3 Common Reasons Why Business FAIL Tips For Entrepreneurs Ft. Keith Cunningham

What is the road less stupid?

How would you describe it? If I gave you the opportunity to unwind any three financial decisions you've ever made in your whole life, how much money would you have? And there's not a person in this room that if I gave them the ability to unwind, any one of three financial decisions, wouldn't have more money. It turns out that the key to making more money is to doing fewer stupid things. That's true. I don't need more good ideas. I need fewer ideas that I think are good, that I've executed on. And so I've had the experience over the last 47, 48 years of being in business of having done some smart things where actually it wasn't that smart. But in reality, I was lucky. I happened to catch a big wave, and I mistook catching a big wave with being a good swimmer. And it's what Warren Buffett is very famous for saying. Most of you have heard it. You never know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. And. And so the key is not can I make it? The key is can I make it and keep it? Those are two entirely different skill sets, and in fact, they are almost diametrically opposed. What it takes to make money is very different than what it takes to keep it. And most people are so obsessed with making it that as they become more successful, they. They do stupid things, which winds up sabotaging their overall success. And I know this story firsthand because this is one of the reasons I appreciated you so much, Paul, and your presentation is because I've had the experience of losing a lot of money, $100 million of my money that I made. I didn't inherit it, I made it. You were better off than me because you cut the bleeding at plus 600,000. I didn't cut the bleeding until I was minus 50 million. So I went from plus 100 million to minus 50 million in a matter of 24 months. And when you do that, it takes your breath away. I mean, that's a major, major event, not only because of the size of the money, but also because it's. The loss is so devastating. And I had so much of my net worth. I have my self worth entwined with my net worth, which is a deadly combination.

How old were you during that time?

40. 40.

And that was during the. In real estate.

Real estate, Yeah, a lot of. And what led to the loss? Look at your losses. It's not necessarily pleasant to think back on, but everybody's had some kind of loss that They've sustained as a result of a bad decision or excessive optimism. Unexamined assumptions, unexamined assumptions, faulty expectations, excessive optimism are killers. Arrogance is killers. Hubris is a killer for creating and sustaining wealth. So the goal to me is not to get it. The goal is to get it and keep it. You can get lucky and make it. And I know lots of people who got lucky. But the problem is they weren't able to keep it because they didn't have skills that would allow them to sustain. So the truth is, to me, sustainability of wealth is the holy grail. Making it. I can catch a big wave. I can get lucky. I can happen to hit a crease in the market at exactly the right point, and, you know, we can wind up being, you know, affiliate associated with you or Tony Robbins or any number of other people. And there's a degree of luck in all that, and there's a skill set in all of that. And so I'm very much about, let's make sure that if we're going to all this effort in order to create the success, and people do stupid things in the creation mode as well. People oftentimes think that if I just improve my product, that that would somehow allow me to create business or financial success. And yet the truth is, it doesn't require a great product in order to make a lot of money. If I ask you to think about your favorite restaurant, the place you would go to have a huge celebration, you're thinking about it, you know where it would be. There's not one person in this room that's thinking about McDonald's. Not one. And yet nobody has made more money in the history of mankind in the restaurant business than McDonald's. How did it happen? Is it because their cheeseburgers are so good? No, their cheeseburgers are horrible. Right? They are. Their French fries, on the other hand, are really good, but the cheeseburgers are horrible. What allowed McDonald's to make a lot of money was not an obsession with the product. It's never, write this down. This will be a takeaway. It's never what you do. It's how you do it. It's never what you do. It's how you do it. Southwest Airlines, their whole business model is put butts in seats and fly those butts from point A to point B safely. No mention of your luggage, Right. Your luggage is immaterial to the airlines. Whether it makes it or not, we don't care. Let's just make sure the person gets from point A to point B doesn't even have to be on time. Southwest Airlines has made more money in the last 10 years in the airline business than the rest of the airline industry cumulatively since Orville and Wilbur Wright. Now you think about that One airline has made more money than everybody else since Orville and Wilbur. How'd that happen? Is it because their planes are so good? Is it because their first class section is so roomy? Is it because the food is so outstanding? Is it because the hostesses and stewards and stewardesses. Is it because they're so good looking? No. I can't tell which is older, the stewardesses or the airplanes. Right. It's never what you. Southwest Airlines success is not based on what they did, it's how they did it. You name me any product or service. I don't care what it is. Give me one week. You could say chewing gum, shoelaces, seminars, pins, socks. Name me any product or service. Give me one week, and in one week I'll come back and name you one person who's made millions, hundred people that have gone broke with the exact same idea. The problem is, as entrepreneurs, we become obsessed with the product. We become obsessed with either the quality. And I'm not opposed to great products. That's not the message. The message is, what is it? As a business person, what is it that we're focused on? The artist side of me wants to focus on the product and making it better and longer lasting and prettier and more robust. And I'm good with that. We need artists. The operator side of me wants to get busy and get a bunch of stuff done. I just, I got so much to do and holy cow, if it's going to get done, I'm going to have to do it myself because I don't know how to hire a team or keep a team or have a players or create a culture or I don't know any of that. I just got a lot to do. That's the operator side. The business person side says, wait a minute. The job is not to react to the problem du jour. What I need to do is leverage and structure. Write those two words down. That's the difference between a solopreneur and one person army. A solopreneur and a business owner. A business owner has mastered two things, structure and leverage. And without structure and leverage, there is not a way to create a sustainably successful business. I'm going to say the structure part a different way before I talk about leverage.

Yeah.

Opportunity without structure is chaos. The Achilles tendon of most Entrepreneurs is structure. They hate it. That's why they started their own business, is because they hate the idea of having structure. And yet structure is critical to for scaling. I hear a lot of people in here talking about scaling or scaling is just a Silicon Valley word for growth. That's all it is. How do I grow this thing? Okay, well, if I'm going to grow this thing, I need structure in order to be able to do it. Otherwise I got kind of a fire drill working with a bunch of people doing a bunch of stuff, and it's not necessarily the most productive thing that needs to happen. Leverage, one of the highest forms. When I talk about leverage, most people think, oh, he's talking about debt. In reality, I'm not. I mean, debt is a financial instrument, it's leverage. But the more powerful form of leverage is who's on your team. So I'm going to ask you a question. If I gave you an opportunity to build a world class team of A players, and the only people on your team were A players, I mean, seven footers, these are the Kevin Durant's, they can do it all. If you only had a team of A players, how many of your existing problems that you have right now would go away, disappear? It turns out the problems that most of us are dealing with are not even really the problem.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to Joe's Freebook and you can.

