8 Tips to Get What You Want in Life and Business Feat. Dan Sullivan & Dan Martell

You are a person who easily could have died. You could have went down many bad paths, and you did. And you talk pretty openly about that with addiction. I talk very openly about my addiction struggles and whatnot. I've read your whole book. You've read my book. In terms of the drive, the drive that destroys the entrepreneur from having freedom, from being successful, from feeling really connected to. To not having a business they love, having a business they hate, and all these things that you've really created a process around that for yourself first, and now you're teaching it to other people. What are some of the things that. What happened to you that first off caused you to be in a pretty destructive place? And what happened that ended up having you shift in spite of, you know, luck, in spite of the guy in jail telling you the. Not what the guardian.

Yeah.

Telling you that no, you shouldn't be here, and giving you motivational words, which you probably said to a lot of other people, like you said. But for some reason to do.

I mean, do you want me to share that part of it or just in general, what drives me and how did I kind of fall in love with this? Because what I usually to that question, I would talk about my dark energy, light energy. I think anybody that grew talk about.

That, actually, because I think that's useful. We talk a lot about that here in Genius Network.

And I mean, this is the thing that, you know, proved people wrong, proved my dad wrong, prove all the people that ever said I was a piece of shit. Like, the people that thought I grew up and I wasn't allowed to play with any of the other kids in my neighborhood. Like, I would literally have to run to the backyard, to the woods to go hang out with the neighbors. Cause their parents were like, you're the kid that the police came over. And so, yeah, I just grew up just not feeling like I was worth much. So even though I got sober, that didn't go away. Yeah, it was still there. So for a long time, probably a decade, I would. I was building businesses, trying to be successful, trying to fill that. That void, to try to become enough. And. And it's a very powerful energy source. Right.

It's.

It's kind of like, you know, it's like a diesel energy source where it's got a lot of torque. It just doesn't burn very clean. And what happened was, is when I was 27, you know, almost a decade of building companies, I had two failures right out of the gate. Like, you know, people are like, how'd you have so much success. I just started really young, so it's not that impressive. You know, when you look at the entrepreneurial year, some people are like, oh, my gosh. It's like, yeah, but I've been doing this for 26 entrepreneurial years for real, you know, like, trying not side hustle. And at 27, I was in a relationship, engaged to a woman. And I came home and I found her in tears. And she takes the ring off and she drops it on the counter and she says, I'm done. And she left. She went to stay with her parents. And this was seven weeks before the wedding. And in that moment, my life just fucking fell apart. Like, it was everything I'd been doing up to that point, you know, building the business, trying to be successful just went away. And I had to ask myself, like, why was I doing this? Why was. Why was I trying to be successful for a person? And she never, ever, ever asked me for any of it. She never, never once that she's like, you better be successful or I'm gonna leave. She was like, I would love to be in a relationship with somebody that talks to me. And all I knew is, you know, how to out work and how to hustle, because that's. That's what I did. So she leaves. Six months before I exit my company, I become a multimillionaire. Depressed, anxiety attacks, A fucking mental mindset guy. I was like, positive mental attitude and all this shit. And I'm having anxiety attacks. I have to go see a therapist. And he's telling me, like, walk around with a rock in your pocket, and when you feel the pressure on your chest, squeeze it. And I was just thinking, like, how stupid? Like, how much am I paying you now? He did give me some good advice. He said, you should buy a boat because being in the water is a very therapeutic thing. Two thumbs up for that suggestion. But yeah, just. I went through this, like, crazy period where, okay, I had the money, but nobody wanted. Like, all my friends were like, you were the worst person. I go to birthday parties and with my laptop, and in my mind, I'm thinking, I am the best friend ever. Because I'm busy and at least I'm at the party and I'm sitting there working on contracts and fucking sending emails. Oh, yeah. And I justified all of it. You know, my parents were pissed off at me because I do. I don't know if you guys do this, but I answer the phone when they call and then tell them how busy I am. Don't answer the phone. It sounds Crazy. But my dad one time screamed at me, goes, why are you answering that if you're so busy? And I go, I don't know what you need. And he goes, I'm retired. Like, I don't need anything. Just want to talk to you. So I was like, okay, new rule. Don't answer unless I can talk. But it was really like, after I got through that period when I was in my late 20s, that I moved to San Francisco. And I give a lot of credit to a guy named Naval. Many of you guys would know who he is today. Naval Ravikant. But when I moved to the Valley, Silicon Valley, and met these young, early 20 tech luminary entrepreneurs, right, that had built these $100 million companies in five years, I couldn't understand because I was very driven. I don't know about you guys, but, like, I can't turn off the fire in my belly. Like, I like to build. I'm a creator. But I had to find a way to do it so that I didn't alienate the people in my life. Cause that was easy. I could go all in, be obsessed and just not talk to anybody else and just work. But. But that wasn't gonna lead to me being in a relationship that I think anybody should be in. And Naval introduced me to the concept of leverage. And that literally there's only four ways to get leverage. Okay, write these down. You're gonna wanna write them down. I call them four master skills. The first one is capital, right? So when I look at businesses, the way I help them, scale is understanding where their constraint is. So I call this the theory of Constraint. It's not even my idea. It's from manufacturing, okay? TOC Theory of constraints. Most businesses are capital constraint, and they haven't solved that problem. The second one is code, right? Software automation. In today's world, AI. Okay, What a fricking. Like, if AI didn't write that intro, I wouldn't like. I would have been super like, yeah, of course AI wrote that. It sounds great. So, like, AI has.

And it actually didn't.

It didn't, no. Well, someday. And then the third one is content. That's what we're doing right now. Think about content. Think Joe Rogan think, you know, writing an SOP, standard operating procedure, huge leverage. Write it. Once 10,000 people follow it, it doesn't cost you one extra second of your time. The fourth C is collaboration. And this is what I talk predominantly in this book about, is the idea of working with other people, of using, you know, labor as A concept. Dollars to buy back your time so that you can work on things that light you up to make you more money. And once I understood that, it was like, now I can push as hard as I want under using. Because literally, then it's like, I just need to become an expert at these four points of leverage. Four Cs. And that was when everything unlocked. That's when I was like, the only thing stopping me now is my creativity to solve a problem. It's not time.

Yeah. So the pain. Where do you think?

So.

There was an artist named Peaches that had a song. I met her when I was having dinner with the global director of MTV probably eight years ago in New York. And her name was Peaches Singer.

She has a song I feel like I might know.

Yeah.

Fuck the Pain Away is the name of her song, one of her songs. And so it's like, people work the pain away. They gamble the pain away. They do all kinds of things. So there's this entrepreneurial pain and angst. And I like the Charles Bukowski, the alcoholic poet. He has take the writer away from the typewriter, and all you have left is a sickness which started him writing in the first place. So you take the writer away from work, and all you have left is a sickness which got them starting a business or whatever in the first place. So turning your occupation, your career, your profession into something that you actually really enjoy, not just be one of these people that pontificate that love what you do, and you never work a day in your life, that sounds good. But most people grind really hard, and they don't really love what it is they do. And there's parts of it they do and other parts that they can't stand. I think you've done a masterful job of differentiating, and you're willing to pay money to do it. So your whole premise of don't hire to grow your business, hire to buy back your time.

So.

So, for one, what is the pain? And then secondly, let's talk about how to remove it, how to eliminate it, because you have a great methodology to do that.

