with our live streams and challenges, like, where are we going? Like, what do you are predicting as, like, the evolution of the online marketing space?

Great, great question. Of course, now if you take some of the parts like everybody's worried about AI. Worried and excited about it at the same time. Yeah. Right. And I think that's probably a good worry with boundaries. Right? Yeah, well, it's going to change. But the Internet changed things. The printing press changed things. The gas vehicle changed things. I think this might be one of the biggest shifts ever. But I still believe that we need the human connection, the human thought process. So I don't. I just want to say I would take that fear off. We all, we've handled so many evolutions in this world since the beginning, since the first flame or the first round wheel. How many different things in evolutions. And we are innovators. We adapt, we adjust. So I think if that's a worry of yours, I would just park that for now. Because the only thing we can do is focus on us. We can't focus on the outside world. And what I've seen over 25 years is I believe the marketers that are going to make it are the ones that have the vision to continue to deliver more and more value in front of the paywall. I think things like a good webinar that delivers value, then ask for a sale. Will do. Okay. A webinar that seems like a 90 minute sales pitch are going to be extinct. Yeah. Because people want value first. Show me. Yeah. Why should I work with you, Jesse? Right. And I think we see that with a five day challenge. That's one of our biggest things. I think we've kind of spearheaded that. We've done the biggest in the world. I just looked in the last year, we've put four and a half million people into our challenges. Right. In just the last 12 months. But why do they work so well? Because we offer a product or a service at the end. Because we spend five days filling them with value, not teasers, like real education that they could leave with. So at the end of the five days they can go, that was amazing.

Yeah.

What's next? Or that was amazing. Maybe not right now. Not. I can't believe he sold to me. Right. And I think we are getting even though sales is service. And I believe we do people a disservice if we don't sell something that could change their life. I think people are getting more weary, like, what is this? And I think, I believe if you fast forward 10 years, there's nobody going to make it with a quick sales pitch unless it's a spontaneous buy. Just got in a fight with my wife. Things are going bad. I'm about to get the divorce. I need that right now.

Yeah.

Right. If the ideal person is going to click the button. But if you want logical buyers who are going to think through it, it's Creatively having the nerve to deliver way more value in front of the paywall than you're usually comfortable with. And then the only companies I think are going to survive are the ones that truly love their customers. And people love what's delivered so much that their lifetime value goes up. Because if your lifetime value goes up, you can afford to spend more to acquire the client. And I think the last thing I'll say is I love the term, I've been using it for 20 years is if your company or the company you're going to start does not ripen green fruit, you'll never last. And what I mean by that is you do an event and day three, you make an incredible offer, you're going to get the buyers like me. I'm a spontaneous buyer. Yeah, I'm an immediate buyer. Or there's someone that's like just had the fight or just decided to quit their job and they want this thing now. Or they went to the doctor and they got the report that your cholesterol is high and you got too many too much fat in your bloodstream. Like I'm losing the weight now. Right. You'll always get those spontaneous buyers or somebody with urgency. The companies are going to last. That to me is ripe fruit. But all these other people opted in. You have to ripen that fruit. Yeah. You have to deliver value. You have to be consistent. Don't just sell non stop. If you're going to sell something, give them five to one ratio value, value, value, value, value. Oh, by the way, I have this value, value, value, value. But so I think as we evolve, I would say more value in front of the paywall or before you ask serve before you ask deeper, stronger serve, real stuff, make your product even better that you over deliver and build deep roots and reciprocity of value. So those that are unsure that are logical thinkers, they pop in a month later, four months later and all of a sudden it's like a, it's like a wave of additional sales because you're servicing them. I think that's an ingredient that'll last the next 25 years.

I love that. And, and I'll add to that too. Based off of like what I see too is I see so many people now with the sophistication of the market making bigger and bigger claims. Let me get you from to $10,000 a month. Let me get you $100,000 a month. And I think people think that's the way and I think now going forward to bank off what you're saying. Of the value. Value on front, but value on the back. To make sure that you actually deliver on your promise and you actually like give them the deliverable they paid for.

And can I tell you, just to get the sale.

Yeah.

It's not, it's ruining the market though. You ruin it for everybody because then people don't believe. Here's something that maybe you know, but since you've been following me maybe a decade. Yeah. Have you ever seen me use a money claim in anything I do?

Yeah.

No, not one.

Yeah.

We teach people how to be in the self education industry, to do a course, be a coach@mastermind.com. that is the whole concept that we don't do anything else. We teach people how to be the best version of themselves first. Right. Living to your full potential. So some people are with us just to be the best version of themselves. But if we get you to help you be the best version of yourself, we believe it's time you sell what you know.

Yeah.

That's the natural evolution of Masterminds, what we do. But have you ever seen me talk about. We have 3,000 videos of people that have sent in how much money they made with it and we don't show any of them because it's, it's so front end loaded. I want the people that come in and realize, hey, we do have some secret sauce, but you got to do the work. Yeah. There's no magical money machine. But I'm going to get in the passenger seat. I'm going to ride co pilot. Yeah, right. I'm going to ride shotgun. And together, let's take you from where you are to where you want to be and that is sustainable. Jesse has been so awesome spending this time with you. Before we go, any last words or I love to say, is there someone in your life past present that you'd like to thank? And without their support, maybe you wouldn't be here.

There's so many. I think I'm going to thank my wife and we started to get together when we were 19 years old.

Wow.

Yeah. So 19 pretty much majority of my, my life now with her and just the evolution together from 19 to where I am and just growing together. And she's always been that person that can continue to keep me on the path. So I'm gonna thank her.

Yeah. Beautiful.

Yeah, man.

I appreciate it so much. I told you guys, be one of your favorite, do me a favor. If you loved it, follow, subscribe and take the link right now and share it with someone in your life. Let's continue to get this word out there. We don't have all the answers, but hopefully we delivered some. Thanks for being a part of the Own youn Future podcast. We'll see you next week.