Illuminating Your Weaknesses Is The Secret To Entrepreneurial Success! - David Corbin

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Is your brand thriving or are you committing brand slaughter without you even knowing it? So what if your very problems that you're trying to hide from could actually become your greatest source of strength? So in this episode I have David Corbin here. He's a four times best selling authority brand integrity expert. Here to reveal how illuminating, actually shining a light on the negatives can help leaders like yourself face the truth, align with your values and build brands at last. He's awesome. You're going to see he's coming straight from his pickleball court with a stogie in his hand. This is a good time. So David's great. Enjoy it.

All right, Dave, we're rolling. You're outside, you're enjoying the pick. Well, you're not enjoying pickleball, but you're enjoying the rain in San Diego. And you and me are both being San Diego brothers. We know how rare that is.

Yeah, man.

You're having a good time, huh? How are you doing?

Life is, life is big. Life is groovy. Every morning I, I start the day in such gratitude. I say four things. I say yes, please, more, and thank you every morning.

Yes, please, more. Thank you. Yes. I'm just writing it. It's so simple. But you know, it's. I think the best thing in life are simple. You know what I mean? You got a. I love your vibe. I mean, so we met at Prosperity Camp, Greg Reed's event in San Diego. You're great friends with, with him, of course. Scott Duffy, my business partner. So, yeah, I've been noodling on your book here, illuminate. I know you have some others as well. It's great.

Face the negative shit in your life, right, and do something about it. Basically, yeah. So what give you your philosophy? I mean, like what, why are you so happy? And you said you're going to Be in business forever because, you know, there's a lot of slaughtering happening. I won't let it all out, but we need to.

Yeah, man. So, yeah, I love, I love running my businesses. I love inventing products. I'm building companies around them. Sell the companies or stay with the companies. Build the company as it's building me. You know, most people think they're building their company. Bullshit. The company's building you.

True.

And, and you know, I, I, I've been. You want to know what makes me happy? I hand out LSD at all my speeches now.

No, but, but for, why don't you give me someone? I mean, you give me a book.

Here's the deal. No, and in fact, it's so funny because.

I, I had to get permission from the TED organization to actually hand out fake lsd, you know, and, and, and I just did the same thing. I just did a workshop for the San Diego Sheriff and her entire command staff two weeks ago or last week or I don't know, it's a blur. And I, and I got permission to make believe I was handing out lsd. And what I, what I do with that. You're going to love this, man, is I have a make believe that I talk about how I was at Woodstock and you know, I was there and.

I was back OG the original, the.

One in 1969, 56 years ago. And, and you know, I was, which was kind of cool until, until I got kicked out and, and, and then, you know, and that.

So you're saying you snuck backstage and you.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I wasn't invited backstage. I just turned 17 years old by like three or four days. But, but anyway, so I got kicked out and I tell that story and, and I, I Learned these powerful 14 words that this dude tractor beamed. He said, man, like you're either green and growing or ripe and rotting, but you're never standing still. I didn't have a freaking clue what he was talking about. But, but I, I did later, you know, a dozen years later, I started a business and, and, and I was kicking ass, doubling every year. Had offices in 12 Western states. Started all that company back then with a hundred dollar bill. I mean, it was kind of crazy, but we grew so big and we almost lost everything. The house that I'm in right now, I almost lost. It was kind of crazy. So I tell that story in one of my TED talks and I tell it in my keynote and then I tell my audiences and I said, hey man, I brought you back a gift from Woodstock, it's this tabs of lsd, and I joke around. I say, you know, when I count to three, toss it in the air, catch it in your mouth and go, whoa, dude, I'm tripping, right? So. So have some fun with it, guys. So that's like the setup. But here's the serious part of that. So, like, I tell them now that you're tripping, you can have a conversation with your business. And I hope to shit people are listening to this. You can have a conversation with your business. And because you're tripping, you could ask it questions and it can answer you. How's that for him? Okay, so now you. So you got the setup. You can ask your business questions. And from the voice of your freaking business, you could hear it answer. And here's the two questions. And this is worth grabbing. Question number one. Hey, business, what do you need me to do? And you write down the core job functions. Now you got a list of core job functions. So, my entrepreneur brothers and sisters, you know what I'm talking about here? It's basic as hell. Do it. Write down the core job functions. Next. You're tripping out, man. You're asking your business, yo, business, who do you need me to be? And shut up and listen. And write down the qualities and characteristics that it tells you it needs. Now, you got two lists. Now, because you're tripping, let's get naked.

That's part of the deal, right?

But not naked of clothes. That's the easy part. Naked of ego. And now rate yourself right now on your ability to deliver what your business just sent you out to get.