Get a copy there. Eunice is where I need a little whiteboard, if I can get one right here. Joe just handed you a piece of paper a second ago and said thank you and said write down one of your biggest problems. So I'm going to ask you right now to write down on your piece of paper one of your three biggest problems. Maybe you just did that. Maybe you can refer back to that piece of paper. Maybe you're not going to have to share this. We're not going to talk about it. It's not going to be anything. So you may want to write really, really small so that nobody else can see. Write it really small and just write down or revisit one of your three biggest problems that you think you have with your business. Let me give you a thought. The exercise is over. You don't have to complete writing it Down. The exercise is over. Every person here has an is line. This is reality. This is the way it looks. This is point A. Point A. And the problem that most people have, in my experience, I know I have this problem, is that I'm not particularly honest with myself about the reality of my situation. I sugarcoat it. When I was at the University of Texas, every day I'd walk past a little message etched in granite over the. The doors of a building. And the message was, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So you know this, right? And every day for four or five years, I walked past this saying, and I went, I don't know what this means. What does that mean? You should know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Well, the reality, it dawned on me later, is that as long as I'm lying to myself or not telling the truth, I have no opportunity to make a change. So it's why addicts don't stop using is because they say, well, I don't really have a problem. I can stop anytime I want. Yeah, I know it's a little. I know it's a little bit. But, you know, the reality is it's. I'm functioning right. It's why alcoholics or poor people pick a topic. People don't tend to tell themselves the truth. This is point A. We also have point B. Point B is ought. This is the way I'd like for it to look. This is point B. And it turns out that most of us are experts on point B. We have massive clarity on the way we would like for it to look. Because we've done all this visualization, we've done all this goal setting where you make a goal and then you make it vibrant, and then you turn it into black and white. Then you bring it closer and farther away, and then you put music around it. And so we're really good at visualizing what ought. We tend to suck at what is. And when asked what our problem is, we describe the gap. The gap between where you are and what you want is what you typically describe as the problem, when in reality, this gap is not the problem. This gap is the symptom. I just ask you, Joe, just ask you. The last exercise you did, write down one of your three biggest problems, and everybody got busy real quick. We knew what the problem was because we were visualizing the gap between where we are and what we want. When in reality, that's not the problem, that's the symptom. The gap sits right here. This is Sorry. The problem sits right here. This is the problem. This is the obstacle that I need to overcome in order to move the needle on my is line. In order to move the needle on my is line, I need to get clarity on what it is that's truly blocking my forward progress. What's blocking my forward progress has nothing to do with where I am versus what I want. What's blocking my forward progress is the obstacle that sits right here. And it turns out, Joe, that the hardest part of thinking time is getting clarity on the problem, that is, if you don't have clarity on the problem, that is, you'll be tactical instead of strategic. So I say 10 pounds overweight. What do I want to do about it? Well, as long as I view the problem as being 10 pounds overweight, which is not the problem, that's the symptom. Hello. Hello. Are you with me that? Being 10 pounds overweight is not the problem, that's the symptom. But as long as I identify being 10 pounds overweight as being the problem, then what I will lurch to is, okay, should I buy a jump rope or should I join a gym? Should I buy Oprah's latest diet book, or should I get a personal training? Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll get a piece of home exercise equipment. That's what I'll do. If I just had a peloton bike in my house, then I would get in shape, which is why most home exercise equipment and most diet books don't work, because it's a tactical response to a tactical question. As long as I'm dealing with the symptom, I'm going to be dealing in tactical. And once I say it's not a tactical issue, I need to be strategic and think strategic and identify the problem it is. So here it is, and then I'll stop, Joe, if I don't have clarity on the problem that is, I'll build a machine for the problem that isn't, which is what we do 99% of the time. We identify the gap, call it the problem, when in reality it's a symptom. And we're highly tactical in our response because we have a tactical question that we've asked which winds up sabotaging our results. If you tell me your sales aren't high enough, I'm going to say that's a symptom, not a problem. If you tell me you don't have enough profits. If you tell me you have a crummy culture. If you tell me you have weak employees. If you tell me your balance sheet is screwed up, if you tell me all those are symptoms, what's the problem? So if I gave you an opportunity to rethink the problem that you identified a minute ago, is that really the problem? Really? Is that the problem? Is that the core root underlying problem that's blocking your forward progress? Or is there something below that, something buried where you got to get busy and figure out what in the world is going on? So business, to me is an intellectual sport. It's chess. Money and business does not respond well to emotions. Warren Buffett said it. Optimism is the enemy of the rational investor. It turns out in business, optimism is your enemy, which is why one of the pieces of advice that you gave is so good, Paul, which was, we all need a board. We need advisors. We need people that we will listen to. The higher you go or the higher you want to go, the greater the requirement to have somebody around you who will tell you the truth. Because I can't smell my own breath. I can smell your breath, but I can't smell mine. I can't see my own swing. I can see the shot. I can't see the swing. I need people around me watching me swing who will give me advice. And then I gotta be willing to hear that advice. As long as I'm arrogant, right? Unwilling to listen, it does no good to ask. So business is an intellectual sport, and the people that win the game sustainably have got skills and tools, which is why I wrote the book Let the Road Less Stupid.

Yeah, well, so I love how you refer to businesses and what you build as the machine. How would you, if you, as simplistic as it may sound, what do you mean by that? A machine. Everyone here is building a machine. And your comment about building a machine for the problem that isn't it seems to me that the vast majority of entrepreneurs, because of the failure rate and the stress level and just the really not getting ahead in any way financially, that they spend an enormous amount of activity accomplishing not much of anything except getting tired and worn out and frustrated. So if that's the case, you've developed a process which is thinking time, which we'll get into, which is why I believe your book is so good. And it's so beyond just a book. It's a map. It's a plan and a path. What is this machine, though? If we think of we're all building a business, it's a machine. It's an intellectual sport. It's a chess game. How should everyone Here, think about this machine. That is their business.

