Relationships Beat Algorithms

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gary Sanchez. At the why Institute, we've helped over 40,000 people discover, make decisions and connect using their why. This show will be much more powerful for you once you know your own why. So head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why. Today you're going to meet one of the leaders who've discovered their why with us and is going to share their story and the powerful lessons they've learned.

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and then live your why. And so if you're a regular listener, you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. And so today, we're going to be talking about the why better way. So if your why is better way, then you are the ultimate innovator. You constantly seek better ways to do everything from the most mundane task of brushing your teeth to improving the rocket fuel that powers the space shuttle. You can't stop yourself. You take virtually anything and want to improve it, make it better and share your improvements with the world. You invent things and take what has already been invented and improve that too. You constantly ask yourself questions, what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? What if we improved it? You contribute to the world with better processes, better systems, and operate under the motto often pleased, never satisfied. You are excellent at associating and taking from one industry or discipline and applying it to another, always with the aim of improving something. You generally operate with a high level of energy, because after all, that too is a better way. And so today I've got a great guest for you. His name is George Bryant. He is a New York Times bestseller bestselling author, podcast host, and one of the most highly sought after digital marketing consultants in the world. To teach his relationships beats algorithms approach to business. He has helped hundreds of the largest companies in the world and thousands of entrepreneurs ethically scale their business by deepening their relationship with their customers and creating transformational breakthroughs that help them accomplish their goals. He believes the company's financial success is directly dependent on on the amount of value they share before and after a purchase. Business is about relationships and touch points. The companies that put relationships before transactions will win. That is the relationships beat algorithms approach. And George, welcome to the podcast.

So excited to be here, my friend. So excited.

This is going to be fun. So let's start with the obvious. How did you get into this? Give us a little bit of your path, your journey, where are you from? How did all this stuff happen? Because it's exciting.

Yeah, we don't have a four and a half, half hour podcast. I'm going to give everybody the dopamine hit of it. Right. There was a better way. Let's just start with there. There was a better way. Right. So I grew up in outside of Boston, pretty broken. Childhood drug abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, social services, emancipations, you know, seven year divorces, bullied, front teeth knocked out three times, nose broken twice, you name was, it was there. And I knew at a very young age, and I don't know why, like I used to say, I felt like I didn'.

I just knew that there was something different for me. Like I didn't go down the road of like, oh, I'm going to be an addict or I'm okay with this or I'm going to end up pumping gas. I was like, I can't stay here. And so I started working at like 11. I got a. I was a skate guard at the ice rink. So I got to, you know, be 12 years old and ice skate around and tell people to slow down while I went as fast as I wanted under the table, of course, and I got paper routes. And really what it was is that, you know, the world that I grew up in, I had to support myself at a very young age. You know, I had to feed myself. I didn't really have much support or anything. I lived in friends, basements, things like this. And so as I started to become aware of like what the world was like, you know, social services, having case studies, like my parents fighting, arresting each other, police involved, welfare checks, I was like, yeah, I don't want this at all. And I looked at my family and quite frankly, my entire family primarily were in that world. Like they lived in that world. Alcoholics, drugs, like renters, never owned anything. And I was like, this is not why I'm here. And so I worked and worked and worked three jobs in high school. Well, going to high school, I didn't really go much to high school. It wasn't that I was a bad student, it's just I wasn't a student. I just didn't go. I was like, I have to feed myself. Like I have to keep a roof over my head. I have to be able to pay my bills at 15, 16, 17. And so I had this bright idea at 17, that I needed to leave. And I was like, well, what am I going to do? And I was like, I'll join the Marine Corps. That'll be fun. And so I tried to join the Marine Corps. I was 55 pounds overweight. I was already struggling with the eating disorders from the abuse. I was bullied, like. And so luckily I had this recruiter who not healthily, but helped me lose the weight. And I forged my parents signature and joined the Marine Corps. So literally, I graduated high school because my teachers knew they spited me and the best gift they could have ever given me. I missed like 130 days my senior year. And I wasn't there much anyways. But they knew the cops knew everything new. And I think they kind of wrote me like a permission slip to have a chance. So I took off, went to boot camp, and then the, you know, the better way took over. I had a lot to prove to myself, to the world. And it was, it was out of spite in the beginning, but I went to boot camp. I graduated honor graduate out of 1200 people, number one, went to Marine Combat Training, graduated first out of like, you know, 800 people. Went to my job school, graduated first out of 50 people. Got to pick my first duty station, got to Cherry Point, North Carolina, and sounds like we're, we need somebody to deploy. I'm like, I'll go. So I ended up in Somalia for 13 months in 2004. And so I started this career in the military and really it was a career to run, right? I left one traumatic world to join one where I was rewarded for that behavior. Disconnection was great. No feelings were great. There was no pain. And so I just kept hiding. And really I was avoiding addictions of substances and doing it with disconnection and feelings, right? I didn't know how to process my pain, my trauma. And so I joined The Marine Corps 2004, ended up in Somalia for 13 months. 2005, ended up with a pretty horrific injury. I got exercise induced compartment syndrome, almost lost my legs, ended up having six surgeries, spent 12 months in a wheelchair, gained 100 pounds, got addicted to opiates and narcotics, suicidal, attempted suicide. My bulimia spiraled out of control. I was 260 pounds in a wheelchair at 5 7. And I was alone for basically 12 months, living in a barracks room while, you know, contemplating life. And so at some point they were like, listen, you're going to get medically separated. And at that point I was more scared of going back to nothing that I was of doing the work. And I was like, why? How can I. If you can run a physical fitness test. Test the next 60 days, you can stay in. Like, mind you, I hadn't walked in, like, eight months. And so luckily, I was able to pass. It bought me some time, stayed in, and it lit this fire of addiction to working out for me. Then I was like, here we go. Here's another one. Right now I'm going the other way. I did triathlons, you know, was running, was lifting. Ended up in Afghanistan in 2010. I did lose my dad to cancer, and they were married and divorced in there. But it doesn't add to the story. 2010 in Afghanistan. @ this point, I'm pretty high up in the Marine Corps. I'd been in for 10 years. I was a staff NCO. I had 55 Marines under me, and so I was rewarded for being a psycho. I got to work out three times a day. I got to be the leader by example. I got to hide my feelings and emotions. We end up in Afghanistan. And I got pretty injured, both emotionally and physically. I ended up getting seven concussions over the course of two years from I got traumatic brain injury. And then I lost 28 Marines total. Um, and then, you know, and then when I got back, I actually witnessed three of them commit suicide. So all this kind of stacked up and added up. And so when I was in Afghanistan, I found CrossFit and Paleo, and I was like, I need to take control of my life. I've lost my dad. I committed to never being like them. But here I am, addicted to something else, disconnected, not feeling my feelings, pretending I have it all together. And that deployment really shifted something in me, and I was like, I'm going to teach myself how to cook. I'm going to take care of my body. I'm going to do the work that I need to do. I'm going to process this trauma. I'm going to do it all. So when I came home from Afghanistan. Oh, I did tie a world record in Afghanistan, though, for a standing box jump. That was just a fun little tidbit, Mr. Extreme. Someone's like, how high can you jump? And we figured it out one day, and I ended up tying the world record for a standing box jump at 57.