Scale of 1 to 10, baby, 1 is you suck. 10 is mastery. And now you got an honest assessment of your ability on what you need to be and what you need to do and where you are. 7, 8, or 9. You know the song goes. Remember the dancing bear? You got to accentuate the positive. That's all good. Where you're a three, four, or five. The song says, eliminate the negative. No bullshit. Don't eliminate the negative. Illuminate the negative. Yo, face it, follow it and fix it. And start to close the gaps. And when you close those gaps, it is now a no whining zone, my fellow entrepreneurs. No lining. It's the market. It's the this bullshit. You close those gaps.

You want job and business security anywhere on the planet, you close the gaps. You got it. And when you close the gaps. Dig this. When you close the gaps, up goes your competence. And that brings up your confidence, which in turn Brings up your competence and again brings up your confidence. And you're going up the incy beansy spider, but not of the water spout. The spout of prosperity and freaking entrepreneurial freedom. Boom. Mic drop. I'm gone, Joe.

Let's go play pickleball. I'm ready. I'll meet you up there in about 20 minutes. Man, this is. So this is why the company is building you. It's building us through the process. If you let it though, right?

If you step into it, man. Right. And just like the law of gravity, there's a law of control. The law of control says we feel good about ourselves to the extent that we're moving towards our destiny. Not completely, because there's other factors, you know, up there, you know, of the fact. But. But. And endorphins kick in. It's kind of like, you know, some of work off of lists, right? So we check off the list. It feels good. It's endorphin.

Yeah, it is.

Some of us will do this, right? It's not on the list, but we did it. So we'll put it on the list just so we could check it off.

Because checklist Manifesto, right? There's a book about that basically kicks.

In the endorphins, baby.

Yeah, yeah. Well, how. I mean, this is. I don't know if everyone listening or watching have tripped before I have, so I know what you mean. Like, it's pretty easy to eliminate the ego and start to open up, you know, to what's possible. And I think that's the point you're getting to, right? Is like have those conversations that you wouldn't normally have when you're monkey brain is just fogging shit up. Basically. You can't get to the truth. Right. So I don't know where my question is, but, like, this is a hell of a process. I wrote down the whole thing. And you know, the two questions, I'll just reiterate them again, if no one caught them. Is asking your business, what do you need from me? Or what do you need me to do specifically? And then second is yo business, what do you need me to be?

Yeah, who do you need me to be? It's from the famous philosopher Frank Sinatra, do be Doobie. Do be Doobie. It's do be do be be do. Who are you being while you're doing what you're doing what needs done? And who are you being while you're doing what you're doing? Boom. That's it. And. And it's. It's pretty simple. It's damn simple. So I've done this with the president of AT&T.

The secretary of the VA.

I've done it with some pretty cool Academy Award, but I've done it with some pretty cool cats.

Maya Angelou. I saw that too.

They don't, they don't say, oh, this is too simple for me. But mid range, mid cap entrepreneurs might go, I don't know, man. I already know that stuff. Tell me something I don't know. Okay, well, fine. It's all good, man. I mean, I live near where Tony Gwyn used to live. You know Tony Gwyn, the baseball?

I have his baiting bass, baseball gloves he gave to me during a game when I was like, I got him to sign. I. I was a Tony. Gwen Love. Still am that. He's my idol. Yeah, I know where he lived too. Yeah.

So he and his wife and me and my ex wife, we started a Montessori school together and our kids grew up together and they went to Francis Parker. I was invited to his induction at Cooperstown. That was really cool.

Wow.

Tony Gwynn used to be the first one in to the club and he would, he would swing off a tee.

That's right.

I remember. Swing off of a tee. So if brilliant on the basics is good enough to tg, it's good enough for me.

Heck yeah, man. I love the Tony Gwynn references. That makes me, Warms my heart.

Well, see in the back there behind my pickleball court, I have a library building. And in that library building I have his 2000, 2000 bat. Hit that.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You didn't get the 3,000 now, but you got the two.

No, in fact, he pissed me off because I, I got, I didn't go to his 3,000th game. It was in Canada, I remember. But I bought the ticket and I wanted him to sign it. And he said, dave, I'm not signing it. I said, in, in nice words, what the. He goes, you weren't there.

I said, you know what? I hate you and I love you. Goodbye. No, I mean. And I gave him a hug and that was it. But. But, yeah, no, the guy was full of integrity. But the key, the key, the point I'm trying to make is brilliant on the basics. The most winning football coach in the history of football used to, at the beginning of each season, he'd hold up a football and get, gentlemen, this here's a football. And they knew. Yeah, right. Back to the basics. Back to the basics. Don't drop it. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Don't drop.

Well, how do you. Yeah, I can nerd out on Tony and football. We'll go there another time when we're hanging out. But I want to see that 2000 bat by the way. But the how do you shake a smart entrepreneur that is just so heady, you know. And they're just living in cranium land over here. How do you do? I, I know you've dealt with it and you know what I mean?

Yeah, I don't. You don't?

Oh, you say not for me.

