3 Diagrams That Could Change Your Life Forever: The Secret to Time Mastery with Dan Sullivan

The basis for my three diagrams is an ability that everybody is born with. And most people don't look at this as an ability. They don't actually look at this as a skill. But it's three time senses. And the three time senses are called past, present and future. So how many of you are familiar with past, present, present? How many of you are shaky about one of them or the other? And what I find from coaching entrepreneurs is that there tends to be frustration with the future and impatience with the present and a lot of regret about the past. Okay? So there's a weirdness that I notice that everybody has with these three time senses. And my feeling is that the number.

One problem why people have trouble with.

Past, present and future is, is they don't see them as capabilities. So if you think when a baby is born, there are some built in potential capabilities that come with just being human. And for example, we now know that children are wired for mathematics, that in a very, very short time, children begin to be mathematical in relationship to their surroundings. And it actually shows up very early, like three or four months. Children can start to distinguish and actually start differentiating things in terms of numbers. And, you know, and so we have that build in ability. And of course, how many of you have discovered that some people are better at math than others? How many? I mean, I mean, you're probably better at math than some people, but there's people who are way better than you are at math. The other one is language. We have hard wiring to be able to speak, okay? And so language comes to it, we don't have it right away. And it makes a huge difference, the environment that you grow up with, whether you get language or not. And for example, they find children who are born in very, very disadvantaged neighborhoods in the United States. Inner city neighborhoods never develop the future, the future tense of the verb. They only speak in terms of the present. And so if you don't have a word, you also don't have the idea, okay? So words are actually ideas. And so children who are very disadvantaged and do not have people talking about the future actually don't develop a sense of the future. On the other hand, children who are born into very educated families of goal setting parents tend to develop that future sense very, very powerfully, okay? And they start thinking powerfully, and it's a reinforcement. And if it doesn't happen early, it's very, very hard for it to happen at all. Spatial recognition, three dimensionality, we're born with that. The one I would like to talk to you about though, has to do with looking at the past as a skill and a capability, looking at the present as a skill and a capability, and the future as a skill and a capability. And I say that if you get these three capabilities right, then all the other capabilities that you develop are right also. And so what we're going to do is we'll just put these up on the screen. So we have past, present and future. And what I'm going to show you is three diagrams. So the three diagrams, one of them is called the Freedom Cycle. The second one is called the Captivity cycle. And then I have a really neat one at the end, which is called the four Cs. And I'm going to show you the Freedom cycle first, because this is the right way of actually arranging the time senses of past, present and future, so that these three time senses really work for you. They're always on your side. And then I'm going to show you the captivity cycle, which is, I would say that the vast majority of people on the planet are actually have a relationship to time that I call the captivity cycle. And you will know people personally who are involved in the captivity cycle. And when I give you the conditions, you will immediately have dozens and dozens of examples of individuals and groups and organizations and even countries that are in the captivity cycle. And then I'm going to show you the four conditions for actually creating a really great future. And this is also a capability, and so that more and more you have the ability to actually use the past, present and future in a way that constantly creates a bigger and better future. So the right way to proceed with the time senses, we always have to start in the present, and you start in the present and you move to the future. And this is called choosing. So a distinction I like to make. I'm very passionate about words. And so when I was about 15 years ago, my team, not knowing what else to get me for Christmas, actually got me the Oxford English Dictionary, which consists of 20 volumes, and each volume is 1,000 pages. So the S's in the Oxford English Dictionary cover two and a half books. It's the biggest letter in the English Alphabet is 2 1/2 volumes of S. But one of the things I notice is that there's two words that people use interchangeably. One of them is choose, and the other one is decide. And I notice when people talk about choose and decide, it's like they're equal words, you know, they choose, they decide. But one of the things you have to understand about choose is that choose can only be used in relationship to the future. It's a future sense. You can't choose the past, you can only choose the future. And so the thing that's really important here is that choosing comes from the inside. It's not dictated from the outside. Okay? So people who choose the future are doing it on the basis of their imagination. They're doing it as a result of the life they've lived and capabilities they've developed. And every human choice is kind of unpredictable before it happens. And it's very, very important that the very basis of creativity, of creating new things actually comes from a very, very strong capability of choosing the future. So people who are very creative people sort of say, well, how can. Where do the ideas come from? The ideas don't come from anywhere except an act of choosing a bigger and better future. And the reason why they create something new is because they need to create something new to satisfy a chosen future that's bigger and better what they have than what they have right now. Then what happens when you choose the future? Now you're in a position to do something with the past. So a lot of times people will come to me because I'm really good at giving advice. And when I was six years old, I was very good at giving advice to people who were older than me. And one of. I must have got onto this time since very early. And people say I'm having a hard time making a decision. How many of you right now have a decision? And it's a bit hard, it's a bit hard right now. You're having a hard time getting your mind around it. And what I've discovered is you cannot make a good decision in the present. It's impossible to make a good decision in the present. You have to first of all choose a much bigger and better future. At a date in the future, let's say three years, we can decide. Decide is a very interesting word. It comes from a Latin word. And the C I, D, E part of decide. We have other words like that in the English language. And one of the words we have in the English language is homicide. We have suicide. We have fratricide, we have pesticide, okay? And what it means is to kill. So the C I, D, E means to kill. So that when you decide, you're actually saying something's okay and something has to die and it's an actual killing off. So what I say, just to make it positive, is that what you actually decide is what part of the past gets to come along. What part of the past Given the new, bigger and better future that you've chosen, what part of the past gets to come along? How many of you like that sound rather than, this can't come with me. That's sort of a negative. But you're actually deciding what part of the past gets to come along and how many of you have parts of the past that if you create a new, bigger and better future, there's definitely parts of your past that get to come along. Any idea what the two main things that always get to come along from the past? What would be one thing that always gets to come? Yeah, well, knowledge. Yeah, I put it down. So knowledge, learning. But I say skill. Do skills always get to come along? How many of you would develop a skill and then leave it behind? No, no, but we always bring the skills and how many of your achievements you actually bring forward. So one of the best ways to really clean up your past is just see your past in terms of skills and achievements. Just see it. And you say, well, what if my past is really worthwhile? And I said, well, any part of your past that represents a skill is. Is a good part of your past. And any part of your past that's an achievement is a good part of your past. So once we're there now, we've done two things here. We have to choose the future. Okay, so we're choosing the future. So it's being created bigger and better. And with that picture now in our mind, visualizing our mind of the bigger and better future, now and only now, are we actually in a good position to make good decisions. So we often wonder, why do people make bad decisions? And it's because. Because they're trying to decide in the present. You cannot decide in the present. You can only decide in the future. From the standpoint of the future, once you're in the past, then we can do something else. Now we can move from the past to the past to the present. And what we get to do now is utilize our past. So I'm a big deal that my past is very valuable because I get to use things from the past, skills and skills and achievements to arm myself in the present to actually take the actions to create the bigger and better future. Okay, now, so this is really, really interesting because this is innovation. So a lot of people say, well, how are these creative people creative? And I said, they choose a bigger and better future. No, no, no. But I mean, how does it actually happen? How's it actually happen? You know, I've listened to all the CDs, I've read all the creativity manuals. I can't quite get a handle on what it is they're doing. I said, they're choosing a bigger and better future. Yeah, yeah, I know, but I'm talking about creativity. I said, they're choosing a bigger and better future. I can do this for 25 years. They're choosing a bigger and better future. No, no, but I want to be really creative. Yeah. Choose a bigger and better future. It's got to be something else. Got to be something else. No, it's just choosing a bigger and better future. And I'm going to show you, in my third diagram, the four Cs, how you get really good at choosing. Because a lot of people are very, very bad at choosing. Very, very bad at choosing. I call this the freedom cycle, okay? And I've gotten permission from Harley Davidson to actually use this lang language. So it's a freedom cycle. And that is that the feeling of using your time senses to innovate gives a very powerful sense of freedom, okay? And the freedom shows up. The freedom shows up. Freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and freedom of purpose. And this is why you became an entrepreneur. I've been coaching entrepreneurs for 40 years, and people say, you know, how can people just do that for money? And I said, well, they're not doing it for money. They're doing it for freedom, okay? It's just that in our world, freedom costs a lot of money and they have to have the money to buy their freedom for them. So that's innovation. And what it is, it's related to abundance, okay? So abundance is the constant feeling that you're innovating a bigger and better future and that your life is becoming more and more innovative.

