Adam Lyons on Positivity, Productivity and Profits

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Hey, welcome back to the show. This is Brad Costanzo and you're listening to Bacon Wrap Business where we do bring you sizzling hot advice. And today I've got a great guest. You're going to love this. We're going to go into some territories you're probably not used to on a business podcast. That being said, if this is your first time listening to the show or to welcome you with open arms if this is another episode and you're a returning listener, I want to thank you so much for your support. It means a lot to me. So do the five star reviews that you've been giving me on the show. I read every single one of them and it helps encourage me to do them even more. If you're not really familiar with the format, we go into all types of topics here and a lot of them are business related. Some of them are mindset and personal development. Today I'm going to be blending a little bit of social skills and their applications in business, sales, productivity, etc. With a very special guest of mine named Adam Lyons. I'm going to bring on Adam in just a few moments, but before I do, I want to tell you how to get in touch with me. If you'd like to ask any questions about your business, if you'd like a second opinion on your own business or marketing strategy, or you'd like to share your own really great working strategy that we call a bacon wrapped business strategy, please send that in an email to ask bradaconwrappedbusiness.com I read every single email, I read every single review and I appreciate your time listening to the show. So let's get into it. Adam Lyons is gonna be joining us in just a moment, but let me tell you a little bit about Adam and why I asked him to be on the call. So Adam Lyons is known as the world's number one dating coach. Yes, that's a dating coach. He is an expert at social psychology, social dynamics and has been doing this for years. He is responsible for helping to transform thousands of men's lives. Shy, introverted and dateless to absolute rock star social lives and showing guys who never thought they could get a girlfriend, how to meet the love or loves of their life many times over. He's also not douchey about it. Now, a lot of folks who hear the term pickup artist, dating coach, etcetera, they have preconceived notions, and they think that these are slime balls who just teach guys how to manipulate women. And I want to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. I actually have a lot of experience in this business. I had a business in this. In this area in the past, and that's actually where I met Adam Lyons. I cannot tell you how impressed I am with his mastery of social psychology and his empathy for his students and his curiosity about human behavior in general. Adam and I started working together, and he became a client of mine to help him transition his business from just the dating advice world into the world of helping businesses use the social, psychological, I guess, tricks, you could say, and understanding how the human brain works to make them even more productive in their business life. It's been an amazing transition to watch, and I asked Adam to come on the show today and share some of the applications that he's learned and developed over the years in social psychology and how it applies to business. So, Adam Lyons, are you with me, buddy?

I am indeed. Dude. Thank you ever so much. That was an amazing introduction.

Well, I try, my friend. I try. I'm really excited to have you on the call. It's fun. We talk on the phone all the time, and we share so many great things. I wish we were recording it more often.

That's true. You know what, though? You're a little bit unfair to yourself when you said you came on board to help me just transition into business. You helped me with my dating business long before that, and you actually helped me. I mean, in one week, I remember, you helped me make, like, $34,000, which was, like, the biggest amount of money I'd ever made in a week.

Previous to that, that was a fun conversation for everybody else who doesn't know. Adam called me and said, you know, hey, can you help me with this one little problem? We were on the phone, and I think I just told you a handful of things to rephrase. And you called me back and say, okay, I just closed a $34,000 deal as opposed to, like, an $1,800 deal, which you were normally.

Exactly. Incredible. And that was. Yeah, it was amazing. I mean. Yeah.

So since then, what I like working with you the most is that, dude, you. You implement when I. When I give you something, you go out, you don't hem and haw. You don't second guess. You just go out and do it, and you see amazing results from it. And so you're. You're so much fun to work with in that aspect that, you know, too often you tell somebody to go do something or you give them an idea and they do the opposite or they do nothing at all. So that's why I love working with you.

Thank you.

So, yes, we'll touch on this for a moment because I think your backstory is so important to what we're about to get into. And the topic is really. I'll kind of set the stage for the topic that I want you to talk a little more about being positivity, productivity, and profits. And I love the name of that. And can you tell me a little bit about how your transition without going through a long discussion of, you know, your entire dating career, etc. But kind of give a. An overview of how this all happened and where this came from?

Sure. I mean, I think the summary is in high school, I was voted least likely to ever get a girlfriend. And that kind of like, stuck with me for years. I get to the age of about 25, and I'm like, forget this. I'm gonna get good at this. And I start studying, you know, Neil Strauss the Game and with some other local people, and I learn about dating. And some instructors came to England from Canada, some dating coaches, and I got to train with them in return for letting them stay with me for two weeks.

And actually, I don't think many people know this story. And at the end of the two weeks, the guys were like, you get more women than anybody we've ever seen. Like, instructors included. And I was like, you're kidding me, right? I'm a student. And they're like, no. Literally, we see more women come in and out of your doors than anybody else we've ever seen. You should go and talk in Hollywood. And so they pull some strings, and the next thing I know, I'm flying on a plane out to Hollywood to go and teach this on stage. And I basically stand on stage. I didn't really care about the industry. I didn't really care about any of the people in it. I just cared about getting across. One message, which was the reason I was successful was because I socialized with large groups of women, and I used those groups to meet more.

Women. It's almost like farming. Rather than individually going out and meeting girls, I would generate entire groups of girls. And befriend huge amounts. And anyway, I gave that message and people loved it. And next thing I know, I got voted number one in the world a bunch of years in a row. And this is now my life.

Yeah. And it's a fascinating life. And for anybody who, for any guys out there, heck, even girls as well, who have any interest in improving your dating life, that's an entirely different topic. But I highly suggest that you seek Adam out and we're going to give you his contact information.

At the end of the call. I cannot, I cannot recommend your work with people enough. I mean, I've seen, I've seen people that thought they were amazing with women and this was kind of fun to see, to see their. You know what I'm talking about. To see their egos go. And they looked at you like that's not even human. Like every girl in this place loves him and he's being. He doesn't even look like he's trying, so it was kind of funny. So, that being said, let's talk about the transition and especially how it applies to business here. So you were telling me that the very first time that you gave a business related talk based on this, what was it, to an options traders.