No, I don't waste my time. I mean Yesterday I did 13 hour mentoring session from 8am to 9pm we didn't have lunch and we, we talked through dinner with my bride. He's a rocket scientist. He's a rocket scientist. He's pretty smart. He invented a device that's on 6,500 rockets, satellites. He was on the Mars rover with his device. Point is he's a smart dude and he sold his company for a couple of dollars. He came here, flew here from Boulder and paid for a day of my time.

He's humble and courageous enough to open himself up to where he can learn, grow and develop. And you're telling me about an entrepreneur who can't put 2/2 million dollar bills together and they know everything. Yeah, no, so I don't, I don't. One of my. You met my former business partner, Brian Tracy at that we used to say don't wrestle with a pig because if you do, you get dirty and the pig probably likes it.

And we also over he and I were just talking about this at his house the other day over Christmas, Hanukkah in Kaanapali, Maui. We came up with a philosophy of success and it was basically success is not having to work with assholes. Jeez.

Yeah, that's the truth.

And that was it. Now we cleaned it up. I cleaned it up from one of my books. It's success is not having to work with dirt bags, morons and blah blah, blah. But true success is working with people who you could respect, admire, trust and love. That's, that's true success. So when somebody who knows it all or they roll their eyes or something like that, I go, that's all good. God bless you. It's all good.

Yeah, it is. And there's another someone's going to want to roll around with that pig. And that's okay. It just won't be me.

You know what? Yeah, exactly. And well, don't get me started.

There's People whose marketing is so good that they'll convince that person that they have their key to success.

Right.

And that person may or may not go. There's a lot of money that's wasted in personal professional development. There's a lot of lions in. In lamb's clothing and stuff. And that's why people like Scotty. You know, I work with Scott and some others because I know their head and I know their heart. They're good people, you know, and I've seen how they. I've seen how they engage even under pressure.

Yeah.

You know, grandma said that you don't know how strong people are. She said people are like tea bags. You don't know how strong they are until you dip them in hot water.

Ooh, that's good.

And I've seen Scott Duffy through some interesting times and never did he deviate from his ethics and his integrity. And for that reason, anytime he asked me for a favor or anything at all, I start, always start with yes. Even the question doesn't even come out of his mouth, and I say yes.

That's when you know. Yeah. You know, you have good people and that's. Yeah. Stick together. I think, I think the pickleball session is Duffy and I and you and your bride. And then we'll.

We'll bring. Well, in fact, honey, get some Kleenex ready because these guys are gonna need it. Okay. No problem.

Show it up. Well, how do you. You know. I know and I know Duffy's had some crazy cool stories too. And you know, he's been on the pod, you know, so people who don't know Scott yet, you'll know him more. But we did release an episode recently. How do you, like, you don't have to put anybody specific, but like, if someone's hiding from failures or, or the things that, you know, that maybe their ego is stopping them from getting through. You know, you're all about shining a light on the negative, but like, talk me through how someone can work through it. They're open. They know they have some shit they got to work through.

Yeah. Or do they got them or do they see a lot of people walk around, they don't know it. Right. They just don't. You don't know what you don't know. And that's. That's all good. You're going to wake up. I wrote, you know, a Wall Street Journal best selling series called From WTF to OMG with some lol Unpacking Life's hidden Lessons. Eventually they'll unpack the lessons in what they're at. But, you know the book that yelled up. Yeah. I just completed my 14th book. And I'm really proud that the ideas that I share catch on. And four of my books made it to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and USA Today. So that means people are resonating with now these ideas that I come. That I come up with. I don't know that anything in the world is original. All I know is shit comes to me. I try it, I use it, I leverage it. I either it either works or doesn't work. If it works, I do it again, I do it again, I do it again. I use it with my clients, et cetera. Then I write a book about it. And then people come and they read the book and they say, oh, can you work with me on it? So the Illuminate book, for example, it's all about. Look, man. One of my mentors taught me. James Baldwin, a magnificent philosopher and playwright, he said, we can't solve everything we face, but we can't solve anything unless we face it. And in the book, which is a story I teach face it, follow it, and fix it. So in answer to your question, the question, the seminal, important question that we need to ask ourselves is, what am I missing here? What am I not facing about myself, my development? Now, again, I really think you should trip out on those two lists.

Yeah, yeah.

And when you trip on the. On those two lists and you get serious and naked of ego.