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'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

This is out of want. Why are you doing this? You're doing it because you want to. And why do you want to? You want to because you want to. No, no, no. I mean, but what's the reason why you want it? It's because you want it. And people say, no, no, no, there has to be a reason why you want it. And I said the reason why you want it is you want it, okay? And this seems like a very simple statement, but most people don't want things because they want them. They want things because. And then they tell a story about why they want it. And from the moment they start telling the story about why they want something, they're pure fiction writers. They're just making it up on the spot to justify why they want something. The only reason why we want things is because we want them. Well, this is just going to eliminate the entire psychological industry, psychiatric industry, because they're saying, yes, but why do you want it? You want it because you want it. And the truth is, it's a creative act. And you cannot psychoanalyze a creative act. It just happens and it's creative. Okay, so this is the freedom cycle. Now I'm going to do the captivity cycle. You can say boo.

Boo.

Okay, so here's the thing. This is what happens. They still start off with the same three potential skills, but what happens is when they're in the present and they get the notion that they would like to have a bigger and better future. Okay? So you take Joel's prescription, Joel Kahn's prescription, that you can have a picture in every health indicator that you have, that you would have a higher performance. It would be a bigger, better world, or what Robert talked about of people really, truly being breakthrough leaders. They have a high sense of energy and they have a high sense of engagement. They have a high sense of empathy. They have a high sense of productivity and creativity. So they have these five things, and all of us can visualize it, okay? But people who are in the captive or in the captive cycle have a hard time visualizing, because the moment they even start to visualize that it's going to be different from what they've been doing up until now, they immediately get clicked right back to the past. It's almost like they get a thought, I'm really thinking about bigger and better. And they get an email. And the email says, what are you doing? Let's come in on Monday and talk about this new better thing and bring counsel with you. This is the justification board in your mind. How many of you. The justification board. And the justification board says, we notice that you're thinking this thought bigger and better. What's that all about? You got a problem? I mean, is there some complaint that you have about the way things are now? And you have to understand that people who. The vast majority of people, the moment they get a new thought, a new possibility in their mind, immediately, their past, which is completely unionized, their past, which is Completely unionized, says, why don't we talk about this? Why don't we look it over, bring him in for a couple days, he'll forget about it.

And.

Every time you come to the justification board and you have to tell lies, because that's what happens. See, the justification of what you want is a lie. And you get used to lying about what you want, okay? And you feel it. I mean, when you lie, you lose power. I mean, it's just one of the things about lying is that you lose power because you're removing yourself from reality. You're not telling the truth about the reality. And there's a loss of confidence, there's a loss of power in that. But not only that. That becomes the dominant experience in your life, is that if you even so much as have a glimmer of something bigger and better, you're right back to the justification for it in the past. What happens then? Is that the past? So you're choosing the past, you're not choosing the future. And then the past decides what you get to do in the present. So your past gets to decide what you do in the present. And the only acceptable thing to do in the present is to utilize your time to reinforce the past. How's that feel? No, no, no, no, no. I mean, so how many have you. How many of you have done this? I do it. I do it. I mean, I'm, you know, I teach this stuff, but I still do it. But in the major parts of my life, not so much. I do it with minor things, you know, I mean, we all. None of us are 100% anything. We're all doing this. But how many of you know people around you who do this? That the moment you would suggest a new idea, what happens?

Whoom.

What's that all about? What are we doing here? So the big thing is that the vast now, the freedom cycle really requires a lot of individual effort. This is totally supported by society. This one is totally supported because society basically wants to stay the way it is. That's why that's a stable society. So all of you here are change agents in one part of human life. I mean, this is really what Genius Network is about. You would not come into Genius Network, you would not be a member of Genius Network if you weren't a change agent in some part of human life related to individuals, related to organizations and everything. But it's going to require people to have a vision of themselves that's bigger and better than it is right now. Okay? So the thing is that if you're going to be better and better as a change agent. You better really, really get the freedom cycle down as a very powerful skill inside yourself because you will not be able to help people when they say, I can't meet tomorrow. I'm at the justification board. I'm at the justification board. Can we make it Thursday, 10 years from today? Anyway, so this is repetition. It's repetition and it's a constant repetition. Now here's. It has some very, very interesting. Has some very interesting connections into society. I believe that the lifetime experience of not being able to get out of the repetition cycle is the basis of all addictions, especially drug addictions. And the reason is that people really, really want to have this sense of innovation. They're really passionate. I mean, it's something that people. It's such a powerful idea of the ability to feel that you're creating something really new and really different and really.

Better.

Is such a powerful feeling. And people have had this feeling. I mean, you know, it may have been accidental and it may be when you were five years old, but you have that feeling of innovation. And your circumstances as you become an adult doesn't allow you to have that. But drugs will give you the experience for a short period of time that you're actually in that innovative mode, you know, that you're actually in that innovative existence. And there's all sorts of addictions, but it's an artificial way of actually creating the sense that you're innovating. But then of course, it doesn't last and then it's destructive, it's self destructive. So what happens here is this ability to actually engage with the future for people who are in the repetition cycle is actually cut off. And after a while they just can't really, really do it. Okay. And you can say, well, anybody can turn them around. And I said, well, no, you can rearrange the wiring in your brain so much over such a long period of time that, you know, you might have a religious conversion and you know, you might have deep psychotherapy, shock treatment or that you might get a chance to do it, but it's not going to be self created. You're probably not going to make it. And a lot of people are in that. They're in that degree. Okay. So this is the captivity cycle and it's spoo. Freedom cycle, captivity cycle. Okay, okay. And this is about scarcity. And what it is is the scarcity of being able to create greater freedom for yourself. It's a profound scarcity that a lot of people have it's time. They have a scarcity of time, they have a scarcity of money, they have a scarcity of relationship and they have a scarcity of purpose. And so they're driven strictly from their past. And it's about need.

So.