There are two types of business models. There's the Michael Jordan model and the Michael Dell model. Both of them will work, and both of them, you can get filthy stinking rich. One is not right, one is not wrong, one is not good, one is not bad. They're just different models. Michael Jordan, Tiger woods have a personal services model. It's all on them. There's very little leverage because Michael can't delegate the jump shot to win the game. Tiger can't delegate the two foot putt on 18. He Tiger has to make the putt. You can make a lot of money in that kind of model, but there's not as much leverage as there is the Michael Dell model. The Michael Dell model is Michael hadn't put together a computer in 38 years. He put together a couple of them and then realized very quickly, unless he had some people on his team that he could leverage, that he wasn't going to get to the success that he was capable of or that was available to him. Depending upon which model you're talking about, the machine could look one of a couple ways. The Michael Dell model, where it's not a personal services type of model. Michael Dell model relies on three things. It relies on a strategy, a plan, not an idea. Not an idea. One of the fundamental mistakes we make as business owners is we wind up executing on ideas instead of plans. We have an idea of what we want, but there's no yellow brick road. This is oz. We're in love with oz. I've heard so many business owners tell me over the years, this is my dream, this is my vision. I go, I'm good. You're telling me about oz. Build me the yellow brick road. Show me how to get from where you are to Oz, and then I'm on board. But just because you become very adept at describing OZ doesn't give me the clarity that I need to be an investor or to support you if I don't have clarity on the plan. So the plan, the strategy is number one. What does strategy mean? Southwest Airlines, here's how they made all their money. Here's how they made more money. It's one sentence. This is one sentence that's going to tell you how Southwest Airlines made more money in the last 10 years than the restaurant rest of the airline industry. Cumulative. Southwest Airlines at the very beginning said this. A plane on the ground makes no money. How hard is that? What a brilliant insight. And so they built the entire organization around keeping planes in the air and it turns out the key to keeping planes in the air is to become an expert at baggage handling. The core problem that Southwest Airlines had to figure out is how do you get the passengers and the baggage on and off the plane as quickly as possible? Because the faster we get them off the plane, faster we get the new ones on, faster the plane takes off, more money we make. One sentence that's extraordinary. So plan and a strategy is number one on machine. Number two. You gotta have people. A, players. You take a great strategy and you have B, players. C, players. If anybody in here have an employee, anybody in here ever been disappointed with the performance of an employee? I'm going to give you a hint and we may talk about this more. You get what you tolerate. You get what you tolerate. In fact, I'll say this, I'll say this even louder. This could be the most important thing I say. Nothing can change until the unspoken is said. Nothing can change until the unspoken is said. And the truth. Here's the truth. For us as leaders, the greatest failure of leadership is a lack of courage. A lack of courage to say what needs to be said. I tell my employees we own businesses and I tell my employees all the time, I'm. I refuse to lower my standards in order to accommodate your need for mediocrity. I will not do it. This is the standard that we have. And what we're going to do is we're going to help you build a yellow brick road so that you can be successful. Every. Every employee you have, every employee you have, has, for all of us, has the exact same outcome. They're all optimizing for the same thing. Every one of our employees wakes up the morning and they want to be successful. There's not one person who wakes up in the morning and says, today I'm going to try to do the worst job that I possibly can. My job as the. As the owner, as the leader is to support my team in being successful. That's my number one job. And so I'm going to coach, I'm going to build a yellow brick road. I'm going to have performance standards, but I got to have eight people if I. So I've got a lot of tabs open right now in my brain, so I'll come make sure I come back to machine. What's the definition of an a player? There's three or four things. Number one, they have a high internal emotional need to succeed. High internal emotional need to succeed. I'll say this a different way. Pros don't have to be motivated amateurs. Do people ask me all the time, how do you motivate your employees? I say I hire them. I'm giving you an opportunity and I've built you a yellow brick road that if you stay on the yellow brick road and hit my standards, you and I are going to do well. If you can't hit my standards, I understand this is not a good fit. You're not gonna be able to stay here and be successful, which I know you don't wanna come to work for the next five years and be unsuccessful. So let me help you go find someplace else where you can be successful. Because it's not here. Because here, this is what we produce. If I don't have standards, which is all part of the people, if I don't have the standards, then I'm going to be promoting people or giving raises based on loyalty or longevity or likability. Oh, my God. This person has been here since day one. You know, in fact, the first month they were here, you know they were here. We didn't even pay them. They've made it. And so I wind up creating this story that becomes a substitute for performance. At the end of the day, I don't want the story to get in the way of the facts. I tell you what sabotaged you. It sabotaged me. I substituted a story for the facts. I'm really good at spinning those stories. So are you. That's where those unexamined assumptions come from. So that's number two. Number one is I gotta have the plan in the process. Number two, I gotta have the people. Number three, I got to have the structure and part of the structure. Probably the most important part of the structure is going to be the culture. Culture is not perks. Those are two different things. Perks are how many jelly beans are in the kitchen and whether you do or don't get to bring your dog to work. Those are perks. Joe has heard this story. I was given a speech in Oslo and there were some very well known famous entrepreneurs who had done very well. And one woman came on stage who's very well known and started talking about how important culture was in her organization. And the example that she used is. And we just built our employees two nap rooms. I hadn't gone on stage yet. I'm sitting on the front row. And when she said this, I looked up and I said out loud, I didn't mean to, but I'm sure she heard it. You must be kidding me. Nap rooms have nothing to do with culture. Nap rooms are a Perk. Besides that, I'm not paying my people to come to work and sleep. That doesn't even make any sense to me, but apparently it did to her. And so I look at culture as, how do we treat each. Treat each other? How do we talk to each other? Culture is accountability. The Navy seals has got one hell of a culture because they're accountable. They get stuff done. They do what they say they're going to do. They're on time. That's a cultural issue. And so I would ask you, as you're thinking about a machine, what's your plan? What's your leverage? Tiger has leverage. He's got a plan, but he also has leverage. It's just not the same kind of leverage that Michael Dell has, but he has leverage. And they both have structure. Michael Dell and Michael Jordan, Tiger woods, they all have structure. There's a culture. There's a way we do things. The whole idea of the machine is that I pour gasoline in and it runs, which is not the kind of business that most of us have. Most of us have a business where we're this, we're crankers, we're hand cranking. And then I hear people talking about, I want to scale my business. And if you scale a crank business, you wind up with more crankers because there is no machine. It turns out scaling a crank is a bad idea. But we're addicted to this idea of growth and getting big and scaling as if big was the same as rich. Big is not the same as rich. Those are two different words. And when I look into the cockpit of most businesses, there's one lever that the pilot has at his or her disposal. Who's running the business? The pilot. And that lever is the accelerator. Anything that goes wrong, okay, first thing let's do, let's mash down. Let's get big, let's amp, let's scale, let's add more. This, let's do this. Let's get a social media web. Pretty soon, I got all these tactics storming at me, and I'm going, what? What is the real problem here? What is the real problem I've got? You know, J.C. penney thought that the idea was to get big. And you see where they ended up. And the list, Kodak, the list is long of businesses who somehow mistakenly believe that the most important thing is how do we grow it? When are we. I'll say it this way. Sometimes gains are a result of losses avoided. If you could rewind the clock and avoid 08, 0, 9 and 10, had we just been able to dodge that bullet. Now we can't always. And so one of my jobs as a business owner is to think in terms of risk. So the machine is three things. I got to have a process, I got to have a strategy and a plan. I got to have the people to execute and I got to have some structure so that I pour in gas and this thing goes. It doesn't require me in order to double the size for me to spend two times faster. That's a crank business. And that's a business that if you try to scale it, you wind up tired. So that's a machine.

How do you get your team so engaged? What is your method of creating this?

So Peter Drucker famously said, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Right. What I've come to understand is that I over invested in culture. Culture is less important than I thought. And in fact, a lot of my mistakes was over investing in culture. Let me give you an example. We built an office in Malaysia that made Inc. Magazine top 10 most beautiful offices in the world. This office is a sight to behold. If you check out my Instagram, I just did a video of it. But if you go to the office right now, it's empty. Why? Because everyone wants to work from home. Nobody gives a shit about having one of the most beautiful offices in the world.

And I've been to the office. It's freaking cool.

Yeah. Here's, here's what we do know. And we learned this the hard way. I wished I'd known this sooner. Working from home is a huge competitive advantage. But you've got to combine some of these things together, right? So on LinkedIn, my COO just sent me this data. Only 10% of the job offers on LinkedIn right now allow working from home. 46% of job applicants on LinkedIn are looking for work from home. So we decided to shift with. I was so attached to my office. I mean, imagine having one of the most beautiful offices in the world and then being able to say, you know, fuck it, we're just going to be a work from home company. We did that and it accelerated the company like crazy. Here's why. Because now we are one of those 10% of companies that offer work from home that we are getting almost half of all of LinkedIn's applicants. So now we're able to hire all of these genius people who for some reason or the other do not want to show up in the office. So I have, I have this killer team. For example, my chief product officer just came back from speaking to the Pope about AI. He just won five awards at ces. He has five magazines and five inventions in Time magazine. He has a song coming out this month with Snoop Dogg and Idris Alba. He's my chief product officer. Why? Because he has that freedom, right? He can work from home. And I also give him freedom to work on all of these other projects. So I find smart people and I'm like, okay, be part of our team. You choose your own working hours. I trust you. You can have side gigs. I just want you to really crush it at Mindvalley and I'll give you recognition. And that's how I get many incredible, many incredible people in my team. I have a young girl from Iraq who does videography on my team. On the side, she's making award winning documentaries, but she still wants to be part of a team. So work from home has been incredible. More important than any BS cultural thing such as education perks. People just want their freedom. So Daniel Pink, okay, he wrote several books on really elevating employees. And he said, you want to make your employees really love your company, give them morning autonomy. So most of us, our lives are so shackled up by our work. You gotta be up at 9, cut through traffic, skip your gym, skip time with your kids. So you have to show up at 9:45 for your Damn, like early morning huddle. We don't do things like that. We give our employees morning autonomy. I tell them we're gonna move our huddle to 2.30pm no rush, take your time in the morning. Need to see. Need to make a good breakfast for your kid? No worries. Need to work out in the gym. Need to meditate, Go do that. And people told me I was mad, but that actually creates this incredible amount of loyalty. And so freedom is one of the core values that we give our employees. And the side effect is I have crazy freedom right now. Like, I am probably one of the most free CEOs of a company our size that I know because I'm not bound to any shackles. I choose my own hours as my employees do. I. I get to work from home as my employees do. But we make, but we innovate like crazy. We get incredible results, whether it's our advertising team or our technology team because of OODA looping and because of these other principles. So the ASSD model, that's unique to us. The ASSD model also ensures that we're not outlandishly growing our team. And we're being really focused on revenue per employee.

