9 Skills Every Entrepreneur Needs to Survive Disaster & Scale to 10X

How should entrepreneurs evaluate risk? And if a negative financial outcome does befall somebody, what can or should they do to survive?

Evaluating risk Risk has three flavors. There's a probability that the bad thing happens, there's the cost if the bad thing happens, and there's the controllability that you do or don't have over the bad thing. I think that understanding all three of those is vitally important. And I think one of my jobs as a business owner is to, number one, identify the highest probability risk. So in your business, whoever you are, whatever business you have, there's a opportunity for you to think about what are the five highest probability risk that I currently have that would disrupt, here's the guardrail. That would disrupt my future stream of earnings. What are the five highest probability risk and assign a probability to them. So in your world, in the teaching world, a huge risk for you is you. You are the single point of failure in your business. And if something happens to you, that's going to disintermediate. Genius. And I'm the same way. Something happens to me, there's going to be. I in the teaching world am the product because it's my experience. So if we can Understand what the 5 highest probability risk are that we face and we're thoughtful about those, we can then say, well, is there a way for me to reduce the cost if that risk occurs or can I make that risk more controllable? Is there anything I could do that would reduce the probability of that risk occurring? So W.C. fields said it W.C. fields said, I wish I knew where I was going to die and I would make sure to never go there. It's true for us as well. If we can have clarity about what the risks are, then we can minimize sometimes the probability of that risk happening or if the risk does happen, or the cost in the event that risk happens. And I think one of the primary roles of a, a CEO, of an owner is to think about defense along with thinking about offense. We tend to be offense oriented. It's growth, it's maximizing, it's optimizing, it's 10xing. It's all the things we talk about and rarely does a business owner think about what are the gotchas, where are the places that if a risk did happen, it would somehow cause a major disruption to the revenue stream or the earnings. And so I happen to be a big believer in being thoughtful about the risk. Now, if the risk does occur, you know, if it's failure, and that one's much harder, you know, Dan Talked about taking four months off. I'm not quite as quick as Dan was. So it took me 18 months. When I went broke and lost everything, it took me much longer to get my mind screwed back, my head screwed back together. And part of the reason is for that is because I had my net worth and my self worth entwined. And that's a deadly combination. You get who you are entwined with what you do. It's deadly. Particularly when you lose on what you do, right? I mean, so those two are entwined. And so it was a brutal, brutal time period. And it took me a while. I use this example, when all this happened, I was between 38 and 40 years old. And that was 30 years ago. So those of you doing the math. I'm 69. The analogy I use is that time in my life, it was like being a basketball player. And it's halftime, and I'm trotting off the court and I look back at the scoreboard and the score is 87 to 3, the other guys winning. And so here I am in the locker room at halftime, my midlife, and I'm trying to figure out, how do I win this game? How do I win this game? And a very wise person looked at me, and after months and months, I grew a ponytail, I got my hair, my ear pierced. That still hurts. It's been 30 years. Still got a little problem right there. I don't know why I did that. And a very wise person said to me, keith, you're asking yourself the wrong question. You're asking yourself, how do I win? And you should be asking yourself, how am I going to play? How am I going to play this game? It's not about winning. It's about how I'm going to play. And I made a decision right then. I'm going to play for excellence. I'm going to play for mastery. I'm going to play for keeps. I'm going to play for spectacular. This is my life. I'm proud of it. And I will gladly live it again if only given the opportunity.

You know, this is going to be c. Seem like a diversion, but I'd love if there is a way. Is there a quick way to tell how you met Sandy and what you said to her? Not well, if you go through the how you met her, that could take a long time. Because I know this story. It's great. But when you sat down with her on your date and you asked her a question, could you tell that story? Because I think it's not only useful in terms of Keith Cunningham dating advice. But I also think it's actually really relevant to people, people's clients and customers and simply finding out what is important to them.