Yeah, it was a guy that knew of my work and I had started helping him with other areas outside of dating because he asked for it. He was like, you know, can you help me with, with some of my work? He goes, because I'm an options trader and it's really important for me that I maintain my confidence at work. And so I gave him some tips for that, which ended up bleeding out into other areas. And he owned a trading floor in Chicago. And he's like, can I pay you a very nice sum of money to stand in my trading floor and teach my traders how to do this talk. And I was like, I mean, I don't know anything about trading. I don't know really. I've never done a business talk. But I mean. And I'll do it for you because I like you and also because you paid me a lot of money, which is always a good reason to do something.

Of course.

Yeah. So I put together this speech based on things that I used in my own business and things that I believed my employees should live by and things that I'd helped him with. And he brought me in and there's all these option traders and these guys are making so much money, it's ridiculous. I mean, there's guys that are trading with like half a million dollars, like on the line. And, you know, to them it's just another day at work, and they didn't want to listen at all. So I'm setting up for this talk in their sort of, like, meeting room, and everyone's like, yeah, I'm not going. I'm not going. I'm not going. And in the end, the guy who owned the floor basically said to them, it's mandatory to at least sit in for three minutes. And he's like, you have to go in the room. You have to at least listen to the beginning of what he says. If you don't agree with it, leave, you know? And so I. Yeah, so I. Standing there and I've got all these guys come in the room, and there's, I don't know, like, 25 guys, and they're heckling me. They, you know, they're like, what do you know about trading? Like, literally heckling me from the. From the crowd. They did not want to listen and learn anything. And, yeah, it was a very hostile environment. And, you know, they were like, oh, man, you know, I thought you're a dating coach. I was hoping you'd at least bring some. Some hookers for us or something. Like, it was just. Yeah, it was. It was that kind of environment.

Right?

Environment. Just like very alpha trading, guys. And I wrote. I wrote some stuff on the board, and I looked at them and I said, okay. I was like, I'm about to tell you something, and I'm gonna start by telling you this. I know nothing about trading. I don't understand the concept of it, but I guarantee you that by the end of this talk, I will have told you why every single day, you are throwing away tens of thousands of dollars daily because of some really stupid mistakes you're making. And I'm going to demonstrate those mistakes live here. I'm going to create some scenarios for you.

And I'm going to prove to you that you're going to fall into these traps one after the other. And every single time you fall into one of these traps, that's $50,000 you've lost. $100,000 you've lost.

Now, let me guess. Nobody at that point stood up and left?

No.

Who would leave at that point?

Yeah. They were like, okay, well, I want to hear I'm losing money. You know, I realized I wasn't going to tell him how to make money. But that wasn't the fear. My entire thing isn't that you're. Well, it kind of goes both ways, right? If you're not making money Then you're losing money and kind of like vice versa. But it's that these guys were missing on huge opportunities to make cash based on the way their psychology affects the way they handle their business. And, you know, they were at least going to listen at that point. And then I gave one of these examples to the very first guy, and he was desperate to prove me wrong and not fall into the trap. And of course, sure enough, he fell for it and he made the mistake. He made the wrong choice. And I proved it to everybody. And suddenly they were like, okay, I see how that can.

That's great. And I want to get into the content of the talk here in just a moment. But you've since done this now for multiple other companies, from, you know, to groups of salespeople to, I believe some real estate agents and a handful of other companies have started to bring you in as an expert in the, you know, the content on this. Isn't that true? Yeah.

Yeah. I've had a bunch of different people who asked me, and what's fascinating about it is I don't have a website about it. I don't. I don't tell people. This is what I do. Really. In fact, Brad, I think you're one of my biggest advocates. And it's like, you're the main guy, but it's word of mouth. It's people from the trading floor who heard the talk. There was a guy in the room that owns a trucking business, and suddenly he wanted me to help his business out. And he was just hanging out because he was a friend of one of the traders. So, yeah, so it's kind of like move, word of mouth. And it's something that I've started doing and I love doing, because it's insane how much the psychology of our own minds affects our potential to grow and gain.

Cool. So give me some examples. And if you want to relate it to the options traders, because that was the first one and that's what we were just talking about. Let's go on. Let's talk about that. What are some of the psychological, I guess, area. What are some of the areas that people are sabotaging themselves? They don't even know. So go into the positivity. Positivity, productivity and profit.

Okay, let's. Okay, so let's look at this. This is like a really simple thing. The concept of positivity, productivity and profit is that people who are positive will make better decisions, will gain more opportunities and will do better at them. And people that are negative won't and there was a great psychological study that I absolutely love that sort of, like, demonstrated this incredibly well. And what.

They did was they got groups of people to write down whether they were optimistic or pessimistic, and they gave them a task. They put a newspaper in front of them, and they said, I want you to go through the newspaper and count how many photographs, how many pictures are in this newspaper, and tally it at the end. And the pessimistic people took, like, a couple of hours on average. The optimistic people completed the task in three minutes, maybe even less. So it's like night and day, and it's like, well, how did every single optimistic person achieve this task so quickly?

And yet the pessimistic people took so long. And the way they did it was that on the third page, there was an article that says, person doing the study. Just so you know, there are, you know, 1233 pictures in this. In this newspaper. It's a test on observation. Congratulations, you passed. Feel free to write that in and let the examiner know. And all the optimistic people spotted that article. All the pessimistic people didn't. And what's really fascinating about this study is it was actually a study on luck and positivity. They basically wanted to prove that luck didn't really exist and that people who are unlucky are actually just unobservant. And we can get into that a little bit more. And the way that they proved that luck doesn't exist is halfway through the newspaper, there was another article that said, there are this many pictures in the newspaper, and if you cut out this coupon, you can redeem a $200 gift voucher for spotting it. Yet nobody found that one. Nobody. So the optimistic people spotted the first newspaper cutting and then finish the task within three minutes. The negative people didn't see any of them and counted all the pictures. And the theory is, if the optimistic people were actually lucky, they would have found, or at least one of them would have found the cutout that let them get the $200 gift voucher.

