EO Thought Leadership Forum Episode 007

Welcome to the EO Thought Leadership Forum, episode number 7. My name is Joe Apfelbaum from EO Brooklyn, and today we have with us—

And I'm James Ashcroft from EO South Florida. Great intro there. Jumping all over your introduction there, Joe.

We're getting better and better at this, James, and this is fun. So today we were brainstorming, we were brainstorming and thinking about what are we going to talk about today. We're all out of ideas. James just sent an email. If you're not subscribed to James' website, you can tell everyone what your website is, or you can click on the description below and we'll post his website.

Right.

Yeah.

We'll do that down in the show notes.

So, so you were saying you were out of ideas, and one of the ways that we, we get inspired and we have ideas as to what to write about is through following other thought leaders. When we speak about the thought leaders that inspire us, James has mentioned to me in the past James Altucher. So is that a person that you look up to? Do you read his stuff?

Oh, absolutely, Joe. I mean, he's— everything he writes, I get his emails. Right now he's writing quite a bit, so probably getting 2 or 3 blog posts a week. But everything he writes, I print out and I read, take the time to read. I just love his writing style. It's very vulnerable. He doesn't hold back. And actually, he has a method to his writing where he says that unless he's terrified to hit the publish button, he won't publish.

Wow.

So he wants to be kind of scared, opening himself up. So it's been a really good benchmark for me because I'm actually starting to see on my blog posts, the more vulnerable that I am with my own thoughts and I have that jittery nerves, Those are the blog posts I get the most comments and emails back on. So it's, it's, it's really works, you know. So I've learned so much from, from him and just being able to mix, you know, business life with personal thoughts and philosophies and stuff. It's been a huge, huge eye-opener for me. So I owe a lot to what I'm doing to his content and also his wife Claudia, who's now doing his podcast show with With him too. Just an amazing couple.

So besides reading blogs and articles and books, you also listen to podcasts, watch videos, you know, completely immerse yourself into somebody else's content. Have you ever heard of Lewis Howes?

Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I was listening to him on a run today. I was listening to his interview with Jeff Goins, which is, which is pretty neat.

So yeah. He has an interesting podcast that I listen to on a regular basis. I check out his website. I check out his videos. He actually interviews some pretty interesting people, and he also has a method of how he does that. So for me, learning how to interview people, learning what questions to ask, you know, he doesn't necessarily add a lot of value himself by what the information that he gives, but he extracts a lot of value from a lot of other people. So he has tons of authors that are on his website.

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree completely. And I do like his concepts of the School of Greatness and the interviews he gets. He's top-notch. He's on my regular rotation, so.

Who else do you have that you are constantly reading and listening to and subscribing to? Because there's a limited amount of people. I mean, there's so many thought leaders out there. There's so many people putting out content. I get Seth Godin's email every single morning 'cause I'm in the marketing world. And so who else are you looking at? Who are your top 5 that you say, okay, these are the 5 people that I follow, or the top 3 people that I follow on a regular basis, and I'm always reading their stuff? Is it Gary Vaynerchuk? Is it the people that you know? Is it, you know—

Yeah, it's a mix, you know. It's the people I know and then obviously people I don't know, but I feel like I know. I call those my e-mentors, you know.

Your e-mentors. I like that one.

Yeah. So, uh, um, you know, if I'm anything, if you're anything like me, Joe, you know, you kind of get on these kicks and then, you know, your podcast library starts adding up and you have like 10 shows to listen to, but I always kind of come back to a few of them. Um, one is actually by a guy named JB Glossinger. He's the morningcoach.com guy. Um, I'm actually in a mastermind with him now. I feel very lucky to be a part of what he's doing. Every day he puts out a 15-minute piece of content in the morning. It's kind of a part of a morning ritual. You listen to it, get your day started off right. He's on point about so many things and he's been a great mentor to me in the last 6 months, you know, getting to know him here in South Florida as well as listening to his content on his podcast.

Gary Vaynerchuk.

