Marx Acosta-Rubio — How To Achieve Success In Whatever You Do

This is an intro, intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Flowchart with your boy, my.

Boy, Matt Wolf and Joe Fear. Hey, hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is Joe Fear.

This is Matt Wolfe.

That doesn't sound like a normal Matt Wolf, but that's him. Anyway, it's not an imposter. So today this is a pretty awaited podcast episode for Matt and I. A fellow by the name of Marx Acosta Rubio was introduced from a buddy of ours, Dan and shout out to Dan Ryan. And I know he's listening, but Mark's for the first phone call I had with him a couple weeks back, did not know him at all. Had an hour long phone call with him and it completely blew my mind. And it's weird, but I can't really describe it, but I described it to Matt as I just got a PhD in life. I don't know how to say this, but this guy needs to be on our podcast and you need to learn from him.

Ye got another PhD on life. I mean, we're going to talk about mindset, business philosophy, marketing strategies, branding. I mean, we go all over the place and it is, it is absolutely amazing. We loved every minute of it. So much so that I think this is the longest episode we've done to date.

Yeah.

Just because we just went so many places and we were so passionate about the conversation and got so excited.

So, yeah, I mean, it's just great. So get ready. I mean, this is one you can listen to on the drive, but definitely you want to, if you're, if you're not driving, take some notes because there will be a lot of takeaways here. Re listening to them. And we'll probably have a part two because we're up for a challenge.

Yep, definitely we'll have a part two. Oh, one last thing we want to do in these intros from here on out, right?

Yes.

We want to tell people, go to evergreenprofits.com contact get in contact with us. We want to hear from you. We want to know what you're thinking of these podcasts. We want to, you know, we just.

Want a further conversation because I think a lot of folks don't really know exactly how to get to us. That's the easiest way. They go straight to us. We love to chat with our listeners because unfortunately a lot of the times we just have to meet you in person, which is great, but that's the only way we hear from you. So shoot us a message over there@evergreenprofits.com contact no more. Let's get to the show.

Here comes Marx.

Hey, Marx, thanks for joining us today.

Hey, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, man. So I'm gonna go back. I think it was two weeks ago we met for the first time through a mutual lurking friend named Dan Ryan. And I know Dan Ryan's listening to this podcast right now.

He's our biggest fan, but he's definitely.

A lurker in the best way possible. But our conversation, you and I, Matt never actually got to experience youth too much, so I'm kind of interested to see how he takes it. But it was mind blowing. I know. I walked away to Matt after the fact. I was like, I think I just got a PhD in life.

That's not a joke.

That was a word for word quote he gave me after getting off the phone with you.

But the problem was I couldn't explain it.

So that's why we brought you on the show.

Nice. Well, thanks for having me, guys. And it is kind of interesting to find out how people's perception changes when certain things are not just revealed, but sort of awakened. Because there's a lot of truth that you know, but sometimes gets clouded or misinterpreted by just adding more and more junk. You know, it's interesting because Bruce Lee once said, or and I'm paraphrasing, that the essence of martial arts was not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. And the best way that sort of the analogy I can give you is imagine if you were a sculpture and you had this big, beautiful sort of block of stone, and you could see inside the stone already what you wanted to create, mainly yourself, an image of you, and you start sort of chipping away at the unessential until you get to the true self of what you look like or what your best self is. I think that's kind of what business and personal growth and life really are about. Unfortunately, though, there's a lot of this do this and do this and do this, and a lot of these books or seminars or whatever you want to call, talk about how you're missing things and it may or may not be true. But what about if we look at something a little bit different and think about what is it you have that's preventing you from holding you back? When I coach clients and let me know if I'm just rambling or being verbose and stuff.

Very good.

Okay, good. One of the things is I have a lot of clients that are either really high net worth individuals or Just starting out in some political figures and what have you. And I can't mention only a few of them don't have NDAs with me. But what's interesting is, is that the process by which we always approach it is almost identically the same. The principles and the concepts. Right. Not the techniques or the skill set or the attitudes or attributes, but sort of like the concepts. So I'll tell you a little story. And you know, when I first started in business, I think I was, gee, 28 years old and I'd gotten fired, actually. Yeah, 28. And I got fired from a company that I worked at doing phone sales, selling office supplies. And I got fired because a guy lacked integrity. I called them on it, we had a disagreement, and he let me go. And of course, that was sort of a pivotal point in my life, if you can imagine.

Oh, yeah, right.

It's like, oh, I get home early. My wife's like, honey, what are you doing home early? And I was like, I got fired. And she doesn't miss a beat, man. She goes, great.

Oh, man, you got a good wife, right?

I was like, yeah, of course. I was petrified, scared out of my, you know what.

Yeah.

But age 31, I was a millionaire. By age 36, I was a DECA millionaire. And by age 30, I was broke. I'm now 48. That was 10 years ago. And I went from making a quarter mil a month to being negative a quarter mil a month. And I went from. We went, I should say, from being sort of this really high end, you know, amazing family in California with celebrity friends and, you know, I mean, I can name drop, but it would be sort of ostentatious to do so to, you know, nobody returning my phone calls. Not a cricket could be heard in sight. Well, we had these parties where my wife would spend a ton of money in our backyard. We have a. We still own the house in California. Beautiful house overlooking the valley by the Kardashians and Ozzy Osborne, all those folks. And you know, I thought, wow, this is crazy. And what had happened was a couple of employees that stole some accounts I had. You know, they have sort of embezzled, they've done some illegal things. But I don't blame them because it really wasn't their fault. It was my fault. Right. When I look back at what happened, I realized. And I'll drop this big key moment and I'll tell you when a big key moment is coming. Because what most entrepreneurs, CEOs or individuals don't realize, but they should. And hopefully this will help them is that you're only one, two or three moves away from greatness or disaster. It's not 100 moves, not 50 moves, not 10 moves, one, two or three. And what I had done in my organization, I made three moves literally that turned us overnight from a roaring Inc. Founder, fastest growing company number 383 to literally losing it all. I mean I lost almost everything, right?

Oh wow.

And it wasn't difficult in retrospect to see what actually happened. So of course after that I sucked my thumb for a while. It took me a few years to get over it. I mean it was pretty devastating. The emotional beat up or the emotional negativity that happens when that occurs is pretty intense. And it's sort of right at changes the identity, you know, because you have beliefs, values, you have environment, you have rules, you have all these things. But at the at the core of who we are is our identity. I am blank. So I went from I am this to I am something else. And I began to have self doubt. I don't know if you guys ever have self doubt.

Sure.

But it right, Never, I mean never wait in life of course, you know, I'm the only one, I'm the only bonehead that have self doubt. You know, am I good enough?

Yeah.

You know, did I, can I do it again? Was I lucky? And I knew. I mean I've read up to this point over 3,000 books, right. I've taken all the NLP classes, EFT havening, Tony Robbins was a friend of mine at one point, all of these other things. So I wasn't lacking knowledge. I read all the Dan Kennedy marketing stuff, you name it, right? I mean I had done it all. Jay Abraham was a good friend, still is. So all of these things and I still could not get myself and turn myself around. And then one day I had an epiphany and I've only had a few pivoties in my life and I went right, holy cow. Omg. And then I began to sort of rebuild my life and rebuild my business but in a different way. I didn't do it the same time I did it. I had a big office and lots of employees and you know, I was driving this. I remember I was driving a custom made CLS 55AMG Mercedes in 2006 and I was coming down from this beautiful house in the hills, going down to the office and I had employees and I was Mr. Big Man. I was multimillionaire, you name it, whatever have you. But I was driving down halfway through the office, I had a moment that I realized I was miserable. I didn't know it. I thought I was happy, but I wasn't. And I was like, holy crap, why am I so angry? Why am I so sad? Why am I miserable? I got the beautiful wife, the three kids, the. The house, the, you know, the condo in Mammoth Mountains. And I mean, I had the life like the full. And I'm Hispanic, right? So I'm like, you know, I'm an immigrant, right? I had the full American dream, but I was miserable. And then I realized there was no ticker tape parade for me. I had made it, but nobody was clapping and trimming on.

It's just for you.

Yeah, yeah. And I didn't realize. And then I began the process of self sabotaging, which is why I made the 1, 2, or 3 moves that pretty much killed my company.

Man, that is so interesting. I mean, we've. We've interviewed, you know, quite a few millionaires and, you know, deca millionaires and stuff like that on the show. And I feel like a lot of them have very, very, very similar stories, right? Like, if you go. If anybody listening goes back and listens to, like, the Amisha episode, right? There's a very similar story where there was, like this moment of realization where, man, I have it all, but I'm still miserable. Like, what's, what's the thing that's missing? I thought I had it all. And it's just so fascinating that it seems like a lot of. A lot of people actually kind of go through that awakening at some point.

Well, I figured it out, right? Exactly what had happened. And you're right. I mean, it's not a super common story, but it isn't an uncommon story, right? And some people will self sabotage in different ways and not lose the business, right? They'll get divorced, they'll get super overweight. There's a lot of ways that it'll manifest itself if they're not congruent. And for me, once I had the realization that I wasn't happy, I began to seek happiness. And in that I thought, I must ruin everything in my life. I must try to kill everything in order to achieve happiness. So that wasn't the right answer. So here I am now, you know, destitute, broke. I can't rub two nickels together to save my life. And I thought, wow, this is not where I want to be. So I had that epiphany. I had that moment, and then I thought, okay, so how do I change it? How do I grow my company again? How do I diversify? How do I create msis, which stand for multiple sources of income? How do I do what I want to do and still be happy? In the process of doing it? Right, I began sort of this rebuilding, and it was. It was a. Do you guys remember the movie Jerry Maguire? Oh, yeah. Okay. Do you remember the scene where Jerry is talking to Cuba Gooding Jr. And he's like, help me help you. You know what it's like to be me every morning? It's a, you know, seed swallowing or seed swallowing, pride, whatever, yada, yada, yada. And he's like, at this breaking point, right, where, like, nobody understands what it's like to be this character and he's trying to do something. So that was me.