Inches. Oh, my.

God. Yeah. Google George Bryant box jump. It'll come up. And that was just one of those. Let me prove to you that I can do this. And so I came home, and I was like, I'm gonna teach myself how to cook. So I started teaching Myself how to cook. And I knew I needed accountability, right? I'd never cooked before. I knew I was a binge eater. I had all these issues, and I really wanted to beat him. I didn't want to tell anybody, but I was like, I can do this. So I was like, I'll just post my recipes on Facebook every day. So I had to make a fake Facebook account because I didn't have a college email. So I made a fake college email to get a Facebook account. It's like, 2010, 29, 2010. So I just posted recipes, and after a couple months, everyone's like, God, I really wish you had a blog. I'm like, what's a blog? Oh, it's like a website. So I set up blogger.com, moved my recipes over, and I was just posting everybody else's recipes that I was making on this blog, and I needed to name it, and I was like, oh, it's Paleo recipes. So I named it civilized caveman cooking creations.blogspot.com because that's easy to remember. And I kind of just continued that. And at that point, the Marine Corps said, hey, listen, we love you. It's been great, but you literally cannot deploy again, and you'll die. You are broken, beat up, like, boom. Like, so we're gonna medically separate you. And so after 12 years, they were like, hey, you have traumatic brain injury. You have bleeding on your brain, fluid on your brain. You have your legs. You can't walk. You can't feel them from the knee down. And this after, they, you know, told me they would amputate them, but I made a full recovery. And then you're like, you have ptsd. And at that point, when we came back, in the matter of two months, I had witnessed three suicides. And so it was kind. I was gone. Like, I was off my rocker. I was gone, gone, gone. And so I was like, all right. And I didn't know how long it was going to take, and so I buried myself in this business, right? And I was like, I'm posting every day. Well, turns out, ended up being a good thing. And, you know, teaching myself how to cook taught me how to heal my body, eat healthy foods, cut toxins out, learning about Paleo. And then someone's like, hey, man, you know, you should have, like, an ebook. Like, what's an ebook? And they're like, take all your recipes and put them in an ebook. So I did, and I sent it to them, and they're like, no, we wanted to pay you I'm like, why would you pay me? They're free on my website. They're like, ah, but it's convenient. Here, put it on this website. It's 2011. So I then uploaded this thing to the website. They're like, tell everybody you did it. And I had been doing this for, like, six months now. And so I did. And I remember I made my monthly salary in day one and made, like, 5200 bucks. And I was like, whoa. And I was like, this is broken. This isn't real. Like, no idea, right? And then they're like, no, no, no, no. Tell everybody again. Like, blog about it, email it. I'm like, all right. And I made my yearly salary on day two. And then I was like, okay, I have no idea what this is, but okay, I'll get out now. You can send me out. I'm fine. I didn't really want to be a Marine anymore. I was really tired, broken, depressed. And so I basically transitioned to becoming a food blogger. And I did that. 2010, 2011. And then by 2012, I had one of the largest paleo food blogs in the world. I posted every day. And so I just kept doing this and doing this and doing this. And luckily, at that point, I met my wife, who was a saint, a goddess, a savior. She had been a hypnosis and NLP coach for 20 years, had done personal development for 20 years, and here I am, like, I'm great, yet I haven't processed anything from my life. And so she was a really big shining light. So I kept running this business, and that was my stake in the entrepreneur world. And so I ran the business, ended up getting about 2 million social media followers, 5 million month on my website. Wrote a cookbook that everyone said wouldn't make it on the list, except it was on the New York times list for 22 weeks. And someone's like, you should launch an app. I taught myself how to launch an app, hit number one in the world, got featured by Apple's the top health app of 2015. And, you know, this story continues because there's always a better way, right? And. And so that kind of continued. And then as that continued, my wife and I got married, and we experienced a lot of pain and trauma caused by me. And I had to really start diving into the work. I had to, like, start healing my past and healing my trauma. I started with emdr, then that led to breath work, then led that to, you know, plant medicine, mdma, assisted psychotherapy, trips to the jungle with shamans like you name it. Because I had already been addicted to opiates, I'd been on 21 prescriptions, I had nerve blocks, I had Botox. And like, I wanted something different. And so I made it my mission to find a better way to heal myself. And that started by loving myself. And so I went from synthetic to natural to breath to food, to mindset and all that stuff. And I basically engulfed myself in that world. And then my wife was eight months pregnant, we were about three weeks away from bankruptcy, and I was about as miserable as they come because that, that food business was me hiding in plain sight. And I knew that it wasn't for me. And so I made a decision to walk away overnight. So I walked away, deleted social media, deleted 2 million fans, deleted. An email list, deleted a website, deleted. And I walked away from a seven figure business because it wasn't aligned to who I was. And I knew it was keeping me stuck. And at that point someone's like, man, you should really teach people what you've been doing. I'm like, why? Like, no, we need this. I'm like, okay. They're like, we'll pay you. I'm like, why would you pay me? Because that information is valuable. And then that was the day I became a consultant. And so they're like, will you come do a keynote at my event? I was like, yeah, what's a keynote? They're like, oh, you give a talk. I'm like, what should I talk about? So I just wrote down some notes, I went a couple weeks later, gave a talk, and I gave this talk on how loving your customer, customers and actually being in relationship with them would help you build and scale your business. And so 88 people in the audience, I give this talk and about 30 of them come up to me after, can I hire you? And I was like, for what? To teach us this? I'm like, sure. And my first client was actually Men's Health, of all people. And so my consulting career started in that way. And I quickly became one of the highest paid digital marketing consultants in the world in about 18 months. Because I took everything I had self taught for seven years. I didn't have a marketing background, I didn't have a business background. I had a broken, wounded human that wanted to connect with other human background. And that's how I learned marketing. Everything I did was about people. How can I respond? How can I help you? Can I get on a call? What can I create for you? And so what I called an accident. I tell people I was successful because I was stupid, and I mean that in the best way. I had no preconceived notions of what it would look like. So all I knew is that the only way I would build a business is if that I put something out there, people received it, achieved the goal, and had a relationship with me. And that became the premise of everything that I did. And so then these companies heard and they're like, let's try it. And then you start applying these principles to companies doing a million a month, 2 million a month, and they go from 2 million to 5 million, 5 million to 10 million. And I, over the course of three years, took over 300 companies in 7, 8, 9 figure and two unicorns up into billion dollar status by this approach that I created and applying customer journey, psychology.