Very, very interesting. One of the most dominant models of the last 50 years has been Maslow. And I disagree with Maslow totally. The first time I saw Maslow, I totally disagreed. It because it's about needs. And needs are dictated from the outside. They're not dictated, they're not created on the inside. So you've got survival, you've got safety, you've got belonging, you've got achievement, and you've got self actualization. But notice the structure that Maslow used. It was a pyramid. And when I was born in 1944, society was pyramids, Government was a pyramid, big unions were a pyramid, corporations were a pyramid. And it was kind of like this pyramid. Society was created as a reaction to the Great Depression and the Second World War, which, you know, my parents lived through that, some of your parents lived through that. And just to have the basic things that you needed to live was a real win. And so everybody thought about needs. You know, you got to satisfy your needs. We don't live in that world. Okay. And it's probably why things are kind of confusing today, because we've switched over to a world where wanting is possible. As a matter of fact, wanting more and more things. Okay, yeah, but why do you need that? Well, I don't need it. I want it. Okay, why, you know, why does Stephan need to be on a boat for six months? He doesn't. He wants to be on a boat for six months. Why does he want it? Because he wants it. See the distinction? How many of you are really grasping the distinction here between needing and wine? Now I'm going to tell you something. I gave this talk at JJ Virgin's Mindshare in August. And afterwards, after I gave the speech, I had about 20 entrepreneurs come up to me to tell me how much of an impact they had that my talk had on them. And they were all female, Everyone was a female. Okay, there were men there, but all the women came up and talked to me about them and they said, I can't tell you how much this wanting just because you want it is liberating. And I asked about this started happening. I had three or four of them because we have ever since the beginning, whereas there's just as many successful women entrepreneurs in the marketplace as there are men entrepreneurs. Our percentage in Strategic coach has always been between 15 and 20% women, okay? So I started asking him this question. I said, I'm going to say something and see if you agree. Me, agree with me. Really successful women are as successful as they need to be. Really successful entrepreneurial women are as successful as they need to be. But really successful men entrepreneurs are as successful as they want to be. So you ask a woman, well, why do you need to do that? And what happens? They say, well, I've got a family to feed. I've got this. It's a justification of why they're ambitious, okay? So I just want to say that, and my feeling is that this is culturally induced, that women are really forced far, far more than men to justify their success in standing out as an individual. But if you get this wanting thing straight, you immediately get relieved. You won't need a justification because wanting requires no justification.

Okay?

So this is really the big difference about need. Okay? So diagram number one is the freedom cycle. Diagram number two, spoose captivity cycle. Now I'm going to show you how to really get good at wanting. And the way you get really good at wanting if you turn the sheet over. The sheet over this sheet right here. Turn the sheet over. So I'm going to just take the present and I'm going to do the future. And we're going to choose the future. Now, how do you get good at choosing? So I'm going to tell you a story. August 15, 1978. I was both bankrupt and divorced on the same day. August 15, 1978, okay? Divorced in the morning, bankrupt in the afternoon. I arranged that way so I could keep my credit card and have a really good lunch. Celebration that I had to give in my credit card. And, you know, I mean, you laugh about it, but it wasn't laughing time back then because you just got really two very, very bad report cards, you know, and you had really screwed up in two areas. So I began thinking about that for about three months after my experience. And I came to two decisions that I was, number one, going to relieve everybody else of responsibility for what had happened to me because I had to get my power back. And you can't get your power back if someone else is responsible. So one of the things, if you want to free yourself up in a situation, a bad situation, you've got to relieve everybody else of responsibility and take it on 100%. So that was number one. But number two is I came to the conclusion that I had had the relationship failure and the business failure because I wasn't really telling myself what I wanted. I was expecting that if I got married, I would be told what I wanted and that if I just started a business, I'd be told what I wanted. But it's not that I didn't have the wanting skill. So I came to one goal at the end of 1978, and that was for 25 years. Every day for 25 years, I was going to keep a journal. And in that journal I would write at least a sentence about something I wanted every day. I could write a paragraph if I wanted, I could write several pages if I wanted. But I had to write a. I had to write at least one sentence. And it was about something going on in my life right at that point. Fast forward, it's 2003, it's January 31st. Babs and I are out with some close friends of ours. We're having dinner and I said, I just want to let you know I'm finishing a project, a 25 year project. And over the last 25 years, every day except 12 days out of that's 9131 days. So 9119 days I wrote in my journal. And you know what? Something I really became a muscle bound wanter. And I'm like wanting on steroids. I really want things. Don't need much. Want lots. Okay? And wanting, we're talking about keeping young, needing ages. You wanting makes you very, very young. So it's a skill that makes you young because no matter what you've wanted in the past, you want more in the future. Bigger and better. Okay, so how do we get to be a really good wanter so that we can constantly stay in the freedom cycle and not in the captivity cycle? Well, people say, how many, how often have you heard this with what you sell? I would do what you're telling me to do. If I had the confidence I would become an entrepreneur if Obama would subsidize me. The department of free stuff. Do that. So you say, well, no, no. The weird thing about this is that people always want to get what is essentially confidence, which is the fourth thing you get in becoming a good wanter. You get confidence. And I said, so that's number four. And they said, no, no, no, no. I know what you're saying. Not confidence. I want the capability. And I say, that's really unfortunate because capability is number three. Okay? And they say, well, I want. I don't know what I want. I said, it all starts. I'm going to go right to number one. So capability equals Confidence, it really starts with a commitment. And what a commitment means is that you're giving yourself a picture of bigger and better in the future. And you're saying, regardless of what it takes, I'm committed to get there. Because that starts it. Because you have to organize and channel your energies. And once you get there, you have that commitment. Then. And this is the tough part, this is the tough part. It requires a second step. And the second step is courage. Requires courage. Okay, now just to clarify, courage, the difference between confidence and courage is that confidence feels really good and courage feels really shitty. How many of you right now, in some project or area of your life right now are experiencing courage? Yeah.

Yeah.

And I have to tell you that this courage is a skill. It's the ability to go through periods of feeling really shitty because you've had a really strong commitment to change something with the knowledge that if you can just stay in the state of courage and having made the commitment long enough, what will happen is that the courage will give you capability and the capability will give you confidence. And once you have the confidence, you can then jump to a higher level of commitment for something that's even bigger and better. So what we have is a virtuous cycle here of commitment, courage, capability and confidence.

And, and.

Our past all becomes raw material. And the raw material is what, what are the two things that you always want to bring forward? Skills and achievements. So you keep stockpiling in the past, skills and achievement, which you get to come forward and it's that higher level, constantly increasing level of skill and achievement which allows you to make commitments to higher and bigger, better things. And then it starts over again. So here's a weird thing with entrepreneurs, because I've been coaching them, little survey in the room. How many of you, your biggest breakthroughs since you started being an entrepreneur came when you went through periods of commitment and courage where you weren't guaranteed capability. How many of you, okay, and how many of you right now are planning your future to such an extent that you'll never have to go through another period of courage? Yeah, I had this guy, he was born, he was a hidden child during the Second World War, a Jewish child in Europe went through a horrendous war, comes to Canada, doesn't speak English, speaks French. So he went to Montreal and he taught himself English, got a doctorate from college, became an incredible expert on the Canadian tax code, was a financial advisor, made millions of dollars. And then he's sitting there, he's got 20, 21, 23 year old children and they're slugs. Because he said to himself, everything that I had to go through, my children are never going to go through that. So he had to demonstrate incredible courage and develop incredible capabilities. But he created a cocoon for them. So they had. And now he's spending the rest of his life subsidizing them because they never developed any courage or capability. So I really watch out for entrepreneurs who are always trying to make things easy for their kids. Don't make things easy for your kids. Have them go through the same four Cs so that they can actually master the freedom cycle. And if you can do that, by the time they're adults and walking around, you've done everything you possibly can for your children. So this is the three. How many of you. I made the claim that three diagrams were going to totally change and transform your sense of the past, present, and future. So I want to survey how many of you. I've actually done that with my three diagrams, actually do that. And how many of you can see that the more you use the four Cs to reinforce the freedom cycle, one, you'll become an extraordinarily good wanter of the future. And the other thing is that you'll find yourself separating and not being bogged down by people and organizations that are in the captivity cycle.