Yeah.

And I think what's key about what you're saying too, because I think a lot of people could hear this and be like, yes, that's exactly what we're going to do. No more meetings, never have time in the morning. But you have to have really talented people, Right, that can build this stuff and make it all work. And if you don't, that would be very difficult because I've watched Elon Musk's interviews about working, you know, and he's like, you know, someone's got to build shit. You can't build a Tesla from home, you know.

Right.

That sort of thing. And so I, you know, I've really looked at the, the pros and cons in different ways to observe.

I mean, it depends on the business. Right?

Yeah.

So if you're manufacturing, obviously you have a factory floor, people have to be there. But if you're doing stuff that's digital, it's not necessarily true. And this idea that employees are less, less productive when they're working from home, I don't know how true that is. We've not seen it.

Yeah, yeah. No. You know, it's funny to mention Elon.

So we were.

You.

We were at one Elon Musk.

We, we were at SpaceX.

Yeah, we went to SpaceX. I've been there twice. Two meetings with Elon Musk and just small group of people. And you had asked him, what is the biggest contributor to your success? And Elon is kind of an awkward dude. You know, he's got way better speaking than back, back then.

And he said, I can tolerate.

I think he's talking.

He said, I have a high tolerance for pain. Entrepreneurship can be. Is like crawling into an abyss of darkness and chewing glass. Yeah.

He said, I can tolerate more pain than almost anyone I know.

Right.

Which is quite fascinating and.

Right. And I mean, God bless Elon. I think, I think Elon's a great gift to the world. I don't want that. I just. I want to enjoy life. So I have different rules as to how I do it.

No, no, totally, totally. This is great. All right, so for the time we.

Have left available with all the courses.

All the training, all the personal development, everything. Mindvalley right now. And for Genius Network members, I talked.

To them backstage about this.

If you are a Genius Network member, you're going to, you're going to give. You'll send me access, figure out how.

We get it to everyone.

A free membership in mindvalley. So what is that? What does that mean?

Okay, so a membership on the. So mindvalley has many different divisions to it, but a membership on our app. This is the app that Apple has installed as a demo app in all new iPhone 16s and Apple stores. So it gives you access to over 100 of the world's most incredible programs in every aspect of making you a better human. For example, where's Verne Harnish? Right, so Vern has a program on scaling your business to a million. This is for beginner entrepreneurs. That program is on there. At the same time we have a program by Mickey Agrawal, the award winning entrepreneur on how to scale to 100 million. At the same time we have Jim Quick's memory program and speed reading program, the best speed reading program in the world. We have all of these different unique programs from a variety of world class authors. And these programs are based on microlearning. So even Silver Method, the program is on mindvalley. And in 20 minutes a day you can basically advance just about any aspect of your life. The newest program I think is of particular interest to many people in this room. It's by John Lee, he's an incredible digital marketer and it's really about how to use social media for marketing, advertising and branding. Incredible program and it just launched and so all of these programs are available for one subscription fee. We like Netflix for improving your life. You also get access to a thousand hypnotherapies and meditations. These are really high quality audios that can help you boost your confidence, relieve stress, help you sleep better. All of that all in one really beautiful app.

What do you charge?

What's your pricing?

So we charge 500 if you come to the website. We sell a lot through long form VSLs on YouTube. So we had, last year we had the number one and the number three best performing long form ad on YouTube globally. And on those ads you're buying it for between 300 to 400. Gotcha.

What do you think is going to happen with courses in education? How's it going to be, I mean changed? What areas do you really see it changing? Dramatically.

So I think bulk subscriptions like this are going to be how people start consuming content. I don't think courses are going to disappear, but. But what's going to happen is that these courses are going to get a lot more intelligent. Right? So for example, you might be taking Vern's course, but you might also be able to chat with an AI avatar of Vern and get the answers that you need. You might also be able to jump into a community and discuss with other students. Post questions, receive responses. They might be. One thing that we're going to be getting to is every person who comes on our app will understand who you want to be, understand what your motivations are, and have a custom AI coach. And you can choose. Maybe you want Dave Asprey's voice, or you want my voice, or you want Marissa Peer's voice. Have an AI coach guiding you day by day with the right class, the right lesson to help you get to your learning goal.

Okay, and so one last thing. What is the smartest doable thing that we've not talked about that you can share that would help help everyone here make the most money?

Okay, the smartest doable thing. I think what I shared on OODA is probably what I've seen make the biggest impact in businesses. But the smartest doable thing is like, find out when Alex Mendocin is going to pee. No, find one person, right? One person who is a marketer, who's an expert in any type of marketing that you're interested in. Go really deep in their work. So many people come to me going, hey, how? Like, how are you guys doing DSLs? How are you guys doing webinars? You're crushing it. And I tell them it's nonstop focus. Like, before we had the number one and the number three long form ad on YouTube. We released 42 different ads that failed. And it took us one year of learning to get there. The reason my advertising strategies work and demolish the competition is because we stick to one thing and we make mistakes, but we go really deep till we master it. And most people won't go that deep.

Yeah.

So what are the creative ways that you preload your year to get the most out of it for?

It's a great question. So I'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to, like doing as much as I can in a period of time. And I do it because obviously I teach it to people. So it's like, I don't know if you, like, they always say, like, if you want to get wealthy, help other people get wealthy. So it's like, because I'm teaching other people how to get more time back to live a pretty high quality life. It's kind of fun because then I keep asking myself, like, how do I do it? Even better. So my wife and my friends are all like, this is great, Dan. You have so much time for us because I teach it, so I have to do it. But what I have is a process for essentially designing my year. Okay. So the first Step is at the end of last year in December, I review everything I did, I do with my wife, like everything that happened in the previous year. My wife and I do a retreat and we look at it and we ask ourselves, fuck yeah or never again. And it's literally that simple. If it's not a fuck yeah, we just, we won't do it again. And I'm talking like family trips, blah, blah. We just, we just decided, I'll tell you guys, we used to go home because I grew up on the east coast, live on the west coast. We used to go to the east coast every summer for two weeks. This trip, we decided ain't a fuck yeah no more. They can come to us and I'll pay for it. I think you guys should give yourselves permission to do that stuff. Some of you guys are holding on to stuff. You need to create some space. It's not what you're doing, it's what you got to stop doing. Okay, so like we look at all that, then we look at all the requests of things we want to do. Look at our bucket list stuff. Look at, you know, we made a commitment that like every two years we do like this big family trip with all our families. Her family one year, the other year, my family, two countries a year with our kids, all that stuff. And then we have this one page document that I'll give you. It's literally a template. It's got all the months, like days. And we take the list and we put it into the calendar. Visually, I use my pen on my iPad and I highlight. We have different color codes. So like red is Renee and I time my wife Renee. And then like orange is work and green is like my boys trips and like all that stuff. And then we kind of look at it like a piece of art and ask ourselves, does this feel good if we actually did this this year, would it feel good? And then we have the feedback. So like, I remember one year I used to do my vacations before my events. I don't know how many of you guys run events. Show hands. Okay, Imagine going on vacation before your event. Dumbest idea ever. Never occurred to me to sit down and ask myself, does that feel good? So when we were looking at it, I was like, let's move it after. That's all I did. And then, wow, what a crazy idea. Now I go on vacation after my event. So literally after this event, I'm on vacation and I am so proud.