And I just kept remembering that scene over and over and over again. But here's the interesting thing that happened along the path. I became twice as wealthy in half the time. I became happy for the first time in a really long time, and I'm still super happy today. And I began to realize where I had screwed up and how to prevent those things from happening. Now, it doesn't mean that life isn't without challenges. It doesn't mean that life isn't without problems. Although David Allen, a good friend of mine from getting things done, which we'll talk about, since there are no problems, just projects. So it doesn't mean that these things don't exist. It just means that you can better handle them. Give an example. So if you're doing jujitsu, you know, Brazilian jiu jitsu, or any kind of MMA form, and, you know they have belts, right? White, blue, purple, brown.

Right?

Okay. And if you and your audience is familiar with it, if you're a blue belt, you know, a purple belt can beat you up, most likely, or submit you, right? If you're purple and they're purple, then it's even, right? So the higher you go in terms of your ability to adjust, adapt, and submit the opponent, that the easier they get. They're still there, they're still challenges. You're just better, wiser, stronger, right? Okay. So I thought, okay, so how do I get better, wiser, stronger? So I went in this process, and sure enough, we built the company was doing really great. And then a couple of years into my renewing of success and happiness, I had a friend of mine who I won't mention because I have an NDA with him. He's a pretty popular figure. He said, hey, would you help me with my life? And business. And he was doing okay, wasn't doing great, but it was doing, you know, seven figures, so it was doing okay. And I said, sure, I'd be happy to. I mean, after having gone from arrogant to totally just beat up and then to being humble, I was like, yeah man, I'm happy to help you because, you know, I want you to avoid the sensations, the feelings, experiences that I had, which are not very pleasant, right?

So, you know, one of my mentors had taught me that there's three things in every business. Strategy, team building and sales. And those are things you cannot delegate as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, as a captain of ministry, whatever. You cannot delegate strategy, team building and sales. And I'll explain to you later why. So he taught me these things. This guy worked for Lee Iacocca and that's what got my business really back up and running, right? I understood what strategy really was. And then when I went to talk to my, this original mentor, he's like, well, strategy is blah, blah, blah. And it was a bit confusing. So I went to my other mentor who was the highest paid consultant still is in the world, consulted with Apple, the military, and I can't say his name either, but no, no marks. It's easy, here's what it is. And he goes, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I went, oh, I can do that. So I applied that, right? Then I said, how do I build a team? How do I really build the team, right? I went back to this guy and he goes, oh, well, you know, that's not my area of expertise. So I went, okay. Went to another guy and he said, well, I don't know that one. So back to the original guy. And he goes, easy, like this. So I did it and it worked. And then I thought, what do you mean by sales, right? He goes, well, you can't grow too fast, you can't grow too slow. You know the rule of 72, yada, yada, yada, business model, what? I said, okay, I got it. So I began to apply this and sure enough, I began to skyrocket up to success. So this guy says, man, I'm seeing you. I saw you go from Mr. Everybody everything to like, nobody, nothing. And here you are again. It seems like you're doing really well. Will you help me? I said, sure. He goes, I'll pay you. I said, you don't have to pay him. He goes, no, no, I'll pay you. I said, no, it's okay. I don't think I'm worthy, right? Problem number one, I don't think I'm worthy of it. Don't worry. He goes, no, look, I'll pay you $10,000 a month plus a piece of the increase. I was like. My wife says, don't be a dumbass, Dan.

But okay, take the damn money.

Take the money. I did. The money, right? So I took the money. And for 12 months, guess what happened?

12 months. Let's see.

You made $120,000.

I did that. That is true. Very good.

That was good. What happened to the client?

I don't know. My gut says big things happen. But then my cynical side says probably nothing because he chose not to follow through.

Oh, Matt. So your cynical side was right. Oh, Joe. Sorry. Your cynical side was right. So here's what happened. Nothing. Like, I was trying to implement strategy and team building and sales, and I was on it, man. I was at my best. I was like, I'm gonna make this a mission. You know, Jim Rohn, one of my mentors early on, said that in the beginning of his career, he used to say, I'm gonna make these people successful even if it kills me. And then he goes, I almost died. Almost died, right? So I was me. I was like, I'm gonna make this guy successful and increase his business in life, even if it harms me. And it did harm me. And we failed. Oh, my gosh, it was terrible. And I said, buddy, I said, look, I love you, you love me. I'm doing the best I can. Nothing's happening. Stop paying me. He goes, look, I know what you're doing in your life and your business, because I was still growing and my relationship was getting better, right? Because I was close to divorce at one point. So everything's getting better. Life is going wonderful. And he goes, look, I see what you're doing. I want that, too. He goes, I have faith in you. You can do it, Marcus. I was like, oh, I'm racking my brain. So then I went back to my original notes of when I started going through this sort of self reflection after I was broke and destitute and despondent. And I had a formula called V2GPT, which is vision, values, goals, principles.

Okay?

So I said, okay, well, let me run this by him. So I said, okay, let's do this together. What's your vision? Okay, great. What are your values? Okay, what's your goals? Because, you know, vision and values come before goals, right? So you have your vision of, okay, here's what my ideal life will look like or should look like. And here are the things that are important to me. And the way I get there is by having these goals. Okay, got it. And then what principles do we apply? Do we apply the Hawthorne principle, Parkinson's principle, the 8020 principle, all these principles we listed. And then I was like, okay, well, everything seems aligned. What am I missing? So I asked him this one question. I changed the formula from V2HP to V2HP2. And I said, are you willing to pay the price it takes to achieve that? And he said, no.

There you go. That's your answer.

Pin drop, right? It's like, oh. So I went back to the original model of business, the three pillars. Strategy, team building, and sales. And I thought, we're missing something. We're missing mindset. So I added mindset, strategy, team building, and sales. So I went, okay, great, let's go ahead and start changing the mindset. A mindset is a set of beliefs that you have. And a belief is thinking about something that you believe to be true for you. Right. So if I believe my wife loves me, you know, to me, that's something that's true for me.

Sure.

Now you can say, well, she doesn't love you, that's okay. Because that's a belief you can have. So a belief isn't reality. It's what you accept to be true in your life. Okay, got it. And if we have these beliefs, these accepted rules and regulations and whatever have you that are not conducive to what we quote, unquote, say, we consciously want that our subconscious mind, our unconscious mind will hold us back. Right. And we can talk about this for hours in terms of, you know, unintended benefits and all this stuff. And as we went in forward to try and change his mindset to one that was conducive to what he said he wanted, everything began to click and everything in his life opened up. Now, we didn't make a bazillion dollars the next 90 days and six months, but by the 12 month, we had doubled his income and we had not, I wouldn't say double his time off, because that's sort of a cliche, but he was definitely more in control. Now, I always do inquire, not inquire, I always do ask and prod my clients or anybody who I know to do gtd, and we'll talk about that. And I'll tell you how people misunderstand what GTD is, and I'll explain why GTD is an 8020 principle. And it's the only way I have found because I've tried to Break that model. I tried to break the GTD model. I hate it. Everybody hates it to a certain extent. Right. It gets constricting. So I've tried to break it and every time I've tried to break it, I realize how unbreakable it is and I end up coming back to it. So I'm glad, right. Because it makes me appreciate and get what David would call perspective, which he believes is, okay, the most rarest and valuable commodity on the planet, which is how you see things, control and perspective about it. So anyway, so long story short is we finally started to happen. And then a long word of mouth, other people he started talking to people that he knew and so forth and so on and yada yada, yada. And then about the third or fourth client, I created an intake form which I'm going to give you guys. But it's. But it is for your eyes only. It is not to share with your audience because it really can do a lot of damage if it isn't properly managed by somebody who knows what they're doing.

Sure.

But you'll see that there's three or four pages just on mindset and what we cover. And it's no fluff, no BS, right. It's not like it's a 200 page book. It's not anything that you don't already know. We're just approaching it a very commonsensical way. We're going to do a past, present and future.

But.

And then as we run through that process, you'll begin to, you'll see that the. One of the best ways for your, yourself and your audience, anybody listening to really get more successful is to unhook the chains that hold you back you didn't even know you had.

That's the end. That's all that past stuff that you just kind of divert to. You know, when things get rough or things get scary, you kind of start freaking out and be like, back in the day I tried this. And you know, and that's where you kind of spiral out. Or you can.

Well, if you look at the ACE Study. The ACE study, right. The ACE study, which. One of the biggest studies talks about childhood effects and how they affect disease and mindset and wealth and all this stuff. The brain is really smart, right? We have three different parts of the brain. If you look at the teal corporate brain, brain chains, for example. You know, one part of the brain is the thinking brain. One part of the brain is a reflex brain which is trained to fight or flight or fornicate or feed or whatever the other one was, right? And then you have, of course, the archiving brain or the unconscious mind and your neocortex, Right. The part about thinking always comes online last, right? So if we don't deal with the archiving of the subconscious mind, or if we don't deal with the reptilian brain, then the thinking brain can only be as effective as it can be with all the constraints. You know, your good friend of mine, Ray Dalio, talks about, hey, look, guys, the greatest thing I ever did in my business was to meditate. And I'll tell you why that's true. Or if you look at, you know, Virgin Airlines, right? He'll say that. Or Virgin Brands, he says that, hey, look, the greatest thing I ever do is work out.

Oh, yeah? Yep.

But why is that?

That's. I mean, that's a good question. I mean, I think for me, just talking my own experience, I resonate with both of those. And I even tell Matt this all the time. I'm like, if I don't meditate at least once a day, and if I don't work out about three times a week, my. I get a little squirrely. I start thinking wild thoughts. I don't think straight.

Well, I mean, so my. I guess. My sort of guess on where we're going is that it's. It's giving your subconscious a chance to process things where we're always so much on the, you know, the front of our brain trying to think things through logically, but we're never really giving our subconscious that chance to process it in the back end.

Yes, to all of the above. So when. When you meditate, right, in a certain way, you're depotentiating the amygdala from these things called ampa receptors. So what happens is when there's a trigger, internal or external, these amp receptors pop up in the amygdala, which is sort of the almond, right? Comes from the word Greek, from element. It pops up, and then you have an emotional response to that, and it's usually a negative response, right? It's like, oh, that's bad. Don't do that. It doesn't matter the reason. It just. It happens. The more you meditate, the more you work out, the more do other things. You'll depotentiate. That means that you'll delink those things. So when that event occurs, you no longer have this negative emotion to get rid of a phobia, right? So you have this phobia of snakes. You go, ah. And I know you guys don't have them, but, you know, somebody does it go, ah, it's uncontrollable.