I love that you did say because freedom. Because ultimately, I mean, what. I first heard the definition of an entrepreneur from you. So the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur was a French guy named John Baptiste in 1804 that said an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield, from a lower level of productivity.

To a higher level of productivity.

So anything that is going to take you from here to here and make it better is entrepreneurial thinking. And so this is literally offering you the ability to think entrepreneurially when it comes to other people. And what are the different types of freedom, Dan? Because we have a. There's a lot of. There's a lot of bullshit related to success. I mean, many people think of success as just making a lot of money. And we all know people that are miserable, humans that fleece people that aren't very happy, that have financial. You know, they have money, but they don't have wealth. They don't have physical wealth, they don't have relational wealth. They don't have spiritual capital. There's all kinds of other things. What does freedom. What does freedom mean to you in the context of entrepreneurship?

Yeah, well, you know, because I've coached entrepreneurs for 46 years. You know, I often notice the complete misunderstanding of entrepreneurs in the non entrepreneurial world. You know, they just do it for money. And I said, you know, it's really interesting because that's not been my experience with the 6,000 entrepreneurs that I've coached. And we've had 20,000 in the program with the other coaches. My belief is that entrepreneurs are mostly motivated by freedom. And it's freedom of vision, freedom of decision making, freedom of action. And they can't do that if they follow an employment path in life. They know somebody else controls their time, somebody else controls their activities, and somebody else controls their growth and their promotion. So they choose a path, a risky path at first, to gain freedom of their time. And when you have freedom of time, as Dean said in his remarks about freedom, is that you find you have freedom of money. So the more time you control, the more you can make money that is bigger and better money than other people. You put freedom of time and money together, then you can control your relationship networks, your personal relationship networks, your work relationship. You can work just with people that it's enjoyable working with. And my sense of that, it's the growing combination of freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship. It's not an addition, it's actually a multiplication. Freedom of time multiplies. Freedom of money. The two of them together multiply. Freedom of relationship. And gradually there's a really major purpose in your life and it has to do freedom of you're free to actually create good in the world and value in the world on your own terms, and you can choose it. And my sense is that it's not been really easy in most of human history to do what we're talking about here today. But I think the last 50 years in particular have really freed up entrepreneurs. I think the combination of the virtual world and entrepreneurism is a major exponential event on the planet. And I think that anyone who wants to be entrepreneurial and has good instincts about using the virtual world can, can really grow exponentially. But don't be doing things you don't like doing. Find the people all around the world who can do the, all the house that you don't like. And I think it's exponentially easier now if you know what your purpose is to find the who's who will assist you in your purpose. So that's, you know, and I'm, I'm experiencing that it is just incredibly easier to do what I do today than it was 10 years ago. Incredibly easier to do what I was doing 20 years ago. And I'm happy it. Happy. You know, I'm really, really happy. I've got. I've got my happy on, so I wear my happy all the time. Yeah, but Dean, we talk about this. Dean and I have a podcast series, you know, probably every couple weeks anyway. Right, Dean? In the course of things. It's called welcome to Cloudlandia. And we talk about the difference between the mainland, which is controlled by the laws of gravity, and virtual reality. And Dean has the greatest collection of great entrepreneurial stories to talk about how people who are in their teens are producing billion dollar companies and producing billion dollars of results just because they're following who, not how, multiplied by virtual capabilities.

Yeah, and they wouldn't call it that.

They.

They don't know it.

But we're observing this. Once you have a formula now, like we've got that.

You can observe it and you see.

How that's what's at play.

That's what's happening here.

So let's talk about criticism. How do you handle criticism? And it's funny, before I was coming to interview you, I'd read your book, Little Stretchy Black Pants. And it's great. And I highly recommend everyone that wears clothing. And that would probably be almost 100% of everyone.

Watch this.

You have to read this book. Not only is it filled with great business lessons and perspectives and tells a story of how you built the company. People don't realize how much you have actually transformed the clothing industry. I mean, it's unbelievable the impact that you've actually had in the world. And when I tell people, when I was telling people I was coming out to do an interview with you, I remember, like, this one woman, she's like, oh, didn't he say something on the news? And of course, you've heard this a million times. So I'm not here to like, oh, you know, Chip said something in this way you describe in the book. I've watched the clips on video, right. And maybe there's other ones I haven't seen. I'm really struck with not trying to say, oh, you could have, should have, would have done something differently. I'm sitting there going, I don't understand how they could take something so out of context, because it appears that was happening. So I want to get your perspective on, really, the question is, how do you handle criticism? But tell the story of what happened and how that went sideways, why you think that happened the way that it did, and how, when you're such a public figure at that point, how do you psychologically process all of that, I mean, from your mind. Did you do something wrong, do you think? Did you. You know, what actually happened? Because I think it's a lesson for when life throws you certain curveballs or, you know, however you would describe it.