Present.

The team is happy, the customers are filled up. Like, I'm good. To go. So it's like all these little tweaks that I do other things that I do to preload my year, I put all my like business building stuff in there. So I put all my quarterly strategic plannings with my, the key people on my teams. I put all my events in there. I put the things I need to do to recharge, right? So if anybody follows me on social, I do snowboard trip, snow biking trip, mountain bike trip, and they're all spaced out throughout the year. And literally if, and I'm not even joking, if today was my last day, obviously I'd miss my kids and I love my wife, but that would, that'd be the hardest thing, right? I'm good and I've been good for a really long time. It's a regret minimization strategy. For a long time I've said if today was my last day, would I be okay with it? And a long time I couldn't say yes. But now because I know that I've done the time with my kids, spent time with my family, spent time with my teams, you know what I mean? Like, and I just think being a little bit more intentional with a cool tool like the preloaded year, it just changes the game for your ability to get the most out of a 12 month period.

So what was present when you wasn't working that caused it to not work other than alcohol?

Yeah, no, Alcohol was a big one. So I quit drinking 11 years ago. Best decision I ever made in my life. I get emotional because I think of my boys. I grew up around it. We grew like, I mean, I knew better. Dan, you should not drink. Oh no, it's okay. I'll be a social drinker. And if I was drinking, I wouldn't be with my wife and my kids would have to experience a lot of chaos. So I'm just like super grateful that God said stop.

Like.

And so that was a big thing. But honestly it was all the last minute reschedules, the, oh, I forgot to do this with this person. Like, there's all these feedback loops that happen in our lives that should indicate to us that we're missing the mark a little bit. And it doesn't take a lot of work. I'll tell you a stupid example, but it's representative of the issue. Like, I have one of my best friends. I love him, okay? He read the book, said he read the book. I can tell he didn't really read, you know what I mean? Like some people read books. I don't think you really you didn't. And like, we'll go and do something and he'll forget a thing. And I'm like, dude, it's not the first time you forgot your thing to do the thing. And like, he'll have to drive 45 minutes back home to get it. I was like, why don't you have a checklist? And like, I know some of you guys, I don't want to checklist. Cool. Well, then just be okay that you'll always forget a thing. I have a checklist. Does it take a little bit of planning to write down? Like, if Joe says, hey, I want you to do this, I say, ann, add it to our travel schedule and we have like a meeting where we review stuff and we evaluate. You know what I mean? Like, it takes a little bit of planning, but because I do that, I don't have those conversations like, oh, shit, it was my dad's birthday yesterday. Fuck, I'm an asshole. If I knew that, I would have planned, I would have went home. You know what I mean? So, like, for me, it's all the times that I missed something, I wasn't on top of it. That was the feedback loop to say, hey, if you just planned a little bit with a little bit more discipline. Because that's a big character trait I think most people are having a hard time with. They make commitments to themselves in private that they don't keep. Okay, there's two problems this book's going to surface. Two things for people. One is that you'll never earn a penny more than you think you deserve. So the buying back of your time, it's not that you can't afford it, is you don't think you deserve it. And that's not something I can help out in 45 minutes on stage. The second one is that you lack confidence in your ability to figure it out. And the reason you lack confidence is because you don't keep the commitments you make to yourself in private, and you erode that. So until you upgrade your self worth so that you realize your time is worth triple what you're saying it's worth, and you hold the commitments that you make to yourself in private. Discipline, then it's going to be really hard for you to justify buying back your time.

Yeah.

So.

That psychological issue of not thinking you deserve it, what needed to happen in your life in order for you to get to that place?

I think there's levels, right? It's like, do I feel like I deserve to be like, do? I mean, literally, when I think back and I scan, like when I was, you know, 26, after 10 years of being an entrepreneur is like, do I, do I deserve to be a millionaire? Like really, like people say you write it down. Fucking, you know, goals, you know, you read all the books and like what, you know, you write, you write it all down. But as you write it, you don't believe it. Like, that's just true. I can really, I can remember I went to a seminar and I wrote down the goal and I will be a millionaire. But I'm like, will I really? You know what I mean? Like, like I don't know, I'm not that good. And like, okay, I'll write it down. I'll play along. I'll visualize it. So there was like these levels of like, okay, I did it. So sometimes I wonder which comes first, right? Is it the. Well, I know which comes first is it's the person who does the thing that gets the result. So at different levels, what I've changed and this will probably serve a lot of people. I don't talk about this in the book at all is whatever my goal is, whatever the self, like whatever the number is, the outcome I want to do the achievement. I don't focus on just writing that down and hold it in my mind, although I do. I'm a big visualization manifestation energy guy. Like, like bigger than most people know. You ask me, I'll tell you all about it. But what I do now is I ask myself, what's the daily standard that I would have to uphold to make that true? And that's where I've really learned to build my self confidence. And my self worth is. My self worth is not tied to the achievement. My self worth is tied to the activity. And Naval actually said this to me a long time ago. He said, be patient with results and impatient with action. Be patient with results, impatient with action. Which means that if I want to build a 10 million a year business. Cool. What would need to be true on a daily, weekly basis in my schedule? Because really I can tell you what's important to you, right? If I ask you guys, how many is family really important to you? Raise your hands. I don't mean to put you guys under the bus, but here, check this out. If I looked at your bank account and I looked at your spending, would I see family on there? Disproportionate to what you just said, which is number one. And if I looked at your calendar, would I see that stuff in there as well? Disproportionate to what you said, because those are just. Those are just realities. Where do you invest? So, like, I have a family coach, I have a parent coach. Like, why do we invest in Genius Network? And for some of you guys, never even considered inviting somebody to coach you as a family unit, right? They exist. We live in this. Cool. I think it's the coolest thing in the world. And Joe, you know them all. Like, there's literally an expert in anything you could ever want to do, including gifting. Shout out to John. Right? Like, anything that you aspire to be. There's a person that will coach you and you can just pay them, just again. Then there's somebody that's going to teach you how to outsource and delegate and you don't even have to, like, it's not me. You can just hire them and do it.

And there's some people, they just, for the life of them, they want everyone else to pay them, but they don't want to pay for anything.

Those people have a fucking problem.

Oh, yeah, Okay.

I don't know. They're not in this room, but let's say they're out there.

Yeah. You.

How you show up as a buyer is how your customers will show up for you. And if you're struggling, your business is because you're putting out shitty energy. The amount of people we talk to that will not invest in themselves but yet charge a premium for people, invest in them. Fascinating to me. Yeah.

Yeah, completely. There's so many people that are the pontificators of self help that are too cool for school. They only show up if they're on stage, but they won't learn. And you know what, I say this a lot, and I've thought of this a lot because I started my first podcast in 2010. The first time I ever recorded a podcast was 2005, when no one even knew what they were. And it was a podcast. I'm promoting whatever.

They didn't call them podcasts, though.

Well, they had just started. Apple had just started.

Yeah. Okay.