Yeah. So most people, when they grow businesses, they'll get to a place where they feel pain. Does that all make sense? Like, the more you grow, like, if I could triple your business tomorrow, some of you guys would say, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, not ready to handle that. Right. We all say we want it until it happens. And then you're like, son of a. I got to get some shit figured out first. So when you know. And I learned A long time ago that entrepreneurs will not grow into pain. If I held a knife to your throat and say, step forward, you would not do it because your body says, well, that would hurt. So I'm not going to do it. So a lot of you guys, when you have opportunities to grow, you feel this pain line. I call it. You do one of three things. The first thing is you decide, you know what this hurt. I'm going to do what I did last year because I made more money and it was easier, right? I call it stalling. The problem with stalling is essentially the world isn't stopping to grow. Gross domestic product increases every year, whether you like it or not. The customer's demand of what you deliver year over year. I mean, gosh, it'd be great, you know, Joe, if we could just do what we did 20 years ago and everybody'd be happy. Doesn't happen. So your customers needs are gonna grow. And the most importantly, this is one that I lean on the most, is your top people. They expect a future because here's what I know. Your job as a leader is to create a vision big enough for everybody else's dreams and goals to fit inside of. And if you don't do that, your top people, they will bounce. So stalling is not an option. The second one is sabotage. And sabotage is a funny one because most entrepreneurs don't know when they're doing it. But sabotage is essentially dragging your feet, replying to an email. It's deciding to come into your business and launch a whole new company, a whole new product, knowing that it doesn't have the proper resources to succeed. But in doing that, it's going to create chaos. And then through that chaos, you're going to be able to downsize and you can blame it on that thing. Anybody else throw hand grenades in their business? Come on, let's be honest. Every once in a while, it's a good hand grenade, is a good fun time, right? A little chaos, why not? So sabotage is the second one and the third one is sell, right? It's, I heard there's more money in solar. I mean, Joe, you've been doing this so long that, you know, you've seen it. You've probably seen people in this room that have gone through transitions because you hear that somebody else is, you know, I'm going to do AI, I'm going to do software, I'm going to do whatever. The truth is is that no matter what that next thing is, you will hit what's called your complexity ceiling. You will hit the same place you're at today in regards to your ability to deal with chaos, your ability to deal with people, your ability to be creative. And you'll run into the same problem. So it doesn't matter what vehicle it is, you're still bringing you with you to that next thing. So what I encourage people to do is when you feel that pain, to lean into what I call the buyback loop. And the buyback loop is a three step process. Because everything in the world is a three step process. But the three step process is pretty easy. But what's unique about it is the implementation. The first one is, 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.

First one is you audit your calendar for time and energy. Okay, so when I look at. And Ann's here, my assistant, you guys will probably read about her in the book. But Ann, raise your hand. She's right there. This is Ann, okay, That's Jonah. She runs my life. Anytime I feel like there's chaos in my calendar, where I feel like I'm being held back or I can't express myself, Ann and I do a calendar audit. We look at what are you doing, what lights you up, where do you really drive results from your time? And anything that doesn't pass that filter, it's got to go. So time and energy audit. The second step is transfer. So ATF T is transfer. Transfer is how do I get that stuff in my life to somebody else in a way that I can feel comfortable? How many guys have a fear of letting go? Just let's be honest, okay? Here's the thing is that wherever you're at today, know that next year you can't be doing half of the stuff if you want to grow. So whatever you do today, half of it has to be somebody else if you want to give yourself a fighting chance to achieve your goals. It's just the law of the way it works. So learning how to transfer to another person where you can feel in control is really important. I teach this framework called the camcorder method. I do it almost every day and I literally record myself doing the work. And then I hire somebody, they watch the recordings and then they create the standard operating procedures. Some of you guys are such control freaks that you. You need to create it. Does that make sense? I'm going to encourage you to let the smart people that are professionally studied in the thing you need them to do. Watch them. You do the genius you do, but have them document it. So then that's really cool. And then the fill. And this is where if you don't finish the loop, it's a buyback loop. The fill is the most important because without the last step, you don't get the acceleration. And what the fill is, is filling up your calendar initially with things that make you money. So if you're a logo designer, you should be designing more logos. If you sell whatever, Sell more stuff. Once you've got all the operations of the business not on your plate, then it's becoming more so. The three areas I tell people to invest in, other than relationships, obviously, is skills. What skills do I not possess that my organization needs? What are the beliefs that I have that are simply not true? The biggest cost or the worst belief to have is one that just simply isn't true. The other day, I had an entrepreneur. She believed the more she grew, the more weight she put on. That's a real thing. I know men that I coach, if they lose the weight, women will make passes at them, and they may do something that would jeopardize their marriage. Real talk. Well, how the heck are you supposed to have success if you have a belief that the more successful you are, that you have pain? Right. So beliefs is the second one, and then the third one is your character traits. Discipline, motivation, leadership, communication. Most people don't have the character traits of somebody that's achieving at that level. And to me, that's like, if I buy back my time, then I'm investing. That's why I love investing in coaching and seminars and all that stuff, because it's literally a cheat code. I'd rather pay for the world's best person to come into my life to teach me what they know. It's literally how I build all my companies. I find the agency who's the best at the thing, pay them, come in, teach my team, bring your playbooks, and then I'm good. Team, execute. It's literally the fastest thing in the world, but you gotta pay for it. So that's why the buyback loop is just such an efficient way to grow your business.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome. All right, well, let's get into it. What do you mean by buy back your time? Explain. Well, let me say it this way, because I Have some notes here. So you. Why do you spend 2 million a year buying back your time so that you can scroll TikTok?

I love that you saw that. It is kind of funny because, like, if you know me and you actually, like, came into my house and watch me, like, when I work, I work incredibly efficient, right? I'm not busy. People are like, I'm always busy. It's like, fuck, I don't give. If you want to brag about being busy, go ahead. That's just not me. When I work, I'm effective. Like, I'm here doing a media tour. I got 13. And how many podcasts? Thirteen podcasts? People, like, how long you tell I want to hang out? It's like no time allocated. Right. But when I'm not, I'm not. And I don't mind laying on the couch and just chilling and scrolling TikTok.

Getting a dopamine hit.

Yeah, just fuck it. Like, I get it. Like, I help people build software like this. I understand what's going on neurologically, but I give myself the permission. Why? Because when I wake up, I attack the day until I feel drained. And when I'm done, that's like. That's like, I love reality tv. Like Real Housewives Game on. Me and my wife loves that shit. Selling Sunset. Let's go. Like, it's weird, but it's just. It's just true, right? But yeah, I spend probably a couple million dollars on hiring people to run companies, to run my household, to run my life, so that I can do only what I want to do and not what I don't. Not because I'm not willing to do it, because I did it for a long time. Just because I know that's not a good use of my time. Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, totally. Well, and so I think everybody, you.

Got to spend the money. I just think some of you guys are pretty freaking cheap.

Yeah.

Like legit. If you tell me you don't have time and you drive the new Mercedes and you got a big ass house and you fly, you charter private a lot. Just saying you might want to allocate your capital somewhere else.

Yeah.

Yeah. So here's what I think. We have Dr. Don Wood, who's actually watching on Zoom, and we were talking earlier today, and he has this line. We were talking about it earlier. If you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they are the way they are. So the way that somebody shows up has a lot to do with it. So upbringing, what they've been exposed to their own identity, the rationalizations drilled into them to not, you know, I mean, a lot of people have deservance issues with having other people do stuff. There is this great line. I interviewed a guy when I was a carpet cleaner and I was just starting to teach carpet cleaners marketing. And his name was Jim Henry and it was 21 ideas on hiring and firing. And he said, you don't buy a dog and bark for it. And I was like, that's a very interesting line. And how often as entrepreneurs do we buy dogs and bark for them? Right. And that's a really hard thing. It's been hard in my life to let go of stuff. I certainly have a team, I have a great team. I certainly have invested a lot. And part of my agenda here, even with you, is because you're really good and you've coached a lot of people on how to do this. And I don't think it was very easy for you in the beginning, but you've learned how to do that. And I'd like to be able to have you to go back to transfer to transfer what you learned because I'd love to have everyone leave this conversation with a lot more leverage.

Yeah, you guys want some very tactical ways to work through people. So here's the big idea is that at each stage of revenue, usually 300k, 2 million, 10 million, 30 million, 100 million, there's different skills. The CEO like, there's one skill the CEO absolutely need to adopt or they'll never be able to get to the next one. And I'm assuming most of this room kind of like seven figures, couple set.

There's no one in here that has a company that's doing less than a million and there's at least 15 people that have $100 million plus.