There are definitely people that have an aptitude to be able to talk in the public realm and can have a sense of what I say and how it's going to be interpreted by other people. And definitely I am responsible for the way that people hear things. We had had a situation at Lululemon where the. The board and the CEO were maximizing quarterly numbers so they weren't reinvesting in quality, innovation, et cetera. And so I was having quite a difficult time, you know, myself against nine people on the board. And so sure enough, we had a massive quality control issue. And immediately after that, I was on. I forget, was it Bloomberg something? It was Bloomberg. And the woman asked me about the quality control issue with the pants. And I knew that there was something wrong with the pants, but I couldn't quite put my thumb in it at the time. But I knew that some, some woman were like buying like the pants, like two to four size too small. And it's like anything, you know, you take an elastic band and you pull it too tight, it's going to break. But I couldn't really, I didn't have. I didn't have enough information at the time. So when I was asked a question about the quality control, I mean, I guess I could have. I sometimes fantasize about going back and throwing the board and the CEO under the bus, but I wasn't in that mode. That's a fantasy kind of thing, which maybe is what I. So anyway, I said, well, you know, some women just don't, you know, I don't know, shouldn't be. Don't fit into the pants or don't wear them properly. I forget my actual wordage. And so a couple things happened, I think is it was just the start of social media. And so suddenly there was the ability for anybody to make a comment and to say something about it. And the interpretation from what I first thought was probably women that probably weren't the Lululemon customer, because you got to get like. The Lululemon customer was a highly educated, media savvy, athletic woman. And she would have known that whatever kind of came out in social media was probably from people that a couldn't afford. Lululemon, didn't want the quality, couldn't fit into it, were probably judgmental about their own bodies and consequently were judgmental about anybody who they thought were judgmental about their bodies. But the board of directors, of course, in my fight with them at the time, saw that as being, you know, a way to kind of, like, remove me as chairman of the board and not being ahead. And that's fine. You know, probably, you know, time was happening, but I kind of look back at and I go, that was so overblown, like, to the extreme. And I know for the. For the media, especially like Bloomberg, it was, like, really easy for them to go, like, to. To splice and dice the tape, how they wanted to. To make it look a certain way, because they were not in the news business anymore. They were in the entertainment business. But nobody had really defined that at the time. And if you look at news now, it's mostly an entertainment business, but the uneducated people think it's actually news. Right. Right. I think the other thing is, because I'd made, I'd say, probably pretty good enemies of Coke and Pepsi as I was a stand in 1998, that. That was making America fat. And I thought it was a drug, and I thought it was one of the worst things I could imagine. And it was just easy for me to look at people that were drinking, like, four or five cans a day and look at their fat. People that aren't drinking it are not fat. It was like, that was easy to see. So I could imagine at the time that Coke and Pepsi and maybe even McDonald's, because I was very anti McDonald's for the Olympics Olympic sponsorship. I didn't think any of that kind of worked. That, you know, they've got big PR machines that may have been waiting for the right time. Yeah. And then the Lululemon PR machine, backed by the board of directors and a very insecure CEO who was just on survival for her job. That would have also been part of the mandate of, like, let's distance ourselves from this person. So. So I don't think it was so much me. I think it was a confluence of timing in what was happening in the business, what was happening in social media, how the news was redefining itself. And I probably said a line that hit the most sensitive nerve of the most insecure people in the world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's really interesting about how protected someone almost has to be to not subject themselves to just being a human and saying certain things and everyone being so calculated. And I think I've seen you describe this in other areas where if the, you know, interview, like sports Athletes and stuff, and they've all got their canned phrases and all because no one wants to say anything. And it's like on one level, people are, oh, be transparent, be real. But then if you say anything that someone has any objection with, you just get attacked. And so at what point do you play to win versus play not to lose? And if you run around playing not to lose, which I think you describe in your book quite a bit about different individuals and through the growth of, of Lululemon, through the growth of your company, it's just having that winning attitude, being as integrity, you know, high integrity, as humanly possible, and knowing that you're human. I mean, there's not a single person out there in the world that has not said things that are. Can obviously be interpreted or interpreted like you said there. I mean, because I really watched and I was like going, okay, yeah, you know, I understand, but I don't see anything in your, you know, body language or anything where you're trying to attack anyone. I mean, you're, I mean, you have a clothing line, it's your own company. I mean, if someone says, this is who I make the clothing for, I mean, it's. That's who you make the clothing for. I didn't see, I didn't perceive it as you criticizing or saying anything that they did not sound bite and take out of context.

Yeah.

And probably people had, didn't have the context of what, I hate to use the word I. Because I don't want to self promote. But I mean, really, Lululemon was all about woman and it was all about elevating like a class of women to, you know, management and CEO and directorship level. That had never occurred before. Right, right. And, and, and so I think these, the, the people that were like, attacking me because I'd never done any marketing for myself or for Lou Lemon around that type of thing. It was easy for the, the media, the press, the social media to create a story because there was no story at the time.

So one thing I want to actually point out too now, whatever someone may think of you or perception or, you know, try to be the spectator saying, he could have played this a different way, could have said things a different way. I would challenge anyone to look at their own life, what they have done and said, how they handle it, and also go out and build a company that has employed hundreds of thousands of women and has empowered them to not only have better careers, but to make more money, to become better parents, put them through tons of leadership and personal development. And try to improve their lives all the way around. Because I think your track record in life, everything that a person does in terms of the deposits into the positive parts of world and humanity versus withdrawals. I mean, I think it would be really hard for anyone to really look at what you've done and say you have not been a massive advocate for women and for health and for good eating and for challenging people that really exploit people in a lot of ways.

Thanks, Joe. I think there was. It was interesting at a time though, when we brought all these amazing women up who were 23 to 30 years old and brought them through the same. And then suddenly Lululemon got to be so big that we had to bring people in from the outside. And I'd say that they were those 45 year old women who really had to like fight in life. And they were in companies where probably they weren't treated right or, you know, they had to fight through the whole men's system. And they probably had a. I think they came into Lululemon with a perception of men, which was way different. And, you know, and I definitely talked to the woman in our company like equals. Like, I didn't separate men or women. And you know, like, we've totally blunt, totally authentic. Like we're getting something, we gotta get it done here. There's no playing nice in the sandbox. And yet I think that the older woman had, when they listened to me talk like that, were not able to grasp that I was talking to them as an equal. But I think they saw as this dominant man telling them what to do. And so it was really this. There's definitely a tier system in the hierarchy of women and where they came from.

Yeah. So how do you handle criticism today as a result of just having built a company and everything? Because you certainly have had to encounter.

Well, I think I have the choice. And that is not to say anything. But my mind, being an entrepreneur and somebody who I think my natural inclination is to be seven years in the future. And a lot of things that I think of and what I say do not meet the societal norm of how people think today, because it's just not where my mind goes. And so I'm trying to set up my family and my life and my businesses for or what we call in Canada where the puck's gonna go, not where it is. And so when I talk about how I see things change and where they're gonna be, it really upsets people that don't like change and they don't want to make it they don't want to make a change in their life. They don't want to be different themselves. They don't want to have to move their own personality to where the world's going. They want the world to move to them. And so they're going to take the lowest form of trying to make the change. And that is criticism. I have this theory I think is really neat. And that is our number one instinct is survival and our number two is reproduction. So ultimately we want as many people as a possibility to reproduce with as we can. So I think that's, if you look at one side of it, is that we always want to cheer for the underdog and we want to bring them up. It seems natural, doesn't it? And that seems okay. And we don't think anything of it. But on the other hand, why is it that we want to bring the tall poppy down? And I think it's a natural instinct for the mediocre group in the middle to have more people to reproduce with. Yes. And that in itself is a survival.

Technique, you know, and that's interesting. I got to think about that there. I can't remember if it was, if.

It was Sperm wars was the book.

But I remember a book where like.