Yeah.

But when you cure that, it just means that the trigger, the snake, no longer causes an emotional response in the amygdala. When you meditate, when you work out, when you do those things, that's what happens to a certain. And there's a lot of ways you can do it. There's a lot of techniques you can do it. Nlp, eft, Havening, cpt, doesn't really matter, but as long as it gets to this wall. Well, imagine that you have so many responses in your life that are many tiny little fear phobias. You don't realize them. It's kind of like the noise in the background in a room. Like if you're in a room and then somebody turns off the background noise, you didn't know it was there until it turned it off. You go, oh, thank goodness. I had no. Okay, so life is kind of like that, right? We have all these little things holding us back. So as you begin to eliminate those and begin to get rid of those, then you're unhooked, you're free, Right. You're not cumbered by these things. That's the mindset. The mindset isn't just, you know, be strong, courageous, bold, go after what you want. Everybody says that. Great, then why isn't everybody doing it? We've all read the same books, right? Attend the same seminars, same classes, know the same people, listen to the same podcast, you name it, Right. But only a few people, a very select few can ask, actually do it. And it's not the other person's fault who isn't doing it. It's that they have these anchors tied to them that holds them back. So once we got that eliminated and began to tear those down, man, it was easy for him.

But like you said, it all stems from a choice. And he has to choose to accept this challenge, quote, unquote challenge. Really, it's taking hold of your life, their mindset. And this reminds me of that, and I'm sure you're aware of it. I cannot name these tiers, but the NLP pyramid, where the bottom or the top, however you want to look at it, is I think it's beliefs. And then the top.

The top is identity, Right?

There you go. Yeah. So that's in. Everything stems from that identity.

Yeah, I think it goes environment, beliefs, rules, values, identity, or something of that nature, but exactly right. It seems to the identity. And that is unfortunately, a useful but somewhat antiquated model it's just. Yeah, if you have something you believe that isn't serving, you get rid of it.

Yep.

That's really. Now how you do that, again, is up to you. There's a thousand ways, and you guys will experience that as we go through our process. And you'll be like, wow, this is cool.

Yeah. And so you mentioned this. Let's briefly tell. Because we don't even know much about it, this challenge, I want to show it to the. Or introduce it to the listeners, but also ourselves, too. Just give us a quick brief of what you have in mind.

You're going to be a client of mine, gratis for the next 90 days. So I'm going to run you through the process. If you came to me, said, hey, Marcus, I want you to help grow our business and improve our lives, whatever, this is what I would do for you. And the reason I said, look, let's do this is because a lot of guys will come on here, and I don't just mean your podcast. I mean in general, right. They will come up and give people how to and what to. And a lot of it's really great information, really super valuable, awesome stuff that if they implement, it'll be rock star status. Right. All super good. And. And yet people haven't had a visceral experience. So I'm like, look, let me put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. You know, let me just get your podcast and, you know, we'll talk about whatever you guys want to talk about. But why don't you experience it so that 90 days from now you can go, okay, now that we've gone through 90 days of this nutcase over here, let's share what's actually have occurred. I think that will be a very interesting case study.

Right?

And first of all, you guys will improve your business and your lives, you know, for sure, because I have 100% success rate thus far, and it all depends upon what you want to do it. The reason I said it's a challenge is because, and you brought this up earlier, it's if you don't want to make these changes, if you don't have the desire, the want to motivation to get better, there ain't nothing I can do. There ain't nothing anybody can do.

Right?

You can go to seminars, podcasts. It's not going to help, right? Jim Rohn said, you can't change people, but they can change themselves. So if you're looking for wanting that change, then, yeah, everything else can be easy. If you have somebody that knows how to help you get there and is committed to your success. Right. In terms of. Because look, I mean, like I said, I've read 3,000 plus books. So have you guys. And if I looked at my library now and you pointed to a book, you know, any book you want, whether it's biography, history, philosophy, theology, politics, you know, science, it doesn't matter. I can say what the book is about. If you asked me a better question, which is what are you doing or what have you done from that book specifically? That's a different question.

Right.

And I can't tell you that I've done everything those books have told me to do.

And then you ask yourself, why is that the case? Well, interesting question. You mentioned earlier about thinking. Right. And you said the archiving brain, the subconscious mind. The unconscious mind. This is where the 8020 gets lost. Because I know we want to touch upon that.

Sure.

A lot of guys take the 8020 and they go, I'm going to get rid of 80% of what my business does and it's all useless. I'm going to read the far work week in Tim Ferriss and I'm going to automate. I'm going to do the deal. Right. You know, define, eliminate, automate, liberate. And then everybody buys it and they end up being miserable. They get inside insomnia, they can't sleep, it doesn't work. Their business collapse. I know somebody who tried the 8020 principle and went broke and they had a pretty successful company at the time in terms of marketing and sales. It's totally misunderstood. So why is the 8020 or the prior principle misunderstood? Everybody wants to do what. When you guys hear the 8020 principle, what is it you want to do?

It's almost like cut the fat. It's focused on just that 20% so I don't have to worry about the hundred.

Yeah. Take things off our plate and only focus on what seems most important.

Okay, and how do you do that?

Many ways. I guess what we could do is we segment, you know, with our business. We're segmenting based off of interests and then kind of diving deeper into, you know, we're kind of qualifying folks along the way and speaking only to those folks, leaving the rest. And that's just an example for, for you here.

Okay, so let me give you a different take on the 8020 principle. Have you guys ever gone and lifted weights?

Oh, yes.

Okay, and when you go to the gym, what are you focused on?

Personally, I'm focused on my, you know, the programming that I Have pretty much what I got to do right then, right there.

Cool. And I used to be a bodybuilder. I was for two years. I went from 165 to 225 in two years. I had a personal train. It was amazing. Right?

You're saying I got a chance, huh?

You do have a chance, my friend. You do have a chance. What was the single most important thing that is the small percentage that made the biggest difference in the training. What is it? Do you know what it is?

I'm guessing diet.

I was about to say the same.

You can't work your way out of a bad diet. You see, a lot of guys and gals go to the gym. They're pumping iron hard, they're working hard, the cardio, lifting weights. They never change. Follow their diet, Then you'll see why it's a fair assessment. So does that mean that we should just simply focus on the diet and not go to the gym?

No way.

But wait a minute. Hold on a second. Isn't the diet the 20% of the bodybuilding?

And see, this is exactly why I loved our conversation, because we dug into this and this is. Yeah, keep going. Because you're totally right.

Okay. So you need it. All right. You know, one critic for Richard Koch, and Koch, Richard loves to talk about this, said that, sure, that, you know, the patty and the burger is a 20%, but without the buns, it's not a hamburger. So the 8020 principle isn't necessarily about eliminating. It's about identifying. It's about understanding. So if you know that diet is 20% and lifting weights is 80%, you don't stop going to the gym. You just make sure that your diet is clean to get the maximum results. Now, you can eliminate things from your diet. You can improve your exercise routine, you can improve your motion, but it still means you cannot throw away your clients. You can't throw away the bottom clients. You can't fire your employees. You can't stop doing the little things. You know, cognitive science tells us, and David Allen has. This is why GTD is an 8020 activity. David Allen has told us incessantly that your mind cannot tell the difference between buy company and get cat food. And cognitive science has verified that, which is why you have to capture everything.

Got it.

The approach is ignore it. What? You can't ignore it. When you begin to do that, what happens is your relationship. Suffer with your loved one. Because you end up having those mindset anchors that are holding you back because even you're trying to ignore Cat food. It's going, cat food, cat food, cat food, cat food. Your wife goes, honey, you want dinner? Go what?

Yelling at you, Right? So you can't ignore that. The 8020 principle is all about identifying the things that work. And when you do that naturally, naturally and organically, you begin to shed away the excess things that don't serve you any. But taking the approach in backwards getting, eliminating the things that you think are 80% opens a vacuum, which then creates stress, which then creates cognitive dissonance, Right? Which then creates all kinds of yucky stuff because you think life should be one of. You know, Richard says being ambitious and lazy. Lazy is the wrong word. Being ambitious and relaxed. And the only way to get relaxed is to have nothing on your mind. The only way to do that is to apply the GTD principles. Why? Because it's just the way your brain works, which for your readers, if they don't know what it's. Capture everything that's got your attention, clarify what it means, if it's actionable, reference, someday, maybe, whatever the case may be, then organize in a place that you can review, look at at the appropriate time or not, and then reflect on all the things you have to do and then engage.

I'm going to say something really fast is I did that because our buddy Dan, he basically told me, hey, talk to Marks and look at GTD and look at Omnifocus. We'll dig into that in a second, I'm sure. But I did just that one step of just unloading my brain. And it took me a while. And I know there's still a lot more, but it was like 80 different things, business and personal life. And just that act alone, not even organizing it, just unloading. I was like, holy shit, I feel great.

I do something similar in the form of journaling every evening before I go to bed. That's my way of unloading, because I don't like to go to sleep, sleep with stuff in my head. I don't do it in the same context of Omnifocus and gtd. And, you know, I know we're going to talk about that, but.

That process of just getting it out of your brain is actually a very, very, like, freeing process. And I sleep better at night because of it.

Of course, because your brain goes, ah, I don't have to think about it anymore. You know, David says, your office is allowed. Your brain allows the office. It's so true. And by the way, remember, that's one of the five steps or phases. And then you have, of Course, how to set priorities, which are the 50, 40, 30, 20,000, or he changed it to 1, 2, 3, 5 level because they're over in Europe. But so what you're looking for in 8020 is space. You need time to think, right? Richard says activity drives out thought. So if you're too busy doing things because you're going for loudest and latest, as what David Allen would say, then you have no time to think.

Yeah.

So, for example, right now we're doing this awesome podcast and I'm trying to give you as much, as much as I can in a short period of time. And there's nothing in my mind but, you guys, if there is, I write it down and then I just keep on going. And then of course, I'll clarify and organize, process and reflect and engage later. But that is true, right? So the 8020 principle is not about getting rid of stuff. It's about figuring out what's working the best and then utilizing a systematic approach to run your life and your business. And like gtd, so that when you have a thought about cat food or buy the company or next podcast or whatever, you write it down and it goes into the appropriate space. Now look, my list is full of stuff. I've got 100 plus projects, you know, a couple hundred actions, and I'm not doing any of them. And I may not even do 80% of it.