You know, I just think he's fantastic. He's the execution guy. He's brutally honest and kind of gives me that kick in the pants that I need sometimes, you know, to see someone else at such a high velocity. It makes me feel lazy sometimes, so it's good. It kind of kicks me in gear, which I think probably affects a lot of people like that. You know, I can't say that I have the drive that he has. I mean, he works, you know, 16 hours a day. He's go, go, go. That's not really my life, but I can take from his content that every second counts. So when you are intentionally living, then make it intentional and hit your goals. So those are 3. Obviously, James Altucher, I just mentioned, not just his blog but his podcast. He has an hour show where he interviews people. I mean, straight out of the gate, he was interviewing Mark Cuban and the like. So just great guests. And then he has his daily Ask Altucher show, which is viewer-submitted questions that he and his wife answer, which is great. A couple of others, Tim Ferriss is just fantastic, you know, the Human Guinea Pig. I just love the way he dissects leadership or results into kind of bite-sized morsels we can all wrap our head around. He's just really good at that. So, I really enjoy his podcasts. Now, let's say probably the 5th is in rotation, this guy named Rich Roll, just came out with a new book, Plant Power Ways. He's instrumental in changing my life, you know, on a physical level and spiritual, becoming vegetarian, doing the Ironman. It was all inspired by what he's done after reading his book. So, he has wonderful guests. It's definitely plant-based. Vegetarian, you know, vegetarian show, kind of, you know, along that movement. Um, but he's just got phenomenal guests as well. So that's probably those top 5. Yeah.

So for me, I definitely, um, I'm reading Seth Godin stuff. I mean, I find it very fascinating, the creativity that he has and the way that he talks about marketing and generally the ideas. Um, I listened to the HBR, the Harvard Business Review. Oh, really? Okay. That is a, you know, they have 20-minute segments and authors on these very, very, very interesting concepts. I listen to that on a regular basis. I don't spend so much time listening to podcasts, like as much as I'd like to do, because I listen to audiobooks and, you know, I spend my audio time doing those, you know, doing more books as opposed to podcasts on an ongoing basis.

Sure.

Every once in a while I listen to Hal Elrod's Morning Miracle.

Yeah, I've read his book and it's a great book.

Yeah, he has some interesting guests. So definitely check him out, check out his book. It really changed the way that I look at my morning routine. I used to think that I was a night person and it kind of changed my whole mind around. And when I write in the morning, like you get my Sunday morning email. When I write in the morning, my brain is so much fresher. There are times that I've written the email the night before or on the evening and then just knocked it out, but the emails are so much more powerful when I do it a couple of hours within the time that I wake up. They're so much more emotionally packed and so much more powerful. Using those morning hours to write, to consume, to write. Guy Kawasaki is a great guy.

Fantastic.

I don't know if you've read his stuff, but I read his book. Um, there's one book that he published called APE, Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur, that teaches you kind of how, like, how to publish a book.

Yep.

And one of the concepts that always stuck out to me, and I, and I just mentioned it to Dave Kerpin yesterday, another great entrepreneur, another great thought leader. Um, I, I just mentioned, you know, he's, he writes that you should consume information like a hummingbird, which consumes 10,000 calories a day. You know, at very, very high speeds, and you should put out information like an elephant, which produces 150 pounds of manure. So thinking about how much you take in and how much you give out. So give out a lot like an elephant, but consume like a hummingbird. You know, consume, you know, a lot, a lot of information.

Gotcha. Interesting.

And the more information you consume, the more information you can give out. So for me also, reading books are very powerful. I just finished reading Zero to One. from Peter Thiel. Thanks to another Ego member.

Yep.

Taejoon Kang actually bought it for me as a gift. Very, very nice, awesome thought leader. He's writing his own book about his journey. He took his company public, Six Dimensions. You should look him up. Very, very interesting guy. Good friend of mine in New York. Peter Thiel's book is just incredible.

I haven't read that. It's on my list, probably in the next 3 books to read. It's a serial one. It keeps on popping up. And I've heard a few interviews with Peter Thiel talking about his book here, and I just hear it's fantastic.

Yeah. So in terms of like my top 5 people, that's kind of like what it revolves around. You know, there are always articles that pop up online that a lot of people are sharing, and so I read those every once in a while. For me, scheduling time to read has been really important. Because I don't have extra time. I don't have free time. Like, if I have extra open time, I'll spend it with my family, my kids.

Right.

Even that I try to schedule in, you know, how much. But like, I'm not going to spend my whole Sunday reading, or, you know, I'm not going to spend the time that I have that I could enjoy myself. I'd rather go for a run than sit down and read something. So I need to actually do that. I need to schedule it in. I love Tony Robbins. So like all his stuff is phenomenal. I'm a very big fan of his. And then there are some classics that I kind of have to read over and over, like Stephen Covey stuff and, you know, the Napoleon Hill stuff, the Dale Carnegie stuff.

Yes.

Like those are like classics that you kind of have to read over and over. I like reading. So if you take a look at the categories of types of books that I read, I definitely don't have cookbooks in there. My wife has cookbooks, right, in her category. She has dozens of cookbooks, um, and she's actually writing her own cookbook, and you can check out her website at Busy— Good, that's great. Yeah, you can check out her website at busyinbrooklyn.com. Um, check it out. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, in terms of the categories of the books that I read for what I'm interested in, obviously business is huge. Just in general business books like Peter Thiel's book. You know, the sales books like Brian Tracy's books and Zig Ziglar's books, those are fantastic. I love sales. I love marketing. So they talk a lot about sales techniques and methods, and I think that sales integrates in every aspect of our life. It's not just about selling, you know, business. Just everything that you're doing is sales.