When you go back to prehistoric days, I'm going to butcher.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

They'll take this in the right context. But what my interpretation of in remembrance of it was is that back in prehistoric days, a woman would have sex with multiple partners and the sperms of multiple partners would have to compete to impregnate the woman biologically. And so 90% of the sperms have claws and different. They would be literally fighting. So the aggression is actually biological. There's a certain level of competitiveness in it. And then you take, you know, today where people on one hand are being told everyone should be, you know, nice and friendly on one level. And there's a lot of characters in the world that they have agendas and they want to take people down. And when you're going to the, you know, the take down the tall poppy, you know, the chop down the tall poppy, I think, you know, when you look at criticism, there's from a friend who's going to give you feedback and say, hey, you could have done this better, but they're coming at you with a good intention attention. They want to kind of help. They don't want to attack, that's one thing. But people that want to attack, like a lot of criticism, I think is a self hatred turned outward. And if you have someone that is looking at an individual that built an athletic company as an example. You're clothing. We're designed for people that are exercising and are active and are outside. Starting with skateboarders, right. And going into the yoga community. It's kind of like if you sell armor to a soldier, they're not probably not going to take that to a restaurant and wear armor exactly the appropriate attire. And so then you build a company that becomes the clothing is so well made, so well thought out. I mean, you did it in order to solve problems that other clothing work were creating. Right. With friction and everything. If everyone looks at, reads your book and gets the origin of understanding how you started with little stretchy black pants, they will understand, understand that you created this. And so you have this and then all of a sudden you have a large segment of the population buying your clothing for purposes other than what it was the company was originally designed for. And then they attack you and say, oh, you shouldn't have said it that way. It's kind of like, well, I mean, is, is it really that part of you say, well, maybe I'm not working out because you're, you're an advocate for eating well, you're an advocate for an active lifestyle because you know how much it's helped. I mean, you use your own experience in a lot of ways. And you know, I mean, and if someone, and here's my thing, if someone doesn't like what's going on in the world, you can either complain about it, you can attack people that do it, or you can actually get off your ass and do something about it. I mean, and everyone has that opportunity.

And so, yeah, you know, I think it's also part of my love for athletics and my love for authenticity. I've never wanted people to buy like the athletic clothing I make in my multiple companies because they want to look good. First off, it's got to work for them. So I think that my mind, when I was developing the Lululemon pants for women at the time wasn't thinking about like tummy control and fat control, like a bra. I wasn't thinking that way, but women were thinking that way and, and buying it to look good. And then I could get where our clothing had to look good. But first off, it had to function first. I just hate a fake world and it's just not where I was. And I think that's. I was meeting that intersection at that time.

Where would you put ethics and ethical behavior in. In the world of entrepreneurship or marketing? You know, Because a lot of times we think that success equates to unethical behavior.

Right.

You always see a lot of people that are cheating and lying and so on and so forth, whether if you're too ethical, you're out the door. Right?

So.

And I know that you guys each have a real kind of deep take on this. Let me ask you, Dan, start. Start off what. Where do you put ethics and ethical behavior in the realm of marketing or success?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's really interesting. And I, you know, I'll. I'll join another word to ethics, and that's morality. You know, that the. The two go together. Ethics, you know, I mean, morality has to do a lot with your mindset, you know, the values that you have. But ethics is really about your behavior. How, you know, really the ethics is your morality in action. But one of the things I've noticed, I read an article once about inner city kids, you know, who are, you know, who could be dead at 8, they could be dead at 12. South Chicago. So part of the year, I live in Chicago because our main US Company is right near o', Hare. And. But it's a war, a war zone down there. You know, there's two postal zones. America is really organized. If you go to any big city, you go to the police, you know, police headquarters and police headquarters, and you want. You talk to the officer in charge of violent crime, you know, in the city, and you bring a map and you give them a marker and you say, where should I not go in this city? And they always do it by postal zones. And in Chicago, it's two postal zones. Isn't it interesting how Americans organize crime according to post? I mean, what a country, you know, and anyway, so those kids do not have enough certainty about life that they can think more than 24 hours at a time. So when there's a possibility of stealing something, their first thought is, can I get into trouble in the next 24 hours? So what I came to is that ethics is a function of your time perspective.

Okay?

If, on the other hand, you have a time perspective, if I do this now, what's it look like 10 years from now? The behavior that you will exhibit during the next 24 hours will be ethical. And the reason is you don't want to be doing something today that costs you ten years from now. And so my sense is that ethics is really a function of time perspective.

Ah, very interesting. One of the things I really admire about both you guys, Dan, is you guys both have really interesting perspectives on stuff, you know, it's not just the usual that you read in books, you know, like, who else would come up with that? I mean, I think you're absolutely right, you know, but over to you, Joe, what's your. What's your take on ethics and business?

Yeah, you know, it's.

It's considering for even the carpet cleaning industry, which is where I started off. I created a thing called ethical services. And I tried to. I've always tried to use the whole concept of, like, Dan. I asked Dan years ago. Let me start with this. And I'll try to share several different ideas in a little riff that I'll do here. So I asked Dan what's, you know, what's your favorite definition? What's your definition of selling? And he. He just blurted out, and I don't know how many years ago this was now, Damn, probably like 15 years ago or something. And he said, selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. Now, I have that memorized because I thought about it quite a bit when he said it, and I. Yeah, Dan always has these very interesting quotes that he shares. And let me just say this, too. I probably should have said this early on. Do you know between both of you, do you know how many, God knows how many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe in the millions range, that both of you have inspired, encouraged, have them show up to face incredible difficulties with, you know, maybe not in the funnest of ways, but just the ability to get through life when life is very difficult. I mean, both of you have been such incredible mentors and role models, if you've intended to be that or not. It's just what you are. I mean, by the very nature of. I mean, Jesus, just look at how many reviews the War of Art has, right? And how much both of you impact people. And so, you know, everyone has something to sell. You know, part of it is a bigger future, though, in a way, to look at life. And so when I asked Dan that definition, I started asking my clients, you know, what do you think are the most important words in the definition getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. People would say engage, they would say action, they would say commitment. And most people didn't get the three words good for them. And I always thought you can get someone intellectually and emotionally engaged in porn and shitty food. And doing something damaging. I mean, what I've liked about the war of art is it's always about the higher self, not about the lower self. I mean, you can, you know, yeah, you can be a degenerate and you can get involved in vices and all that that does. There's, you know, that, as you say, you know, resistance will give you a free pass on that sort of stuff.

Stuff.

And so as it relates to ethics, I always think of, you know, what's good for someone. And would you sell it to your best friend? Would you sell it to your mother or your father with the assumption you like your mother and your father? You know, for someone that you really care about, if you're in a situation where someone's going to go down a bad path or something, that could be damaging or it could be rotten or it could be scandalous or not good for them, and you cared about that person, you would try to intervene. You might use words, you might use a challenge, you might use an intervention. You might try to block them from harm's way. And so who are we, in the best of terms, when we care about someone, we're selling, we're being persuasive, but we're doing it with the mindset of we're trying to care for this person and we're trying to protect them. So when it comes to. I think everything in my life is about connecting. Connecting other people with ideas, with each other, with things that make them better, not always feel good. Like, for instance, you wrote the. The Warriors Ethos, which you recorded in 2011. Everyone would be very. Their lives will be enhanced if you download that book and listen to Stephen read it. It's called the Warriors Ethos. Like, I think it's less than 90 minutes, and it's great. And you talk a lot about, you know, Spartans and you have such. This deep knowledge of so much of history. But anyway, you know, there's. The whole goal of making someone better is not always going to make them feel better. It's not always about happiness, Right? And we live in this culture. Everyone wants to pursue feeling, you know, sweet and loving and all that sort of stuff. But the fact is, human progress oftentimes takes enormous effort and in many cases, sacrifice. And so when it comes to connecting, there's true connecting because you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape, you know, and when you are connecting with someone, you care about them, you're operating from a good place. Connecting, though, is when you're conning people and making it look like connecting. So there's connectors that use con artistry, and they con people and they blow smoke up their ass, and they sell crap, and they make promises and they. They don't. That they have no intention of delivering on, or they're selling crap on a box, and the very best thing you're going to ever see from them is their sales pitch or their marketing. But then there's real people that when they sell something to somebody or when they offer something to somebody, they actually really care about that person being better off as a human. So, for me, I don't. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. I mean, you might tell really crude, dirty jokes to your buddies that you would, you know, were in the military with. That could be vulgar, that could be inappropriate to many people. But you might not say that to, you know, someone's grandma. Most people have drank beer. Most people have gone to church. You usually don't drink beer in church, although I'm sure people drink beer in church. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. And I like people who understand the distinction in. Who operate that way, because we've all met people who. That, man, they just put on a great show. They really act like they care about you, but they're using narcissists or sociopaths or they have just created a value system, you know, that is different than, you know, the ones that we made it adhere to. And the weird thing, and I'd like to ask you guys about this, you know, as I'm rambling here when I'm thinking in my mind, is that I think most people think they're right. It's that saying that, you know, we judge others by their actions. We judge ourselves by our intentions. And I. I first heard that when. I don't know if you bought. Well, Dan, I know you know Harvey McKay. Do you happen to know Harvey McKay?