Value communication, and my definition of marketing to their businesses. And so that's kind of what's Fast forward to me. And then now I sit here with a beautiful family, a wife, my children, lots of horses, we got a couple pet snakes because my kids love snakes. And I own a couple businesses now, so I do consulting. I have a podcast. I have a diaper bag company where we make tactile diaper bags for dads. I have a protein bar company where we empower women to live. And all of our companies donate 10% of gross back. So we get women out of abusive shelters and homes, we give 10% back to veterans. I have a vitamin company called Vitamin Patch Club where you get to wear your vitamins and we raise money for cystic fibrosis and things like that. And so now I get to use this skill set to change the world by teaching people that relationships beat algorithms. And that is the shortest version I can give you.

Gary. That's an amazing story. And so those of you that are listening, so right now I'm looking at George. So, you know, he's got a sweatshirt on a tattoo sleeve, he's got the hat on backwards. He looks about, I don't know, 25 maybe. But based on that story, you got to be about.

80. Yeah, yeah. My body, my body and my brain feel about 100. The birth certificate says I'm 37.

Though. 37. So that is a lot to pack in in a 37 year old.

Life. Yeah, yeah. It felt like, you know what the military felt like. You know, they say dog years, right? Like, you know, it's like six to one. They that's what the military feels like. It's like six years of age, growth and wisdom for every year that you're in. And I was in for 12 years, three combat deployments, you know, through all that fun stuff. And it really, really. I see it as a gift now, but at the time I didn't realize. But you know, those beautiful analogies, you know, like, it takes pressure to cook an egg or, you know, create a diamond, and that's really what it was. And I do see it as a gift. And, you know, one of the things that I think is so important and by the way, like, I'll publicly acknowledge you for what you do on your podcast, I think it's. It's absolutely phenomenal. And I can see your life's work in it, and I think it's a gift to humanity. So thank you for doing.

It. Thank.

You. When I think about it, you know, and I think about my why being a better way, which has always kind of been my life is mine was born out of survival and reactivity, right? And so for me, I learned a lot of skill sets as a child. And the way that I look at it is you can either use them to do good or you can use them to do evil, right? And like, I could have gone down that road, or I used it as a perspective shift of like, there has to be a different way. There has to be a different way. And then there was a point in my life where the different way couldn't come from reactivity anymore. And there was this, like, two year period in my life where.

I lost the ability to be driven by external validation. And that was one of the hardest things that I've ever gone through. Because when you come from that and you go through that, you're like, I'll prove them. I'll prove them. I'll prove I'm good enough, right? I'll get into that core wound and I'll just show them, and I'll just show them, and I'll just show them. And you get to a point where you think that that's how you are, like, that's how you succeed. Like, you need the pressure, you need to prove it, you need to do it. But really that's at the sacrifice of yourself or other people. And what I loved is that my I've always been a better way person, but my better way in the beginning was born out of insecurity and reactivity. And then there was that period and I still became a better way, but it shifted from for everybody else to myself and like, understanding that this is a gift and that's how my brain's going to work and it's okay to do it to make it better and for me to be better and to call myself to greatness. And then, you know, the way that I say it now is my job every day is to build the best version of myself to give away as a gift to the world, a gift to my family, to my kids, and to the world. And when I look at, like, the life experiences that I've had, I wouldn't wish them on anybody, but I wouldn't wish them out of my life. And I think for years I looked at my better way is like, I'm going to show you there's a better way because of my ego. But now I look at it, I'm like, I'm going to create a better way because that's me building the best version of myself to give away to the world and to help people and to, you know, like, I want my headstone to say something that my kids are proud of. Right. And, like, I don't want to be remembered for, you know, my bank account or how many businesses I built and, like, how many people felt like they mattered. Like, how many people felt connected, seen, heard, and respected. And then how do I pass that on to my two children? And so, yeah, it's been really, really interesting, for sure. That's the way that I'd say that.

One. Yeah. So let's think of. Let's talk about that for a minute, because there's going to be other, better way, people listening to this that are struggling with the exact same thing that you just talked about. So take us into that, mom, where you realized that it was not an external thing, but it needed to be an internal thing. What.

Happened? We were bankrupt, we lost two companies, and when I really needed it, there was nobody there. And the way that I would describe this was I had a personal development coach look at me, and she said, we can feel your heart, but it doesn't do any good if there's trails of dead bodies behind you. And it was transactional. Right. And my better way was a way to stay disconnected from myself because I was afraid to feel right. Like, I didn't know that the fastest path was through. Right. Like, bison and buffalo got this game figured out. You go to Yellowstone, there's a storm coming, they turn towards it and walk straight through it. It's the shortest path every single time, right? And here I was running zigzags in the opposite direction, going seven states away, thinking that I would actually eventually have to face the storm. And so for me, because. Because of the life that I'd lived. It took an extreme amount of outside pressure to create clarity for me. And I don't wish that on anybody. Right. I'll take the easy button anytime now. But it got to a point where I was in this chamber of like, everything is cracking, everything is breaking. I'm losing everything. I'm gonna lose my wife, I'm gonna lose my kids. There's no point in me being here. And I had to have a hard conversation. And I'm like, okay, well, I'm not going to take my own life. I don't believe in that. And I've lost enough. And I believe it. And I was like, so I have two choices. I either take this on or I just quit. And if I quit, I don't get my kids, I don't get my wife. And I ended up right where I said I never wanted to be. And I had to have that self integris really deep check in. And it wasn't an overnight thing. The awareness came overnight. And then what I got to fall in love with is I got to fall in love with myself. No matter what it looked like, was I overweight, was I underweight, was I happy, was I sad, was I depressed, was I angry? But I got to learn the game of not making it wrong. And so, you know, like, one of my business partners, he's a men's coach. He's been doing this for 20 years. And we talk about this all the time. I was like, hey, when it comes up, like, what do we do? And he's like, sit in it and sit in it and sit in it and sit in it and realize that it's temporary. Right. Feelings are things that we can catch, but it doesn't mean we have to hold them. Right? You don't have to attach a padlock and hang them onto your back. Right. They come for a reason. And if you explore what that check engine lights for, then there's a path on the other side. And so the way that I put it into practice for me is that I realized that being with it, like just sitting can become a distraction at a point. I'm like, I'm always going to feel my feelings, but I have to set a timer. Like, I have to have a container. And the moment I do, I'm going to move into something. I'm going to step forward, I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to call somebody, I'm going to do something, but I'm going to make sure that I completely feel it before I call. Not that I avoid the feeling by calling first. And so it became this moment of just clarity where it doesn't shift overnight. But I say awareness is the finish line. Because when we're aware of what's happening, why it's happening, where it's happening, we then have the power to choose. And there are plenty of times I choose to not feel those feelings. I whip out my iPhone in the middle of night and play on Facebook, right? Like, I'm not absolved from this, right? But then I catch it and I'm like, oh, I'm doing it. Okay, do I want to keep doing this or do I want to do something different? Right? And it became this game of falling in love with this awareness without making myself wrong. No fault, no blame, no guilt, no shame. And so there's a lot of self love, self forgiveness. But I think the most important part for me, Gary, is that it was self. It wasn't external, it wasn't my wife, it wasn't my kids. It was a. I really need to know who I am at the core. Like, use Google Maps as an analogy here. People will tell me all day where they want to go. I want to go here, I want to go here, I want to go here. I said, cool, but if you hit start, it, can't tell you how to get there until you know where you are. And I was like, that's the game that I had to play. I had spent so long running from who I was because I was pretending to be my results, not the person creating them. And so what I really needed to do was to be okay with myself. And so for everybody listening right now, like. Like, I run seven companies. I consult some of the biggest companies in the world. I have two kids. I only work about four hours a day, and I spend about five hours a day in silence. So like, I go to the gym at 3:30 in the morning, not because I like getting up early, but I like having three hours before the world wakes up. No music, no sound, just me and the weights. Me. In the gym, I cry, I'll yell, I'll scream. I'll look like a gorilla in the mirror. I'll tell myself how much I love myself. I'll dance with myself, right? But I just spend as much time as I can being in a relationship with the one person that no matter what I do, I can never get rid of. I can't divorce myself. I can't leave myself. Like, it's me. It's me, myself. And I. And so that's been one of the biggest secrets for me is not making it wrong, but like, if I feel sad, feel sad. If I feel happy, feel happy. And then make sure that like, I'm feeling it for me and I'm experiencing it for me. And then when I'm on the other side or when I'm clear, I can go give that away or I can choose how I show up in the world. And that's what's been the biggest thing for, for.

