One Thing I'd Tell Young Entrepreneurs About Running a Business

I'm going to start with reciprocity. It is the foundation. It is as Brian Tracy says. I want to give him credit for that. It's the most powerful law of human nature and what the law of reciprocity says. And the wealthiest, most successful, most happy people I know in the entire world understand reciprocity above all. And for most people, not you, because you're here learning. You get it. You wouldn't be on this call right now. For most people, it seems counterintuitive. Most people feel, well, I'll do something for you when you do something for me, or I'll do something for you if I feel I can get something from you. I believe reciprocity is. I believe reciprocity in a different way. I would say the definition of reciprocity really is. Not only is it the strongest human nature, reciprocity is, if I do something for you, you will feel obligated. It's human nature to do something back. For me, that's reciprocity on the simplest way that I can describe it. But I want to bump it up. I want to show you how it's affected my life. Reciprocity to me is the same thing. But I want to do something for you and not expect something back. Because I think there's a bigger play here. I think there's something bigger than us. I believe in God. You can believe in the universe, whatever it is, what God, it doesn't matter. I just believe there's a higher power than us that knows when you do for others without wondering what's going to come back. It comes back, and sometimes it comes back by somebody tapping on your shoulder. You give and give here, thinking you're going to get something back. And all of a sudden the deal comes through. Your neighbor wants to sell your house and you make money. The job comes to you without asking for it. The new company falls on your lap. The partner taps you on the shoulder. Would you like to use my money to invest in real estate? I'm getting goosebumps. I'm not kidding you. Because in my life I know that I've found a way. And it was. It's counterintuitive. It's the complete opposite of how I was raised. I love my dad dearly. He's a great guy. But my dad was taken advantage of a lot as a kid. The youngest of 12 in an abusive home. Crazy stuff, right? And I became a better human because of that. So I'm sorry he went through it, but it changed in this generation, right? But he Got taken advantage of a lot. And my dad brought me up saying, hey, don't do so much. Don't be so kind to people. Don't give so much. They just take advantage. If something gives you, then give back. Well, if you hold out, then you never get to that point where people come to you and give to you. And all I know is the more I've given, the more that's come back to me and not necessarily in the same person. So let me go through a couple things here. This is some stuff I studied with Brian Tracy, and I did some research. I have my own. I have a whole page of notes on my life. But I got a couple people that I respect. Robert Chowden, who wrote the book Influence and book Persuasion. And of course, you know who Brian Tracy is. Brian Tracy says that even compliments are a form of reciprocity. If you say to somebody, oh, you look amazing today, they can help do it today, test it. If you say, oh, my God, you look amazing today, or I love those shoes. Immediate obligation. Where people go, oh, I like your hair, I like your shirt. I like the new car you have. We feel obligated. Take it the other way. Something's physical. Take someone to lunch and when you're done, go, I got lunch today. It's on me. People, they feel obligated. People will say, oh, you know what? Next time you have lunch, it's on me, right? You send somebody a Christmas card. Like, ah. You feel obligated. Did you ever get a Christmas card or a birthday card from someone who's not on your list to send? You're like, oh, my God, I gotta put them on the list. Or you get a birthday or Christmas present last minute and you're like, oh, my God, they sent me a present. Hurry up, call your assistant, call your friend, call your wife, call your husband, or just run to the store and go, I gotta get a present really quick. We are built that way. We are built internally. It's our nature. Is everybody like that? No. But are the majority of people. Absolutely. We give and that person feels obligated to give back. We have this deep desire. This is Brian Tracy. We have a deep desire to feel even. We don't want anybody to have one up on us. But the reverse is also true. So remember that the reverse is also true. If we don't do and we expect something back, we set ourselves up for failure. Now I'm going to get back. I want to share a couple cool things from Robert Cialdini. He's pretty awesome. If you've never read the book influence, read it. But I want to tell you a couple stories. First. I want to tell you about Richard Branson. So I get to have. If you've ever seen any of my stuff. Richard Branson has a cool quote that he says about me. If you don't know who he is, he owns all the Virgin Convergin, Atlantic, Virgin airlines, Virgin Records, VA, Virgin Mobile, multi billionaire, one of the top 500 top, probably 100 richest people in the world. And I get to have Richard Branson on camera saying, dean's the type of entrepreneur that makes the world a better place. And he wrote quotes for me, and he invited me to go spend a week on his island in Necker. Necker island in the British Virgin Islands. I mean, a week on an island that cost, like 100 grand a night to be there, I got to go there for nothing and spend it with him. Sailed around the island, got to know him, invited me back the next year. I went back the next year, had the most amazing time, food, every. I mean, listen, I grew up, I lived in a trailer park. I lived in a bathroom with my dad when I was a kid. And then to be on Necker island with a billionaire, just like, you know, we had sushi in the pool, and they, like, floated a boat filled with