Well, the cool part is this strategy works at all levels, but predominantly for the 2 million level, plus or minus 500k is because at that level the skill to learn is how to work through somebody. And that is a scary proposition, especially if you are the product, you are the business, your name's out there and you're asking somebody else to lead a team that then talks to the customer. So that's where you would easily want to, you know, buy a dog and then bark for it. What I'm going to encourage you to do is a few things. Number one is empower your frontline workers to fix people problems. So one of my favorite strategies I talk about in the book is the $50 magic pill. Sometimes I call it the 50 to fix it. But essentially anybody on my team can spend up to $50 to solve any problem they deem worthy without ever asking for permission. Okay, now that sounds cool. You probably heard it before, but let me show you how it scales up. And I don't talk about this in the book, so I want to bring stuff for Joe. Specifically, it's 50 for frontline workers, 500 for managers, 5,000 for directors, and 50,000 for CEO level. Now think about that. So I literally empower my team at different levels to spend real dollars without ever asking for permission to solve problems. The only thing I ask them is after they solve it, that they tell their leader. So if one of my manager spends $5,000 to solve a problem, all I ask them is spend it, solve it, get it done. But then you have to tell your leader so that there's an opportunity to have a feedback loop. Does that make sense? Same thing with C level. So that's how I'm able to scale companies is because I empower the people to make decisions to solve problems. So first off, figure out what you feel comfortable with and then literally have it all hands and tell your teams if you see a problem. Now, I love it because Sam's here, and Sam's the one that caused this little kerfuffle in the business. Sam was earlier on in our relationship. He's one of my business partners, Al, but he was one of our editors on our YouTube channel, and we have this rule. So he had an issue with a thumbnail, so he needed a thumbnail. And the designer on the team didn't get back to him. So what does Sam do? Hires a freelance thumbnail designer. And the video comes out, thumbnails goes out. The designer goes, I didn't design that. Who designed that? Well, Sam hired something. Why are you guys hiring people to do my job. See what happens there. Now, our leaders are well trained to have a conversation, to say, if Sam felt like he wasn't getting the response time fast enough, then there's an issue with process. But the issue with process shouldn't stop because we're waiting on somebody. It's, hey, if that hurts your feelings, let's talk about why he didn't get what he needed by the certain time. See what I'm saying? So it will uncover opportunities for you to hopefully develop your people.

I like that. The very nice way to say that, or someone's just a total slug or.

Somebody can't manage themselves and you might have to transition them off or ak fire them so that's one of my favorite things. But the other One is the 131 rule. Okay, so the 131 rule states this is that anybody that comes to you with a problem, you ask them, what is the problem we're trying to solve? That is one of my favorite questions to ask in the universe. A history of questions. If you come to me and you ask me for advice, first question I'm going to ask you is, what problem are you trying to solve? I don't know if you've ever been down the rabbit hole of answering somebody's question to find out. At the end of your answer, they were like, oh, no, you didn't understand me. And you're like, you didn't ask that question. What are you talking about? And it's like, okay, reset. So step one, what problem are you trying to solve? Then the three part of the equation is, what are the three options you've evaluated? Because as entrepreneurs, what we actually want from other people is that they've thought through the option set the way we would. Because, like, that's the thing. When I talk to somebody, I feel like they don't get it. It's because I don't think you evaluated all. All the options. So I always ask people, what are your three options that you've evaluated? And then the last one is, what's your one recommendation? So if you came to me and said, hey, Joe, we need to fill this room. We don't have enough people, I'd say, what's your one? Three. One. I don't know. I don't run marketing. I know, but you own this room. You lead this area of the business. Well, I don't know. Well, do you need some time to go? Think about it. I literally asked them, how much time do you need to go come up with some options? And if they don't even know where to start? I say, well, who could you tell me that you would consider calling to get some feedback on coming up with those options? And they go, oh, I get it now. Okay, perfect. So it's like one time, I had an HR guy, Adam, and he came to me. He's like, dude, I'm stressed out. I said, why? He goes, we gotta hire 12 people in the next month. I said, cool. Well, I'm stressed out. I can hear it in your voice. He's like, what are you gonna do about it? I don't know. You're the HR person. Like, why is it my job? I think I hired you to do your job. I'M just not going to bark for you. And he's like, well, I've never done this before. I go, hey, guess what? Nobody on the team's done what we're doing right now. We're growing really fast. We all got to learn really fast. So I said, what's your 13 1? He's like, Dude, I don't have time for this shit. I get that you think it's shit, but for me, this is how I'm going to lead you properly. And the way I show up for you is how you're going to show up for your team. And if I don't teach you this, you're going to be the bottleneck. And I was like, how much time do you need to figure it out? He said, give me a day. I said, tomorrow, same time, 4 o'.

Clock.

He's like, yep, cool. Next morning, 10:00am Text me, I'm good.

He didn't eat, he didn't need me.

Because once he started looking at it, he solved the problem. And what happens is when you hold yourself accountable to that process is that you will eventually wake up one day and have an organization where you are not needed. Now that brings up some feelings. So all you guys want to be really important. I know I can fucking this, especially this group, like, trust me, I Talked to software CEOs different than people where they are the person in the business we like to feel needed. But I'll tell you, if you want the freedom that I talk about in this book, a third of the problem is leadership. It's how you're showing up as a leader in your team. And the 131 rule will literally allow you to build a business that grows on its own. My philosophy is simple. I build the people. The people build the business.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. So email is one of the most horrifying, scary things of my entire existence. No, it's not that bad. But it annoys me. And you have a great way of outsourcing all of it. And I have a friend I won't even mention, you probably know him, but he's built a billion dollar company. He has a thousand employees. He has an autoresponder that basically says I'm not able to get back to most emails. I may or I may not. And. And in spite of how much you preach this, most people don't do it. And now I am more intent on figuring this process out. And there's always an excuse. We were talking earlier about alibis. One of my alibis is I deal with a lot of high profile people in the area of addiction recovery and I don't want an email coming that anyone's going to read. So I'm very protective of any. Even Eunice, who's been my assistant for 28 years, who I trust with everything, she doesn't read my emails directly. Now we have different emails that come to me that go to team, but I have this private email box that no one gets to and I can't keep up with it. Never been able to. And part of it I'm like, you know, I'm talking to Dan Martell. He's probably the best guy that could ever lay this out once and for all. I can handle this shit. And just freaking. That's been one of my, like, why have I not done this?

It's.

It's wasted so much of my time. So how do you, how do. Because you, you, you route all your messages, not just email.

I don't do email. Yeah, I don't do email. Anne's there, she can tell you. I don't do email.

Yeah.

I don't do text messages. Honestly, Joe probably gets annoyed with me because he messaged me. I don't reply to him sometimes. Eventually I get to it, but it's. I just don't. One thing about me is I turn off all notifications on my phone and I consume the things like TikTok when I want to. Right now here's what I would ask you, Joe, to consider is like, because change is hard. That makes sense. Everybody. Like, change is like scary and we won't change unless one or two things is the, the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. And what I would assume, Joe, is the pain isn't that painful yet because if it was, you would have made the change. Oh yeah.

And also, like, it's weird because, you know, I'm a relationship guy, so I know what to do with messages and I have yet to figure out how. I think about 10% of what we do is magic. 90% of it can be taught to other people. So that 10% of me, that's magic. I don't know how to teach that to other people, but I can teach a lot of other stuff to people.