Interesting.

But none of them did. And so basically, the study.

It doesn't prove that much, but it gives very heavy evidence to the fact that people who are optimistic, who believe they're optimistic, actually just observant. So what was happening, what they feel was happening is the negative people, which are so focused on the task, they were so focused on how daunting it was going to be and how horrible it was that all they could do was the task at hand, whereas the optimistic people were enabling themselves to read the newspaper. They were looking at things of interest, and they were in general, absorbing more information and being more optimistic, which resulted in them enabling or enabling them to complete the task quicker.

Okay, great. So then, so, okay, so you've just. The premise there is that, okay, luck does not exist. Positivity and negativity, however, affect your perception of how lucky you are. Am I getting that correct?

Yeah, that's basically it. So anyone you see who has a business success, you're like, oh, my gosh, and their business is doing so great. Mine doesn't do so good. You're living in that negativity, so it never will. The daunting task of running your business every day, of doing whatever it is that he's doing every day, is preventing you from seeing these incredible opportunities that are around you. And if you can be. If you can find this positivity, we can talk about ways to get that as well in a second. Then it can help you just see better opportunities and to know when to take them. For example, with the traders, this became very important because what you found is when the traders had negative decisions when they were, you know, they just had a loss and they'd lost a lot of money, their brains shifted into a negative mode for the next or for the rest of the day or for a couple of days, and their behavior of trading would change. And I essentially said to them, a good deal is a good deal no matter what happened previously. So the concept being they would be tainted by this negative aura around them and they would no longer see good deals as opportunities. They would be too focused on the risk. However, they all are capable of assessing a risk and decide whether it's worth doing or not worth doing.

Okay, so give me an example of it. Yeah, give me an example of that.

So say, for example, you've got, I don't know, you've got $10 in the bank, and that's all you've got to trade with. And you take $5, you put it on a trade, it looked like it was a good deal, but it went sour and you lost your $5. Now, realistically, the way that trading works, you're going to hopefully win two out of every three. So you can do three trades, you're going to lose two of them, you're going to win two of them, you're going to lose one. So they've just lost their one, and they've lost their $5. Now they've only got $5 left. So now they've got to trade again. But what happens is now they're scared. They're down to their last $5 and they're not sure what to do. So they've got this new opportunity that comes up and instead of thinking, okay, this is a great opportunity, I'm going to go for it, they become scared of it and they don't take the correct, they don't take the correct risk. And because they don't make the right choice, they then lose again because they're going for safe bets. Or for example, they'll do a much smaller trade. That means they only regain a percentage of what they lost. So, for example, they've only got $5 left. So the next time they trade, they only put a dollar down, but.

They'Re only going to get up to six. Whereas if they put the full $5 down, they would have a much better chance of recovering. And with the odds being two, you know, two wins and one loss, they're probably going to win the next time. But they lose that positive attitude and instead they suddenly become, you know, they become wary and they make bad decisions because they're being, they're not being brave, they're not going out there.

It's kind of the opposite of that concept of seeing the world through rose colored glasses where people think, oh, everything's great and happy and. But it's the opposite of this. It's like seeing the world through smoke colored glasses. Like if you're only seeing the negative, if you're dwelling on the negative, you're going to miss the biggest opportunities because you're dwelling and you're holding on to any of the negative things that have happened, whether it's throughout your life or whether it's just throughout a day of trades. Am I correct?

100%. In fact, I love that phrase. Smoke color. Dustin's. Let me put it through to you like this, right? And I'll give you an example that you'll completely relate to. When I first spoke to you about helping my business, I knew that I was about to lose a slew of regular clients. I don't know if you remember, but I was gaining a lot of money. Yeah, I was gaining a lot of my business from one particular, one particular place. And I knew I was going to lose that place and I was going to lose pretty much my regular income. And sure enough, within three months of our phone call, I lost that regular income.

All of the savings I had in the world was a couple of grand. Like it was. It was not a lot of money. It was a few grand. However much it was three or four, whatever it was. And that was all the money I had in the world because I got a house and I had a car, but I had payments, all these things. That was it. That was all my money. When I spoke to you and you gave me the price to work with you.

I never made a big deal out of it, but it was literally all the money in the world that I had saved. It was every single penny. Nothing left.

I didn't know that, by the way. Yeah, no, I know. I didn't. I didn't want to tell you that you gave me the price. I didn't want to haggle because I believe someone's gonna give you information. You want the best information they can give you. And if someone's giving you a price, that's the price they want to get paid. And even if they could do it less, I don't like doing it less because I want them to want to work with me. You know, I want the best out of that person. So I got off the phone with you after the price. I think I told you yes straight away. But I got off the phone and I went to my partner at the time, and I was like, just so you know, I think I'm gonna take her entire life savings and give them to this guy. And she's like, you're crazy. Like, you're absolutely crazy. And I'm like, I'm not crazy. I was like, because if this works, we're gonna make a lot more money. And she's like, is he guaranteeing it? Like, do you get your money back if it goes wrong? I was like, no, no. It's kind of just on word that what he says will work. But, you know, I believe him. I wouldn't be talking to him if I. If I didn't believe him. And he's promised that if it doesn't work straight away, he'll keep helping, but we don't get the money back, he'll just keep helping. And I was like. Which is pretty good for me. I mean, if someone tells me they're going to keep working, I'm down. I'll keep trying. And so I took every single penny I had spare every single penny, and I gave it to you. And it was one of. It's exactly that point when you do that. I went all in. I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. But I didn't go all in thinking this wasn't going to work. I went all in being like, I am going to do this. And sure Enough. Within a week, I made $34,000. I mean, you know, it couldn't have been better. That money literally is what enabled me to transition when. When the break happened, when. When I, you know, lost my regular clients. That was the money that helped me survive and helped me make that through. In fact, it helped me move to Los Angeles, where I live now.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. I couldn't have done the move without that.