So we're on our first date. We had known each other 15 years prior and hadn't seen each other in 15 years. This is the first time we had seen each other. And it's a first date. We're three hours into the first date. It. It is a spectacular first date. And I looked at Sandy at the end of three hours, and I said, I'm about to ask you a question I've never asked another woman in my whole life. And she kind of braced herself and said, okay, what is it? And I said, what do you want? And she said, I mean, what do you mean, what do I want? I said, what do you want in a man? What do you want in a relationship? I said, at the time, I was 50 years old. I said, I've been single for 10 years. And I said, I have been playing whack a mole and pin the tail on the donkey with every woman I've been out with for the last 25 or 30 years. And I'm tired of it. I need to know what. She looked at me and said, oh, that's easy. She said, I want to be loved and adored. And I asked the waiter to come over and bring me a pen and a piece of paper. And I wrote down, Sandy January 4, 2001. Loved and adored. And I looked at her and I said, now tell me every single thing that needs to happen for you to feel loved and adored. And I started writing and she talked for an hour and a half. I'm talking high maintenance here, right? And I'm writing it down, writing it down. And at one point, literally at one point in this hour and a half, she said, and I want a note every day. I said, you must be kidding me. I tried to make myself right. I couldn't, I couldn't. I said, every day, my God, what if I forget? She said, I'll remind you. And she does, right? I mean, at 3 o' clock in the afternoon, if there's no note that's been sent, she'll send me a little text and say, did the mailman break his leg? I go, oh, shit. I start, so the idea, to me that you're referencing, the idea is, look, find out what they want. The key is find out what they want, not what you want. Don't fall in love with what you want. Fall in love with your customers. What do they want? And we make the mistake of business owners of believing that the key is to figure out what we're passionate about. We don't have the money. Our customers have the money. Why don't I fall in love with the customers? Why don't I fall in love with something that can love me back? Falling in love with my product, falling in love with what I do is, to me, intergalactically stupid. Why would I fall in love with something that doesn't love me back? Let me fall in love with customers, find out what they want. Go and get it. Go and get it, and give it to them. If I can do those three things, it turns out I love writing the note because Sandy loves getting it. And if you would have asked me what the key to this woman's heart was and asked me to think about it for a hundred years, at no point in time would I have written down or thought, oh, she wants a note every day. Find out what they want. Go and get it. Give it to them. Sandy's very smart. She. Here she is right here. She's prettiest woman I've ever met in my whole life. And thank you for loving me. Thank you. Sandy's very smart. She asked me for the piece of paper. When she finished, she wrote down, what do you want? I said, okay, let me tell you all three things, right? There's only three. So I told her all three, and it's been really, really good. Thank you. Thank you.

That's awesome. You know, it's got me thinking a lot, too. The impact filter, the tools, what me and Jason Fladlin have been doing, talking to prospects. I mean, I'm doing the biggest deep dive into what do Genius Network members, what do Genius Network prospects? What do they actually want? Because there's so many different places that people could get learning and devote their time. And the challenge is, you know, it's the whole paradox of success sort of thing, the paradox of choice. There's so many choices available that I really, you know, I really want to know what my clients and members really want and are looking for. Because me and Alex Mendozia, we. We did a program in 2003 called Stick Strategy Secrets, and it to this day is one of the best training programs that I've ever done that, you know, people have made millions with that program and implementing it. And so we're doing a stick strategy secrets 2.0 that we're going to start recording in the beginning of next year. And so much of it has to do with what do people want? And Teaching people like Dean Jackson, who I do my podcast with, is here. He has his before unit, during unit and after unit, before the sale, during and after the sale. And so, so much of just being a relationship marketer and having clients coming back and back is it's the difference between the pickup artists that get a phone number or an email versus someone that actually sustains a relationship. And so all of this, the reason I'm bringing this up is that, you know, all the things that I'm doing that you see me doing, even the impact filter at the beginning here, is all based on just learning what it is people want and delivering it to the best of my ability. Every speaker here, every person, every, you know, people, the dominoes that they're telling me would be important to them. So critical. 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. 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. So if you had to give your most prized business, money and wealth advice to your children or to children in general, what would you tell them? The most prized business advice?