Yeah. So in the book I have this framework called the 108010 rule, which is all about the magic. It's the first 10%. Steve Jobs goes down with Jony Ives in his studio and they talk about imacs and ipods and iPhones. Right. And then Jony Ives takes all those crazy ideas from Steve Jobs and talks to his production folks and prototypers, and they, you know, they do shit. And then they come back and they go, hey, Steve, look at. Look at the thing we built. And he's like, okay. And his last 10% is, let's tweak it. And then I'm going to present it to the world. That's his. That's his genius. That's his happy place. That's his magic. So I totally get that. And I'm the same way. I just don't do that 80%. So, first off, if you have this belief that there's no way in the history of the world that anybody else could ever read this before me, then I can't help, because that would be required. Now, when I say that out loud, and some of you guys, not Joe, but you might be in the same position, I would just encourage you to consider that there are incredible people out there that could give two shits less about who you're friends with, what you do, your personal affairs, and they just want to help you. And if you empower them to do that, like, for me, Ann. And Ann has an assistant. We have a team, but she manages that communication, then you can just defer it. And when I hire an assistant, I have a very clear conversation with them. Everything I do and you see is considered private. Do not put me in an awkward position to have to let you go because you were at a party at a friend's house that heard you work for me and you accidentally shared with them something that nobody should have known. Even if it's my schedule, just take it. Like, pretend like you don't know me. And that's probably a good place to stay because you will see stuff. Dude, I do investments in publicly traded companies. It's very illegal. Like, it's insiders trading. So I totally get. And I have those same emails from people who are struggling with addiction, etc. I just, like, at minimum, if I want to solve the problem, then somebody else has to be able to review those messages and then sort them. I get to still do my magic. I'm just not in there. So then once a day, literally before this meeting, we're driving from a previous podcast, we're sitting in the suv, and Anne's got my review folder open, and she's saying, boom, boom, boom. I mean, we did an investment, we did a ton of shit in the car, and I get to come here, hang out, and do lunch with Joe. I don't even think about my inbox. So some of you guys I've actually met, I just forget because literally, Ann is routing so much stuff, and I would love to, but I'm more of a person. I like hanging out with people, and that's where my magic is. It ain't my inbox. So if you want to know if I'm free next Thursday for your podcast, I'm the last person you should ask. Like, Tommy, you're asking me where I'm staying? I literally don't know. Yeah, no. And it's not Tempe. Sam doesn't even know because Ann takes care of us, and we have Ubers and we drive. You know what I mean? So, like, I just. A long time ago, I realized there's a lot of, like, for you to be able to scale, you have to be okay not knowing. Do you know how crazy it is for my dad? My dad goes, hey, Dan, when's your next event? It's in Scottsdale next week. Cool. How many people are coming? I don't know. How do you not know? Why is it my job to know? Well, what if nobody shows up? Well, dad, good news. If nobody's showing up, the team will tell me, but the fact that they haven't told me tells me people are showing up. So I'm still going. I don't get it. What do you not get? Well, don't you care? I care a lot about other stuff. Not necessarily how many people are coming to the event, because I'm gonna be on stage doing what I do regardless. If there's four people and the team actually has red, green yelling, you got to build the system. And I think that's, like, a big thing, is if the pain hard enough for you want to solve it, trust me, there is a solution. It's going to take process. It's going to take thinking. But again, when I talked about skills, beliefs, and character traits, you're going to have to go through the process of developing the skills to let it go. But I'll tell you, man, the day that you wake up and you don't do email and you were there with your kids or present with a friend or you didn't come back from a vacation, and you're totally stressed out day one because you got an inbox full of messages.

Wow.

You want to talk about creativity and freedom and the ability to just push and drive as hard as you can with no pain line. It is a magical place. And that's that. Literally, that's the movement I'm trying to create. Is I want to teach people how to build businesses they don't grow to hate. Because it ain't the business that they're in, it's how they designed it. And they get to a place where it sucks. I'm not saying, you know what I mean, but that's literally when people shut down a business, it's because they built it right, wrong. And the way they're doing it, it hurts. And the process I teach, literally, from a dollar to ROI point of view, you can't deny it's a math equation, right? So that's why I'm like really passionate about this message.

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. By the way, what I'm doing here is a bit of a setup because when I decided I was going to take a one year sabbatical in 2021, in 2020, I was like thinking, okay, in order to have the conditions of taking an entire year off, I have to set it up. So in order to not have email, I have to set it up. So right now I'm going through the setup process. But I thought about it, I had a few conversations. Am I really going to do this? And then I decided to publicly announce it and I did an interview.

We're doing this.

Oh, well, no, I did it in 2021, but we're doing this.

No, no, that's what I'm saying. You're committing to getting your inbox. Eunice, are you hearing it?

Yeah.

And, and so I'm looking at a.

Face because I've had. Do you believe him though?

Do you believe me?

There we go. Here's what I'm gonna do for Joe is, Ann, I'm putting you on the spot and is your resource a thousand percent. Everything I have, you can ask. And she will teach you how we do it, the process. So you've got the best in the world trained, you know what I mean, to support you.

I love it. No, I appreciate that. And by the way, I'm doing this for me because I want to, you know totally what's in it for me? That's my new book, by the way. And secondly, I have had conversations with at least 10 people that are in this room over the years that in the same boat, they're in the same boat as me. And I want this to be for everyone here too, that struggles with it.

Can I just ask how many of you guys, even if Inbox wasn't in your life, most people text you anyways? How many of you guys have that problem? Yeah, okay, perfect. Here's what I do. So Joe texts me and he's like, hey, man, let's get together for this thing on this day, blah, blah, blah. I screenshot it and I send it to Ann. I literally do this all day long. I screenshot, start a new text thread, put Ann in the person in charge, paste it in so I don't have to write anything. And Ann knows got will change the game for you. Why is that powerful? You just started teaching people who really knows what's going on in your life. Okay. And over time, you will teach people how to treat you. So I want people to call me when they're in need and they need Dan Martell conversation. But if you need me to do something or you need my bio or you need to know if I'm available on a certain date, I don't even know, so don't ask me. But I'll introduce you to the person that does so. And there's ways to build the tools, even the software, because some people are like, well, what if Ann goes somewhere else? And all of a sudden the phone number, you can get a global phone number that anybody on the back end can get access to. Like, these are problems that can be solved. I just. I don't even want to talk about that because I want you to just make a commitment, like Joe just did, to give it the fuck up, like, just to make today the day I'm done. Email doesn't support me. If I could get those two hours a day back, what would I do with that? Hopefully you go to the gym and spend time with people you love, because that's probably a really good investment. And buy back your time.

Yeah, Love it. All right, 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. We just, we just decided, I'll tell you guys, we used to go home because I grew up on 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 had 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, 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 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, the key people on my teams. I put all my events in there. I put, I put my, 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? 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 it 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 fuck if I was drinking, I wouldn't be with my wife and my kids would have to experience a lot of chaos. 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 a 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, anne, add it to her 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. I'm an asshole. I should. 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 gonna 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 it literally when I think back and I scan, like when I was, you know, 26, after 10 years of being entrepreneurs, 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, this is 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. 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 of 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 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 for some of you guys never even considered inviting somebody to coach you as a family unit. 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 one of my.

They didn't call me podcast then.

Well, they 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 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 I've done at Genius Network and stuff. 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 it was kind of a quick. I didn't calculate every aspect of it.

But it was a lot.

And so I did a lot of therapy. I've done a lot of work and everything from plant medicines to, you name it. 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 is they start a podcast.

Like 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 surface 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 something about, you know, walking the walk and talking the talk. One of the. Joey who gave you a testimonial on your book.

Coleman.

Yeah, yeah. His book's great.

Oh, yeah. New one in his previous one.

And I met him, Michael Fishman, I think, is downstairs, had him speak at his Consumer Health Summit. And he said, I think it's him. Or I'm not sure who, where. Or maybe it's Garrett Gunderson. Yeah, hold on.

Yeah, he's also.

Oh, yeah, it's Garrett. Okay. 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. 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 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. 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 it. Because I know all of you probably buy books at 10 times the speed of your rate of ingesting them. And some of you, it's, you know. But this one really is a good roadmap and I think you'll learn a lot. 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 it's about intentions. It's about being intentional about how you go into things. And you, more than anyone, seem to take any experience and get the most out of it. And that's what I've learned from you, and that's what I'd love you to share with everyone. How to do that.

Yeah, well, just an observation. So I have been at this for 45 years, and I got really interested in the early 1970s of the impact that technology was having. And it seemed to me that one of the things that was going to happen more and more was just sheer increasing complexity in people's lives. And, you know, when I was born, I was born in 44, 1944, and there were 2.2 billion people on the planet, and now there's eight, and, you know, more than Half of them have cell phones. So there's a lot of complexity that comes out of that. So the real individual ability is really knowing what you want in a world where there's just. And you, Joe, you know why everybody is here this year. And you spend a whole year actually connecting people and bringing them here. So in your mind, this is all connected, this all makes sense. But if you're just showing up here, then it feels like a tsunami, what Joe does. I mean, Joe is like a one person tsunami. And then he brings other people here and you say, geez, geez, geez, you know, and you don't know what you want to do with that. So I'm just going to tell three short stories of how I got on this.

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.

First of all, August 15, 1978, I was both divorced and bankrupt on the same day. And I like to simplify things. So I just put it on one day and I arranged for the divorce in the morning so I could keep my credit card for lunch. And then I had to hand it in in the afternoon because of the.

And.