Wow. Yeah. I never. I never knew. Awesome. But you know what you said if.

I'd have moved or if.

Go ahead.

Say if I'd have looked at it through smoked colored glasses, it would never have worked. Like, I would have maybe tried to haggle with you. And if I only spent half the money, then I wouldn't have been all in myself. I wouldn't have worked as hard. I probably wouldn't have made the sale. I might have made some of the money back and been somewhat happy, but life would have been very average and mediocre.

You bring up something really interesting, by the way, just a second ago. Sorry to interrupt, but you were saying when she said, does he get. Does he guarantee it? Well, by you doing that, there was a shift that happened is when you went all in and you knew it. I didn't have to guarantee anything. You already knew that. I probably had the answers for you. You were guaranteeing it because you're like, there's no. This is a burning the bridge kind of thing. Like, I'm guaranteeing it'll work. Like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make sure it does. And that's one of the things that I think a lot of people miss is they. They look too much for guarantees from the other person. And if it's coaching, if it'. If it is any other type of service, like, you know, you've got clients who come to you to learn better social skills, dating skills, etc. And as long as they know that. Okay. Does Adam know more than me? Yes. Does Adam know a lot more than me? Yes. Do I want to know what's in his brain? Yes. Do I believe he has the ability to teach me? Yes. All of a sudden, you know, the shift changes from, do I. Do I think Adam can do it? Do I believe in Adam? Do I believe in myself? When you're asking somebody to put their money where they're, you know, where their desires really are, it's like, look, do you believe in yourself? I'll give you all the information, and I'll move heaven and earth to get you what you want. But, you know, I'll get you from point A to point B, but you got to get in the car.

You got to be the one who steers. And you did that. And that's why I said in the very beginning, one of the reasons I love working with you is because you, you have, you do immediate implementation, and then you usually come back to me with 10 times better results than we thought you were gonna get.

Yeah, but I mean, you know, I kind of have to. And like. And you, you don't know this. I've never really vocalized it, but, like, now is like a perfect time to do it. And unfortunately, I feel bad because this is gonna sound like the, you know, I love Brad Costanzo podcast.

That's about all right with me.

But like, you, you cemented your. Yeah, you cemented yourself in a position in my life where. And, and you don't, you don't know this because you don't know how my finances work. But every single time since then that I've had large amount of money come in, I've approached you at about the same time and said, hey, can you help me with business? Because I know it's a way of me giving you a large sum of money that I can justify because I've had some come in so I can keep working with you. And that's not something that for me is a short term thing. Like, I see that as a long term thing.

Me too. That's great.

Anytime I gain a large sum of money, yeah. I contact you and I'm like, hey, I'd like to give you X amount of thousands of dollars to just listen to more advice from you. Because it goes in and it sits in. And when I add it and it's not, it doesn't always come out the way that I think it will, but it always comes out better. Like, it always improves something. And I learned something and learn how to do something.

Just continue rabbit trailing. And especially.

Definitely not to make this all about me. But I think we brought up a very important point that maybe the topic of another podcast episode, but in the world of mentors, consulting, coaching that you and I are both a part of, one of the things that people constantly get is, can I pick your brain? And, yeah, you know, and a lot of people say, can I. Can I go buy you a cup of coffee? Pick your brain. Meaning, you know, can I? You know who else picks your brain? Zombies pick your brain. You know, the walking dead, they want to pick your brain. They want to eat your brain. And actually my My buddy Matt Trainor, who was a guest on a previous episode of the marketing moron1. So if you haven't heard that one, go back and listen. He did a blog post about this a long time ago. He said that. He goes, the people who pick your brain, they're like zombies.

They're walking dead. They just want to eat your brain. He goes, think about that next time somebody says that to you, and it'll totally change your view. But what's important to understand is that, okay, you and I were friends prior to this. We were colleagues in the same general industry. We were friends. We'd been affiliate. Affiliate partners and all this other stuff. But then when you came to me and asked for my professional help, and I was like, look, at a point, I probably would have been happy to just to help you for free, because we're friends. But when I had a transition in my life where I realized for myself that if somebody asks for free advice, I'm going to give them advice that is good, but I don't have a personal investment in it either. When somebody puts their money into my pocket. When you make that investment in me, that creates a massive emotional investment in me that says, holy crap, this guy just put, you know, put money on the table for my advice. I'm going to move heaven and earth to make sure he gets what he wants. And it motivates me not to give you good advice. It motivates me to give you the best advice and to keep on thinking about your business even when we're not on the phone. And when I have an idea, I call you up.

Exactly. And that's exactly why I knew from when we first met together, I was never going to just get advice from you because I'd seen you be one of the only people in the dating industry who built a business up, sold it, and make a ton of money. Like, so I knew you knew how to do it, so I had no doubt about your abilities to do it. And, you know, that always impressed me when it was like, you know, can this person really do it? Just look at them. If they've got a nice car, if they've got a business that works, yes, they can do it, and yes, they can help you. They're not going to do it for you, but they're going to help you. And at that point, you pay that person money because you want them to care. Actually, on a complete. I'll give you a complete flip about. And this, you know, part of my social networking, this is actually a system that I not only believe in, but I do myself. When I wanted to get into doing stage combat and film, because obviously I own a film company as well. And for anyone who's sort of, like, listening and, you know, you know, wondering about, like, a film company, what have you, I've signed two deals in the last week on my film company. One of them was for $400,000. The other one was, thank you. Yeah. And the other one was for initially $20,000. However, it works out to be $20,000 a week.