Me. Figuring out who you are. Yeah. So if you were to outline the steps for some. So I'm listening to this, me included, and I. And we want to say, okay, George, what are the steps to figuring out who you are? What did you go through to figure that out? What would you.

Say? Yeah, so step number one is that realize for me was realizing that I got to choose who I was moment to moment. It wasn't black and white. It wasn't a doctrine or a tattoo on me or my soul. It was moment to moment. And that was probably one of the most freeing things that I've ever had. And so like, there are times in my day where I'm like, I want to be alone right now. I want to be a miser right now. I want to be happy right now. And not making it wrong. And so knowing that it's a moment to moment. Game number two was practice. And like when I say practice, I meant I used to say, like, I'm going to spend a couple minutes alone every day. It was a challenge for me to sit alone for one minute with no phone, no book. Like, one minute felt hard. I probably tap my pocket 10 times looking for my phone, right? Or like, should I turn a show on? Should I shit up? Or my leg would shake, right? And it's practice. It's just practice. Like I had 34 years of programming, of distraction. It doesn't go away overnight, right? But I think it's practice and intentionality. And so what I tell people is like, set yourself up to win. Like, you want to go run a marathon, great. Don't go run it tomorrow, right? That's not going to end well for you. You're going to die on the finish line or if you even make it to the finish line, right? Like, but can you go for a five minute walk? Right? And so for me, I was like, practice presence. And so I would just go for a five minute walk and I'm like, okay, no phone or nothing. I'm just going for a walk. If I notice the squirrel, I notice the squirrel. If I stub My toe, I stub my toe. I'm just going for a five minute walk and I just put myself in the space to win. So some people it's walking, some people it's sitting still, some people it's meditating, some people it's the sauna. I do it in my ice bath. But it's being intentional about being in a relationship with yourself. And so set a container for yourself to whatever feels good. To not put a container on it, to not have it look. I mean, put a container, but not have it look a certain way. Don't have an outcome. Like literally go for 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, where the only outcome is that you're in that for the time. Like that's it, nothing, nothing after the other. You don't do anything with it, you don't tell anybody about it. You know, if you have clarity, great, write it down. But the whole thing is just to be be. And then the third part is when things come up, get them out, right? I had a shaman say this to me. And this shaman said two things to me that I don't think I can ever forget in my life. And better way people have this a lot too because we'll see something and then we'll like hold it and use it for fuel. And like sometimes it'll bother us, we'll get jaded. We're like, ah, right. And he looked me dead in the eye and he said, george, he said, if it's coming up, it's coming out. Stop holding it in. And I was like, what? And like I thought about it and I thought about the thousands of times a day I'm angry or I'm tagged or I'm happy. And I either don't express the happiness because I don't want to celebrate and think that there's a finish line, or I don't say the anger. Cause I'm like, oh, it's not gonna. And he's like, all you're doing is holding onto poison and you're keeping it inside of yourself. And he's like, so it does have to say to somebody, write it down, say it in a voice note in your phone, post it, share it, write on a napkin, burn it, get rid of it. And he's like, but if it's coming up, that's your check engine light. You got to get it out. And so what happens for me a lot is, you know, I choose every moment who I get to be, which requires some self forgiveness. Like I slept in this morning, I was exhausted, I spent 12 hours yesterday, consulting. And I was like, oh, I'm tired. And I was like, okay, I'm choosing to sleep in. And then when I got up at 5, which was sleeping in for me, I was like, I had a moment. I'm like, you could have gone to the gym at 3:30, you could. And I was like, stop, stop. And like, I had to sit there. I went over to the mirror, Gary, and I was like, you're. You forgive yourself, you love yourself. Go to the gym at 11. And like, I had to like actually do this. And then I go on my morning walk or my reflective time. And there's days, Gary, I go and I'm just like noticing the world. And there's days I have like low level anxiety. Like I can feel it in my body and I don't know what it is. And so I'll just ask myself, like, what is it? And I'll just play with it, like, what is it? What is it? What is it? And if I get it, great, when I'm done, I'll go get it out. And then I kind of move on with my day. But this simple practice, like, I think for me, and I'm speaking to better ways as myself, one of my traps is a better way is that I always assume it has to be a giant swing in the opposite direction. It has to be overcompensatory, right? Like, oh, a better way is big. It has to be noticed. And I was like, oh, but you create a better way by the micro things that you do every day, right? And then the better way is the culmination of those things. And so for me it's like, okay, you can choose who you want to be in the moment. Give yourself the space to know yourself, whatever that looks like for you. It could be a car ride, just no music, right? Windows down, hair out in the breeze, right? Like, whatever it is that I don't have any, I shave it off before I stress it off, right? And then number three is like, when it comes up, get it out. When it comes up, get it out. And like, those three steps have been imperative for me. And the one secret I think that most people ignore is the power of breath. The power of breath, right? I'm a huge advocate for breathwork and breathing, but not what people think, right? So there's a really good book for anybody listening to this. It's called Breath by James Nestor. It's absolutely amazing. We create a lot of anxiety in our lives by not breathing correctly. We're a whole lot of mouth Breather than we've atrophied our mouth. But one of the things that I like to do, Gary, is that when I'm in these moments, right, Like, I've accepted I can choose who I'd be in a moment. I need some alone time. If I'm in that alone time and I'm like, oh, man, I have anxiety, whatever. I literally plug my nostril on one side, I breathe in for five and a half seconds and out for five and a half seconds. Then I switch, and that's it. Just one time. Guaranteed to go away. Guaranteed to go away. I use it throughout my day. I use it, you know, in meetings. I'll do it on flights, I'll do it on podcasts, and I'm recording my own podcast. Like, hold on a minute, I'm going. A little anxiety right now or I need to get grounded. I need to get present, right? And so the optimum cadence of breathing for a human being is five and a half breaths per minute. Five and a half breaths per minute, which is a 5.5 second inhale and a 5.5 second exhale. And so that's one of those presencing things that I use. So if you take that in, your day is like your daily tool that you have at your disposal at any time. You know, replace your Instagram hit with breath, replace your Facebook hit with breath, right? Like, get into you before you get into the world. That, with those three things are like the biggest things that I could recommend anybody.