And I had about three or four months to think about this because when you're divorced and bankrupt, people give you a lot of privacy. So anyway, I came to the conclusion after about three months that both of these had happened, both the divorce and the bankruptcy, because I was depending on other people to tell me what I wanted. And I said, I have to get a handle on this. And the first thing is you just relieve other people of the responsibility for what's happened. I think that's a very necessary thing. If you're going to transform your life, you have to take all the responsibility for yourself. What I came up with was a 25 year goal. So I would start it right at the end of 78 and I'd go till the end of 2003. And every day I was going to write at least one sentence in a journal about what I wanted. But I wouldn't say I want this because I just say I want it. And I noticed that I had a tendency that I wanted something, then I'd have to justify it. And I said, I'll just try for 25 years. Not to say because. And I did it every day for 25 years and it's 9131 days. And I missed 12 days, but 9131 days. And what came out of it is I became a really good wanderer, a really good wanderer. And I just noticed that it was just like working out for 25 years. You get very muscular. And I met Babs Smith. Babs will show up because she, you know, she radiates. And so Babs is here. And that changed my relationship. Without Babs, I'm just a smart drunk, worried about the rent. And so my whole turning point in my life was meeting Babs. And then we created Strategic Coach and I got to meet Joe. And Joe is my Rolodex. I don't have a lot of names. I just called Joe and I said I'd like to meet someone new. And he introduces them to me. Very simple. So that was one story. So that's where I got it. And this whole notion of wanting and just stating what you want, like I'm very clear, you know. And I met someone yesterday morning that it struck me that probably this is one of the people I meet that's going to work for the next 25 years. And that just happened because I was looking for it. Now the second story I'd like to tell you, the third story is about Joe and Genius Network. But the second story is about a.

Client of mine who a year ago.

In February, this was the. So I have a lot of clients who have really done well in coach and they start second companies and they sell their first company. So the, this person had created a very, very powerful prototyping tool that he could create industrial parts in six weeks for a company, a manufacturing company, where it usually takes about six months. So the offer was for $1 billion. That's the biggest I've ever had. And so he was really kibet'd about this because he was saying they're gonna want me to stay on for three or four years and I'll have to sign a non compete and everything. I don't wanna do that. And I said, well just do an impact filter on everything you want. And he said, well, I don't know if I'll get it. I said, well it doesn't matter, you won't get it if you don't say what you want. So why don't you just say what you want? And he put it on impact filter. And then he had three or four meetings and he told them that he wanted the 1 billion in one check and he wasn't there tomorrow and there was no non compete. So he told the company, big corporation what it was and I said, oh no, no, I mean that's not how this works. And he said, well he said I'm.

Going to make the billion anyway by.

Just keeping the company. And he said, I like the company, I just want to be freed up. He said, I'm not doing this because I need the money, I'm doing it because I want the freedom. And so he folded up the impact filter. In every meeting he had it next to his heart and so they said no. And then one day, two day, three day and he was really nervous because I mean it takes a lot of courage to not accept what people want. And on the 10th day they phoned him and said, okay, whatever you want. And the thing was they really needed what he had. He wanted freedom. And he actually did that. And he said if I hadn't written the impact filter stating everything I wanted and put in my pocket, he said I would have given in. So that's the third one. But the first day that I came to Genius with Babs in the first half hour, Joe said, you're paying 25,000 for the year and if you don't do 10 times, if you don't do 10 times in the first year being here, he said, I'm not going to let you come back for the second year. He said, you're just a loser, you're a bad person. I was sitting there and we had a exercise, a thinking exercise in the entrepreneurial program that actually took you 10 times, but it was about three hours and everybody said it was a great impact. I said, why don't I just create a whole new programming coach for 10 times? And so we added up all the money that we paid in the first five years of 25K, Babs and I and this was 64 times. This program actually gave us 64 times return and I got it in the first half hour and I walked up to you at the end of the first hour, I said, I just got my 10 times but it turned out to be 64 times. So when Joe said we're not going to charge 100,000, Babs and I were the first ones to sign up. We actually signed up. And so Joe asked me to do an impact filter of my intentions for the 100k and I said, well, I'll add it up for five years at the new price and my goal is to get 64 times on the new price. And in the first meeting, Ben Hardy came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder, and he said. He said, I love your little books. He said, but would you like to write a big book? And he said, I'll write the book with you. And Tucker backs is in the room. So we have a collaboration.

Yeah, there's Tucker right there.

There's Tucker right there.

Don't applause for him. He's not a good guy. No, I'm kidding. Tucker's awesome.

Yeah, well, well, I'm telling you, I'm the advocate here for the new Tucker. I don't know what he did in the past, you know, but I'm an advocate for the new because we've just put together a collaboration with Ben Tucker and Reed Tracy, who are all at the same genius network. And that's a 64 times easy. This is my third year in the program. So that's the whole point, is if you don't say what you want, you won't get it or you'll get everything. Gilda Radner, the very famous and funny one of the founding cast of Saturday Night Live, she said, you know, when I was little, I really wanted to be somebody. And now that I'm older, I realize I should have been a lot more specific. So I just do this with everything. Every workshop I do, every book I write, every podcast I do, you know, coming to strategic coach, and I do a couple other conferences during the year, and I just tell myself a day before what it is that I want. And then my eyes and ears, you know, as the saying says, my eyes are just picking up on what my brain is looking for. And I always get some bonus, too. So when I get extra things besides what I came for, then I'm in bonus territory. Yeah. So no, thank you.

And one question for you about this. So everyone here sitting here, we're in.

10 minutes, by the way. So he wound me up and off in 10 minutes. So you just got what you wanted.

This is important, I think, for the value that everyone. So if someone's brand new, like you said, it might be, oh, you know, trying to just feel comfortable here and what is all this and how do you make the most out of it? But everyone here is investing their time, their money, and their energy, and I certainly want them to get a far greater return for that than when they leave here saying, oh, was it worth it? People have had trouble sleeping. Some people feel awesome right now. Some people are their businesses just going phenomenal. Others, you're immersed in struggle and what recommendation or advice as it relates to mindset and getting the most out of this, either if they've been in Genius Network for a long time, which many people here have, or they're brand new. I mean, you've already said it, but I'm just.

Yeah, well, they've got the form. And because you're part of Genius Network, you can do the forum. And if you want to go a little bit deeper into the thinking behind this, we have books at the booth and you can read it through. And there's also a two hour audio interview and there's a 45 minute video of me talking through it. But one of the big things is the vast majority of people go through their life only asking for what they need. Okay. And usually they're trying to fulfill a deficiency and something's missing and they need it. But the people who really change the world are strictly want people. So I see two economies actually developing and entrepreneurs are the greatest wanters in the world. A lot of people just want to have a job. They want to have an income. Well, that's what they get because they didn't say what they really wanted. And then they're very frustrated that other people aren't giving them what they want. But nobody can give you what they want because your brain hasn't even bought into it yet. And you haven't told yourself what you want. And there's no possibility of what you want happening unless you actually tell your brain to look at. Because Ben has a great concept from his psychology work and it's called selective attention. That every one of you in this room lives in a totally different universe. You have a different brain that's looking for different things. And what you will see and what you will hear is completely unique to you. But if you don't tell your brain what to look for, your eyes and ears pick up on everything and it just leads you to confusion.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, see, the other thing too is that I've. I mean, when did you first create the Impact filter?

It's about 15 in its present form. About 15 years.

Okay. So I've been doing this for a long time and it's still, still is hitting me with now different applications and different ways to use this. And I really believe how much you're going to get out of this event has everything to do with the intention and the place you actually put yourself in. And this is an investment, and it's either going to be a great investment for you or it's going to be a bad investment. Totally based on how you show up and the time that you put into it. So that's why I wanted Dan to talk about this. And so I'm going to interview Keith Cunningham here in a little bit. And Keith, his book, the Road Less Stupid, which I'll repeat this again, is one of the best things about this book is it's about thinking time. And I'm all. I'm immersed right now in, you know, Keith's thinking time process. And here I am doing the Impact filter. So part of my thinking time process is incorporating the MCAP Impact filter into my thinking time, because that's what, you know, see, Dan has a lot of great lines, but one of them is, you know, the problem is not the problem. The problem is how you think about the problem.

Yeah, right.

And so any problem, any challenge, any opportunity that you have while you're here, it's what you think it is versus how you actually think about it. And the thinking of other people that are here that you can collaborate with is some of the biggest. It's one of the biggest rewards here. Because at the end of the day, this is a connection network. So anything.