You'Ll find out what you need to illuminate. And you face it, then you follow it. Why? Like, I almost lost my house a million years ago when I was 30 some odd years old. And. And I. Those 14 words came back to me, you know, you're the green and growing and ripe, rotting. And I look like I'm a good guy. Why is this happening to me? I study and read books on sales and market what's going on? And then hit me like a ton of bricks. You're green and growing. Ripe or rotting? I didn't really look at where I was ripe and rotting. Like strategic planning, financial forecasting, budgeting, corporate finance. I sucked at that. And I didn't know it, so I illuminated it, I faced it. What am I facing? I suck at that. What else am I facing? I freaking hate that. What else? It gives me a rash and anal leakage. I freaking hate that stuff. Right, right. So then you follow it. Well, why? I never learned it. I never cared about it. Ain't nobody taught me that. What happens in the future if you Follow it into the future. I'm screwed. What's keeping it alive? My ignorance. Fix it. Learn at least enough so that I could hire somebody to do it and keep them honest. I don't need to be a 9 or a 10. Be a 5 so I could know enough about it. Hire someone and keep them honest with, with my money and my accounting and shit like that. That's illuminate illuminating parts of you. And frankly, two of my internationally award winning inventions came from that model. Wow.

What were those inventions? Curious.

Well, the latest one is freaking nuts.

It's right now it's in every hospital in New York City. It's all over the country. The VA is my biggest customer right now. Dig this. So face it, emergency room doctors and nurses are burning out at breakneck speed. Burnout turnover because of stress. Sustained stress. Now I already own a company that's 20 years old that puts prescriptive healing music in public spaces in hospitals. But we looked and said, what next problem could we solve? Face it, burnout turnover. Before COVID it was a $4.38 billion problem. Follow it. If they burn out, it's expensive to replace them and we're going to run out of nurses and doctors. Fix it. So we invented a pod. Four foot by four foot. It's like a spa. You open the door, you walk in, you sit down, it says welcome breathe, blah blah blah. And you choose a video journey, a nature video journey, anywhere from three to eight minutes, Emmy award winning video, Emmy award winning audio. And in three to eight minutes, using the science of what's called biophilia, how nature impacts the human condition and the science of in three to eight minutes they go from their crazy roles and goals into their souls. So they emerge more present with themselves and others. And we do pre and post testing on it. So it collects all the data. It's freaking nuts, man. And so we Illuminated found that, invented that, it won the international healthcare design award for innovation. Wow. From. From Illuminate. Wow.

And you go into the root of the problem. Yeah. Is the burnout. Because yeah. If we don't have those specialized folks doing those roles, we're screwed. I mean, they're the front line. Yeah.

Yeah, man. And, and that the website on that is Rejuvenation Stations, plural.com. now this company here, who's going to buy it? But if you want to check out a very groovy invention which came from Illuminated, then look at that. And then you ask yourself, how can I use illuminae? Face, follow and fix. And you don't have to. You don't have to learn or study it. All you have to know is face it, follow it, and fix it. Now, the book tells a story and it's pretty cool. Then illuminate, then gave birth to a book called Preventing Brand Slaughter. And that's when you're illuminating your brand, your reputation. And in that one, I teach, you're either living your brand, which is brand integrity, or you're killing your brand. That's brand slaughter in the first, second, or third degree. And it could be involuntary brand slaughter. I don't give a shit. It's still brand slaughter. Yeah, you kill someone, you're going to jail for manslaughter, but you kill your own brand and you pay the price a different way.

Hey, I want to pause the episode really fast and shout out another podcast that's on the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. The podcast is called this Old Marketing and it's hosted by Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose. And these guys have been around for a while, very well known experts in content marketing. So if you want anything around content marketing and the trends and basically the rants and, you know, it just brings in a lot of the tactical but really fun conversations. They're not more than an hour long. So you'll be able to jump in there, get some actionable stuff for your content marketing, and then jump right out in there, go do some stuff with it. So I highly recommend to go listen to the Old marketing wherever you get your podcast and go enjoy. What if your expertise could work for you 24, 7, even while you sleep? So at AI Build Team, we create AI powered digital twins that clone your knowledge, your voice, and even your style so you can scale without burning out. So imagine multiplying yourself, but without multiplying your time or your team's time. And the cool part is you don't have to imagine any of this. You can actually chat with my own AI twin right now. Just go over to AIBuildTeam AI Joe and you can see how it works for yourself. Again, that's AI buildteam AI slash Joe. Let's talk about that. Because, yeah, Brand Slaughter, I'm sure it's happening to probably everyone listening, watching, what are. I mean, especially now, I'm just thinking of with AI and all the different things that are coming up that people probably aren't understanding or aware of. Don't have a perfect question here, but Brand slaughter? Yeah, like either living.

I don't know, I. I guess. Do you Think it's more killing brands or just being slaughtered kind of without awareness of the person driving?

Usually it's usually involuntary Brands involved.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, my buddy owns 35 IHOPs here in town. If somebody, you know, brings a glass with their finger in the water and puts it on the table, that's Branch. LAUGHTER well, my buddy Mikey didn't do it, but he's, he's in trouble for Branch order in the second degree because he allows for that to happen.

Yeah.