This is Apple, like, literally the first time podcasts came out. So we used it as a promotion for our carpet cleaning super conference. That was in 2005. Then I started I Love Marketing in 2010. And, you know, such a new thing. And it's amazing because I had been doing interviews since 1997, and so I've interviewed over, you know, a thousand people for an hour to 90 minutes that we've just published. It's probably double that in terms of just, if you think interviews, interviews. I've done at Genius Network and stuff. But so it's a lot of stuff. And what I, you know, and along the way, you know, working on my recovery, having all kinds of just challenges throughout, you know, a couple decades of my life and spent over half a million dollars on recovery, and I spent that much, you know, acting out addictively, too, so. So it's kind of a. Yeah. I didn't calculate every aspect of it.

But it was a lot.

And so I did a lot of therapy, and I did. I've done a lot of work and, you know, everything from, you know, plant medicines to, you name it. And what I learned now today is that many of the people, men and women, but a lot of my male friends that are not willing to do the work or go and get real help, what they do instead for is they start a podcast and free therapy. Yeah, exactly. And they interview everyone, and everyone thinks they have their fucking shit together. But if you actually say, have you ever done any real fucking work?

Have you ever.

No. You know, and so they do surf this stuff. And look, everyone's got their own journey. I mean, I'm like, whatever. It's, you know, people do what they do. It's just there's. There's something about, you know, walking the walk and talking the talk. One of the. Joey who gave you a testimonial on. On your book?

Coleman. Yeah.

Yeah. His book's great.

Oh, yeah, yeah. His new one in his previous one.

And I met him, Michael Fishman, I think is downstairs, had him speak at his Consumer Health Summit.

He.

And he said, I think it's him, or I'm not sure who, where, or maybe it's Garrett.

Wait, Gunderson.

Yeah, hold on. Yeah, he's also better.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, it's Garrett. Okay. Those who say. They say those who can't do, teach. But not here. Dan did it, then masterfully taught it. A book on living a life you don't want to retire from and how to live your retirement dream today. So I've known Garrett for close to 20 years, and. But it's true, though, those that can't, teach. There's a lot to be said about people that are out there doing it. And I think, you know, I like it when someone's a convert of their own system. I think there's a different result when you actually walk the path and you figure out how to do it, and then you're able to transfer that to other people. And I think, you know, and here's the thing. On his book, oftentimes I'll buy books for everybody in Genius Network. I mean, they invest a lot of money in this. It's, you know, it's not that big of a deal to buy a book. What I'd like to do with this one and what I'd like to do with John, who I'm going to interview tomorrow, is I want you to buy the book. This is also on audio, if you prefer audio, buy the book. And then if you just read the book and just send me like literally an insight, you can email it to euniceopolish.com and just like, here's the big aha and the big insight that I got out of it for one. I'd love to share that with Dan. I'd love for him to see what everyone's perspective. I want you to up to your own fruition, go and buy the book and share that. And then I will make a donation to Genius Recovery in your name as a result of it, for the cost of the book, just because I want everyone to do it. I just don't want to give this book out and say, yeah, go read. Because I know all of you probably buy books at 10 times the speed of your rate of ingesting them. And to some of you it's, you know, so. But this one really is a good roadmap and I think you'll learn a lot.

So.

And I think we can have a future discussion on this too, because it's really important. But the foundational stuff that Dan teaches is great, especially for highly successful entrepreneurs, which all of you are.

So let me take you back to 1997. I had just joined EO, the entrepreneur organization. I failed out of high school. I talked my way into college, only to then drop out of college, 14 schools. The only diploma I ended up with was kindergarten. True story. And what did I learn? I learned that I loved to learn, but not in school. So I approached the Entrepreneur Organization. You needed a million in revenue to get in. Bingo. I'm there. After eight years of slow growth, I'm now joining this organization of great smart people that have shared passions of growth. But what I started to do, I made my first mistake entering into that group is I started comparing myself to others. I started to look around and say, ah, businesses way bigger than 1, 800 got junk more glamorous than garbage removal. And I just thought, who am I? No high school education, not a lot of money, maybe not a lot of brains. I was stuck. And I really started to go in a bit of a doom loop, downward Spiral. And I questioned what I wanted to do and how I could even get there. So September 17, 1997. I go to my parents little cottage on the water. I pull out a sheet of paper and I sit down. It was a dock similar to this stage. I sat down on the edge and I said, brian, you're an optimistic person. Stop thinking of this doom loop. Think of pure possibility. What could the future look like, feel like, and act like? If only I could imagine it. So I took out the sheet of paper and I feverishly wrote. It was a Jerry Maguire type moment. We will be in the top 30 metros in North America by the end of 2003. I said we'd be the FedEx of junk removal, clean shiny trucks for any friendly uniform drivers. We'd even be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. I took the sheet of paper and I was out of my doom loop. I had chills and shivers of just going, wow. I can actually see the picture that was in my brain now. Down in writing. I started to share it with others. Two interesting things happened. Number one, it separated people into two camps. I had employees who said, brian, I don't know what kind of hope dope you're smoking, but good luck with that. And they left. I had another half that said, this is really compelling. I love your story, I love what you see, and I want to be a part of it. And those people stayed and became a part of it. It became the most powerful recruiting tool I could ever create. How did we do top 30 metros? We were 90 days out from making it happen. When one employee comes up to me and said, Brian, we're at 28 of 30 metros. We're missing Pittsburgh and Milwaukee. Cameron and I went screaming through the office, posters up everywhere. Who do you know in Pittsburgh? Who do you know in Milwaukee? We made the top 30 happen. We made Oprah happen. We made 96% of what was in that painted picture happen.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out. And if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe's free book and you.

Can get a copy there now.