We're always selling, always selling.

We're always selling an idea. We're always selling something. So, and then there's another category is personal development. So like the Tony Robbins of the world and so on. And then another category that's, that's very, very meaningful to me is psychology. So books like Freakonomics and books, you know, body language books and—

Influence.

Influence. Oh wow. That's, that's like, I would consider that on, on right in between sales and psychology. So, You know, flowing from business. Influence.

Yeah, it's— yeah, influence can fit in anywhere. I mean, it's just unbelievable, the psychology of human nature, you know. Yeah, so it's— I think it's a good, great, um, great content to have in your toolbox anyway. I mean, just going back to, to tie into what you were saying about making time for reading, and, you know, I think how Elrod's book Miracle Morning, um, does a good job of kind of talking about how to prioritize your day and squeezing that into your morning so you start your day off right. For me, I think we've talked about this on other shows, but for me right now, I'm really enjoying waking up, you know, 5:00, 5:30 in the morning and doing nothing but reading for an hour, an hour and a half to get that out of the way, to get my mind moving, you know, read some great content, books. You know, I'm really reading books in the morning, not so much, um, So what's that book?

What's that book that you have right over, right over there?

This one?

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, this is, this is called Plant Power Way. I'm just kind of sprucing up my, uh, my scenery here a bit for you. Um, but this is a great, great book that's important to me because, you know, I'm interested in nutrition, getting healthy and, and, um, vegetarianism and potentially veganism, actually cutting out dairy for 30 days because I've, I'm having some side effects of eating a lot of dairy, but, But, um, you know, so that's just a great, great book that I enjoy, enjoy reading. It's like a cookbook, but lifestyle-based, you know?

So if you are what you, if you are what you eat, are you also what you read?

Absolutely. I mean, it just falls back to that Jim Rohn quote, right? You're the sum of the, you're the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. Okay. But you can apply that across the board. You can apply it to, you're the average of, um, the top 5 books you read this year. You know, you're the average of, You know, of anything. I mean, so I really do believe that if you surround yourself with 5 great mentors, whether it's podcasts, books, magazine articles, whatever it is, and you, and you really digest them at a deep level, they're gonna profoundly affect you. You're gonna start thinking the way these people think.

What I love, what I love the most about Jim Rohn is his simplicity. Like, there's so many things that he says that we all know already, but we just don't do them.

Yep.

The simplicity is the beauty of it is because it's so simple. And, and, you know, uh, Tony Robbins was inspired by him and—

Oh, he's, he was Tony Robbins' mentor. I mean, there's a great book here I have on my desk called The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn. You know, it's like a nice little, uh, I guess it's leather-bound book, you know, but just some great, great quotes separated by categories and stuff. So it's really, really nice to thumb through that and get some inspiration. I, When I listen to Jim Rohn, it's like, it's like a fireside chat, you know? It's like a, you know, I don't know. He's just like listening to grandpa speak or something, you know?

He's just so simple and like right on. There's a 4-hour video online. Just search Jim Rohn. You'll see this video that he put out many, many years ago. And, you know, obviously he's not going to be putting out any more content now because, you know, he passed away, but But he's a great guy. He's a great guy. He really made a great contribution to this world.

Absolutely. And just to quickly get back to what we're talking about, making time for reading. I mean, you know, you can call it deliberate reading, you know, putting that on your calendar as important as a meeting, you know, it's investing in yourself. That's what it is, you know. I mean, you want to get through a 200-300 page book a week, 2 books a week. Um, you can't really leave that up to, oh, you know, I'm going to, you know, time's going to fall in my lap and I'm going to read those books. I mean, you have to approach it, you have to approach it like you're— I approach it like I'm in a class at school or something, you know? It's like I've got a book and I want to finish it in the next 3 days. So I'm going to get up early and I'm going to read the next 3 mornings, an hour, an hour and a half and power through the book and get through it like a project. So I highly recommend people, um, read in the morning, um, you know, exercise, do whatever you need to do to feel productive early in the morning. And that's kind of what Elrod is, It's a great concept, you know.

Goal achievers.

Yeah.

That's his thing. Well, thank you very much for doing this, and I really enjoy doing this podcast with you.

Likewise, Joe.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the next one, and this has been another episode of the EO Thought Leadership Forum. We hope that you enjoy it, and we hope you check out the other videos. Take care.

Bye-bye.