Should have you did it or not? I mean, you allow. That's, that's involuntary. Most of us, if we can commit branchlaughter, we don't, we don't intend to do it, certainly. But what happens is, and this is a trip because Illuminate and Brand Slaughter got drunk one night and they made a baby called a book called the Illuminated Brand. Right. And in the Illuminated Brand, which is continuation of the story from Brand Slaughter and stuff like that, the bottom line is there's a formula there and I'm happy to share that formula right now because it is kick ass. And people who have a pen and pencil, it really does require writing it down. And it's. Maybe put it, I don't know, whatever. But it's, it's, it's, it's. IBD plus ABI times SBI equals mbv. I'll say it again, IBD plus ABI SBI equals mbv. Now, dig this, this is amazing. I'm doing seven keynotes in September in seven different cities because this, this, this is catching on, like, big time. And here's what is IBD are your intended brand descriptors. Now, I'm an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur. Listeners are entrepreneurs. You could be, you could be killing it or just starting out. It's still relevant. Here's the deal. IBDs, what are your intended brand descriptors? That's a list. You list out those words, how do you want to be described? You walk into a restroom to wash your hands and somebody's in the stall, you know, invariably talking really loud on their cell phone. If they're talking about you.

What do you want to hear them say? He's this, that, this, that, this, that and this, that. Okay, yep, those are your ibd. Next is your abi. That's an audit of brand integrity. Audit of brand integrity. So you've got your list here of your ibd. Here are your list of touch points, customers, prospects, suspects. There they are across there. So you got an X axis, a Y axis, your Abby, your order to brand integrity is you look over here and you say innovative and with customers. Are you in brand integrity? Are you earning that descriptor? That's brand integrity. Yay. Or over here. Ah. In responsive and clients, we kind of. That's brand slaughter in the first degree. So now it's a hit or miss. So now you got your list of brand slaughter. That's where you focus. Remember I talked about closing the gap? Well, the next phase you see is sbi, sbi, Strategic Brand initiatives. Those are use you. You either mastermind with yourself or your team. How could we close the gap on these? How could we be more integris with our brand? What could, might, should, ought we do.

That process equals mbv, massive brand value. Boom, man.

That is, that's a hell of a formula. We will make it easy for people to grab that formula so it's actionable too. Because that's the key thing I want to do here is unlock it, illuminate this whole thing and then actually, actually do the damn thing.

That's the training program that I do all over the place. And we're running it through like one of my clients is the number one luxury hotel in Boston. And we put 100% of their employees through this system. They are a three year old brand and they're beating Ritz Carlton.

I'm trying to think of the other, I can't. But they're number one. They're beating these. In fact, their building was the first Ritz Carlton in the United States 100 years ago.

Oh, that's even better.

Three years old and they're kicking ass. Four seasons. They're whooping and they're three years old. Why? Because the brand is people. Love is just damn good business. And the brand where you have all of your people know their respective roles in living the brand, they know that, they live that and it feels good.

So you said brand is people. I mean that's for that company. But I would, I mean, would you say that's kind of overarching with most great businesses and love is great business too.

There's, there's a connection. I call it the God only knows factor. Because you, if you ask people why they're so connected with a brand, they're going to say God only knows. And then if you were to say, would you switch? They say, no way. So it's the, to quote the famous philosopher Austin Powers, it's the mojo, baby. It's the mojo. But here's, here's the deal. It's not enough for God to Only know you need to know it, and you need to do it on purpose. In everything you do, that involves an audit of brand integrity and the entire illuminated brand model. When you do that.

I mean, I know what my brand is, and I do it on purpose. And it feels good to do it on purpose.

And you feel confident. You walk, you stand upright with your feet in the lettuce where you're grounded to the earth and. And your head to God where you're. You're walking. You. You walk. You walk strong. I walk tall. At five foot five.

Every. Every inch squeaking out. Yeah, well, that's the thing.

And.

And what? Illuminating. Anything, any of the negatives, any of the shit that we're dealing with that we just feel we're inadequate in, we're only going to get, like you said, what? More confidence, more competence, and. And the cycle continues. I might have said that in reverse.

You are good. You are good student, grasshopper.

I'm learning quick.

You're very good student. I am liking very much you.

Oh, man, this is good. Do you find that it. Because it starts with the person, right? Starts with me, starts with you. Listening, watching, and then it goes to, I would assume, team, right? The people that are surrounding us, supporting us, the ones that we work with. So culture, I would imagine so. It's coming out from. It's kind of developing out like a flower, hippie days and, you know, then it's starting to touch people out there.

No, no, you're right. I mean, it does. It does have that sort of ripple effect. And make no mistake about it, whether you're a solopreneur or an entrepreneur who has three employees or 3,000 employees, you are responsible for making sure everyone understands their respective role in living the brand. You see, the brand is valuable, like a Faberge egg. You know what a Faberge egg is?

I've seen.