Well, I just wanted to tell you that you have been saying something for about two years in the addiction recovery, and my mind has just been playing with this, that we're looking at addiction as a problem when actually it's a solution.

And what you want to find out.

What is the actual problem that addiction is actually the solution. And I was thinking about it. We were in really lousy traffic in Toronto because Toronto really has lousy traffic. And everybody talks about the congestion problem. I said, what if congestion is actually a solution to another problem? And I started talking to people about that, and they said, you know, sitting in traffic, and these are people who maybe put in 90 minutes, 100 minutes a day. And they said, you know, it's the one. It's the. It's the one hour and a half or two hours when I can actually have privacy and I'm actually sitting is when I'm in congestion. And they say, what if all this congestion is actually deliberate? Because the only time people actually get privacy and they can just sit there and they're not going fast enough for anything to be dangerous, you know, so. And I said, what if we took every problem in the world and said, it's not actually a problem, it's a solution. And then you backed up to what it's a solution. Because there's a lot of other addictions besides the, you know, the marquee Addictions, there's just weird things that happen in the world and people say, well, why can't we solve this problem? I said, probably because it's not a problem, it's actually a solution. You have to go deeper. So I think that's the sort of thinking that you're doing here.

Oh, yeah. And Gabor Mate, who I brought here to this conference in 2017, you know, he has this great line where he says the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain? And if you understand what the pain is, then it makes sense with the addiction. There's a doctor here, Donald Wood, Don Woods. Where's he at? Somewhere in the room over here. Okay, we'll talk about him later. I met him at the Spartan World Championships, and he talks about the atmospheric conditions, is brilliant at articulating it, but if you look at the atmospheric conditions of someone's life, it actually makes sense why they do the things that they do. So in a lot of ways, you.

Know, and Ben really deals with that. Willpower doesn't work.

Yes.

So anyway, Ben's got the new book out, which is called Personality Is Not Personality Isn't Permanent, which will become Personality Is Not Permanent. And he was staying with us and we were driving to work, and I said, let me get this straight, Ben. You've taken away their willpower and you've taken away their personality. What's left at the end of it?

So in my company, and this is where I'm telling you how I operate.

So what I'm going to show you.

Is on a daily basis, if you.

Did a snapshot and the reporter who.

Can'T follow Tim around is following me around, they would notice that I'm doing a lot of thinking and putting it in thinking processes to figure out whether I want these ideas to actually go on and become action. And if they do, how I pass them on. So this is me, and I call this the first 80%. So this is you, actually. So up here, I'm talking about you. And with you, you have a goal, okay? And you see it real big. So out of today's activities, tomorrow's activities, there's going to be some big goals that emerge, okay? And so what I do, the moment that I have that goal, I use a tool called the Impact filter, and you have copies. All of you have it right on your tables. If you just pass out the white printed sheet, they're down here, right here. So it's a sheet that looks like this, okay? So this is a thought process. This is the paper version, and we have a software version for the participants in the strategic coach.

So you can do it, and you.

Can save all your impact filters, and I'll take you through it in, you know, in just a few minutes. But what I do is an impact filter, and then I pass it to one of my project managers.

Okay?

So Paul Hamilton.

Paul Rach.

This is Paul Hamilton. Paul Hamilton is one of my project managers. So just a very, very short one, and I could do an entire talk on this. One of the biggest, biggest failures that I've seen among entrepreneurs is they make a mistake between what I call process managers and project managers, and they hire a lot of people, and then they don't know why their people aren't excited by all their new ideas. And the reason is because the people they've hired are not project managers, okay? They've hired process managers. And what process managers like to do is to do the same thing every day and keep getting better at it. They do not like new things. Project managers only like new things. And they want to take it right through to completion, but they don't want to do it a second time. So I'm only surrounded on a daily basis with people who like taking my ideas, running with them, getting them finished, and then handing them over to other people. And then they come back and they say, what's the next one?

So there is close to a pure.

Entrepreneur that you can get in a team situation that isn't actually the entrepreneur. So I have to be surrounded. I would say suspect almost everybody in this room is that you have to be surrounded by project managers and not process managers. You drive process managers crazy, and they drive you crazy. And so that's not a good thing.

Okay, so Peter.

I'm working with Peter right now, but the key player here is Marisa. Marisa is right there. Because Marisa is a project manager. Marissa loves getting Peter's new ideas completed and in play, but she doesn't want to do them a second time. She does a great job.

Yeah, she does. She doesn't want to do it a second time. So if you want to talk about.

Process manager over the next two days, just talk to Paul. But I'm going to go back to Kathy Davis because Kathy is the project manager that I work most.

So what I do is I do a impact filter.

It takes me about a half hour to do this. I'm really good at it, and I've done close to 1000 of them. And it's a way of satisfying whether one, I'm sold on the idea one, it's an idea that should actually go into action. And number three is if it does go into action, then I'm going to give very clear instructions to the person who's going to then take it. So I send it to Kathy. And the reason is because my role in the company is to make things up. I'm a master of making things up. I could make anything up, but my company should not be subjected to my making it up habits. So I would say if I've achieved it 10 times over the last 10 years, it's a 1/10 of the ideas that I think about get communicated to my company because I just come back and confuse them. Okay, here he comes again. Shields up.

Oh, damn.

And where does this one belong? In with the 25 you've already given me. And you'd drive people crazy and it undermines their confidence. Okay, so here's Kathy again. So I'm going to talk. Kathy's going to talk through what happens when she gets my impact filter.

Getting an impact filter from Dan is really important and crucial at the beginning of any project and specifically for this app project, because first of all, I know he's extraordinarily sold on the idea. This is something he really wants to see have happen. So I know right out of the gate that this is something that he's got a lot of intention around. And the second thing that's really important is that he's just extraordinarily clear about what the result is that he's looking to get from this. So when I get the impact filter and he's illustrated his criteria for me, he's not telling me how to get it done. He's telling me what he wants the result to look like when it is done and leaves that strategizing up to me. And I just, I think that it's just such an extraordinary, clear way to communicate to people what your intentions are. And I think the one thing that Dan has done that ended up being a really good byproduct is that he gives me a little bit of time to marinate in the impact filter. So he doesn't hand it to me and we don't sit down right away and have a conversation about it. He gives me time to take it away, read it, think about it, and start to come up with some strategies, solutions, maybe some ulterior plans that will make the project happen a little bit smoother that he maybe didn't think about on the onset. But it gives me a chance to do that with myself. Last thing I want to do is rain on Dan's parade in terms of this new project because I know how excited he is about it. So this just gives me the chance to do all my strategic thinking and then come back because I'm also excited about this project and all of the projects that Dan comes to me with. And I want to make sure that he knows how excited I am. So it just gives me a real clear opportunity to think through that. So I think that's just a real pivotal thing to do.

So the impact filter that I sent Kathy is the first one. So you'll see Dan's impact filter and you can read that through tonight. So she gets that. And what I'm doing is that I'm see, I'm not telling Kathy how to do the project.

I'm just telling Kathy what the project.

Looks like when it's finished. And this is the importance of it and this is the impact we're going to have.

So the project that we're actually going.

To, to talk about here is actually the creation of the app that we just talked about. Kathy came on and introduced the app and I'm going to tell you how the teamwork was that did that. It was about a five month teamwork. And so she's going to explain it because Kathy is the second 80% and she's the project manager. If you're going to hire someone and you're thinking about hiring anyone in your company, I would strongly recommend that you hire a project manager before you hire anyone else. And the reason is that Kathy is a master of two tools of doing impact filters to launch a project. And she also has one called a strategy circle, which we'll explain in just a few minutes. And the reason is Kathy is the master of making things real. I'm not a master of making things real. I'm a master of making things up. So when I come to the line that finishes making things up, I have to pass it on to a skilled person whose passion. Now, Kathy is a master of making things up, but only within my projects. She doesn't start her own projects.

Okay.

And it's a particular profile which Paul, her, Shannon, especially Shannon, raise your hand, Shannon. Shannon's speaking tomorrow morning on Teamwork, but she'll talk to you about that. So then Kathy goes into action and she's going to explain what it takes to make it real. Okay.

So this is, I think the most.