I think the wisest thing I ever heard was in the middle of my do over time, my timeout box, and I had a very, very, very wise man say to me, keith, hell on earth would be to meet the man you could have been. That's now been 30 years ago. There has not been a day in the last 30 years where I haven't thought about that idea. I heard somebody say one time that the end of most people's lives, their biggest. Their biggest regrets are not for the things they did, but rather for the things they didn't. And I want to be able to meet the man I could have been, look that guy in the eyeball and say, I know you. I am you. I think the opportunity that all of us have, and if I could give my children advice and they've heard this play for keeps, this thing goes really, really fast. And the older I get, the faster it seems to go. I've been aware for a long time that there is a tension that I have. And the tension is I'm not particularly excited about growing old. On the other hand, I'm not really that interested in dying. Right, Right. And those two are somewhat incompatible thoughts. Right. So I'm aware That this thing goes really fast. And I'm aware that if I don't play for keeps, if I don't play at a level of mastery, if I don't play at a level of excellence. So to me, success is getting there and excellence is staying there. And how do I need to think about my life in terms of creating the excellence of mastery so that I don't have a regret of meeting the man I could have been?

Yeah, that's awesome. Talk about risk. I mean, cause you have in the book, you have three questions to evaluate, like an investment risk. What's the downside? What's the upside? Can you live with the downside? How should everyone here think about stupid risk, intelligent risk, or however you would describe risk? Because I mean, we get paid, I think, relative to what we are willing to take on, relative to the risk, which could be misconstrued as, let's make crazy ass, you know, judgments.