Yeah, Those little delicate eggs, they're worth about six or seven million dollars. The brand is that valuable. Fab. And when you hand it off to your people, you must hand it to them gently, and they must know how to treat it and live it and handle it. But if you do this, oops, my bad, you kill the brand.

So it's. It's just a matter of get real. Get real. Have the. You know, most of my entrepreneur brothers and sisters are courageous, but when it comes to looking at themselves.

They'Re not so courageous.

It gets scary, man. When you're turning the camera around or whatever it is, the mirror, it takes.

Courage.

And it takes. What's the Word. Humility for us all to realize we are all bozos on this bus.

That's right.

We're also brilliant. Our job is in this lifetime to find those areas.

That we're in need, to sand and smooth out, to fortify and fulfill. That's our job as business people. But stay with me, yo. It's our job as a human being.

And as a. As a part of this great spirit that exists, is to find out, you know, what is our dharma, what's our path.

And have the. The cojones, the chutzpah to. To close those gaps, to identify the gaps and close the gaps. And if you can't find the gaps, just talk to your spouse or your. Your team or something. They'll be right there to tell you, and that's just fine. However you get it.

Yeah.

And then fire them for being honest. Yeah.

Just like, how dare you?

Well, I mean.

Or you can. And, you know, I don't know if you're a fan of this, but, Chad, GPT. You know, I know a lot of people are going to that now, talking.

About, what is that? I never heard of that.

Never heard of that thing, huh? Yeah. Have you used it for this kind of process, or do you recommend.

I just had a client. This is so cool. The guy who was here yesterday, the rocket scientist guy, he went to Chat and said, I'm going to the home of David Corbin. He's my new mentor. I would like you to mentor me like David Corbin does. What questions you expect that David will ask me? And freak and Chat knew me well enough to write down some of the questions that anybody who's watching can try that. And you'll see some of the questions that. Chat knows me well enough to know the questions that I would ask. That's a trip, man.

It's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah, that's. Yeah. No, I love. I love chat. I just. Like I said, I just finished my 14th book, and chat was very helpful because my 14th book is called Dig this. Reawakening America, Illuminating her brand.

Ooh, that's good.

Timely, and it's all about this woman, America. And she goes up to her mentor, whose name, coincidentally, is C, period, David. I'm David, period. C. But she goes up to her mentor and she goes, david, I'm like, I need your help. You've been my mentor since I'm born. But I gotta tell you, I'm very unsteady on my feet. I'm forgetting who I am, and I'm everything to everybody, and I ain't nothing to nobody. I need your help. And he's thinking to himself, yeah, tell me about it, I got my own stuff. He goes, but, but, but I've been helping her since she's born. And he says, yeah, America, I will help you. What I'll do is I'm going to send you out to one of our great American corporations and they'll, they'll greet you there, they'll show you around a little bit, and in that process, you'll remember some of your values and what you stand for. And she says, that'd be great. So she goes, first company she goes to is a little company called Apple, you probably never heard of them. And so she goes through it and then she comes back and she debriefs with David. And through that process, she talks about the values she learned there. And he sends her to another corporation and another corporation, there's about 12 corporations she goes through. And each time they debrief and she remembers her values, she also remembers where she messed up and how she got back on track. And so that's the process. And at the very end, and here's the reveal, and you gotta read this book, man. It's the best book I've ever written. But at the end she goes, you know, you've been with me my whole life. You've taken through this journey. I feel steady on my street, on my feet. She goes, I never asked you a question. He goes, what's that? She goes, what does a C stand for? You know, in C period, David. And through some dramatic interplay, he says, it's a God given name. It's the most important name I have. That name is Citizen. Citizen. For in the book it's the citizen who helps to get her back on track, who reminds her and works with her around the woman's right to vote, slavery, polluting our rivers and streams. It's the citizen Rachel Carson who stood. So in the book, you're learning America's, you're remembering America's voice, values. You're seeing where we've gone astray and how as tough as it was, even when we had over 100 Nazis in Congress, we were able to solve that. The McCarthy era, the Watergate era. And so I want people to remember our values. And at the end, I have a book club series where people could talk about, there's questions I give in there and I'm talking to Good Morning America now to get on and talk about that and stuff. I want to engage civil dialogue around what unites us, not just what divides Us.

Ooh. All right, I'm going to pick up that book. Is that out already?

Yeah, it is.

It is. Okay.

It's on Amazon at a place near you. And when you buy it, put a. Put a. Put a. What do you call it?

Overview.

Yeah, yeah, View. That's the word.

Don't use Chat. GPT to write it either. That's. That's.

Yeah. I don't care if chat writes it or your child writes it.

That's true.

It's a quantity more than a quality thing. The way that shit goes down, that.

Is the game over there. Yeah, you're right. Oh, man. Yeah. So I'm curious. Where do you, like, when you screw up? Because I'm sure you do.