Sure.

In fact, I probably won't do 80% of it, hence 8020 principle. But I have to capture it. I've got to clarify it, I've got to organize it and then reflect and engage with it at the appropriate time so that I am able to focus on the 20% I cannot ignore. My brain will not let me ignore what I think is 80%. Look at your client list, right? If I, if I look at one of my companies and I go, okay, show me all the clients, and I do this all the time with a 8020 parental prints. I actually go top 20, middle 50, you know, bottom 40 and lower 10. I don't get rid of them. I ask a better question, which is how do I get them to yield more? How do I add more value? How do I increase their average client profit? What we call ACP, right? And everybody's different. My top 20% require different answer in the bottom 10%.

Sure.

That's 8020 thinking, getting rid of 80% of the clients. You end up like this other guy we talked about previously, who I won't mention, who lost it all because he thought that 8020 principle is getting rid of stuff. It isn't.

I love that. That whole idea of your freeing space, you're bringing in a focus for a specific group of people in this case, and then you can apply that, you know, this 80, 20 thinking to maybe that top 20% like you said, and then work it down to 50, the 10. And it's amazing because like I know Matt and I, we've, you know, we'll get in these, in these kind of processes of just work, you know, like, oh, we set the plan, just do the plan, but without some additional deep thinking. Maybe even instead of meeting over zoom, we actually go take a walk or, or go to the beach or something. Kind of mastermind, because that's where all the amazing thoughts. I mean, he has a hot tub in his backyard. The other night we're like, you know, we gotta unload our brain. Let's just chat it out. And it was amazing. I mean, it's just little things to get away from the screen. That's kind of one of my goals.

So two points. Not to interrupt, but I know that two points. One is you could have a clear space in your mind. So you both Joe and Matt can be totally clear in their mind, but when they meet, it's a different dynamic and together they may not have Clari. So you should do a mind dump on your own and a mind up together. Your spouse, your company, your partner. Because it's a different schematic. So very good understanding that. And if we look at, you know, Teo Copenola's book the brain chains, when he breaks out the brain to three categories. The reflex brain, you know, the one that is knee jerk, reaction, fight flight is always on, right? And it'll override anything. It's always on. The reflecting brain, which is your thinking brain, takes up a lot of energy to think and it gets tired pretty quickly. That's why you can't multitask. You can switch tasks, but you should not, right? So get started pretty quickly. The archiving brain is always on the subconscious mind. The part that sort of puts everything in the library and it's order to be placed and can pick things, right. It's always working, but it works best when you're relaxed, when you're sleeping, or when you're hanging out in the bathtub or in the beach, whatever. That's when the brain will come up with the ideas because it'll do this. So imagine this, right? You guys go, hey, we want to have this idea. Great, here's the idea. And then you guys go we don't know how to do it yet. All of a sudden you go to the beach. Your archiving brain goes, okay, if I take the file from this cabinet and the file from that cabinet and the file from this cabinet and I mix them up like this and I present it to him, it'll have the how to achieve that. That's when you go, oh, now know how to do it. Because your archiving brain was able to creatively combine experiences and whatever have you to give you the answer to that. Yeah, you guys got it. Remember that?

Yeah, that's Matt. We're literally just talking about this the other day is, you know, going into these sessions not with an agenda and, you know, but like you said, you have this problem, quote, unquote problem or project in your brain, don't know how to solve it. Quite right. Okay, cool, let's go to the beach. But not totally have an agenda, but just have it in your mind and then just let the thoughts kind of flow, connect subconsciously that way.

It's true. The thing that we do, the least that is required the most is to think. Peter Drucker called it knowledge work, right? But now it's called brain work or thinking work. And this, I think, was what Richard Koch's biggest issue is. It's like, look, doing less meaning, less active, allows you to think if. Or to your point earlier, you have an objective in mind as to what is you want to achieve and accomplish. If you give your. Napoleon Hill's famous for having this. He wrote Think and grow Rich. He actually wrote it twice. Once he wrote it when he was working for FDR during the Depression. Afterwards he looked at it red and thought it's missing something. So he literally retyped it word for word. Didn't change anything. But he added what he called sex transmutation. And we could talk about it if you like, but he added this sort of this, this transmutation of sexual desire to make this successful. Became a huge success. His publisher said, look, we're gonna go to print, but you got to come with a title. And Napoleon wrote down, literally wrote down 500 titles and none he liked. And he needed a million dollar title. And so his, his publisher called him and says, look, we're going to print tomorrow. If you don't give me the title, I'm going to call it using your noodle to get the caboodle. And the pawn says, no, you'll ruin me. What are you thinking? No, I can't do it. So he sits up at his edge of the bed that night. And he says, now you listen here, sub. You've done some good things for me, some bad things to me for my lack of knowing how to use you. But I demand a million dollar title. I want it tonight, no matter what you do tomorrow morning, give me a million dollar title. And he gave his subconscious mind a thrashing, as he says, and he woke up at one in the morning and he goes, I've got it. He calls the publisher and publisher picks up the phone and says, yes, I got it. And he says, let's have her. And he says, think and grow rich. And he goes, oh, by golly, that's it.

And hence, wow, love it. But you got you. You opened a loop in my brain that I'm actually curious about.

Now.

I'm curious about what this concept of the sexual transmutation is.

So Napoleon Hill and the book Thinking Rich, which, you know, everybody talks about, everybody's read, but how many have actually studied it, that's a whole different bargain. By the way, I can't give you a list later on if you want, of the books that have most impacted my life that I've studied because I, you know, after reading 3,000 plus books, I've gone and I still read, you know, a few books a week, but I've gone back now to re reading certain books and studying them. So in a poet, Hill, right, He says these 17 principles or 13 steps to riches, depending if you read his earlier work or later work with W. Clement Stone or without W. Clement Stone. And he says, look, the greatest desire for man and for women, but for man is to procreate, to have sex, right? And if you could apply that same desire that you have for wanting to get nookie to achieving your definite aim of purpose, you will never fail. So transmuting is changing one thing from one form to another. So he basically, the whole concept is, look, man, you know, when you're a young guy or even now, and you're like, oh, if you're single or married and you go, oh, I want her. And if you're courting somebody, you'll do the most courageous, daring, bold things to try to get that person to like you, right? They're not always smart, but you know, sometimes, you know, they're stupid, but you're doing it. Yet when it comes to wanting to achieve your aim in business, you end up being a kitty cat.

That makes sense. So it's a reframe, it's taking, harnessing that energy and then applying it to wherever you want to Point it to.

It sounds like, well, isn't that what success is?

That is. Yeah. It's that deep down desire, you know, of really wanting to achieve more. Where you're going to even do some quote unquote stupid, risky things. But you're like, screw it, I'm doing it anyway. I got this goal. I want to, you know, this is my only path.

Well, think about, think of a time in specifically when you were younger and you either wanted to date a girl or you wanted to start a business. Like, I wanted to learn hypnosis. So I was like, you know, I was hanging out with Tony Robbins at the time and I was like, I was 23, 24, and I was like, I want to learn hypnosis. So I got a guy to come to New York to teach hypnosis and I put in a seminar. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no business being a sponsor of a seminar. And I did it. We made a little bit of money, but, you know, I would have never thought things through if I didn't have that desire to make it happen.

Right.

Later in life, you think about all the reasons why it's not going to happen. Hence the mindset, early conversation about the anchors that hold us back.

Sure, sure.

So in that chapter, when he talks about transmuting it, and he'll tell you that most of the successful men, not all, but most, had a very unassuming, you know, quiet wife. But because they were able to, instead of chasing the other sex, like a lot of these guys do, that self sabotage, they use that same desire to achieve their aims. That's not a universal truth, but it is a common pattern.

Interesting. Okay, that makes perfect sense.

So if you read the book and if you want to ever go over the book, you can go over the book in detail. But if you read the book, you'll see there's a general theme in the book. The secret is there. What? Napoleon Hill.

And that's in Think and Grow Rich.

That's in Think and Grow Rich. I think it's chapter 17, sex transmutation. I can look it up.

Yeah, no, I've read that book, but it's probably been 15 years. And one thing that I find very interesting about books, and Joe and I have this conversation every once in a while, is I'm a pretty active reader as well. I read probably at least a book a week, definitely five to six books a month. I don't read them word for word. There's a whole process I go through with books, but that's a whole different story for a different day. But one thing that we've realized is that there's been a lot of books that at the time I read them, I wasn't ready for them. And then when I came back around to that book, you know, three, five, seven years later, when I was a different point in my life, I was like, holy shit, why did this book not click this way with me the first time? And there's been a lot of books like that. The trick to money is having some. Is one that comes to mind from Stuart Wilde.

Yeah. Love it.

That book I read once, maybe 10 years ago, and I went, I don't know. Not really. For me, doesn't really resonate. I read that book again a year ago and went, holy shit, this is one of the greatest books I've ever read. Why did I not see this the first time around?

Yep. Which important to read books more than once. So I always, you know, I know that Richard just released an article about how to read a book faster. I don't believe in that. I read cover to cover. I'm not saying that your way is wrong, which I do speed read. I took a class by a guy named Steve Snyder and I can introduce. He lives in Hawaii. You know, he multimillionaire, super great guy. One of the fastest readers in the world.

That'd be amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty easy to read. So, you know, it's trifocus, less center. Right. And you train your subconscious mind to do it. It's actually pretty. I could teach it to you. Gu. Pretty simple.

That's cool.

Awesome.

And I do that because I love, you know, me personally, I just love to get into the mindset. Right. Because I don't. I don't want to be a superficial learner. For me. Right. I like digging into subjects. Deep, deep, deep, deep. And to understand, you know, when I get into Tony, you know, Tony Robbins, right. When I was in my early 20s, led me to, you know, John Grinder and Richard Bandler, which led to Milton Erickson. I just keep digging and digging and digging and digging because then when you go back to talking to Tony or having a discussion with him, you have such a way better depth of knowledge, of understanding.