Forever.

So even though it seems like the smaller deal, it's the better deal. And so, yeah, so that's kind of like what I've done with my film company in the last couple of weeks. My film company is kind of like my baby, and I care about it a lot. But when I first wanted to get into film, I remember I contacted somebody in stage combat that I wanted to work with. And I said to him, do you do private lessons? And he says, no, I don't do private lessons. And I was like, oh, in that case, can I pay you $500 for half an hour of your time? And he was like, I mean, sure. That would be amazing. So this is somebody who initially didn't do private lessons is not going to say no to $500 for half an hour, especially as I knew his lessons were normally only 50 bucks. So I turn up with him, and I meet with him, and he's ready to teach me how to sword fight. And I say, I don't want to learn how to sword fight. I was like, I brought my camera with me. I want to learn how to film a sword fight. Would you teach me? And this is a guy who, yeah, he worked on Master and Commander. He worked on Hook. He worked on Gladiator. So he's, you know, a pretty big stage combat professional. But of course, when he's not making a movie, he's, you know, just teaching how to do it. So he spends half an hour teaching me how to film correctly. And what I learned was that he gets very frustrated with filmmakers because they don't know how to film a sword fight correctly. And I learned a lot about it from there. I used that to network with other filmmakers. I made a showreel that showed people that I knew what I could do. And everyone's like, wow, you really know how to film that. That's great. And from those few demonstrations, I ended up networking and I built up my film business. And then, like I said, that brings me back to the point that, you know, we signed a deal for a $400,000 budget TV series this week. So it all came because the very first time I wanted to work with somebody, I wasn't like, hey, can I, you know, can I just pick at your brain for a minute? I was like, I would like to give you more money for half an hour of your time than you've ever made before because I want your help.

You know, that's really the difference between truly high performers and everybody else. You recognize it? I recognize it. I've spent so much money on mentors in the past that. But it's propelled me, I've always gotten money back from it because when you go in and you realize that the best information and the best wisdom out there, number one, it's not free. But number two, when you put your money down, it activates something inside yourself, but it also activates something inside the person receiving your money for the most part. And that's how you propel yourself. Taking those risks, taking those gambles with your time, with your money, and seeking out the people who have what it is you need. So many people out there feel as though they don't have opportunities. They feel like they couldn't get the education, they couldn't meet somebody. Oh my God, I could never meet a stage combat person. Well, you know what, if you, if you reach out and offer money for their time, I bet you can meet them. It works like that.

Yeah, it's true. And again, it comes back to that thing you said about the traders. It's a risk. It's not like I can just throw $500 down every week whenever I.

Right one.

I mean, back then I really couldn't. Now it's not so much of a risk. But back then $500 was. I mean, I remember I was living on $250 a week in disposable income. So back then that was two, two weeks of my disposable income. So that's two weeks of not eating out, two weeks of not buying anything. It was a big frickin deal. But it was worth it because that $500 got me a showreel. I literally filmed it that day. Like I filmed two actually in half an hour. He had two of his stunt performers perform things. I filmed them. It took me 20 minutes. Obviously I didn't stay for half an hour. I ended up staying for four hours. Because when you pay someone $500, you know, especially when they're not used to charging. He felt guilty. Like he invited me back to his house for Dinner. Like he just didn't know what to do.

That's hilarious.

Think he'd give me enough value? But those two showreels he gave me were enough to convince other people to let me do some showreels, which ended up with me getting a, you know, a pretty decent film reel of stunt professionals performing on camera. Which, you know, you can be good at camera, but you need good talent to film. And I just gained that for 500 bucks.

That's amazing. You know, I want to go back to one of the things you said earlier, and I want to circle back around because we rabbit trailed a little bit, but I think, which I love, but when you were talking about positivity, productivity and profits, and we've established that positivity affects your decision making process, it affects your risk taking process. And, you know, the more risk you take. Yeah, you can lose it all, but you can also gain it all when you do that. However, the positive thinking is so overused and so under appreciated. So one of the things you mentioned earlier was that I want to give some people some techniques because you're not telling people to just, you know, if you go around thinking happy thoughts and being positive, which is so hard to do just by, it's easier said than done. You're not telling people that just, hey, go be positive. There's the answer. Oh, look at the guru. Adam, tell me what some of your real world solutions are to becoming more positive so that you can become more productive, so that you can make more profits.

Okay, so the first thing I do is whenever somebody presents me with an opportunity, I don't think about whether I'm going to accept it. I already know I'm going to accept it. What I think about is how I'm going to implement it. And that's probably one of the biggest, the biggest differences between me and the average person that I meet. A lot of people will be like, I need to see if this makes sense in my business. I need to see if this works. I don't. I already know I'm going to accept it. And it's just a question of how I implement it into my life. So say, for example, somebody confronted me recently with a virtual reality system. They wanted me to create a video sales letter for it. And they hired me to consult for this project. And I looked at the project and I calculated, like how much time it was going to take me to do, and it essentially was going to take two weeks out of my life, like two weeks away from all of my other work. And so I gave them a quote for two weeks of my time. And I also said that on top of that, I'd like a percentage in the business. So for this brand new cutting edge control virtual reality system, I've got two weeks of my life. I've got to stop doing everything else, but I'm going to get paid for it.

And also I've got a percentage of business now. For me, it's a really easy decision. Like I said, I know I'm going to say yes. And how I'm going to implement it is making sure that I get paid for the amount of time I'm putting into it. If they then say no to me, I don't cry about it. I put my best foot forward. If they say yes, great. I get to work on this awesome project. They said yes, great. I'm working on this great project. So I already know I'm going to say yes. I just defined my parameters. In the same week I was approached by another.