Never. How do you realign? Like, what's your. What's your comeback? Like, is there a specific thing that you always ground yourself in?

It's probably yes. When I catch myself, I celebrate it.

Ooh, cool.

Always celebrate cool. Yeah, it's. The shit that you don't catch is you're screwed.

Yeah.

If I catch it or if somebody catches it, I don't always get it, you know? And, like, maybe I'll disagree at first, but I try to stay that open vessel. I try to hold that transformative space. So when I realize that I mess up or I go back to the old ways, you know, I celebrate it like, well, yay. Because it's in the realization I can grow. It's. What? I don't know. What I don't illuminate. You see what I mean? If I go to the doctor and the doctor goes, man, your. Your. Your. Your skin is 98% great. I'm like, what's the 2%? Oh, yeah, well, you got a skin cancer over there. Well, don't just accentuate the positive. Illuminate the freaking negative, doc. Right? So when. When I find that, I don't. I don't go into shame or blame.

I go into celebration because that opens up possibilities. Right? Like when you have.

Yeah.

Because you are shining. I don't know if it's a positive light, but it's an open light. You're shining the light on that thing.

And you illuminate the negative in a positive light. That's my. My buddy John Assar up came up with that 25.

John's awesome.

That first book, he said, david, it's like you're talking about illuminate the negative in a positive light. And I went, john, that's the best idea I've ever come up with.

Well, I was hanging out With John the other day. So, yeah, John's. John's awesome. He's. He's a great guy. That's. Man, that's. This is cool. No, I mean, there's so many things I'm taking away. I'm just like, my mind right now. Here's what I want to do, because I know. Let's. Let's get boogie. What is. I'm always curious, like, so we got the future. Future's unknown, as it always is, but it holds patterns and clues. What are you most excited for? I mean, because I'm. You know, there's AI and all this other stuff, but then people like, is there something that stands out in the next couple years that you're just like, wow, this is going to be cool.

And so, you know, we've studied about Homo erectus. I think we're moving into Homo spiritus. And my. My dear friend, Dr. David Gruder.

Coin that phrase. To the best of my knowledge, Homo spiritus. We're moving into an area where.

Our spirit, our humanity is that which differentiates us from large language and chat and all of AI. It's our humanity. Chat's doing a magnificent job. Oh, my God. You know, Ann and I, My bride and I will sometimes we'll sit down and we'll talk to Sheila, who's my avatar on. And. And she's just. She's the greatest. We have great conversation, and she's lovely, and she's got a great. She's a great judge of character because she loves me. Anyway.

The human components.

And like I said earlier. And you met my buddy, Steve Farber.

Yeah.

He wrote a marvelous book called Love Is Just Damn Good Business. I've been talking about that for years in a different way. But I love the way he says it.

And.

Oh, my God, he's such a brilliant speaker and writer. I just. I just adore him. And yet, love is just damn good business. And the home of spirit is the part of us, the essence of us, the humanity, the compassion, the love, the care, the courage, etc. That is our differentiator. Nurture that, feed that. And, you know, it's funny. I did a speech in Cancun, Mexico, recently, and I went over to the corner of the stage and I put my hands up in a timeout, and I just. I didn't know I was going to do this, but I did it. And that's what I do on stage. I'm a weirdo, but. But I'm old and I get away with this shit. I've been Speaking for long enough that they'll let me talk about anything. So anyway, so I get there and I go timeout. And I mommy, I'm angry. I'm angry, I'm pissed off. And. And my mom would say, first of all, David, watch your language. And second of all, sit down. She'd sit me down at the kitchen table and she'd make me a bologna and cheese sandwich and she'd cut off the crusts and stuff and I'd eat it. And I realized, all right, so I wasn't angry. I was hungry. And the point is, Mommy knew me better than I knew myself. Today, avaricious marketers using AI know us better than we know ourselves.

And they're no longer predicting our behavior, they're driving our behavior. And we complain about the Russians hacking our elections every four years or so. How about these marketers hacking us every 20 to 30 minutes and nobody says anything? We're being hacked. And what's happening is.

We'Re giving away the keys to our kingdom. We have this thing called free will. It's eroding while we're under the. We're under the hypnotic state of that. So what's the solution? I said, folks, what's the solution? And here it is.

We must hack ourselves.

To our highest values of humanity every day. Hack ourselves. Who am I? What do I represent? What are my values? What are my intended brand descriptors? Who am I? And hack ourselves to that on a regular basis. Post it notes I've got opposite my bathrooms, in my cottage, in my library, in my house, I ain't going to forget because I'm not aware of the subliminal hacking that's gone down. Driven by AI, which is marvelous, but just like a scalpel, AI is like a scalpel in that. In the hands of a surgeon, it's a good thing. In the hands of a gang member, it's a bad thing. In the hands of an avaricious marketer, it's a bad thing. In the hands of a neuroscientist or somebody who's studying diabetes, it's a good thing, but it's neutral. It's neutral. It's. It's how you use it. However, we live in a toxic cesspool.