Right.

I was just thinking, going back to that previous point of, you know, things are connecting in your subconscious too. You can apply things from other niches, verticals, all that stuff into whatever you're working on now or a conversation, like you were saying.

But remember though, that the key to those things is how you Emotionalize those concepts.

Right.

So in other words, you know, if you have and Napojo talks about this, you know, an affirmation is useless without the emotion behind it, you know, And I know that Tony wants, you know, goes off Riches or bs. You have to, dude, it's been in think and grow rich. You didn't make anything up.

That's right.

It's been around since even Emil qa, which is what made W. Clement Stone so successful. Right? He, he started reading all the racial algebra books as a kid, which are stories from rags to riches and how the good guy always. Then he read Emile Kuwait's book on affirmation and he believed it. And then he read think you can grow rich and believed that in fact it was when Napoleon Hill met W. Clement Stone in the diner, you know, Stone thought, or Clem, Clem thought that Hill was dead, right. And then Hill, I think was 67 at the time. And you know, he finally married Annie Lou, his third wife. But he was broke for practical purposes. He had never had his other partner. Right. Because it's hard to succeed by yourself. But it was W. Clement Stone that put Hill on the map. We wouldn't know who Napoleon Hill is today if it wasn't for stone. So for 10 years they had this amazing relationship and Stone made it. So Hill died a multi, multi, multi, multimillionaire because he gave him stock in what's now known as AON insurance. AON used to be combined transcripts of America. But W. Clement Stone, what was incredible about him was two things. A, he was affirmation king. There's a story when he's in his 90s and he's flying back first class and it's like 93, 94, he died at 100 years of age. 93, 94, it's flying from Europe back to Chicago. And he gets the whole plane, everybody in the plane, to say, I feel healthy, I feel happy, I feel terrific. And they chanted this as they're landing the plane. People left her all happy and jumping up and down. And no jet lag, right? This is the 93, 94 year old guy.

Yeah, yeah.

So big on affirmations with emotion. He was also big on PMA and pma. So PMA stands for positive mental attitude. And if you look at Hill's later work or if you read any of Stone's work, you'll see pma, that's my license plate too. But he was known as Mr. PMA. Now, you know Jim Rohn, right? One of my all time favorite Mentors and dear friend. You know, used to say, you know, you can't stand in the front of your garden and say, there's no weeds, there's no weeds. And of course, Tony Robbins later used that same line.

Because you know, you have to accept what's true. Well, w. Clement Stone's success through PMA or the essence of PMA isn't ignoring the negative. It's focusing on what you want, not what you don't want. And PMA is the right attitude given for any situation. If you're going to be accosted by somebody with a gun, you don't go, isn't this great?

Right. Maybe you do, I don't know, you break the ass pattern.

That's my form of negotiation.

Yeah, exactly. It could be you think about what do I want? And then you move in that direction.

Yeah.

So it's not positive. Doesn't mean you're always positive. It means you're always focused on what it is you want, not what you don't want. Because we know that the brain will get you through the reticular activating system discovered 1953 or whatever will get you whatever it is you actually focus on. Now that isn't true if you're unconscious and subconscious. Whatever you want to label it is giving you these anchors to hold you back. We got to clear those to get the mindset forward. I know there's a lot. We sort of went on a different route back to GTD and Omnifocus.

I love it. Yeah.

So let's start here then. Just switching subjects a little bit. You mentioned, I think you mentioned this before we hit record, but you mentioned that you thought that sort of daily routines from the traditional perspective that most people look at them from are kind of ridiculous. And I kind of want to dive into that and your philosophy on that a little bit.

Sure. So I think, look, making yourself have a daily, like my brother wants to get up at 5:30 in the morning, but he's not that guy. He's like a Tim Ferriss guy that goes to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning. Why get up at 4:30, 5:30?

Sure.

Get up whenever you're okay. So just like we have different body types, routines need to be dynamic, changing, you know. David Allen, when asked the same question, says about the only thing he does every day is wake up. And sometimes that's questionable.

I like it.

Right. So and everybody, it's if a routine helps you keep it, but if you find distress, not eustress, but distress in that routine don't do it. So my routine is I get up in the morning and I do Egoscue. It's the only thing I do every day religiously. And then I just look at my calendar, look at my list, and go, what I feel like doing now, if anything.

Wait, go back really quick. What is Egoscu?

So if you guys want, I have Brian Bradley, who is Tony Robbins Egoscue therapist for the last 20 plus years and also runs Egoscue on your podcast. It's a set of postural exercises to correct your postural imbalance.

Ah, okay. That is up my alley, because I'm constantly doing stuff like that. Okay, good.

How do you spell that? Just out of curiosity?

E, G, O, S, C U, E, E, G, O, S, C, U, E. Pete Egoscue coaches Paul Tudor Jones, who's one of the guys at Tony Coaches. You know, they're in the. They're up. They have a therapist up in, I think, the 49ers in San Francisco. I mean, they're. They're huge. They're big. At every Tony Robbins seminar, Brian Bradley's there talking about a gossip guy's. He's a. He's a dear friend. So that's the only thing I do because I like it. It wakes me up. I like feeling, you know, limber and loose and ready to rock and roll.

Yep.

I know that Dave Aspie's had him on the podcast and Bubble. So you'll enjoy him. He's a pretty interesting guy. And he'll probably come down and meet you guys at. Give you a free workout or a free menu to a show.

That'd be super fun. We can make some content around it, too.

That's awesome.

Yeah, you guys will like it. So I do that, and then I look at my list because, look, guys, how you set priorities has nothing to do with setting priorities.

Let me explain that. Yeah, I was waiting for you guys to go.

What?

Well, the silence was. The what?

Okay, good, good.

We're processing it.

Okay, perfect. So you're at the airport right now. You've got 20 minutes before you have to board your flight. What can you do?

Where am I right now? Is the question.

You're sitting in my checkout, I guess.

Am I already through the gate and are, you know, through security and all that stuff?

You're in the American Express lounge.

Are you asking what we could do or what we should be doing?

Either one.

Because I would say my typical response is, I'm probably just looking at my phone, checking emails, or looking at social media. Of Some sort.

Okay. And is that what you feel like most doing at that time? Then great. It's productive. See, if you've only got 20 minutes and you don't have a computer on hand, and you don't have, you know, someone to talk to, you can only do so many things.

Sure.

Stream by content, context and energy level. So if you're just chilling at the airport and you don't feel like doing anything, then browsing Instagram and Twitter and whatever is the most productive thing you can do, that is your priority. Now, if you feel energetic and you're, you know, feel like you're on top of the world and you look at your cause list and there's a call you can make in less than 20 minutes, that is your priority.

Sure.

So making a list of all the things you want to get done the next day or having a morning routine kills your creativity. It stifles your brain's ability to intuitively decide what's best for you right now that you can get done. This is where GTD is so critical. Because when you've got a list of everything you can do by context, right. At computer, at calls, at errands, at home, at desk, at office, at agenda, at whatever, you know, brain dead, you know, fully inspired, it doesn't matter if you're at the airport and you don't have your computer, you don't need to look at the list of all your computers. Just look at the list of things that might contain something you could do in 20 minutes. Now, if you don't have everything captured, clarified, organized, you can't reflect and engage on. Therefore you'll waste time, or you'll just look for latest and loudest. Or you look for that endorphin release by looking at your phone.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Yeah, I'm following you.

So priorities are only designated to get you in a peak state. And stress is good or bad. Distress bad. You stress good. So if your morning routine creates a distress, get rid of that flipping thing, man. That's stupid. If it creates you stress, then by all means do it. Like, sometimes I'll get up and I'll be like, you know what I'm gonna do? My egoscue. I feel like reading now, but before I read, I check, I process my email, I scan all my to do items and I go, I'm cool. Now that I know all the things I'm not doing, I can feel good about doing this. But if I scan and go, oh, you know what, that's more important than reading. Right now, let me take care of that first. That's me setting priorities. Or sometimes I'll wake up and be like, you know what? This is on my mind. I need to create this thing. So I won't read. I'll just, you know, get up, do my godskin, hit it right off the bat. When you begin to focus on what David would say, what most has your attention, you'll notice what most has your attention. Then you become a productive machine.

That's right.

Right. The reason I can have the 14 clients and multiple companies or whatever have you and still look like I'm doing nothing is because I know everything I'm not doing when I choose to do something, if that makes any sense.

It kind of does because I'll just give an example. This week has been pretty big for Matt and I, just in terms of the way that we work day to day. For one, we brought in an ops manager, so she's kind of streamlining our systems, getting us all organized, giving us accountability. But at the same time, each morning, Matt and I will give ourselves and we'll send this publicly to the team as well. The three to five things we're going to accomplish that day. If we have more time, cool, we'll continue. If not, then that's what we're focused on. Ever since doing that, we make it a point to cross off every single one of those things for accountability's sake. For one to, you know, we're doing what we say we're doing. But I've already noticed, like just last probably three days before noon, before 1 o'. Clock. I'm totally done with most of these things. My head's free. It frees up time to maybe do more work or just, you know, do some deep thinking, go outside or something. But that's been radically different. And it's come from first, you know, dumping my brain in Omnifocus and then now publicly, you know, organizing it with Matt, our ops manager, the team, all that stuff. So, I mean, yeah, going deeper with Omnifocus and what you're saying is just going to skyrocket.

That Omnifocus has a little flag feature. So, you know, like my list at Omnifocus, right, My current contexts are agendas. I've got about 14, 15 calls. Computer online, computer offline, errands, Desk, home, home, fun, journal, kids, record, video. I got a ton of waiting fors. Right. I mean, because I have.

That I deal with. And then someday maybe I have my project spaced by roles and responsibilities. Here's the Thing when I look in the morning, I go, oh, you know what? These three things seem like I should get them done today and I'll flag them. And if I don't get them done, I'll unflag them and they go back to the appropriate context. Whether it's computer at home, it doesn't matter because sometimes I might have a client call me and it sends me in a wild goose chase and I can't do anything else but that. So I'll feel like a total failure. If my success was dependent upon getting those three, four, five things done, by the way, never more than three, just FYI. So those three things done, I feel like a failure. So I've given myself permission to go, look, Marcus, you didn't do it. Just click the flag goes back to its original context and I'll look at it later again tomorrow. Because remember, priorities are set by a variety of different.