Why science would say that it's your reticular activating system. We all know when we're in an airport, we're stressed, we're about to miss a plane. We hear our name over the loudspeaker, you pay attention, your mind pays attention. As Dan Sullivan says, your eyes and your ears focus on what your brain needs to know. A painted picture tells people what is important, not just the entrepreneur, but what do you want every person in your company to be aligned around when they're faced with tough decisions, what are they zoning in on? What's their North Star? So we made these things happen. The company started to grow. Cameron and I set a hundred million dollar painted picture and we looked another five years out together. And what was interesting about that time was we had to make decisions moving quickly. We needed to know that everybody was aligned. Now with Cameron, I remember he would say, brian's the vision guy. He came up with 100 million. I'm the executor. I'm just going to reverse engineer and make all the magic happen. Sort of true. But I think Cameron did not give himself credit at the time. He knew a lot more about vision and how to make it happen than he let on. So I said, cameron, you say you can't think about vision. You can. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, money's not an object, where would you go? I don't remember his response, but he set it out quickly. He told me what the beach looked like, who was with him, the cold corona in his hand. He described everything about that dream vacation. And I said, see, you just need someone to ask you questions, and vision can happen. One of the most grateful gifts that I think Cameron ever gave to me and to my companies is the ability to ask probing questions. In creating a painted picture, you just need someone to pull it out from within you. It's already in your heart, it's in your mind. What do you want? So let me take you from business to a personal story. Get vulnerable here for a second. I don't normally share this with big crowds, but I was with the Same woman for 19 years, high school sweetheart. I questioned myself in and out of that relationship a few times. Ten years later, we get married, we have a baby together. I was a total jerk and I leave the marriage right after having a baby. It was the right decision at the time for me. I was a total jerk. But my life started to fall apart in many ways and it started to affect my business until Dan, one of my entrepreneur buddies, said to me, you know, you got a great painted picture for your business. I bet you don't have one for your personal life. What are you going to do about it? So I retreated and started writing one out for my Personal life. And I know that you share painted pictures with your loved ones and those around you. So I remember after I wrote it, I shared it with Cameron. Here's my vision. And one line stood out to him. It was about my ex wife saying that we will always be best friends and cheerleaders in each other's courts. Cameron said, lisa hates you. She will always hate you. There's no way this will ever happen. And I said, well, it's in my vision. I believe I see it. I'm going to work my butt off to make it happen. And sure enough, I did. Proof of that is when I went dating and looking for my next marriage, my last marriage. I got out there and I was tired of dating. So I started to write down everything I was looking for. Personality, interest, height, eye color, everything. And I get a phone call from my ex wife, Lisa. We're now great friends and cheerleaders in each other's courts. And she says, so Brian, I know you've been looking for someone. I found her. I said, my ex wife is not going to set me up on a blind date. I'm sorry. She pushed me for a year. We went on the blind date. I actually looked at my list the night after my blind date and went, holy crap, that is magic. So painted picture. I ended up getting introduced from my ex wife to my new wife. Couldn't be happier, found my soulmate. Life's all great and works like magic. Let me give you one last example to conclude on. On a business side, we were 2012. Cameron was out of the company at this point in time. We had a great growth trajectory together. But then the financial meltdown happened. 0809, I had a failed COO I brought in that didn't work out and things were rough. My franchise partners lost faith in me and it was 2012. We did a conference in Vegas, brought everyone together, about 600 people. And Cameron and I had this concept, lean into the future. It's leaning into five years ahead to see what things look like, feel like, act like in creating a painted picture. So as a leader, I had to go out and create the next painted picture when people didn't believe about growth. So I said, we will double our business in five years time. And I'll read you something I wrote that I read out as I walked. Just checking in on Facebook. Where is it? Okay, so I walk out on stage to get people to lean into the future with me. I carried a surfboard, full size. I was dressed in total surfer gear. We had Hawaiian music Playing we greeted everyone at the door in leis. People had mai tais. Hawaiian shirts was mandatory to get in. And I read this. I got everybody to close their eyes. But you don't have to do this. I said, you are sitting by the beach, 12ft from the shore, watching the sunset on the horizon. You feel the warm, inviting Hawaiian breeze. You hear the sounds of celebration all around you. Music, shared laughter, the clinking of glasses. Surrounded by some are your closest friends and family, you pause to reflect on the pride you're feeling. In every entrepreneur's journey, there is a dream. A dream of what is possible, a vision of what success looks like. You have achieved yours, you have doubled your business, and the journey isn't over. I then read our 2016 painted picture calling for another double. And what happened? People told me after my ties, at the end of that night, they didn't really see it. They said, it's great that you got a little Hawaiian theme, Brian, and you spent some money there. But I don't see it. I said, you will. And we read it together as a company every quarter until we made it happen. How did we finish? 224 million in revenue at the end of that year. We were in Hawaii, and when I was on stage, I turned around and I said, holy crap, we are 12ft from the shore. I can hear clinking of glasses. I had nothing to do with organizing the event, but everything I had read out and envisioned had come true. So I think when Joe asked us all, do we think we've got the power to change the world? We can all change the world with one small idea planted in your mind, put in paper as a painted picture, spreads and magic happens.

You're one of the most successful media moguls in the world today. So what entrepreneurial lessons could you share with everyone here as it relates to what you've discovered and thrive that would just reduce a lot of suffering in their lives and give them what you define as the real success, the ability to focus on the metrics, the third metrics.

So I think recognizing that we are our most valuable resource, you know, so often entrepreneurs somehow feel that they can just keep going and going and going and we forget the need to renew ourselves. That's what I did the first two years of Hoffman's life. And honestly, I can say without doubt, we are now nine years old, that when I changed that I was infinitely more effective. Because after all, as leaders in a business, our greatest value added is being clear about where we are going and being able to see the icebergs before they hit the Titanic. It's not micromanaging. And when we are exhausted, it's easier to micromanage because it's transactional, and that's what we gravitate towards. So for me, operating as an entrepreneur from a place of renewal. And again, I'm not doing that 100%. I'm not saying any of that is 100%, but I'm saying I can say now that 90% of the time I'm there. And you said something very important, Joe, which is don't try to do it through willpower. Willpower is too weak. It's like I try to do it in small steps, and then you see the reward and it becomes a magnet that draws you. Like now I've gotten to the point where I really, really do not like myself when I'm exhausted and burnt out, I feel I'm overreactive. I'm not clear. I'm foggy. So I don't like that place. While before I was oblivious, now I'm very acutely aware of it. So at the Huffington Post, for example, I've instituted nap rooms so people can have naps in the middle of the afternoon. At first, people were rolling their eyes like, who is going to be seen walking into a nap room in New York City? Now they're perpetually full. People are asking for a third one. And I have a couch in my office, and when I'm tired, I have a nap. And I used to. I have a glass office. I used to close the curtain. And now I don't. Because again, I think you lead by example. It's like sending the message, it's okay to be seen napping on the job. And you know what was so funny? I didn't tell you that, but when I was in London, I went to speak at the US Embassy in London, and I was asked the question about the nap rooms, and the ambassador was there, and somebody said, well, it would be great to have naprooms in the embassy. And the ambassador said, okay, let's do it. And the Washington Post wrote about it, and the State Department put out a statement saying, state Department employees do not sleep on the job. And I thought, well, that's the problem with the US Government. They don't realize that sleeping on the job, as they put it, that is recharging, would actually make them better at their job. They're operating in the middle ages of pre scientific delusions about what makes success and effectiveness. And it was just funny to see it, like, in black and white.

You know, I have a friend, Dr. Edward Hollowell, who's, you know, just a top ADD ADHD psychiatrist. And he has the same where if you don't manage modern life, it will manage you. And he's talked about how we have almost a cultural add where it's become so normal for people to be kind of crazed that you really have to, you know, you're not going to go out to the world and get a lot of support. This is something you actually have to build on yourself. I mean, your definition of success taken to many people are like, well, you're crazy. What are you talking about? And so you're. But what you're doing is you're wanting to just get people first to recognize and be aware of it and then shift that message.

And that's why we all need what we call a thrive body. At least one kind of member of your tribe that you can. I mean, my first tribe body is my sister Agapest Asinopoulos, who is here with me. And it's just a great support to have.

Who's funnier out of the two of you? Is she funnier than you or what do you think?

She's everything nicer and funnier and everything and wonderful. And I feel very blessed, you know, that we share this journey together because it's just amazing to see how what a difference it makes. I mean, let's say if you are tempted to binge watch House of Cards instead of going to sleep, you can call your thrive buddy and they can talk you down.

It's called a sponsoring sponsor.

Exactly. I'm trying to be a little less kind of addiction language driven. Although I totally love it and I think the AA model is fantastic. I write in the book about my own daughter in her last year at Yale getting involved in drugs and she's now been sober for almost three years and how much value she got from aa And I wrote about it with her permission because I'm hoping it can help other families that are going through similar problems.

Well, you know, I like bringing that up and maybe I talk about addiction. I maybe intermingle it more on a personal level because coming, you know, from being a former, you know, heavy drug user, When I was 18 years old, you know, I weighed 105 pounds. I think I told that story to you. But you know, the thing that Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach has this whole model of who do you want to be a hero to in the world? And you know, I thought about that a lot after many conversations with Dan. And I want to Be a hero to entrepreneurs because I think entrepreneurs are the ones that make things happen. They're the ones that provide jobs, they're the ones that do innovation, they're the ones that create solutions. This room is filled with them. I want to be entrepreneurs, a hero to entrepreneurs and to addicts because addicts endure incredible suffering. And so some of the greatest people on the planet are addicts. And when Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow, he talked about the neural pathways in the human brain, the same ones that the greatest artists, entertainers, entrepreneurs used to be in a state of flow are also the same neuropathways that an addict uses for self destruction. And I mean you can see it recently with Robin Williams, incredible genius redirected in pain and depression and stuff. And so a term in addiction in like AA or any 12 step group for that matter, they use the halt state. You know, halt don't make a decision when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And what's great is, you know, thrive is about how to not get into that halt state. So you don't want to make a decision when you're in a halt state. But part of it is just setting your life up so you minimize any times that you get in those because you just make bad decisions.