And you may know Scott knows that out notwithstanding my cigars. I mean, I'm. I'm a health weirdo. Organic food. I cleanse my liver and kidney every morning and every night with. With nat Homeopathy. And I. I elate heavy metals every morning and every night with zeolite. And like that.

Right on.

We live in a toxic cesspool. And it used to be a toxic cesspool just physically. Now we live in a toxic cesspool mentally and emotionally. So again, if you're not hacking yourself to your. Hi. And here's two things that my bride and I do. First off, I wake up every morning and I say those four things. And you and I talk about, yes, please, more, and thank you. Every morning keeps me a state of gratitude and expectation. And every evening, my bride and I sit down. Five o', clock, the work whistle blows. That's it.

Unless I'm traveling. And even when I'm traveling, we do this. We do what we call our top three. We take turns talking about the top three things that lit us up for the day. And she goes, I go, she. Sometimes we go to 4, 5, 6. Doesn't make a difference. But it accomplishes two important things. One, it keeps us in a state of gratitude. Two, because we're both very busy. She's a very successful architect and I'm running around doing weird stuff. It keeps us connected to what is important to us and to my fellow entrepreneurs.

You know, I'm not going to use the B word, balance, or anything, but to stay connected with your spouse or yourself this way impacts your productivity, your joy, your mirth, your bliss. So those are the two, two things that we do.

Man, it's incredible. I'm going to do it with my kids too. I have, I have a five year old here. I think that would be.

I just got God bumps when you said that. Absolutely. Do it with your kids.

Yeah. Good, good. Man, this is, this is be. I couldn't agree with you more with the whole. What was it? Homeo spiritus. I love it because, yeah, it's, it's. We are being hacked. And it's neutral, though. Yeah, I could see, you know, it's AI being the tool and that's getting so much more powerful every second. But, you know, it's up to us. And, and that's why I think the human side, you know, as much as I love that I have healthy fears of AI, but it's because it's in the hands of however you use it.

Right?

And, and yeah, it's, it's interesting times. But David, I, I freaking love your mess. I love you, man. Like the way that you think. And it's just like this is, it's more important day by day, this message that you're bringing out there. So I'm happy you're out there doing it. And yeah, in terms of toxins too, I host a whole separate podcast with a doctor that literally is all about toxins, so.

Oh really?

I do very similar things. I'm about to get therapeutic plasma exchange to take that stuff out of me because I have a bunch of toxins, as we all do.

But look into, look into ACZ Nano.

ACZ Nano, okay.

It's a form of zeolite. It'll click in the hydrocarbons out the aluminum that they might be cooking at in a restaurant you go to, and any heavy metals, the fluorides and in the water because invariably, you know, you order tea or coffee somewhere, you're getting the, you're getting the fluoride.

It's horrible.

Yeah, plastics and lead and oh my God, don't even get started. So, yeah, that's kind of important because I'll tell you what, here's the skinny and here's the truth. I'm going to get real, real, real truthful with you. So I am not an award winning inventor or a Wall Street Journal bestselling author or a two times Ted Guy or a business owner inventor. I'm not, I am a spiritual being who plays in those roles. I'm not even a husband or a father or a grandfather. I'm a spiritual being who plays in those roles. That's the most important to me is living the gift of, of this life to learn and expand, to grow, to share, to connect, to love.

All the other shit could go away. It's 1, 2, 3.

Yeah, I follow you.

That's just my gig. That's just my gig. Everybody's got their own gig. But I offer that up. And the reason I share that is some people will think about that and go, I don't know, do I agree with it? Do I disagree? And I love that. Everything I share.

Needs to be taken with a grain of salt. And I know that.

I'm not out to convince anybody of anything. I'm done with that.

I live the whole lot of my life trying to do that. I'm just going to live my life and share my ideas and hopefully model because I've got a beautiful life. A beautiful life. And that's what I want to show my kids and my grandkids.

I love it, man. Yeah, you're, you're, you're laying the path and you're doing it for yourself first. You know, you're serving others around. It's, it's a beautiful thing. So, David, I appreciate you, my man, my friend. Everyone go check out David. DavidCorbin.com. is there anywhere else that you think they should go stalk you?

Pickleball.

Pickleball. That's me, man. That's me. I. I'm gonna do more pickleball and fear less of it. I just keep staring at your shirt. I love it.

Yeah. One of my clients.

You look better here than the suit that you had on when I met you. I like this. I'm just thinking of when we were hanging out last time. You were in a suit and everything. It looked great, but I like this. Look at David here.

Yeah, but I was wearing women's underwear underneath, too, didn't I?

On that note, we're done. This is a fabulous interview. I love it, dude. Thank you. Have a great night.

Good to be with you always.

Sam.