Events. Right. Whether it's where you are, what's happened, you know, work that shows up, work that's predefined, defining work. All these things are in the book gtd. So be careful with that. Right. Because you might see that it creates a sense of failure if you don't get it done or you might miss other opportunities.

That's good. Yeah. It kind of takes you off the hook on certain things. Yeah. And that's where something I know personally I will definitely overestimate and be like, I can complete like 10 things today. And Matt's like, hold yourself, hold yourself back.

Now, could we step back real quick and kind of give a quick explanation of what Omnifocus is? Because I know we've thrown that out a couple times on the episode, but there's probably a lot of people thinking, what the hell is Omnifocus?

Omnifocus, it's just a list maker program. You can use Omnifocus Wunderlist. You could use Paper, you can use Excel, you can use Lotus Notes, you can use Listo or whatever. GTD is agnostic. In terms of systems, it's system agnostic. I've used Wunderlist. It was great. Until it wasn't. I had Omnifocus, then I dropped Omnifocus, went to Evernote. Right. I mean, the system you use is dependent upon what works best for you. I happen to like Omnifocus now because it ties projects and action items together. So you can look at Omnifocus. They're just releasing a new one here on the 30th. Omnifocus 3.0. Which should be pretty awesome.

Yeah. Joe and I both have Omnifocus. I know myself, I can't really speak for Joe. I've had a hard time wrapping my head around it. But you just sort of laying out your agendas there actually clarified a lot of how to sort of organize Omnifocus so that it makes sense.

Think of it this way. A lot of people get stuck. This happened to me, right. Because I've been doing. I hired David Allen as my first consultant back in 2001. We've been fast friends ever since. And think of it this way, a lot of guys and gals will think that their system starts to run them, and that is the beginning phase. You want to get to the point where Omnifocus something you didn't even think about, or whatever system you're using, you don't even think about it, right? So, like, I will create a context just as fast as I'll delete it. So I'll be like, oh, I got to do this. And I go, well, I need to do it at, you know, at the library. But I don't have a library context. So I add library and put the thing in there. And then when I'm done, I go, I don't need anymore. I delete it. So I'm always adding context and projects as long as I get it off my mind and as long as I can review it. Right.

That makes a lot of sense, because I think one of the things was, man, man, I'm starting to add too many contexts. Okay, I'm going to delete some contexts. Oh, but then this thing that's coming up doesn't really fit into any of the. And so I was sort of getting overwhelmed with omnifocus, trying to structure it. But, like, the way you just explained it sort of freed it up in my mind of like, okay, it could be sort of a fluid thing. You don't need to keep the same context in there all the time. So that. That actually clarified a few things in my mind. Just that, you know that one sentence you just said.

Yeah, I mean, like. Like, for me, you know, I've had context, like, think about or plan. Right. All you have to think about is this, right? Is what do you need to do to get that thing off your mind and where do you park it? And you can have a thousand contexts or 3. It's all dependent upon your station in life, who you are, what you're doing, where you're at. You know, look, if you guys or your listeners want, I'll put@callmarks.com. it's a website that hasn't even up yet. I'll put a bunch of really cool meat tricks and tips about how to use GTD and the 8020 principle and all the four components of it. Your listeners can download it or we can put it on your guys website. Doesn't matter. I'll provide pretty cool stuff because I know that, you know, time wise it's probably not conducive to go over everything.

Sure, yeah, of course.

But here's another aha moment, right? And I'm stealing all David Allen's material, so I don't want to take credit for this. GTD isn't about getting things done.

What?

I quit. You're off the podcast. Just kidding.

So, two things. One is it's about being appropriately engaged with whatever it is that you're doing and entering the flow state. I'll come back to that. One of my earlier mentors, the guy that said, look, marks, in order to save your business, you need to focus on strategy, team building and sales. And there's a lot to unfold in there, said that we are activity junkies. As entrepreneurs, we're activity junkies. We equate. This is Richard Koch's big yuck is we equate effort with result. That, you know, one unit of effort equals one unit of result. So as you guys are doing your 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 things a day, Go, go, go, go, go, go. You think, yes, I'm achieving success. But in reality, those things may have nothing to do with your success. They may, they may not. The GTD methodology allows you to step back and go, okay, now there's nothing on my mind. And I know all of the things I could do right this woman in time, what will give me the biggest payoff? And then you can pick like a cafeteria line and go, I want this. Boom. And now you're doing that. Whatever it is you're engaged in, nothing else is on your mind. You're in the flow state as Csikimihalyi, or however you pronounce the guy's name in the book that he wrote. Now you're really in it, right? But you cannot pick, you cannot engage, you cannot think. You cannot participate in the building of your business and the changing of your mindset if you don't have clear space. You know, one of Richard's greatest books, which nobody ever talks about, Richard Koch, is the 16x principle. It's a little pamphlet.

Oh, yeah, I've read that. I have that. Yeah, it's Great. Yeah.

So what does he talk about? Clear space.

Yep.

Right. It's be creative. Clear space. If you look at where he's headed now in his thinking and his writing is about being creative. Well, you can't be creative, you know? Will Smith gtder Howard Stern gtd Drew Carey gtdr Robert Denny Jr. GTD Evan Tubenfeld, the ex producer for every Levine gtd almost every Fortune hunter CEO gtdr Marcus Castrovio gtd Right. Joe and Matt.

Gtd.

Right. These guys and gals who are highly productive because why? It gives you space.

Yeah.

And that's what you need to think to have an idea. It doesn't take a long time. But if you're at the beach and you're thinking about all the unprocessed emails, you're thinking about all the stuff you've got to do, you can't let your archiving brain and your thinking brain work.

Matt just pulled out 16x and I was kind of flipping through it as you were just saying. The first page I flipped to, it said, create white space. Like, oh, go figure.

Pretty cool stuff.

No, what? I was just. A couple things resonated with me. Just what you were saying in the last few minutes here is as entrepreneurs, I mean, you're right. I think innately, just the reason we even get into this is that we want to create something amazing, something bigger for either ourselves, our family, the community, whatever it might be. We're always creating. We're always thinking of new ideas and things to do. And it's that doing. Like you said, it's you. I know I've fallen into the trap. I'm sure you have, Matt. We all have. Is, yeah, let's get that task list done. And I feel amazing.

And there is. But there is. You do get a release of endorphins when you check a box. Right. So it is good thinking is hard. It's not. It's not easy work. It is hard. But I would look, I would say that, you know, when entrepreneurs get in it, right. They want to make a lot of money, they do it for the wrong reasons and they end up failing.

Right.

And this is endemic because they chase the dollar rather than chasing creativity and creating something. A dollar then shows up. This is why you don't like looking at your finances. This is why you don't like looking at your key metrics. You have to. Right. It is something you need to do as a business owner. But I would say I flipped that on the head. One of the things that happened with me when I First lost it all. And it began through beginning is I had. Imagine a yin yang. Right? Imagine the sort of yin yang. At the top I had business, money, income, finance, or success. At the bottom, I had family and everything else. And so I drove that business income so I could feed the family. And then I realized I had it all screwed up. I had it backwards. So I flipped the yin yang.

Yeah.

And I put family, relationships, friendship, enjoyment, life, hedonistic, all that stuff first. And then the business. And man, I made it twice as much in half the time. Because the driving principles of why. Right. The proverbial why I was doing it was what was driving me. And it may be. It might. The integrity went through the roof. My character went through the roof. I started making better choices. I could say no easier. I wasn't afraid of losing because I used to live on fear of loss.

Right.

And all those things began to go. And you'll experience this in my intake form as you and I start going through it. But realize, though, that, you know, this. I implore my clients to use in getting into GTD because it makes life easier for them.

Sure. Yeah. Now I want to get into just really quick because you mentioned the bigger why and kind of flipping this. I know in previous episodes we've even talked about it, and no one really has a solid answer for this. I think it's one of those aha things. It just kind of hits you. But is there a way that you can almost initiate this way of thinking of what's my bigger mission? What's my purpose? My North Star. It could be family, like you said, where you flipped it.

Sure. It's actually pretty easy. Believe it or not, people are complicated. You know, it's one of my other mentors said life is nothing more than a collection of experiences, their intensity and their frequency. A guy named Bill, I forgot his last name second. But he was actually one of Jim Rohn's best friend. Bill. Whatever. He was one of Jim Rohn's best friends and mentors. And think about it. You know, I'm 48 years old. Right. Even though I feel 22. And I act like I'm 12. So if I live to be 100, that means I only have 52 more Christmases.

Right.

Not in limited amount. Right. 52 more birthdays. Like, so this, you know, this summer, we're taking two months off to travel Europe and the US and, you know, because we love to do that. It's a ton of fun and stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

And people go, wow, you're so Lucky. Yeah, but I chose it. That's what's important to me. Right. Doesn't mean it's important to you. It's what's important to me. So it's pretty simple how to get to the purpose. If you follow, there's two roads to take. Road one is gtd, right? Which is, hey, look, man, capture all in your attention and then go up through the, the horizon levels, right? You know, actions, projects, you know, roles, goals, mission and purpose. And that's one road. And I highly suggest it's in the making it all work and it's in the getting things done book. Pretty easy to follow. Here's the other one, which I think is this is the way I did it, which is much easier, is ask yourself, what gets you excited? Forget about business, just what gets you excited. Here's what gets me excited. Hanging out with my kids.

Yeah.

The world. Teaching, learning. Right. Achieving.

Right.

So all those things inspire me. So I wrote my purposes, blah, blah, blah, blah, which basically includes all those words and now in it. So if I'm going to make a choice, you know, hey, do I. Do I do this podcast or not? Well, I'm going to teach, I'm going to learn. It's going to be fun. Yeah, why not, right?

Yeah.

But if those values for me, the V2 GP2, if those values aren't being met, then I know it's something I'm not going to do.

Right?

Exact same thing.

I love it. No, and that's. And I guess, Matt, we had this all along. I guess what we were trying to grasp for is like there's this one thing, but I think that's kind of a fallacy. Like, it's probably part of what you just said, because I resonate with a lot of what you just said there. Learning, teaching, traveling, all that.