No.

Steven. He wrote a book years ago, his most famous book he's written a bunch of books, was called how to Swim with the Sharks without being Eaten Alive.

I've heard of the book.

Yeah, yeah. Sold millions of copies. And he's now 90 years old, and he's a dear friend of mine. And so Harvey, he was doing the small event that he invited me to. It was like kind of a brainstorm with a bunch of. A bunch of business owners. And one guy was. Chris Widener was talking, and he said to the. To the group, he's like, how many have you ever been ripped off by someone. About half people raised their head and he's like, how many of you ever ripped off anyone? And no one raised their head. And he said, he goes, huh? He goes, that's interesting. He goes, you know why? He goes, because you know, the reason you've been screwed by someone, but you don't think you screwed anyone is we judge ourselves by our intentions, we judge others by their actions. And, and I thought about that quite a bit and we all, like you could intend to do the right thing, but do your actions actually show that? So I think it takes a deep level of awareness and looking at the, the byproduct of your behavior and your, you know, because all of us have times where we're loving and we're caring and we're doing well in life. And others where we're desperate and we're self centered and we're tired and we're exhausted and we're maybe taking advantage. And so part of it is not that there's some perfect, you know, angel human that's always operating out of, you know, perfect ethics and morality. It's just being able to set up a way you operate and way you behave and the way you conduct yourself in your character. Like my whole book is not about capabilities, even though I share a lot of them. It's about character. My goal of my book is to not just build, you know, Hitler had enormous capabilities. I'd say it'd be really hard to say his character was a good character. I mean, look at the destruction that some of these people. You know, when, when Dan, we were talking earlier with Stalin and Mussolini, I mean, they all had capabilities. You don't rule a country. You don't do what these people did without capability. Some of the smartest marketers I know have enormous capabilities, but their character is kind of shed. And so, but that's my opinion because if you were to ask them their intentions, they all think their value system is their value system. So there's a lot of den of thieves. It's, I grapple with this, you know, one person's freedom fighters and other person's terrorists. So you know, what is it? But those are my thoughts. That's, that's at least some of my thoughts about ethics and morality is what's the byproduct of what your life is about and where it leaves people? Does it leave the world and people in, you know, around you in a better place or does it cause destruction?

But I think you would say, Joe, that like as a, as a marketer or an entrepreneur that the more, and I'm sure you would say the same thing, Dan, the more good you can do, the better it is for you, for even for your, your own selfish interests. Would you agree with that?

I would, I would totally agree with that. And Dan, I'd love to, love to hear your thoughts on it. And I have more thoughts on it, but I want to, you know, kind of.

Yeah, sure.

Well, I think the other thing is that, you know, that there's a matter of, you know, leading a very complicated life for a simple life. And you know, I'm a straight ticket Republican ever since I could vote. And in Canada, I'm a state straight ticket conservative. But one of the, one of the presidents that I admire most was Harry Truman. And after, you know, because he's the one that had the big decisions, you know, I mean, so many big decisions. Big decisions. And you know, and I remember there's a story, it might be apocryphal, but the day after Roosevelt died, of course he was sworn in as the president and he met with Roosevelt's cabinet and he came in and he said, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you know, you know, here comes Harry, a hick from Missouri. And he said, and you, you're used to Roosevelt, one of the great gods of American politics. But he says, here's the facts of it. I'm as powerful as he is because I'm President of the United States. And guess what, you're still cabinet secretaries and I can fire you just as easy as he could fire you. You know, and it just put everybody straight because he knew they were going to scheme against him. He knew what they were doing because they schemed against Roosevelt. You know, the, they do that. But he had a great saying. He says, always tell the truth. It's more economical. You only have to remember one version. And I think that ethics is a form of truth and that is you can be the same person in all situations. And I think that a lot of people, they have to check out their surroundings to figure out who they're going to be in that situation or they have to figure out who, who they've told what, what to make sure that, you know, they're keeping their story straight. And their story is so complicated, it's very, very hard to keep it straight. And I said that all comes at the price of what you're really good at. You know, that comes all that. I mean, if you do that, you're totally non creative. You're a totally reactive human being. And I think that ethics gives you a. A very simple, energizing path into the future where you only have to be the same person all the time.

Yeah. I mean, another way of looking. I haven't really thought this one through. I'm going to be blathering as I say this, but another word for it, it seems to me, could be authenticity in the sense of when you open your mouth and you speak, you're really saying what you really think and not what you think is the other is going to create a, you know, a favorable impression in somebody else's mind.

Yeah, one of your, you know, in the. In your current book, the book's coming out, you were talking about what your attitude has to be when you're writing and you can't think about, oh, this is. Is this a great book? Is it, you know, is it, you know, am I, you know, is this really going to move people? You say, I'm going to throw myself completely in it, and I'm going to finish it, you know, and get the book. And I remember Reagan. I'm kind of a Reagan type of writer. And when Reagan, you know, got to governor more, I don't think so much when he was governor of California, but when he became president, people say, yeah, everybody laughs at me because of the movies I was in. You know, what about crappy movies? And he said, well, I have to tell you, back then, they didn't tell us that the movie had to be good. They said they didn't want the movie good. They wanted the movie Tuesday.

And it's kind of like that.

And I think that's a copywriter's attitude. In other words, you got a deadline. I mean, people say Shakespeare, you know, Shakespeare. Oh, I could be like Shakespeare. I said, there's two things you have to remember. He did it for money and on deadline.

Yeah, yeah.

And Dickens, like Dickens, too, that was writing, you know, install.

He did for money. And so my feel. My feeling is that. And Joe brought it up at the beginning. Joe brought it up, or you brought it up, Stephen, that the best way to be really good in yourself is have it be for value for other people. In other words, that you have in mind who you're doing this for. And so is it going to make a difference in that person's life? And how are they going to feel after? You know, I mean, how are they going to feel about the value that.

They got from you?