Do. Wow, love that. So when you're done with those three or four steps, so there, there was, you know, you get to choose who you are moment by moment. You practice being alone. When things come up, you. They get out. And then the power of breath, when you use those four things, where does that leave you? What is that? What's the difference before and after with.

That? Yeah, so it's the difference between reactive and proactive, right? So before that, I'm reactive to the world, right? Like, oh, the world's hitting me. I need to do this. This is happening today. If I don't do this, I'm going to fail, right? Like, the stress, the insurance, the tr. The car, the job, the whatever. And on the other side of it, it's like, no, no, I get to choose. I get to choose. Right? And then you're going to choose to go into, oh, I do have to handle the kids at school. Like, I do have to get this done today. But the difference between victim and responsible, and I'm choosing to do this before versus I have to do this is the practice required to be present. And like, listen, I do this work I've been doing. I've probably invested over seven figures in my own emotional healing in the last 10 years. And I mean, I've done all of it. Of it. And it's really funny because if I could go back, all I would have to tell myself is awareness, forgiveness, and alone time. Like, that's it. That's what I paid for, right? Probably spent a million and a half dollars figuring that out. And what gets me there is breath. That's it, right? And so this happens throughout the day. Like, like, my wife's horse almost died. We have a couple horses that almost died last week. And that my wife's had the horse for 19 years, right? So when that phone call comes in and my wife's crying and I'm like, oh, man, like, anxiety, panic attack, like, the Marine in me comes out, like, who was it? What is it? Where are you? Right? What do I got to do? And she needed me. And I was like, okay, cool. And I was like, but if I go out there in that energy, I'm just going to make it worse. And so on the call ride over, there was like 10 minutes. I did an entire round of breathwork and I was there, solid, structured, ready to go. But I had to process that out. And the difference is like, okay, no matter what the event is happening, no matter what I do, the event is happening. But the only way that I can find a better way or be aware of it, or be an asset in that situation is to not allow myself to be a liability. And that clarity, that presence, right? The analogy I use for people is like, when we used to be in the Marines, I never understood why we would practice something for seven months that we did for two minutes. I never understood. I really, really never understood. And I hated it. I complained for 12 years. Right now I do it every day. Because the truth is, is that in those moments now, I don't have to think something happens. My body defaults to calm, collected, clear, present. And I think that's a gift that we can give ourselves as human beings every single day. That isn't taught in this world. We're taught more scrolling, more distraction, more consumption, more dopamine, which is all just disconnected from ourselves. And so whether we realize it or not, we're not really driving our car down the road of our life. We're more like a passenger in the car that all the advertising and the nuances and the addictions are driving our vehicle and we're expecting to hit our destination and wondering why it's veering off the road. And so for it puts us in the position of awareness and choice. And there's going to be times that you still have anxiety, you still have fear, but you're aware of it versus it's happening to me or I don't know what's going on. And like that's probably Gary for me, like of everything that I've done. I call them. Scott Carney calls it the wedge, right? And so like I do cold therapy, I do breath work, right. So I do ice baths every day. And the reason I love ice baths is because no matter what we know it's going to hurt. Hurt. You do them every day, it doesn't hurt any less. No matter what. When 33 degree water comes on your body and you're sitting in it for 10 minutes, it hurts like it hurts. You breathe through it and you accept it, right? But what you're really doing is you're training your autonomic nervous system that when it's triggered you don't do anything. You just sit. When it's triggered, you don't respond. When it's triggered, you don't respond. When it's triggered, you're aware and then you choose what to do, right? And that reactivity versus response. Entrepreneurship. Biggest reason I see companies go out of business, something happened. React, react, react, react, react, right? I make my students put a 24 hour hold. Like my ad account got shut down. I'm like, great, call me in 24 hours, don't do anything. They're like, oh, we're lose this business deal. I'm like, great, you're not dying, right? They're like, no. I'm like, wait 24 hours. And like the ability to hold and that's what it really gives us. And that pattern interrupt that wedge to where we practice every single day. The world is going to have triggers, we're going to have stressors. I guarantee we're going to lose businesses, we're going to have ad accounts shut down, we're going to lose things. Things. It's coming. And the more that we practice that, oh it's coming. And it doesn't matter if it's coming, I still get to choose. That's when we win the game. Because you realize it's just a game. And so I'm like, take my pawn. Got it. Cool. You know, checkmate next time. And that's the way that like we choose to practice and play and so another good book. And by the way, I didn't start reading books till three years ago. Now I've read like 440 or something. It's kind of mind blowing. But the Wedge by Scott Carney talks about. About how basically we've gone into living in this sympathetic state because of the world. Like because of the iPhone, because of, you know, the media, because of the newspaper, because of traffic, right? Like, think about it. Like, it's actually nuts that I'm sitting here talking about being intentional about alone time. Like, you do realize, like, 35 years ago, we by default had three, four hours of alone time a day, right? Like, if you didn't have the television on and there wasn't somebody with you, you were doing something by yourself, reading a newspaper. No different than reading a book, going for a walk, sitting. Realize, like, we've literally eliminated human from human being in the last. I mean, since really, like since 1998 when the Internet became a thing, right? And so, like, the fact that we're even talking about it is mind blowing. But I think the more that we can focus on getting back to human is when we have the power to actually make something different. We have awareness, we have clarity, we have connection, we have self. And quite frankly, you know this. You've spent years coming up with this work, and you can't go anywhere different until you know where you are. And so if we feel like crap, if we're scared, if we're, you know, afraid of what's happening, if we're angry and then we're consuming content in the world, that's not giving us awareness of what it is. We can't do anything with it. It. We're just stuck. We're just literally stuck in this. I call it, you know, the spin cycle in our brain, right? Your brain is your worst enemy. It knows your fears, it knows your vices. It knows every single thing that it needs to do to keep you safe, comfortable, and stuck. And I was like, so you gotta play this game, you gotta practice it. And it's just like a muscle, you gotta flex it for everybody thinking, I've only been doing this for like 4 years. I still struggle sometimes. Like, I'm like, God, Instagram be so much more fun right now. Like, that thought's feeling a little dirty or dangerous right now, right? And then. And you know, the. But it's the awareness of it over and over for me. So that's a very long winded answer to a short.