Virtual reality person and he saw how successful we had with the other thing. I think we got funded in like five days on Kickstarter for the other project, which is incredible. And he came. Thanks. Yeah, and obviously that was your help as well. Actually helped me with the opening line on the video sales lesson, which again, the benefit of having a mentor, you can ping them over and over again for all sorts of little help. Yeah, it was an amazing start to it. So he approached me and he was like, hey, can you help me with my business? And I was like, sure. And so I met him for coffee. He got to pick up my ear a bit and what became apparent was that he wanted me to partner with him. So he wanted to give me a percentage of his business, a huge percentage to make this work. Now I've already decided that his project isn't going to work. I, I know the space well enough. It's not going to work. It's a failure. I said to him, I gave him the outline of it and I was like, look, just so you know, I think that this angle that you're going for may not be best. And so I gave him three other different ways for him to look at his business, look at the models, to still do his project, but that would be a little bit more successful for him based on my experience in this space. I introduced him to some investors, some people that might be able to help him. And what happened in this scenario is he didn't take my opportunities. He stuck with his original idea. Now, the reason I wanted to show these two Things, because what happened is he's not taking the opportunities that were given to him. It looks like he's being positive because he's sticking with his original idea.

In reality, he's actually being negative because he was given three ways to make his idea succeed with people who are experts in the industry, people he sought out. He's choosing not to take those opportunities and instead to force his original idea through. By doing that, he's shutting down the positive opportunities that he had. And therefore, even though he's positive about his idea, he's not being positive about his productivity.

Ah, dude, I love the way your brain works. I love the way your brain works.

It's a really subtle difference, and people miss it all the time. He's so stubborn about his idea that he's not being positive about the opportunities that are afforded to him. Now, I'm not saying he should scrap his idea at all. In fact, if he wanted to do his idea, he should do it as well as the three that were presented to him. He should do all four of them, and he should focus on working out how he's going to implement all four. At least that way, when he's running all four of them, whichever one of them isn't successful, he drops, and he's got, you know, two or three that are successful. Instead, he's already made the decision that the three new opportunities won't work.

Dude, that's brilliant. That's brilliant.

It's weird, right? It's a very straight. It's a different way of thinking about. But, yeah, you have to accept everything, try it, and work out how you're going to implement it. And sometimes implementing it means hiring staff to do it. The reason I'll take any project is because I'll just quote it, knowing that I can put somebody else in charge of it. Yeah. So, like, I've. I've got projects where somebody's like, hey, I've got this project. I can only pay $50 an hour. I'm like, cool, we'll take it. He's like, really? You'll work for $50 an hour like my team will, and then I'll find a member of my team that will do it for $25 an hour. I'm like, great, I make 25 bucks an hour. Perfect. We'll take your tiny little project that we don't really care about.

Exactly. But.

But I'll put somebody in charge of it who will care about it, and they're going to be very focused on making it happen.

Bingo. Bingo. Yeah. It's it's amazing what you can do in when that happens. Now, with some of the other folks that you've talked to, whether it's the option traders or the, I believe it was the real estate agents and then the sales pros, et cetera, have you noticed, have you gone back to them and to some of the folks who've had you come in and speak to their companies or at their events and have you asked them if they've seen any results with the productivity or even the profits after your.

So the options traders, this was a big one. They, for the last two years, they've failed to make money during summer. The summer months are less volatile, so it's harder for them to make money. And in fact, it's been so bad the last two years, they considered closing down for summer this year, so having a forced vacation for eight weeks, yeah, it was that bad. They're just like, yeah, we lose money. Like, they basically had a graph. They had somebody come in and go, you lose money during this time, you know, quit. Just don't do anything. And when I was there, I looked at the walls and they have a bunch of bankruptcy certificates on the wall. And I'm like, why do you have these bankruptcy certificates? They're like, well, all the big companies that we know of that have gone bankrupt, we put their bankruptcy certificate on the wall, we get a copy of it and put it on the wall to remind us that any big company can fail. And I was like, oh, wow, these all big.

Companies that then turned around and succeeded. They go, no, no, no. These are companies that just like, done. They don't exist anymore. And, you know, it's to remind us to be careful with our money. Yeah, you should take those down yesterday. Yeah, exactly. They're like, why? I was like, because every day you look at that, it reminds you why you shouldn't be doing this job, why you shouldn't be, you know, doing that. And yet every day you survive and you make money is a day that should be celebrated. And success, like some of the most successful people in the world, like, was it. Donald Trump's been bankrupt like three or four times. I think there's like a.

Or something actually, you know, be careful because I don't know if he ever actually declared bankruptcy or not. I know when he was talking to Rosie O or Rosie o' Donnell said that, and I think he tried to sue her or something, saying, oh, I've never actually declared bankruptcy, or maybe he has or not. But I know the man said.

He probably Listens to the bacon wrap business podcast daily. So I don't want to piss off the Donald.

So we won't say bankruptcy, but I'm sure there have been times in his life where exactly you haven't been a hundred percent perfect. And that's the thing. Like, the most successful people that we know have all, you know, come closer. I've come close.

I've been to the tops and then the depths several times.

Yeah, exactly. It's not, you know, it's not easy. And that's. That's how it works. That's how. That's how businesses work. I was like, but because they're focusing on it, they're not being positive. So, anyway, get back to the thing. So this summer, I contacted the head of the trading thing, and I was like, hey, do you want to go on vacation with me? I know you're taking eight weeks off. Let's go. I had some ideas to go on the lake or what have you. And he goes, I can't do it. We're working. Like, what do you mean you're working? You're not supposed to work during the summer. You made these decisions. You had these analysts come in. He's like, yeah, this is the best summer we've ever had. He goes, actually, it's better than winter right now. So we're all staying.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah. And night and day. Night and day. They're all staying. They're working. And he said to me, it's specifically because of the systems that we implemented after your talk, which are that they no longer trade. They basically create a system of best practices. And when they trade and they don't, and it's almost like an external system that if they're ever feeling emotional about decisions, they look at this little document they made that tells them how to make a decision. So they go back to, like, a baseline where they go, okay, well, the paperwork says that the decision should be made like this. So I'm going to make the decision based on those factors, not based on how I feel.