sushi. And you're just like, imagine being in the pool, the waves crashing. You're on an island with Richard Branson eating sushi, talking about making money in business. It was like, am I really here? What if someone finds out? They're just going, could you leave, sir? You know you're not smart enough to be in that pool, right? So I say that, and it's all cool, and I get to use his endorsement. But how did I get a relationship with Richard Branson? I'm nowhere near worth what he's worth. I don't run in the same crowds he does. Reciprocity. Richard Branson is obsessed with his charity, with his charity arm called Virgin Unite. And me and my dear friend Joe Polish, and we'll talk about him in a minute, too, realized how passionate he was for Virgin Unite. And we went out before we asked anything of him, before we asked, if we do this, what do we get? We didn't ask any of that. You know what we did? We went out and raised a million dollars for his charity with dear friends of ours. Now, that's a lot of money. I realize that. We hit up very wealthy people who donated $50,000 each to. I'm just using this as an example, you don't have to raise a million bucks. I'll tell you some other stories that cost me nothing. But we went out and raised a million bucks for Virgin Unite. The cool thing about virgin Unite is 100% of the money that you donate goes to the people who need it. He pays all the bills in the company. We did that. We started the reciprocity by delivering. Didn't know what we'd get back. And in return, my buddy Joe Polish and Richard became great friends. We went to Necker island twice. We got endorsements, and he's someone who's in my email and my phone now. You know, that's not the only story. Richard Branson was someone I always wanted to meet. But if you would have asked me 17 years ago, if you would have asked me 17 years ago, 15 years ago, if you could meet anyone in the world, anyone who would you like to meet? And the answer to that would have been Tony Robbins. Tony. When I was already in business, I was already generating millions of dollars, already successful, starting from nothing. But I listened to his tapes and audios to get the ultimate edge course. A lot of you listening right now probably listen to it. It changed my life, changed the way I was thinking. And I just adored that guy for doing it for me. And years went by and five or six years ago, a mutual friend introduced us. We became best buds. We've been talking ever since. Like literally, we talk every single week. We just got done golfing and dinner and hanging out for a couple days. I truly adore the guys. He's an incredible man, changing the world and he's on such. He has such momentum right now and he's blessed. He deserves it because he's helping so many people. But Tony and I met and soon as we met, I realized something in his company when you. This is silly. It seems silly, but I realized that when you'd go to like a UPW or a Date with Destiny, I mean, if you've ever been to any of Tony's events, oh my God, you're jacked out of your mind. You're on fire. You're like, you could breathe fire, you could walk across water and then you get home and you want to keep that buz, but it slowly starts fading away and then you're searching online for Tony videos or, you know, anybody other, you know, personal growth people to feed it, right? So I told Tony, I went to your event and I realized that after your event, it would be great to get some follow up stuff from your team. And from you to keep like the buzz going. And he said, God, that's a great idea. So what I went ahead and did is I wrote all the emails, I laid it out, I even recorded videos of how I would do it in like Tony's voice. Now I can't Tony, that's funny. But I went and created, I spent hours and hours and created all that. And I called him one day, I told him I had something for your team. I got on the phone with his team, he set up a Skype call. I was with his top 10 team and I just gave them everything. And I spent a half a day working with him. And I got done. He's like, dude, Tony Robbins literally took a picture of his black card and emailed it to me and said, that will help people so much, it'll be worth millions to me, but even more so the lives it'll affect. Charge me whatever you think for all your time. Of course I didn't charge him anything, but it built a relationship I did for Tony. And listen, if Tony did nothing, if he never talked to me again because he's the busiest frickin guy I know, he's the only guy I know busier than me. If he never talked to me again, I'd be fine. I owed him from the course that he didn't even know touched my life. I feel like he built reciprocity with me by me giving him money for his course back 15, 17 years ago. But I did that expecting nothing in return. And it built a friendship that I consider Tony one of my dearest friends. Now, I'm only telling you this, I'm only telling you this because I'd love for you to think who could you find an opportunity today to go do something for somebody else? Who. How do you build a relationship? How do you build anchors? How do you build strengths? How do you build connections that take you to another level? You know, every personal growth expert, therapist, anybody in the world of human psychology, of human potential will tell you that you are the average of the five people you hang around. You have two negative people that are broke and miserable and pissed at the world and two that are doing well financially and happy. You're in the middle. That's reality. That's a law, right? So how do you, how do you find a better group of people? How do you get people to want to do things for you? And that's what I want you to think of. Reciprocity. Who today could you do something for that could help? What's up? What's up? Hey, before you go, you need to watch these next few videos. They're absolute game changers. Hurry up and click right over here and watch them, and I'll see you there, Sam.