Question.

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Well, you. You broke it down and I was trying to write it down and I bet other people were too. You broke it down and you said, of all the stuff I've done, I could narrow it down to three things. One was awareness. I can't remember. I think it was awareness, forgiveness, and something else. Or what were the.

Three? Oh, yeah, yeah. I think it was awareness, awareness, forgiveness and acceptance, I believe are the three that come up for me.

Yeah. Like, was it awareness, aloneness and acceptance or.

Awareness? No, no, I think it was. I think it was. I think it was awareness, acceptance, something alongside. I'll have to listen to it again. I will listen to this one again. But. But really like awareness and like, if anything, awareness, because that's the game. Like, that's it. Like, you have to know that, like, oh, I made this recipe and the result didn't come out like I wanted. You have to be aware of that so you can pull a different lever next time, right? Like, I went and ate this and it didn't equal a good feeling. You have to be aware of that, right? And so it's not something that's talked about enough. We just have to be aware. But the most important part is that we have to be aware with empathy and compassion for ourself, right? You can't be like, you know, like. And like, here's the thing. Like, you. You can go out to dinner and you can have a food and you can eat dessert and you're like, I wasn't gonna eat dessert. And you can come home, you have two choices. You either celebrate the crap out of that dessert and love every bite of that chocolate cake. And you're like, okay, well, cool. I'm not gonna do that again next time. I don't feel good. But what most people do, and this is something, we struggle. We come home, we beat ourselves up for like three weeks. Right? You're not in a monogamous relationship with food. There is no cheating, only choices, right? Like, the cake doesn't catch, right? And by the way, the chicken didn't care either. Right? Like it's evidence collection. So awareness, you have to be aware. Agnostic of the guilt, fault, blame or shame, right? And then once you're aware, it's acceptance, right? Like, oh, I chose that. Not that happened. Like, nobody put the cake in your mouth. Nobody put the cake in your mouth. And the moment you blame the cake, you're advocating your responsibility, which is feeding the pattern, right? And so when I do say this, Gary, most of the time I break it down into four A's, but it's awareness, then it's action. I mean, it's acceptance, right? Awareness, then acceptance. And like, acceptance doesn't mean that you're absolved of the consequences. It just means that you realize you're 100% responsible for 100% of the things that you do. That's it. If I sleep in, I slept in. My alarm didn't turn itself off, right? It didn't be like, I'm gonna get George tomorrow, I'm gonna turn itself. No, I slept in, I didn't set it, right? And man, I have those stories, right? And so it's awareness, then it's exception. Then this is the best part. It's action. The acceptance gives you a gift. That's what puts the starting line and it shows you where you are, right? It's like, cool, well, do you want to stay there? Sure, if you want to. But I don't, right? And so then I take an action and I'm like, take an action in the opposite direction, right? You're aware that you did it. You've accepted that you've done it. Well, what was the trigger? What was the thing? Cool. Well, what can you do? And like, for me, sometimes, because I was bulimic, I struggle with food, I would catch myself in the middle of a binge. I'm like, oh, stop. I'm like, what should I do? I'm like, I'll just go for a walk. And I would just go for a walk, like a 10 minute walk. And I took an action in the opposite direction. And then step number four is accountability. I told somebody, I told a friend, I told a partner, I told social media, I told somebody that held me to my greatness, not accepted me for my.

Mediocrity. I love that, man. You know, talking to you, you remind me of. In a mastermind group that I'm part of, there was this guy that was always talking about time compression.

And for most people, they don't know what.

You'Re.

When. If you say time compression, they don't know what you're talking about. And I didn't either. At that moment, when he was talking about time compression. What the heck are you talking about? And then when he explained it to me, it's, you know, it's essentially with the amount of experience and the veracity with which you attack life, you have condensed 60 years of living into 37 years. So talking to you is like talking to a 60 year old.

Right? Yeah.

Trust me. Like, and I tell everybody, you know, you ever seen the Matrix? Right? And you're like, I want to learn how to fly a helicopter. And they like plug the USB stick in. I'm like, yeah, I'm like the biggest, the biggest demise of your existence if you ever plugged a USB stick into my head. I was like, because you're hearing the synthesized digested version of what I think about 24, 7, 365 at 7 million miles an.

Hour. Yeah, it's great because you can help. You can relate to so many people because of all the stories that you have and things that you've been through and experiences and the way you synthesize. This is.

Awesome. Yeah. And Gary, what I love and.

Big fan again, like what I love about like what you break down and this isn't something that I saw, but like when we think about the better way, one of the things I like about the thoughts of like compression, right? You read Atomic Habits by James Clear, right? You read a lot of it. I mean Elon said this, right? He's like, he's like, I can shoot for the moon and I can set it as a 10 year goal or I can set as a 6 month goal, right? If I set it as a 6 month goal and I fail, I'm still going to be further than the person who said it as a 10 year goal no matter what, right? And like when we think about it and I think about life, carry this. And just so everybody knows, this came from survival for me, right? Like I was a heavy opiate addict. Like I was a heavy addict. Like I was addicted to everything. Food distraction, like self destruction, like all these things. And most of the stuff that I went to, they're like, okay, well we're gonna do this over like the next six months. Like I'm be dead in six months. Months, like six months my butt. Like I'm be dead in 6 months. What are you talking about? Right? And it's like we set our paradigm, we set our containers, we set the context. And like why not believe I cannot be bulimic tomorrow? Like why not? Why not believe I can't just do this? Like why not believe I can't launch that business tomorrow. Why not believe I can't fix my relationship in this moment or change my diet in this moment? I was like, I'd rather believe it to be true in an absolute.