Right. That's so great. Yeah, I really do. I said this a minute ago. I love the way your brain works, but your ability to pick up on some of the most subtle clues and subtle actions that people are doing and not even aware of, and it's things that even a lot of psychologists wouldn't pick up. And it may sound obvious to us listening here that having pictures up of companies that have gone bankruptcy, you know, oh, obviously you wouldn't want that, but, you know, you actually asked, well, what are all these little certificates going on up here? I think 99% of people are going to walk by and totally ignore what's on the wall. You actually said, well, what is this? Because everything. You realize how every little thing, or how a lot of little things affect your daily, you know, just your daily mindset and how a little thing can make a big, big difference. And so many people gloss over that.

You really get excited by psychology, don't you?

Yeah, I love it. I love. I love psych. I love people. I love the way they think. I love, you know, understanding it. But, yeah, the thing that, you know, that's that positivity thing, you know, Like, I am constantly observant. I'm always looking for opportunities. And I don't mean, like, opportunities to benefit myself. I just mean opportunities. I'm always wanting to learn things. I'm always wanting to see what else there is out in the world that I've missed out on that I should be knowing about. Yeah, like, it's funny. I'll give you an example. In the last week, I've suddenly become obsessed with calligraphy, and I've realized I want to relearn how to do handwriting Now. Handwriting is such a lost skill.

It is.

We don't use it anymore. We type. It's almost archaic. Like, you really don't need to handwrite. And at this moment, something that I've had no interest in my entire life, I've started to develop this interest about. And I know over the next year or so, I'm going to get a couple of books on it and get a nice pen, and I'm going to start teaching myself how to do handwriting again. Why? Why would I want to do that? Well, the reason is because I sat talking to you and you told me about the importance of, you know, your very best contacts, your very best, you know, connectors, and the people that are almost like the champions of who you are, it's good to send them a little message every so often. You know, like a little envelope that maybe contains some gifts and some things that you think they'll appreciate. And I remember thinking, wow, a handwritten note would probably go really well. But my handwriting is terrible. So if I write somebody a handwritten note, I want it to look nice. I want it to be something that's worth keeping, that they're like, wow, this is really beautiful handwriting. And so I know that at some point in the next couple of years, and, you know, it won't be soon, but I will be doing that I'm going to teach myself how to do handwriting again. And that will lead to some kind of opportunity. I don't know what, but it will lead to something.

I guarantee it. Everything you do leads to something. I'm always amazed by the opportunities you come back with and the things you're working on. Like, you just. This is the first time I've heard that you had this $400,000 deal and all this other stuff. So I love catching up with you because there's a million. There's a million things you've got going on that just blow me away. I think you probably live one of the most exciting lives I've ever seen. And it's just. And it seems like to the outside world, I guarantee to your personal newsletter and following and your list. In the dating world, it seems like you're this charmed, quote, lucky guy who just has a million things fall in his lap. And you, all you do is you sit back with beautiful women and feeding you grapes and life is a bowl of cherries. You never have to work for anything, but you personally work harder than most people I've ever seen. You take big risks on yourself. You follow through and you create these opportunities, whether it's creating an opportunity to get into south by Southwest without using, Without a Ticket, Adam's YouTube channel for that or, you know, the ability to hobnob with some of the top people in the, you know, in Hollywood or business, you name it. And now, you know, transitioning from, you know, and you're actually not even transitioning from, because you still are doing the dating coaching because it's still a major passion and love. So you haven't given that up. But adding on corporate training and corporate productivity training and creating an entirely new channel for your knowledge and your wisdom with companies who have a big vested interest in improving their productivity, giving them the ability. This is one of the things that. And I've told you to do this and you've done it. And I think anybody can really benefit from what I'm about to say, which is there are so many more opportunities out there if you tell people what else you can do and what you're willing to do. You know, there's a lot of folks on your list who come to you for dating advice. And I some of them are business owners, some of them are entrepreneurs. Some of them are high up in businesses or at least have access to those folks. They probably had no idea that you even would or could give a speech like this to their business. It just happened to be like, oh, yeah, I'm totally happy to do that. But by letting people know that, hey, look, this is what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, kind of, this is who else I can help, who do you know? It is such a very powerful, powerful way to open up opportunities you never thought you could have.

Yeah. And actually, I mean, that's. I know that's something that you and I are about to tackle. Next is, you know, hitting my mailing list and letting them know, you know, I've got this. But actually, it just occurred to me, I got something that I've got to share. So we said about this $400,000 TV deal, right? And I love it in marketing, things that people talk about, like how much money they made, and they do this big deal, and everyone's like, oh, my God, that's amazing. But I want to share with you why sometimes it isn't as good as it initially looks. But if you've got this concept of positivity, productivity, and profit, it can really work for you. So to me, the $400,000 budget TV show is the best idea ever. I mean, it's going to be amazing. I'm really excited about it. But the person that is giving me the $400,000, to him, it is the worst thing ever. And I'll explain why. So I'm helping somebody create a TV show. They. But this is season two. Season one they already created. And I can't say the name and I can't say the TV show because obviously I'm giving away a bit too much confidential information. But the original TV show had a budget of about $240,000 to create 12 episodes, but they spent $260,000. So they lost $20,000 making this TV show. So when they got renewed for a second season and they were asked to make 24 episodes for $430,000, they cried because they knew that there was no way they were going to bring this TV show in under budget. And they could see themselves losing even more money because per episode it was. They were getting paid less.