Important thing I do right out of the gate is I do my own impact filter. Essentially, I do an impact filter on Dan's impact filter, so I have a real clear sense of what his vision is. And then I do an impact filter on how I'm going to actually make that real. So I start to think through the strategies, so my success criteria start to become strategies and ideas that I know need to happen in order to make his vision a reality. So it's just a great chance for me to get clear on that. I communicate that back to Dan so he knows that I'm clear about what needs to happen in order to have his vision become a reality. So he now has confidence in me that I'm going to get the job done, and then I can turn around, take that impact filter, drop it into a strategy so circle, which for me is the best tool to think through all of the things that need to get done and really build a team around what needs to happen and start to come up with the explicit strategies in order to have it happen. I knew that by doing the strategy circle, there were going to be a number of things that were going to be needed for this particular project. So one was definitely development of this particular app. We have an amazing tech and development team in house at Structure Strategic Coach. But based on the timeline that Dan Hanai had discussed up front and all of the other projects that we have going on in the company, this ended up being a really good project that we could actually outsource with, since it was his own independent little entity that could be created by someone else, especially someone else that had experience in creating apps, since that's something that we had never done before. By doing the impact filter and the strategy circle, we were really clear that this was the correct direction to go in.

So then Kathy puts together the third.

80%, which is the team, and that's whoever she needs to actually carry it out, and in this case, involved outside organization. Now, what I should say is that we wanted the app back by June 30th. We had it on June 24th. But the thing was that between the time we got agreement on the impact filter, so it took me a half.

Hour to write the impact filter.

Her impact filter came back to me.

So these.

We had two documents. We had these two documents, and she lives a thousand miles away from me.

So she.

I live in Toronto and she lives in Winnipeg. So we see each other perhaps, you know, maybe two months of the year actually live. But this was all done by email and it was. Was done by Skype and it was done by teleconference. But this document is actually just a teamwork document. And we just talked about it. We talked about it for a half hour and then she was off and running. So between that conversation and the actual finished Impact Filter, an hour of my time was required. Over the next five months, I was oyinvalfur and she made the decision on the outside developer. She went through the design process and everything else. And the reason is I know nothing about apps, so what input am I going to have? The only time I was brought back in is that we were going to call it the three Wins and it was taken and she came back to me and I'm good at naming things. So I said, well, what do we want here? And I said, well, what we want is a winning streak. A winning streak was too long for an app, so they made it Win Streak. And I think Win Streak's better, turned out to be a better name. And that was an hour. You know, I just played around with an hour. We went back and forth and so there were literally hundreds and hundreds of hours on this project. There were roughly about, you know, all told, about 10 other people involved. But I knew nothing about that. The only thing I knew is that on June 12th, 24th, we got a result. It more than satisfied the criteria I'd put together in the original. And that's a big win, so that constitutes a big win. And Kathy and I have done probably 100 projects like this over the last six years and each of them is just a little upfront with me, very clear instructions. And so what it does for me is that allows me.

So what it is then that you.

Need a team to make it recur. And one of the teams that we need to make it recur was Apple.

So Apple is out there.

You know, Apple is part of our team. You know, we have the developers who are constantly fine tuning it, so they're part of our team. So in this world, your team can be anywhere. Okay, and that's what I love, is that this is a methodology with, fits in perfectly with the technologies that we now have for communication and collaboration because you're just doing a part of it and you're not overseeing the complexity of it. Okay, so what I'm going to do is wrap this up because now this is the way I'm going to operate for the rest of my life. So I've got a methodology and, and I put together a new 25 year framework for where I'm going to go and it takes me over 90. And so my goal is at 90, I'm just as energetic, just as involved, just as enthusiastic as I am today. And the way I'm going to do that is by vastly simplifying my existence right now. Such a way that I just do the first 80%, okay? And my entire life from now on is just making it up, okay? And that's leadership, okay? And so I'm just in a leadership role, okay? And that's me. And I suspect that's all you are. And then I have a line, I call it the line. And I don't go any further than the line. And on the other side of the line, I'm just creating a framework by the impact fill where I explain to everybody exactly what the purpose is. Exactly what the purpose is. Why we doing this next thing is the importance of it. If we pull it off, the other thing is the ideal outcome, what it looks like, what the benefit would be. The other thing is, I always say what the worst result is. And you can see the worst results there. We totally screw it up, It's a mess. We give it to the clients, it doesn't work. Our renewals drop by 30%, we start laying off staff. I'm miserable. I really spell it out.

I really spell it out.

I scare the shit out of myself. And it's very, very important. One of the most famous actors of all time, Laurence Olivier, he would, before he went to, he went to act every night and he was renowned for, if he was doing something for the 150th time that he would go and just before the performance, they had peepholes in the curtains and he would look out and he would remind himself that if he tried to do last night's performance, he was going to totally bored. So he would say this, this is not last night's audience. This is not last night's theater. This is not last night's performance. This is not last night. And he would just remind himself that it was all fresh and new and he'd scared himself right back to opening night. And so every play was opening night and he was as scared as can be. So whenever I do anything, I want to make sure I get myself in a state of creative fear that I'm going to blow it, okay? And then I say, okay, I've handled the fear. And then I say, okay, so what's the best result now? I want the excitement. Because all achievement is a high octane, octane mixture between fear and excitement. A lot of people kind of try to remove both from their life and they produce nothing. You cannot get away from fear and excitement. But it's got to Be fear and excitement for the right things. So I'm laying out something really right and then I lay out the success criteria. So my philosophy is, you know, and this relates back to the very first model I started with about this gap of measuring your progress. You know, you're measuring your progress against the, against the ideal. If you just stay on your side of the line, you've probably reduced by 99% that you'll actually do this. So in order to stay out of the gap, you got to stay on your side of the line. So my whole philosophy for the rest of my life is to stay on my side of the line and do impact filters surround myself with great project managers who create great teamwork. And all I have to do is relate to about five or six project managers and they, they create extensive teamwork. And I don't have to know any of his thing about that. You know, there was an additional expense on this project that wasn't budgeted and I never knew anything about it because why would you talk to Dan about budget? And you know, I mean, I get $500 in my ATM every two weeks and I'm as happy as can be, you know, you know, and you know, and so, you know, I mean, that's it. I lead a very, very simple life. I do about three activities and that's it. And this is what I teach. Because the add person shouldn't be involved in a lot of activities. The add person should just be involved in two or three incredibly important, powerful, multiplying activities and then have a whole teamwork structure that actually allows you to multiply yourself out in the world. And so this is it, this is the thing. So what I'd like you to think about is where is your line? And if you could make great progress every 90 days of staying more and more on your side of the line and then having this great project management team on the other side of the line who actually do know how to find the talent, they know how to train people, they know how to set up the, you know, the entire completion schedule and then they know how to handle, hand it off to other people. Your life is just going to be incredibly happy. And then it's just making sure you take your drugs every day.