Gary Keller in his book, the One Thing got it wrong. He really screwed everything up. Right. Because he really did. Right? You can focus on this, dude. You can't ignore flicking cat food or dog food or, you know, get your teeth clean. You just can't ignore it. You got to capture it. But he said, what's the one thing? There isn't one thing. I mean, how many things excite you? A lot of things excite you. Right? You know, for me, I like being remarkable, Whatever that means. Right. I want to be remarkable. So when I go on a vacation, it can be a remarkable vacation. Now, when we went on Europe four years ago, we backpacked. That was awesome. Yeah, right? You know, we took backpack, it went to four countries, 15 cities. It was awesome. This time we're going all first class. Why? Because that's what I want to do.

Cool.

Is one better than the other? Not really. They're both awesome.

Sure.

So think about what excites you, what doesn't excite you. You know, Jim Rohn used to say, what's got you turned on? What's got you turned off? So for purpose. It's pretty simple, really. It really is, man. Just what excites you. And, you know, and stop trying to get this. You know, society tells me I should be this and be that. Not really.

Yeah. Well, I like what you just said, too, is like, if all this other stuff, just capture it. Like, I think if you always. I think if someone takes the 8020 from this interview and don't overly analyze my 8020 reference here. But like, just capturing. I feel like, is that 80% is just unload the brain.

20%?

Yeah. Or is the 20%. Yeah. So you can just create that white space and think clear.

Check. Check this out really quick, right? Just to kind of add to that. Sorry for interrupting, but the 8020 should not be fractal all the time. That's a horrible thing, because then all you're thinking about your life is everything is a burden. So I'm going to watch a movie, but I'm only going to watch 20% of the movie. Okay, dumbass. I'm going to listen to 20% of the podcast. Okay, that's stupid. No, no, no, man. Your 8020 may be different than somebody else's 80 20.

It's about being able to have a siphon, absorb it, all right? Bruce Lee said, absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add specifically your own. But it's absorb, right? Absorb, reflect, absorb. So listen to the podcast, read the book, take it in, look for, have the joy and the happiness and the excitement of taking it all in, and then you discover and uncover what works for you. There's, you know, Ray Dalio's book, the principle, right? It's 500 pages. So what? You should only 20% of that. No, man, absorb it. Read it multiple times.

It's great. Yeah.

Reflect, ponder. Absorb it. Come back to it again. That's the 20%. Instead of, you know, going to McDonald's and shoving your face with fast food and, you know, your life should be by the collection of intense, awesome experiences. That's the 20%. As you know, Ray Dali wanted to live a remarkable life. He wanted to live a great life, but he didn't. 80, 20 every flipping thing. You can't do that. It's harmful. It's. It's dangerous and it's, it's horrible for your relationships.

Yeah, I love it. No, I mean, you're so right. And I like how you're. I see you getting passionate right now and. Because this is. Yeah, I mean, it's so true. And it's just things can get misconstrued and like you said, the whole fractal thing, if you're looking at it as a, a fractal, okay, well, now you got all these different layers that you have more 8020s to go deeper in on. And like you said, it's almost like freaks your mind out a little bit.

If you go fractal, you'll go broke. Why don't you go ahead and 8020 your sex life with your spouse.

See how that works out for you.

I love it.

I have a quick sort of.

I'm not quite sure how to word this question, so this is going to be sort of stream of thought here, but let's say somebody's listening to this but podcast and you know, they're just starting out in business. They're like bare bones in their bank account, but they're sitting here going, yeah, I want to, I want to live a remarkable life. I want to be able to go travel Europe. I want to, you know, focus on the 80, 20, spend less time working, you know, that kind of stuff. But they're, they're, you know, their perception is that their bank account doesn't allow that right now.

Sure. Well, the two things. One is we got to get away from this working less. Right? Because David Allen defines work as something that isn't done yet but needs to get done. So going to the market is work. Talking to your spouse is work. We love to say it works and it doesn't work. So I don't differentiate work from personal life. I just live my day as best as I can and I focus on things that excite me. So I think that the challenge for someone who's starting out is this poverty mindset, which goes back to the original mindset component. Look, if they go to callmarks.com or you can put on your site, whatever, I don't care. I'll download a bunch of stuff that I'll just gather a bunch of cool stuff that I've used over the years for coaching, and they can have it. But here's the thing that I would say. One is, realize that it is a mindset issue and you do have things to Take care of. You cannot listen to this podcast and go, okay, I'm now going to be an entrepreneur. I got it. It doesn't work that way. So I say, in my personal opinion, go get help, man. Go find somebody that can help and mentor you, you know, that will give you the money, that will give you the experience. Do we try too often to do things by ourselves? You know, like, we're afraid to admit our weaknesses. Oh, man, I admit my weaknesses all the time. And if I don't, my wife will remind me constantly.

That's so interesting. That's literally one of the conversations we were having in the spa the other day when we were sitting around chatting, just kind of brain dumping. What was on our heads was this sort of concept of like, it seems like the more vulnerable, the more transparent, the more we ask for help, the more we reach out to various people in our network, the more seems to flow back to us. The more help people, the more people want to help us, the more people want to be vulnerable and share their, you know, their struggles with us. And, you know, it's, it's. It took me a long time to come to that realization. It's only been the last year or so that I've leaned on my network and helping and getting help from other people. But, you know, that, that rings so true, what you said there.

Yeah, listen, me too, right? That's why I crashed and burned the first time.

Yeah.

But the second, I was like, I need help. So I sought help. And it was, let me tell you, man, it was embarrassing. Be on no end to walk with your tail between your legs.

Sort of two nickels in hand and going, I need help. Yeah. I had this appearance of success because I still had the big house and the Mercedes. But I'm broke as all get up and I don't know what I'm doing and I really need some help. And when you, you know, one, one story to you guys. One of my other mentors who I sit on his board now, great guy. Can't say his name, but great guy, he's like, look, what most harms executives and entrepreneurs is the ego. And you have to shed the ego. And so he gives the story, right? So the samurais were undefeated until the Tommy Gun. Remember the Tommy Gun? The one that you wind up.

So if you watch the, you know, the movies, the Samurai, you'll see it there. And they wipe out all Tom Cruise's friends who were dressed like samurais.

Right.

So he said until then they were undefeated because they died before battle. Same way that Buckmeister Fuller became super successful. He killed himself. Okay, let me tell them. Explain the story. Right, so the samurais, before they went into battle, they would give away all their possessions. Their family would bury them, metaphorically speaking, like, dig a grave, put their suit in there, you know, and bury them and mourn them. And they'll become invisible to the. To the tribe, because they may not come back. They know they're leaving, and they're gonna go fight to the death. They may not come back. So they're already dead. So how do you beat somebody who's already dead?

That is interesting.

Yeah, Right? So they would show up with a samurai sword, and they're like, I'm already dead. I have no fear. Hence, I can make my moves appropriately. Tan, tan, tan, tan, tan, tan, tan. Because they're not like, ding, ding. You know, they're not holding the sword, shaking, and just go, what if he hits me back? They've already lost. Yeah, they've already died. And that unleashes the fear of death. And when the fear of death gets unleashed, then and only then can they perform at their optimal. Well, Buckmeister Fuller, his daughter died because he didn't have enough money to, you know, go ahead, basically give her medicine. So he went into the Lake Michigan, I think it was, to kill himself. And he sat there, and he was about to take a deep breath of water, and he realized he was already dead. So he came out of the water, and they lived an incredible life and amazing inventions, because he was no longer afraid of death. So the entrepreneur, the CEO, is afraid of death. Now, the physical death is easy. The death of the ego is really hard.

That's true.

It's kind of like something they say. You hear it in action movies all the time. Is like, the scariest man on earth is the man that has nothing left to lose.

That's exactly right.

Lose so he can perform at his best. This is why when you make money and you make more money, you can make better decisions, because you're no longer afraid of losing. So if you just adopt that as an entrepreneur who has no money, if you shed the ego and do the things that you have to do, because really, it's all about making the proper choices and decisions. And when you make the best choice, when you have no fear, if you're afraid of losing your big client and they're doing something unethical, that's not okay with you. But you let that go on, and then guess what? You're going to lose that client anyway. You're going to feel like crap about it if you don't let that happen, you may lose the client, but you gain peace of mind. And then the universe goes. Job well done, thy faithful servant. And boom. Gives you more great stuff when you unshed, right? You unhook the ego when you go, look, guys, I have coaches. I have stuff that I do with all the time too. Hey, I need help with sometimes. It's stupid, silly stuff.

That's okay because that's totally great.

Yeah, right. Because like the sculpture, taking away at the unessential to get to the beautiful piece that is me, right? My true essence, you know, same as yours. We have to chip away all that crap that's getting rid of the ego. So, you know, being an entrepreneur, you know, we can, we can jock a Wilkin. Get up at 4:30 in the morning. It ain't my style, brother Ben there done that. It doesn't work right. It's a good rah ride. It feels like a coffee cake. Good coffee.

Coffee cake.

But it isn't nourishing your soul.

Yeah.

Getting up in the morning routine, you know, I want to do the breathing that Tony does or the writing that Tim does, whatever. Cool, man. Rock and roll. But you know what? Not for me. I don't want to go, hey, don't do anything for me. And I want to journal because what if I don't feel like it and I have to do another thing? Oh, screw that. I'm not interested. I want to follow my intuition. I want to be free. I want to be creative. When I got that man alive, I'm telling you, dude, everything changed for me. Everything. The colors seem brighter. My wife became more awesome, which really was me changing. Right? I mean, and you know, if you guys ever get to meet me in person and my wife, you'll be like, you know, my kids, you'll be like, you know, this dude, he's got issues, but he's like a pretty good guy.

We all got issues, brother.

So this is. This is the mindset piece of those four pillars. Anyway, I know that we sort of rambled on and this is the kind of.

This is amazing. And this just excites me so much to continue, you know, this journey that we're going to do together.