If you have your emphasis on that, you're taken care of. You know, your friend who was in 24 that you visit with in Sundance, the actor. Glenn Marshaw. And he's fascinating guy. And I have to say that if you looked at his life, you know, he's, you know, Hollywood, Hollywood actor. He does movies, he does TV and everything. I bet he is the most fully employed actor in the history of the United States over the last 50, 50 years. And he was telling Joe, he said, well, you know, he says you got to look at it from the standpoint of a director. He says, you can't look at it from any other standpoint of the director. And the director needs two or three stars to even get on the board. He said, so I'm not a star. Okay. And then he comes down to about number five. And he said, who am I going to put in number five? And he says, I'm always number five in the directors. And he said, I always prepared. I always show up on time. I'm always a great team member. And he said, I'm always grateful and thankful for every role I get. And then he's employed nonstop for 50 years because it isn't about him. It's about the. It isn't about him that when the director gets number five, oh, we'll put in Glenn, because that's an easy one. And my sense is the other thing is also to know your value to other people and what can they always count on you for? You know, I spend a lot of time saying it can be a hard one, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

What can. You know, I always show up on time. I'm always prepared. I always come up with something new, you know, and my team just depends upon that. Ah, my clients.

By the way, I was going to ask you, Stephen, do you know who Glenn Morshower is?

No.

No.

Yeah. So he's not like Dan said, he's not like some, you know, a list celebrity.

But no, that's why he doesn't. That's why I saw his.

His face. I'm sure I would know.

But every director, Every director everywhere knows who he is.

Yeah.

Let me share a story that Dan knows this one, but years ago, me and. Me and Glenn were speaking at an event in Las Vegas, and it was. I think it was 2009. 2000. Yeah, I think it was around 2009, 2010. And Glenn has been in more military roles than any living actor. And so he's. Yeah, he was on every episode of 24. Other than Kiefer Sutherland, who was the main star, he was on every episode of 24. And at the time, there were pictures of Kiefer Sutherland on People magazine, I believe, National Enquirer, basically all the tabloid type of magazines on the COVID with him drunk on the sidewalk outside of the Viper Room in la. And I was asking him, I said, so what's.

You're asking Glenn? You're asking Glenn, correct?

Yeah, I was asking Glenn, what's the story on Kiefer? He goes, well, now that he's been outed, he goes, you know, I can maybe, you know, say a few things. He said, great guy, super professional. Shows up, does a great job. Everyone likes working with him. Awesome guy. And he said, at the end of, you know, at the end of his. The day, he finds it sometimes easier to sit and hang around and, you know, drink in his trailer and on set than go home to his mansion alone. That's. He said. And at this point in Kiefer's life, he goes, his fame is globally inescapable. He said, there's nowhere on the planet that he could go without being recognized. And he said, you know, a single piranha won't do much damage, but a swarm of them will take down a great creature. And he said, if you get into this business, he was referring to the entertainment business. Without knowing who you are, it will misinform you. That was the statement he made. And I was like, yeah. I go, that's really interesting. And when I first met him at Sundance, we were having lunch, a friend introduced us, and all these people were coming up to him asking for autographs. And I said to him, I go, does that ever bother you? And he said. He goes, you know, sometimes, you know, if you have to really be somewhere in a hurry, it could sometimes be challenging. He goes, but I am. He goes, I wouldn't even have a career if it wasn't for these people. He's like, I am so appreciative that anyone likes what it is I do. He goes, how would I even do what it is I do without these people that like what I do, like my work? And appreciative. He goes, why on earth would I have anything other than gratitude for these individuals? And he had an incredible work ethic, and he was gen. And I've. I've seen him in many situations, and he is always loves his wife, is just a super caring, grateful, appreciative person. And therefore, he gets roles and gets opportunities that others do not, because he just comes from that place. But he also has done a tremendous amount of work on himself, and he's really quite aware of don't Take yourself too seriously. Like my dear friend Dave Keckage, who unfortunately passed away at 78 years old last year from kind of a malpractice surgery. It was horrible. And Dave wrote, he was my friend who was paralyzed from the chest down for half of his life. And he had one of his credos. He had 100 credos called kekich Credos. Credos. He had an interesting last name. And he said, things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they're going wrong or seldom as great as they seem when they're going well, lighten up. You'll live longer. You know, just having the state of mind on how you approach things.

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Can I. If we can go back and pick up on the ethics. The ethics topic. So I, you know, I looked at your biography. So I looked and I, you know, I got to the end of your biography, and I said, oh, another guy into a university. And these were all the classes he took, all the, all the, you know, the different occupations you were in the oil fields, you know, you were a fruit picker, you know, and you did air and B. Airbnb in your own car or somebody else's car and everything else. So lots of different kinds of people, lots of different kinds of situations, including Hollywood, you know, being in Hollywood and, you know, being in the, you know, movie, writing scripts and writing books and everything else. But from the standpoint is that ethics in one area of life is the same as ethics in another area of life.

Definitely.

There isn't any industry that's more ethical than any other industry.

No. And like. Like you were saying about the actor, your actor friend. I mean, showing up and being ready to, you know, hit. Hit your mark and say your lines and. And not, you know, be shafting anybody else is at least as important as talent, you know, and. Because somebody will bring you back, you know, and you will bring them back, you know, that's really like, Joe, you. One of the things you've always said, and this actually comes from Dan, too, that part of being an entrepreneur is not only doing what you want to do, but doing it with the people you want to do it with, you know, and so in order to be with those people, you have to be for them what you want them to be for you. Right. You have to show up for them and deliver the goods for them and be somebody that, you know, that's. That's ethical. Right. That's not gonna throw their buddies under the bus when. When the heat gets applied, you know? Well, I mean, I just want to say this before I forget it. You were talking about how we judge other people by their actions, but our own selves by our intentions.

Yeah.

And that one of the axioms in. In screenwriting or also in novel writing, in any kind of story writing, is that the villain never thinks he's the villain. From the villain's point of view, he's doing the right thing.

Right.

And that's. That's, you know, if you think of any of sort of the great villain speeches like Jack Nicholson's one in A Few Good Men, you know, where he says, you know, you can't handle the truth, and he, you know, he's the guy that, you know, basically, you know, okayed the murder of this young Marine.

Right.

But from his point of view, he goes, this wonderful, great speech that Aaron Sorkin wrote about, we have to stand on a wall. There are bad guys on the other side of the wall, and God damn it, you need people like me on that wall, you know?

No.

So it was one of the finest movie speeches of all time, by the way.

It's a great one. Yeah.

But sort of ethics, too, in a crazy way.

Oh, it is.

I'm sure. You know, if we had Putin on the. On that show right now, he would say, God damn it. The worst thing that ever happened was when the Soviet Union broke up. My people were crushed mentally by that. And psychological.

Greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

I'm going to bring the USSR back, and I don't care who I have to kill or what I have to do to do it. And I'm sure that in his mind, he's a saint. And to, you know, tens of millions of Russians, he's a saint, too.

Yep.

Not to the Ukrainians, but to the Russians.

It's.

It's an interesting thing.

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but it's just a thought.

No, here's.

I mean, I think it's a lot.

To ponder about, like, what do we believe and why do we believe it and what are we really trying to do?

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