See what works and what doesn't work and then iterate the rest to make it true. And like, I. And what's nuts to me, Gary, is like, I ask people these questions because most people understand. My podcast is called the Mind of George because, like, I needed somewhere to get all this out. It's like, plugged into that crazy stuff that's happening up there. And I love my crazy, right? But if I went to everybody right now and put a thousand people on the street say, hey, guys, listen, I'm gonna give you an iPhone. They're like, cool. I'm like, great. You have two choices. Do you want the first iPhone or the one that came out yesterday?

Nobody's going to choose that first iPhone, right? But yet they wouldn't have the one today unless that first one was.

Created.

I love.

That. And iterated and iterated and iterated and iterated and iterated. And what I learned about myself is that my pursuit of having it look perfect was also my addiction to staying stuck.

Because, like, you know, right? Like, I'll make a plan, right? I'll launch that product. And it's. Oh, but what about this? What about this? What about this, right? Walt Disney broke this down the back. Walt Disney had three separate offices in his building. And I don't care what you think about Disney. I just love this concept, right? And it's an. It's an NLP concept. He had a dreamer office, he had a doer office, and he had a critic office, right? And so him and his team, when they went into the dreamer office, there was one rule. You could only dream. You couldn't talk about how it was gonna happen, if it was how it was, if it's gonna work or not. The entire job was to be in the dreamer office, right? Like, I want a ranch with 225,000 acres, like Yellowstone, the show my daughter got me addicted to, right? Like, I want it. That's me in the dreamer office, right? I don't care if I can do it, not do it. It belongs in that dreamer office. And then I get it out in the dreamer office. And then it's like, okay, cool, now I need to go to the doer office, okay? Not the critic office, the doer office, right? Like, can we do that? How would we do that? What steps would it take to get there? How Would we get there? What would we do? And then you remove from that and you go to the critic office and the critic office isn't there to stop it. It's to ask the critical questions would get in the way. Can we finance it? Would there be a way? Would this happen? What liabilities are there? And that compartmentalization is what gives you the ability to get crystal clear. But it also stops us from getting in that loop over and over and over and over and over again. I'm not going, I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm not going. Because what happens as humans is when we have a thought, we go through all three compartments at the same time and we basically have Jekyll, Hyde and Jerry in our brain, right? Like going da da da da da da da da da. And then it just keeps us stuck. It just keeps us stuck. And I was like so the moment we become aware and we accept that, we take an action forward and then you iterate and then you iterate and then you iterate. And I was like so believe it is what you want. But like none of us are sitting here with a first gen product. None of us are sitting here with a first gen life or a first gen soul or a first gen relationship. If you think that you're still married successfully because you treat your wife the same way you did when you got married, you are grossly lying to yourself and mistaken. If you think you're raising your child the same way you did that when it was a one month old baby, you're grossly mistaken. And so if we fall in love with the fact that it's a game and the finish line is the progress and the iteration every day it actually gives ourself a permission slip to play and to play harder and to play faster without basically self holding ourselves in this stuck, right? Like I don't want to cement my feet in anymore. I did that. I used to. I'm an addict. I'm a. No, I'm not any of those things. Wherever I choose to be in this moment and in an hour I might choose to be a lazy bum that sits in the sun. And I'm okay with that.

And so like that that thought process for me because Gary, like what you said is like.

Knowing my way is a better way. I used my story to keep me stuck for so long.

I became my story rather than being myself and I experienced that story or that was something I tell. Like I'm this, I'm that. I did this, I had that. And All I was doing was keeping myself stuck. I wasn't growing. I was romantic about who I was, right? And the results didn't end well. And I'm like, cool. Like, it's great. You talk about who you were. That's awesome. But you have to use it as a reference to who you want to be. Like, future self journaling. The holistic psychologist Benjamin Hardy talks about this. And personality is impermanent, right? People journal, like, well, you can journal about two things. You can journal about who you are or who you want to be. One of them is going to shift you massively. And it's like, so journal about who you want to be. Talk about it, like, you get there. Talk about it when you're there, right? Like, Gary, if you ever come to my event, which I'll have you, I'd love to have you speak.

One of the things I do when I bring the event together for one of my mastermind groups is, and I don't prep anybody at any of my events. All they know is to show up, there's breakfast, and then four days, you're mine. I got you, right? No context, right? And so I was like, you guys all love talking about yourself, right? I'm like, cool. I'm like, you're going to go introduce yourself. You're going to go introduce yourself to two people in the room. And I said, you're going to tell them who you are. And I said, but you're going to tell them who you are a year from now in present tense. And so I want you to walk up to them, and I want to say, hey, I'm Gary. Hey. I just left my ranch in Montana with 225,000 acres. I walked downstairs. My wife was wearing the tank top of the business. The kids were there. I saw the horses in the back yard. Like, it was beautiful. I got in my black, you know, Toyota Prius, because I want to save the planet. As I looked at the solar panels over my farm and I drove to the charity to go save 200,000 veterans lives this year. And it just felt good. I had my Americana, like, in vivid, explicit detail of, like, what it looks like, the texture, the taste, the everything. A year into the future.

You cannot have anything but joy, excitement, or absolute clarity. Once you're done doing that, that's great. And so I do it in my journal. I do it on video. Like, people like, God, why do you do so many videos? I'm like, I'm literally just coaching myself. I'm holding myself accountable. I'm Projecting to the world who I want to be. And then this, you know, amazing thing happens. We somehow conspire against or with ourselves to create it. And so I just think it's. There's all these things that we can do, but I think the biggest one is starting, like, when you talk about time compression in. It's just accepting that there are no containers unless we make them, right? Like, an iPhone wasn't a possibility 20 years ago. Like, everybody remembers, like, Uber will never work, right? Or, like, that's not gonna work. Or nobody. I remember. I remember explicitly because I study marketing advertising. They're like, there will never be a computer in every home. Like, never, right? And I'll. Steve Ballmer, who owns the Clippers, I know him because I've worked with them also. Also famously said when he's the CEO of Microsoft, iPhones will make them a lot of money, but no way will they ever get market control.

Right? So much for that famous last words. But these things, like, there's so many things that were literally statistically impossible, that can't be done. That can't be done. That can't be done until somebody decided that it could. And so we get to stop letting the world decide what we can be and not be, and we get to decide who it is and how it's done, and we have to believe that we have to own it, and then we have to do everything in our power to make that an absolute. And that's the game that we get to.

Play. Well, I don't. George, I do not want to get off this call without giving you a chance to talk about relationships beat algorithms. So I love the direction we were going. You and I could talk for days. But.