We already know we're doing a part two, so, you know, we don't. I know you've got some time constraints and we got to wrap up here, but, you know, we're going to do a part two, so anything we feel like we missed in this conversation, we'll definitely make sure we, we get caught up in the part two. And you know, Joe and I are going to do this 90 day challenge with you and then in 90 days or so we're going to actually release another episode and talk about the, the results and then kind of dive deeper into our experience and then dive deeper into anything that we feel like maybe didn't come out in this conversation that we felt should. So one, one question that we like to ask our guests at the end of the show is we always ask, are there any sort of books that you highly recommend that are like must read books? Now on this episode we actually talked about quite a bit. You know, you mentioned brain change. You meant brain Chains, get things done 16x. I mean, there was a lot of books thrown out in this and you also mentioned that you were going to share a list of some of your must read books. So we don't have to go too deep on this topic.

But, but I want to reframe that in that you said you've read over what, 3,000 books or so.

Yeah, it's like 3,500 books now in counting.

So how do you choose which books to actually go deeper on? Because I know you're not doing that with all of them. So how do you. I guess that's the question I want to replace here. Is sure, we all have a bookshelf. Which one do we pick?

Fair enough. So to answer the first question, I think the book that everybody should read is Jonathan Livingston Siegel by Richard Bach. If you haven't read it, read it. You can read it while you're sitting in the can. It's a really short book. If you understand the concepts and principles and you should read it more than once in that book, it will add value to your life. And it's a great book for kids to read which begins to shape their view of the world. Right. And if you haven't read it, it's a great book. So the second question is, how do we do it? It's really interesting, right? Because sometimes books will have the right answer for the right time and sometimes they won't. So I always read a book with asking myself, you know, Bill Bain once said, it's stupid to go to library unless you know what you want to learn. So I always read a book of what is interesting to me now, what do I want to learn now? And it may not be marketing, it may be biography, it may be theology. Maybe. I just trust that my brain will guide me to the answers that I'm looking For to help improve my life. And then when I read that book before I buy another book, because I happen to do all the time, I go, is there a book I want to read now? I just. Listen, guys, I'm not gonna say we got it. We should think about getting back to trusting our intuition.

Right? And we're always told what to do because that's the way school tells us. I want. Do your homework, do this, do that. Cool. That's fantastic. Go back to your earlier life when you're a kid and think about how you woke up every summer day lasted forever.

Yeah.

Summer was an eternity, right? You were present all the time. Life was amazing. That's my life now, right? I'm like that same kid going, wow, you know, whose house should I bike to today? And the reason is because we have to learn to listen to our intuition. Trust your gut, Feed your gut, right? Read the good books. Classic. Don't listen, guys. I don't want to mention any names, but, you know, there's a lot of books out there that are just crap. You know, they just, you know, so and so, you know, I'm a sales expert, or I'm a, you know, you can 50 times your. Multiple this, and you can. They're all full of crap. And they're all full of crap. Go read the books that make you think.

Well, yeah, and you got to. There's so many books out there that, you know, there's this, like, movement of like, you're. Your business card should be your book kind of thing, right? And so people slap together books real quick because they want to seem credible. Like, I'm a published author. And I would say 9 out of 10 times I've read a book that fell into the this is my business card have been junk for sure.

There's nothing wrong with that, right? There's nothing wrong with somebody selling you a $35,000 package to write your book and then market it by all means, rock and roll. And you know, and best of luck to you. I have a philosophy. I'm not a consumer so much as I'm a producer. So for me, it's like, let's be less consumers and more producers. That doesn't mean I don't consume, because I consume a lot. It just means that if I'm going to put out some content or some material, it better be stuff that's truthful or effective. When I was doing lots of martial arts, I got my black belt and traditional karate. Threw it at the guys because I was already taking classes with Daniel Santos, Bruce Lee, spending in Protege. And I realized how much I didn't know what I knew. And I'm not putting down classical karate because it has its place and they're amazing. But from my experience, what I was learning was much more effective. I went to the first class, got my butt whooped and I was a black belt dude. And this guy had been six months. And then I became a really good kickboxer. Like, you know, world class, amazing, super good, right? And then I went to Gracie Jiu Jitsu at Hicks and Gracie's Academy and got my ass beat again, right by a white belt. So I blue belt. When I had multiple fights under my belt, it had one. And this guy took me down three times and smacked me. So what did I do? I joined the class.

Sure.

I didn't say jiu jitsu is. I'm always consuming, I'm always learning, but also be a producer. So when it comes to books, if you think about, you know, Jim Rohn said, don't just read the easy stuff. Don't just get the mental candy. Read the difficult books, read the classics, read a biography. Read, you know, read a biography on Hitler by Vocal Ulrich. Oh, hey, look, dude. It's an incredible book. Richard Koch. I recommend it to Richard. Richard, read. It's an amazing book. Read Steve Jobs, read Leonardo da Vinci. A biography will give you more insight into business and life of success than any book you can pick up, barring about a half a dozen. There's a half a dozen books that I think will be better than biographies. But if you want to buy a book on how to 50x your business, don't. Unless it comes from you guys. Don't go to the biographies. You're welcome.

We should retitle the name of our next book.

Joe, don't read this book. Go to biography section and see who inspires you. There's a book that just came out, Grant that. Oh my gosh, man, I run. Sure. Now what a book. First of all, it'll take you a while to read. Yeah. But holy cow, that book will do more for you in business than just about any business book you can read.

Wow. Okay. I wrote that down. Love it. That's a must buy.

Well, think about it. Think what happens in your mind. I know we're going to cut it here and you guys will end the podcast, but I love books because I love learning and data. I love learning, so I can do right experiential. So here's the thing. If I read a book on most books, how to increase how to X or how to Y. Doesn't matter. Right? The book will tell me this. You're defective, but it's not your fault. Right? All marketing. Right? As a Dan Kenny. You're defective. It's not your fault. Here's the problem. Here's how you can do things to fix yourself, and then here's how to fix yourself. Cool. Thank you for that. Got it. A biography goes like this. This is a story, and this is how your brain learns about this individual. And when you read the book, you become the character. You're now Grant. You're Steve Jobs. You're Leonardo da Vinci. You're whoever you know, you're arm and hammer. So you're feeding your brain. You're all the Horatio Algebra books, which is how w Coming Stone became so successful.

Yeah.

Right? Because you read all those books and then think of good. You become the character. And guess what? You solve the problems. You become successful. You know, you suffer through them.

You embody them.

Yeah, yeah.

It's way more impactful. You sold me a biography test for danger. I am reading Ben Franklin's right now. So it's already the one that he wrote. Yes. Autobiography.

The one that he wrote for his son, which is full of bs. Enjoy it.

Is it, uh. Oh, no.

I've heard the Walter Isaacson book, though, is amazing. So.

It is incredible. I mean, Walter Isaacson, okay, he's not nearly as good as Ron Chernow. Ron Chernow, to me, is my favorite. The guy, okay, Walter Isaac is just amazing. I mean, amazing writer, but, man, Ron Chernow, boy, there's nobody comes close to him, in my opinion.

I. I'll check it out. Yeah.

Ben Franklin wrote that book to his son, who was a derelict failure, right? And he wrote that book to try to inspire his son to be a better man. But Benjamin Franklin was, you know, sleeping with hookers in France.

That's. That's true.

But he was. But he was doing it for the cause. It's all for the cause, right? Ben said women tend to age less from the waist down. Right. Good for you.

Jesus. I haven't gotten to that part yet.

I'm not saying you should read it. You should definitely read it.

Yeah.

Winston Churchill told his beautiful wife, you know, she referred him as pig. He goes, I don't want to read about history. I want to create history. But yet he read about history. So be that guy. You know, read biographies, but create your own biography. Don't just be a learner, Right? Be a producer.

Love it.

Learn so you can do Something with it. Learn. So you can produce, read biographies so you can do stuff with it. You know, we're going on this vacation for two months. Well, guess what? It's gonna be awesome, right? I don't need to read about it.

That's right, live it.

But having read about London and Italy and Spain and all these great places, we now have a richer experience ahead of us.

That's right.

We can talk about this stuff forever.

But yeah, I wanna make sure you catch your next call or whatever you're doing.

Yeah, it's okay. They knew I was gonna be late anyway. I already told them.

All right, Mark, well, I'm just gonna give you some love here and say you are probably the most generous guy I've spoken to in a very long time with your time, just with your vast amount of knowledge. And now that the fact that I wasn't even expecting this, but the 90 day thing, I mean, you just. Hats off to you. I mean, that's no joke at all. Yeah, I've been absolutely. We've been raving about you and now Matt, I think is aware of why.

Well, I hope I did a good job for you guys.

You did.

Thank you for the podcast. I'll send you guys the intake form probably sometime early next week and then we'll have a chat about what to do next. And. And then you guys will let me know when the second podcast is on this stuff and it'll be you guys telling your experience, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Won't that be awesome?

That'll be fun.

I'm looking forward to that. We do have one last question for you before you go. Is there somewhere you want to send people after listening to this episode? Is there your website or social media? Where do you want people to have.

Them go if they want to get more information on some of the stuff that I can provide for them? All free. All free, all gratis. Just go to callmarks C A L L M a r x.com and I'll constantly put stuff up there and update information that I think is useful. There's a warning right as you're gonna get some. Some truth and you may not like that, offend some people. And I apologize in advance, not really, but you know, I gotta. I gotta be true to what I believe.

Obviously, I love it. No, that's what. That's what we all need to hear. All right, Mark, well, thank you so much, man. Go get on it and we'll talk soon.

Hey guys, they have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. Bye for now.

Bye. Bye. Bye. All right. Thank you. And I hope you just enjoyed this episode you just listened to. Now, right now, before we sign off, I have a few things I would love for you to do. So the very first thing is to go find our guest on Facebook and tell them that you loved their episode with us. That's going to help them just feel good about themselves, but also it's going to spread the word a little bit more for us. So go find them on Facebook. Everybody's on Facebook. And go say that you love their episode and maybe one cool thing that you learn there. The second thing is to go to itunes and subscribe to our podcast. Just look up Hustle and Flowchart and hit the subscribe button. And the very last thing, the third thing, is to leave us a review on itunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast and help us spread the word more. That's how more people are going to get this awesome knowledge, this, this cool podcast training and a whole bunch of other cool, free training that we give out@evergreen profits.com. so that's about it. Go find them on Facebook, go subscribe on itunes and leave us a review. You would be amazing if you did that, but you're always amazing. So thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode.

You're awesome.