So they've got $430,000, but they're expected to make 24 episodes, and they're crying about it. It. So they came to me and they say to me, hey, can your company produce this? If we give you the budget, can you bring it in under budget? And of course, I had a TV show on the Discovery Channel last year, and we produced 52 episodes for a lot less than $240,000. And so we, you know, we looked at it and I looked at my team and we calculated all the costs. Not only are we going to be able to bring this in under budget for them, so they're going to create, they're going to get a profit, but we're going to make a profit on the budget that we're going to bring it in at. And that's because, you know, I basically saying yes to the opportunity and I've said yes to other opportunities in the past that helped me learn this and learn how to do it. So to him, this whole thing is negative. Like he didn't want that money, he was going to say no to that opportunity. But to me, we say yes because we've planned out the implementation and we know how it's going to work.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So it's just funny. I hear people see stuff like that all the time.

Oh, I imagine. I imagine you do.

It never ceases to amaze me what kind of stuff you get involved in, man. So let me. I want to start to wrap this up for people because I know they want more from you and I want to start to let them know.

Where they can get in contact you, whether it's for business, whether it's for dating and social life enhancement or whether it's for some filmmaking opportunity because you never know. You're definitely a jack of all trades when it comes to. Or many trades, I guess I should say. But let me just give you, I gave you a plug earlier on with the intro, but I really want to say that if you're listening to this show right now, if you own a business, if you have employees, if you have customers who have employees, let's say you sell to other businesses and.

You have a desire to increase your profits and you're not exactly sure how, maybe you see the marketplace or I'm sorry, your employee morale suffering a little bit. Adam absolutely has the ability to come in and give a fresh insight. And like very, very few people I have ever witnessed, not to mention it's kind of interesting. I think it's so cool that, you know, hey, you know, if I was at the options trading thing way we're bringing in the number one dating coach in the world to come talk to you about profits and productivity. It's going to be a just a kind of, I want to say novel, but a novel approach with an expert who can deliver some real transformative value. Plus, if you've been listening to this show, as you obviously have, you can tell Adam has got Varied experience. He's a very entertaining speaker. I've seen him speak live. I cannot recommend you, Adam, enough personally to folks.

If they have the ability to bring you in to talk to their employees, to talk to their customers, to share your knowledge and insights with them. I cannot recommend it enough. That being said, if you have any troubles in the dating world, if you want to date more people, if you simply want to get out there and date better than you think you have the ability to get, I cannot recommend you as a dating coach enough either. I didn't want you to have to plug yourself and pat yourself on the back. I'm happy to do it for you because I've always been amazed at your skill set, your attitude on all of this stuff and your willingness to go the extra mile to open up new opportunities. So that being said, how do folks get in touch with you?

Well, I tell you what, for your guys, like, for people listening to you, Brad, I'm just gonna give you my personal email address and you know, if somebody wants to listen and see, you know, I can pretty much guarantee that every single person listening to this is shutting down opportunities every single day that could be generating them thousands of dollars in income. And if somebody wants to, you know, to talk to him about it or they would want me to, to come in and have a look around and see what negativity they're living in by accident that they're just not aware of. Or again, if they just want to learn how to pick up girls and have threesomes or what have you.

Yeah, exactly. Right then, yeah, feel free. Email me@adamfcpictures.com so it's adamafcpictures.com perfect.

You know what, it's amazing if you've been listening to the show at all prior to this, I've made it through the entire episode without making any cheeky bacon wrapped metaphors. Like oh man, that's a bacon wrapped idea right there. Which is quite amazing. But you really do wrap bacon around the.

You've got a bacon wrapped brain. There we go.

There's my cheeky baconism for the moment. Yeah. Oh. So earlier, as I promised, I almost forgot to do this as I promised I was going to share a bacon wrapped. Do you like bacon? First of all, are you a bacon eater? I didn't know if you're like one of those people.

I'm not a bacon eater. I'm a bacon connoisseur.

Ooh, connoisseur. So check this out. You're going to love this. Unless you Hate onions. Do you like onions? Can you eat?

Love onions.

Okay, cool. So I just found this on the interwebs and I'll put it on the website version of the show@baconrabusiness.com AdamLions that's where your show will be featured if it's not on itunes. However, I found bacon wrapped onion rings. Check this out. So actually it's smoked bacon wrapped onion rings with sriracha dipping sauce. So what they did is they cut these onions in I guess the wide enough to where it would be like an onion ring and then they took, I think it was the sriracha sauce and they basted the onion with it and then they wrapped bacon around the onion. I think they put a toothpick through it and then they put it on the grill and then they made sriracha and mayonnaise to dip it with. So I saw that, I immediately went to the grill, I did this and I made them myself and it was absolutely amazing. So bacon wrapped onions with sriracha dipping sauce, that's going to be on the website version of this show. So if you want to see it, head on over to baconwrappedbusiness.comadaclions you can also hear the entire show and check out the show notes on this. If you want to reach Adam personally, you said it's adamfcpictures.com am I correct? That's it. Cool. Mention bacon wrap business, mention Brad Costanzo and I'm sure that Adam will pay extra close attention to you because he came from the show. Also, if you have any, if you have any questions about your own business marketing life strategy that you wish to ask me, you want a second opinion on what you're doing or you want to share your own bacon wrap strategy with me? Maybe even become a featured guest on the show, don't hesitate to send an email to ask bradakenwrapbusiness.com and do me a huge favor, since I'm doing this for free for you guys and bringing this to you. My payment is simply leaving a review on itunes. I love the 5 star reviews. If you think I'm doing a crappy job, just send me an email to ask Brad at baconrat business and I'll stop doing a crappy job. But if you like it, leave me a review on itunes. I read every single one of them and it's really important to help keep the show going and let other people know that you like it as well. Adam, buddy, I want to thank you so much for your time. I know you got a busy day and you gotta go, you know, make some movies, help some people with dates. Help some people be more productive. But thanks a lot, man. I really appreciate you joining me.

Cheers, Brad. Thanks.

Thank you. And you have a good day, too.

You too, bud.

Thanks, Sam.