What is X? When you say 10x or 10 times, what is the X? Because what I've discovered working with entrepreneurs, and by the way, tomorrow is 40 years since I started coaching. So tomorrow, And I'm Catholic and August 15th is the feast of the assumption. I can guarantee you on that August 15th I had a lot of assumptions and I had my first bankruptcy and then I had my bankruptcy that I was divorced in the morning and bankrupt in the afternoon. So there was what Jeff Walker would call testing that I did back in those days. But I personally worked with 6,000 entrepreneurs. And they're ambitious people. They're talented, successful, ambitious people. But what I find is that each of them has a unique take on what the future looks like for them. And each of them has sort of a formula or a unique recipe of really what constitutes success for them as a person. It's just in their business life, it's their personal life. So I'm just going to give you a list of the sort of things that people, when they talk about increasing by 10 times, these are the things that they would want to increase. And the number one is confidence, okay? And you know, I'm a great believer that confidence is a capability. And that confidence as a capability can be increased 10 times. And if you increase your confidence by 10 times, the results are just a byproduct of 10 times higher confidence. Where you are today is really a function of your current confidence level and therefore you could increase it. But then there's things like revenues and profits and wealth. And one of my big one is free time. Okay? So just to give you a little tip, Babs, would you stand up because Babs, this is Babs, Bab Smith. And as Joe mentioned this morning, without Babs, I'm just a smart drunk. An out of shape smart drunk who is worried about the rent. So that's where I am today. So my life consists of before Babs and after Babs. And I'm really quite clear, I tell her that in the morning and I tell her before I go to bed at night. And I'm very, very conscious of what Babs did to my life. So free time and then health and then fitness and your overall energy level, these are all 10 times goals. So it's not just one thing. Typically your mind would go to income or go to profits, but in fact that all of these are factors that contribute to 10 times. And the people who do 10 times and do it well, what I mean is they do it in a way that's absolutely good for other people, but they absolutely do it good for themselves. Actually cover the, they cover the menu here and then reputation and capabilities and clients and your customers and the kind of support you have, technology and connections. So as you're thinking about this, you would have three or four that you would go after right away and it wouldn't be necessarily. Some people. It's not about income. You know, I have a. I just a few days ago, I was with a client who's from Ojai, and he came down to see an intro that we did in. That we did in Marina del Rey. And he had come into the program about 10 years ago, 13 years ago, and he was making a quarter million dollars personally. And then he was working 300 days to get his quarter million. And then we started our new 10 times program three years ago. And I asked him, you know, how have you done? And his income had gone to 2.5 million personally. So he was up 10 times, but he was doing it in 30 days a year. So he had done a double. 10 times. He had done 10 times with income, but he had done, you know, he was working. And so it was actually 100 times increase. And he's a big art collector, and he likes doing all sorts of things, but he's got it down to 30 days, 30 days a year. And now he's going for 10 times the top number, the income number. But he wants to get his whole work, the actual work that he has to do is down to roughly about 10 full days a year. Now you say, well, I wouldn't want to do that. And that's exactly the point. You wouldn't, because that wouldn't be your goals. But those are his goals. And so when we talk about this, what I want you to think about here is that it has to be your goals, so you know that 10 times has to work for you, okay? And that's really the point here. And everybody's unique, and you've got the freedom. You know, entrepreneurs are the only people on the planet who actually have the freedom of time, the freedom of money, the freedom of relationship, and the freedom of purpose. Four freedoms that you have that other people don't have.

Time.

You can arrange your time the way you want. There's no upper limit on the amount of money that you can make. You can choose to work with who you want to work with, both inside your company and outside your company relationship. But the big thing is purpose. So Dave Kekich, you know, and I've been communicating with Dave for a number of years, but today is actually the first time I. I actually met him. But we were talking, and I was talking to Craig Venter, who's Peter's partner in longevity, and we were talking about the life extension, which I believe my goal is 156 right now and has been for 20, 27. Years. So at 70, I'm not even actuarially on the table yet. I haven't even qualified for the actuarial table because I still have 86 years to go. But I said, you know, you can extend physically, you can extend people's lives, but the question is, do they have any purpose? Do they actually have any purpose? Because a lot of people really don't. Once they finish their work life, they really, really don't have much purpose. So that's going to be the big issue. I think once the purpose drives, people will, you know, they'll do it. And 10 times is a nice purpose to have. And so my goal, I'm 70 and I'm going for 95. So I just put together a 25 year goal. And everybody in my that I coach is on the 25 year plan. And my goal is that in the next 25 years, I accomplish 10 times more than I accomplished up till 70.

Okay?

So whatever that was, I accomplished a lot before 70, but it's going to be 10 times more.

It's not fun to watch, is it? Especially when it happens to one of our friends. Linda and I were running buddies at Harvard. She was a leadership expert and she had a center in North California. People came from all over the world to learn from her. She was fabulous. The sales were stagnant, so she decided to write the book that would launch her thought leadership and jump start her sales. Now, Linda and I were fast friends. Have you ever had that instant connection? I'm sure it's kind of happened in these meetings as well. Okay, so I got a ringside seat to all of this, right? I saw her spend every waking moment on this book. I saw her spend every dime she had. And so I couldn't wait to read the book. And so she gave it to me and I was tearing through it and my heart fell. She had great ideas. She always had great ideas. But the book itself did not have a focal point that made her stand out to her clients, which were the C suiters of Fortune 500 companies. She didn't pay enough attention to what was going on around her at the marketplace. So after a year of promoting the heck out of this, investing heavily, giving it everything she had, and not getting enough clients to the center, her business closed. Broke my heart. And what's so sad about this is that Linda was not an idiot, okay? She was talented. Her clients loved her, she got rave reviews. But the problem was, is that she looked like one of many because of the other voices in the marketplace. So when she came out with that book, here's what her buyer saw. Things you've already heard by just another expert. To them, they didn't understand how brilliant she was. To them, she was old wine in a new bottle. And that is what I want to talk about today. I want to make sure this doesn't happen to us. Okay? So thought leadership. Thought leadership is when you're writing a book, doing a webinar, anything. It's a strategy in which you are using your perspective, your insights, your brilliance to influence your buyers. Your goal in all of those activities is to stand out in a crowded market, in a market that has a lot of other voices than ours. I'm a market strategist, and I live at the intersection between what we do best and what the marketplace will more richly reward. And there's one thing that I say to clients time and time again, and I want to say it here. If you get nothing else, please get this, is that if we don't pay attention to the marketplace, the marketplace will not pay attention to us. It's just that simple. Now, that begs the question, what is the marketplace? Everyone has a different marketplace. And so, just for the purposes of this talk, the marketplace is your best clients. It's where they reside. Everyone knows who their best clients are, or you wouldn't be as successful as you are today. It is also where your competition resides. And they are drawing attention away from you. They are drawing budget away from you. They are competing with you for that line item. It's kind of like going to the grocery store. I went to the grocery store the other day, and I just went there to real quick to pick up a can of tomatoes for a dish I was making. This is what I saw heading down the aisle to the grocery store. My head exploded. I just wanted a can of tomatoes, for God's sake. The labels. I got this. I got that. This is this. Oh, over here, I'm like, just, can of tomatoes. That's all I want. Our buyers, our marketplace sees that in the same way as, well. There's too many options out there. And that is why the marketplace, and many of you know this, the marketplace runs on the visceral reaction, the visceral reaction. They operate on emotion. The marketplace is not logical. So we bring out all these reasons why we're better. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We have to have that one thing that people point to and say, I want me more of that. As they would say in Oklahoma, give me more of that. So here are the Top three mistakes I see brilliant, talented people make. And again, this is unintentional. You see, these mistakes are very easy to make. And they're easy to make because they look good on paper. Okay? You think you're doing everything right. You think you're following the instruction manual, yet it doesn't turn out the way you think it will. And that is because people do not pay enough attention. They underestimate how crowded it is in the marketplace and they underestimate how they are being perceived. It's just a mess out there. So here's the first mistake I see brilliant people to make. I call this just be me. Now, these people lead. They focus on their mission and or methodology. I see this a lot in the personal growth field. They will. They believe that showing up is enough. If I just show up with my sweet self and work real hard, it's going to be okay. I call this confidence without a cause. The problem is that they assume that they have no competition. They think that their passion and their excitement is going to be enough to show their natural differentiation. The problem is everyone is excited. The view at 30,000ft is free. So, your antidote. Claim your territory. Plant your flag. What can you redefine? We saw Joe this morning. Redefine what addiction looks like. What can you redefine? Mistake number two, get famous first. Now, these people lead with attention. It doesn't matter what kind. Thank you, Kardashians. Unfortunately, they accidentally position themselves in the free category. They're cool, but expendable. They confuse glitter with gold. The antidote. Sharpen your message. What is your role in the conversation? Joe is a community builder. Eric. Eric is an advocate. You'll hear him next. Alex. Provocateur. Third mistake. Ta da. As in, here I am. Listen to my story. Listen to my track record. These people lead with their achievements, which is a wonderful thing. The problem? They are talented but nondescript. The antidote springboard. Your story. Based upon your story, based upon your track record, what do you stand for now? What do you stand for now? What do you advocate? Folks, these mistakes are easy to make, and we make them unintentionally. The problem is we get caught up with our brilliance. Our brilliance blinds us. So here's what happens. Let's look at what happens when we pay attention to the marketplace. Chris Valletta. I met his wife at Harvard. He's a former NFL football player turned serial entrepreneur. Built $100 million business. Was wondering where his next adventure was, so he hired me to position his thought leadership. He wrote the book, and I tore that book apart. The good news, I found his gold. The bad news, it was on page 176 of his book. And that's what I want to leave you with today, is everybody has gold, but we have to unearth it. We have to do the digging, because the marketplace will not do it for us. When we put the marketing in the mix, magic happens.

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