And when we get there to catch ourselves and course correct quickly, we are going to get there. I mean the truth is that nobody while we're on this planet is going to be in a thriving state all the time. The important thing to recognize is that we can course correct really fast so we don't have to be off center as long as we have traditionally been off center. We can return to center really quickly.

Yeah, well, I'm going to, in just a minute we're going to do some Q and A with the audience. So if you have a question you want to ask Arianna, think of it and then go up to the mic. What I'd like to ask you is this is a really important message and certainly I've been behind it and I've loved your book and I've wanted to share this message with as many people as I could, which is why we've done the interview and I've, you know, we've gotten a lot of people involved with this because it's important. I mean this will reduce suffering and I really want to reduce suffering for entrepreneurs because these are great people doing amazing things, but they don't do great work when they're burnt out, when they're exhausted, when they're not rejuvenating. And what's the whole point of making profit if you can't enjoy the profit? And so what could, what, how could we best help you with your goals and objectives with this movement? I mean, what sort of support can we help you? Because I think collaboratively, you've got a huge platform, but we also are sitting in a room with some really sharp, brilliant people. So what are your thoughts on that? How can we help you?

Well, first of all, thank you for your support and for really believing in the message. I would love to invite all of you to write on the Huffington Post about your experiences, either your experiences with burnout or wake up calls, all your experiences with how you thrive and how you are prioritizing when you are prioritizing your own renewal and recovery and regeneration. And to make it super easy for you to bypass the growing Huffington Post bureaucracy, I will give you my email address so you can send it to me and we can set you up with a password and you can block whenever you want. So It's Ariana with 1R and 2 NSAffingtonpost.com and then what we do is we translate a lot of what comes on the subject in all our other editions because it's a global phenomenon and we want not just the States, but people around the world to be exposed to it. And I'm finding there is nothing more powerful than sharing our stories. You never know who is going to be moved by JJ stories or Tim stories, or people are touched by different stories. So my story may touch certain people and your story may touch other people. And I feel traditionally they say that people don't change except through pain. I want us to change that paradigm. Why should it be so? Why should, should you all have your own wake up calls, those who haven't had them yet? Why can't you learn from mine? And that's kind of really my hope that we can accelerate a global shift that's already happening. The global shift is already happening. 2013 was an amazing year. It was the year when CEO after CEO came out not as being gay, but as being meditators. You know, it was really amazing. I was talking to Ray Dalio, who is the founder of Bridgewater, the biggest hedge fund, and he said to me, I've been meditating for 45 years. I said, why are you just saying it now? And the assumption before now was that if you're meditating, you're kind of a little New Agey, flaky, kind of vaguely Californian, and not really Serious. And now that's changing.

Well, I do TM every day.

Yeah.

And he actually credits meditation for his. The number one thing for his most success.

Yeah.

Which is awesome.

Yes. I was at a conference recently and I was asked to lead a meditation before my session. And instead, Ray Dalio was there, asked him to lead the meditation. And it was really great because this was a group of hardcore business people. And having Ray Dalio there say, you know, meditation has been the foundation of my success. And explaining why, because he could see more clearly, because he could see the icebergs before they hit the Titanic. And connected with that is the fact that this is a global phenomenon, that all around the world, countries, business people are taking steps. Some are pioneers, as it always happens, and ahead of the curve, and others are laggards, and they're going to be the last to catch on. But it's happening everywhere. But I feel with this room and the power and creativity in this room, we can help accelerate this global shift.

Everyone here has their business that has their ambitions. They want to build and grow it. They, you know, there's certain levels of the person in this room will endure more risk, more pain, more navigation. There's incredible resourcefulness in here, and there's a lot of. In the midst of all that, there's a lot of angst. There's a lot of navigating things that they don't know how to do, and a lot of decisions you have to make with very either fractured focus or just not having a lot of information. So I'd love to, if you were to advise everyone here on decision making in things that you have learned that were fundamental in building and growing not only your own business, your first business, but you're now in the position all the time where you're having to guide and direct people that you can't learn everything about their business. So there's some fundamentals that you have learned and that you employ deploy that have helped you build and grow. So I'd love to have you speak about that as the business advice that I'm going to ask you about as the person like, you know, how do you. This fame, how do you deploy? I'll ask you some of the things you're doing, but, like, how do you deploy this fame and this leverage? Because you've now got Daymond John, the investor, the guy that looks at businesses and helps build them. Then you have the. The brand of Daymond John. So you've got these in. A lot of people in the room here have those two Things they have their life and then they have this Persona that what the world views them as.

Yeah, I look at growing the business as the business. The biggest mistakes I made is actually when I had money because I didn't trust my ego. I didn't trust my gut, and my ego got in the way. And I would think that that's why I wrote the Power of Broke is because I always say, well, the person looks good or I can make a lot of money or I'm Damon John or I should do this. And I made the decisions because of. Purely because the ego didn't trust my gut. And out of all those, If I did 10 of those things, eight of them I lost on, and the two that I didn't lose on, I'll go, thank God, I'm out of it. So it's just, you know, you can't necessarily articulate what your gut is saying, but it's not up to anybody else. It's really up to you and trusting your gut. I've also learned that prior to doing any kind of business or going anywhere, the biggest amount of investment is the time and education in it. Prior on, what do you want to do? What part of it do you want to do? What will you need? What do? What do you not? Basically a SWOT analysis, right? But being really honest with yourself about the people. Next step is anybody that I bring in or meet, we date, you know, 30, 60, 90 days. Even when you bring in new employees or team members, you have that oddness. If you don't say, hey, I'm bringing you in. We're going to start doing business 90 days, period. If they feel that they are not stepping up, they'll quit before that. If not, you will have that time where you sit down, you redefine the relationship in whatever capacity you want to. Also, the way that I hire people, if I try to do this, I say, this is your job and it's three pillars. The next one is you jump in where you feel you can add value, you can't add value. Don't worry about it. And if you do both of those really good, then we will do something together. Because there's so many a type personality people I do. You know, Batman always needs Robin, right? But the good Robins out there, they don't feel that they're being rewarded. And sometimes reward is acknowledgement. But more than likely, they. They want whatever they want out of life is you find that they'll be stolen or they'll become your competitor, right? And then last thing is what is in it for the person you're serving, meaning a team member? Because I'll give you an example. I had somebody who was a great salesperson for many years at another job. I brought him over and I was offered.

It was her.

And I was offering her more and more money. She wasn't closing deals, and I was wondering why. And I realized the basic thing she loves to do is her. Her little brother, who lived in Thailand, was old enough, 15 or 18 years old that she wanted to travel with him. And that was a great incentive. So I said, listen, I'm connected around the world with hotels, but I'll give you a little more time off. I will give you these credits to help you fly with him places. And her sales tripled because the motivation people all believe. People think often that the motivation of why somebody's doing a job is the same reason we're doing it. No, it's not. You may be doing a job because it's your bridge between this and becoming a doctor. You may be doing a job you want to get out of the house. You want to feel of value. You may do a job because of money. You may be doing a job because you want to get paid to understand this business in the future. But we too often don't ask what is the driving force of that person working for us?

Right.

Okay.

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