Probably. Well, we probably.

Will. About relationships beat algorithm, because that's.

Fascinating. Yeah. So here's the thing. I've never even told the origin story of this. Ready? So this is what happened. So I became a consultant, right? And, like, I had to fake it till I made it. Like, you would not believe, right? They heard me give a keynote, and they're like, we want your help. And I'm like, okay, right? And if you guys are listening this, I just made a funny face. And I was like, I'll fly to your office. I didn't know what I was doing, right? And I was like, what do you want to learn from me? I'm calling people. They're like, just teach them. Teach them. Like, no matter what you do, when you get there, just ask them a couple questions and see if you can give an Answer, right? I was like having panic attacks, right? Like all of that and my first consulting gig, right? Most of my consulting is 1 to 1 to 2, 1 to 4, 1 to 5, 78 people. Because I had an entire team and I basically gave four 12 hour keynotes, right? Once I was going, I was fine, right? But I had no idea, no idea. And so then I was like, okay, so I'm answering their questions like ah, ba boom, boom boom. And so I taught for a year of just like dumping everything. I would look at their social like, you can do it better, you can do it better. Let's do this, let's do this, let's do this. And I realized that through all of it, underneath all of it, like I'm talking a hundred companies a year of consulting, I realized that I always focused on one thing. Like everybody felt valuable whether they gave us their credit card or not, right? And then that became my marketing law number one. And so when I started thinking about like what do I really help companies with? I help companies create customer journeys that hold people accountable to their greatness whether they pay or not. And at the end of the day, 92% of marketing is word of mobile mouth. The Average consumer gives 8 to 10 brand recommendations or non recommendations in a 60 second conversation. And most of the businesses in the worlds that we live in are designed to be transactional. And so how do we shift it? And I realized that all I had done from day one, the only reason my food blog was successful, that my book worked is I had a rule from day one. I would respond to every comment, I respond to every email and I would only create something if they asked for it. Somehow I became a seven figure business owner and blah, blah, blah. And it all worked magically. And he got lucky. And I'm like, or I listened and paid attention and I kept some principles. And so I realized that one of the biggest problems in business and marketing is that we live in a world that chases strategies and tactics, right? Give me the dopamine, giving me the dopamine, give me the dopamine. But when you schedule back and you go look back 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, marketing principles are all the same. And my definition of marketing is that marketing is a two way value based long term relationship. Nowhere in there does it say upsell, credit card, average order value, lifetime value or anything. But when I look at that, what relationship speed algorithms means to me is that we have integrity in what we promise. And if we make the commitment that we're going to Help you find your why that we do everything in our power to do it, and none of it is absolved to you because you trusted us with you and your fears and your secrets to help you do it. And I can't blame you that it didn't get done if I didn't do everything in my power to make sure you got it it. And that's the way that I applied this principle. So email marketing, customer journeys, paid media, everything. And it's really magical, Gary, because when you actually help somebody achieve what you promised, they somehow magically just become the biggest advocate, the best customer in the world, and they keep going. But I can't see one more time where you add something to your cart and somebody insults your intelligence. Like, hey, Gary, you forgot something. And it's like, no, I didn't forget. I left because you suck. Like, the end, right? And so, like, I did that for a company. I was like, hey, you didn't forget anything, but you gave me a resource that I can never give back to you, which is time. And for whatever reason, today, I didn't meet the mark for you, but I just wanted to give you a gift to say thank you. So here's our 15 best recipes that you can make to accomplish that goal with or without the product. Right? Shocker. We recovered 51% of those sales because it was human based, it was relationship based. And so for me, I looked at all of it and I summarized what I did, and I got interviewed on a show, and they're like, how would you summarize what you do? And I was so pissed off because for two years, all I heard was the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm, the algorithm. Facebook's broken, Instagram's broken. And once they said that, I added a hundred thousand fans to my Facebook in six months while it was, quote, unquote, broken. And then someone's like, how'd you do? I'm like, relationships. And I looked him dead in the eye. I was like, relationships beat algorithms. And like, that was it. It was that moment. And I was like, that summarizes, like, what I do. But at the end of the day, these are our mothers, our brothers, our fathers, our sons, our kids, our family on the other side of everything that we do. And we would not be happy if our family walked a doctor and said, hey, I guarantee you I'm going to help you lose 30 pounds. And then they left with a meal plan, a recipe, and workouts, and never heard from them again. We'd lose our crap, right? And so we can't do it in the world. And so if we keep our word and realize that our business isn't complete until the customer has achieved the result, not when they've bought the product, we're guaranteed to win. That's where you build billion dollar businesses. Like nobody's sitting out here being like, oh, I love Apple because my phone doesn't work, I don't know how to take photos. No. Right. And so that's the way that we play the game. So for me, relationships beat algorithms is out carrying your competition and doing everything in your power to help your customers and non customers achieve the things that you promised. And of course applying it on today's day and age principles and where their attention.

Is. Man, that is awesome. I love that. That's given me a lot to think about. This whole conversation has given me a lot to think about. So, you know, I know we're right up against the hour here and George, I am so glad that you joined me today and I've got three pages of notes so far and I'm going to go back and listen to this again and I'll probably have about six pages by the time we're done because you gave us a lot in that hour and I really appreciate it. Great.

Stuff. Yeah, it was a gift. And for everybody listening, I will thank you. Like I thank everybody. You chose to spend an hour listening to this crazy guy, which is something I can never give back to you. So I just wanted to say thank you for your.

Time. If people are listening and they say, man, I got to get ahold of that guy, what's the way for them to get ahold of.

You? Yeah. So I know you're listening. So I make this really, really, really, really easy. So you only have to remember one thing, right? Little NLP here. But my website is really simple. It's the mind of George. So M I N D O F G E o r g e.com It's a more accurate representation of than my name, but it's www.mindofgeorge.com. i have a podcast called the Mind of George Show. We do three episodes a week week and we have a Facebook group. And my team and my commitment to you is that if you need anything and you get ahold of us, we will help you. So listen the podcast jump in the Facebook group and we will gladly welcome you to our family. So it's www.mindofgeorge.com and eventually I'll make a jingle so you can remember it. But I haven't been that creative yet, and I'm not a musician.

So. We'll get there.

Man. What a great time that we get to spend together. So thanks again, George. I look forward to staying in touch, working together, having you come out to work with our group. And I'm happy to help you in any way that I can.

So. Yes, sir. I appreciate it. So thank you. And keep doing what you do.

Man. Take care. Thanks for listening to today's show. But before you go, let me ask you a question. Would you like all of your communication to be easier and more productive? Take the essential first step to clarity now at why institute.com I'll catch you on the next episode.