Good. Risk doesn't cease to exist just because you ignore it. One of the smartest investor, one of the smartest investors in the world today, who, Warren Buffett, stops what he's doing to read what this man has to say. This is the only guy that Warren says. When Howard Marks talks, I listen. Howard Marks has written a book. You should own this book and you should read it soon. Probably after you read the Road Less Stupid. But then again, I'm biased. If my kids asked me which one they should read first, I'd point them to Howard Marks. So read Howard Marks first. Howard Marks runs a company called Oaktree, Oaktree Financial. And he's written a book called the Most Important Thing. The Most Important Thing, he says three. He says a lot of brilliant things. Three that I'm going to mention. Number one, the less risk you perceive, the more risk there is, which is completely counterintuitive to the way most of us think. If I perceive that there's no risk of having an automobile accident between my home and the grocery store, then I won't put on my seat belt. I'll text while I'm driving. I'll be talking on the phone and watching a video. And as a result of perceiving, there's no risk. Risk skyrocketed. The way you lose money is by perceiving there's no risk. I'm a natural. I've got all this money. These are smart people. If it doesn't work out, I still got a lot more. I mean, what could go wrong? And so we begin to think in terms of. We say stupid stuff. Everybody in Here has done it. I've done it. We say stupid stuff like, the greater the risk, the greater the reward. This is intergalactically stupid. This is unbelievably ignorant. The greater the risk, the greater the probability of a loss. But we say, oh, yeah. I mean, it's risky, but I mean, the reward, my God, the upside is so huge. Huge. We've done this. You and I were talking about this. Warren Buffet was playing golf. This is a true story. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are playing golf. They're best friends with two other guys. They get to a par three, which is the only kind of hole you can legitimately make a hole in one on. They get to a par three. And the. The. One of Warren's playing partners. Right as Warren was about to hit his tee shot, the playing partner said, warren, let's have a bet on this hole. Warren said, okay, what's the bet? The guy said, $2. I bet you $2 that you don't hit a hole in one. And Warren said, well, like, what if I. No, it's $20. I'll bet you $20. And Warren said, okay, $20. I get to give you $20 if I don't hit a hole in one. And Warren said, if I do hit a hole in one, how much will you give me? Guy said, I'll give you $20,000, which is 1,000 to 1 odds. That's what that is. So if Warren loses, if Warren doesn't hit a hole in one, he has to give his playing partner 20 bucks. But if he does hit a hole in one, then his playing partner's got to give him 20,000. And Warren looked at this and said, no bet. And the guy said, why? Warren said, well, I mean, the odds of me hitting a hole in one are not 1,001. It's 10,000 to one. If I stood up here and hit 10,000 golf balls, there might be one that goes in the hole. But if I only hit 1,000 golf balls, the likelihood of one going in the hole, never going to happen. So I'm not going to take the bet. And the guy looked at Warren and said, Warren, it's $20. Last year you made $5.6 billion. It's 20 bucks. And Warren said, I know. Stupid in small things, stupid in big things. Write that down. What's sabotaging us is the small things sometimes. So this idea of risk doesn't cease to exist, that the less risk we perceive, the more risk there is. Howard Marks in his book said, a house that can Withstand a hurricane is indistinguishable from a house that cannot withstand a hurricane until after the hurricane. And what we want to be doing is building houses, financial empires that can withstand a hurricane. I mean, for crying out loud, if you know that the economy does this and nobody can predict it. I mean, you know, there's the soothsayers out there, the economy. Somebody told me one time the reason God made economists is to make astrologers look good, right? The whole idea that somebody can predict what's about to happen, I mean, they can smell, you know, but nobody knows how big or severe or anything like that. They just know it goes in cycles. And what I want to do as a business owner is build a world class defense to go with my world class offense. As CEOs, as leaders, as owners, what most of us have done is built world class offenses. And so we're always going long. We're always. I'm probably the only one here that did this. But when I was a kid, the guys would get in the front. I'm talking about a kid like 7, 8 years, 10, 10 years old. And we'd be playing football in the front yard and there'd be a quarterback and he'd draw on his hand, he'd say, all right, now you do this and you do that and everybody look at me and say, Keith, you go long, right? That means you just run and we're just going to heave the ball down there. It's going to be a Hail Mary and maybe we'll get lucky. And that's how oftentimes we run our businesses, is relying on hope and luck. My dad told me years ago, keith, you can rely on the rabbit's foot if you want, but it didn't do much for the rabbit. And that's kind of true, right? You have to kind of think about where am I relying on hope and luck as opposed to being thoughtful. And being thoughtful would say, is there something that could go wrong? And asking that question and building a defense so that you can live to survive another day, which I didn't do when I was 40, which is why I lost all that money. It was all offense, plus it was arrogant, plus it was hubris. I had an exhaust pipe in my mouth and I was just inhaling my own fumes. I told somebody one time, I was 40, I was 38 years old. I told somebody one time, I was being interviewed and they said, keith, how would you describe yourself? And I said, that shows you how screwed up I was. Okay, I'm not proud to say this. I said, I'm a little bit like Haley's Comet. A guy like me only comes around about once every 70 or 80 years. That's how good I am at business. And that was right before nose down into the dirt. Right. All right, here's a final thought on risk. It's better to ensure survival under negative outcomes than it is to predict success under favorable ones.

Say that again.

It's better to ensure survival under negative outcomes than it is to predict success under favorable ones. And so this way of thinking. You mentioned it a second ago. The three questions. What's the upside? And we tend to be experts at the upside because we're optimistic and we can see the opportunity. What's the upside? What's the downside? Which we tend to not be that good at. We rarely ask that question. And if we do, we kind of minimize it. It's kind of like what most of us do with our competition. Most of us with our competition minimize our. Yeah, I got some competition, but nobody's really doing. I mean, I'm different. I mean, I've got. That is about the craziest thing. Let me ask you a question. I'm opening another tab. Let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question. How much money could you charge for your product or service if you had no competition? How many customers would you have if you had no competition? I already know your answers. If you had no competition, you could charge whatever you wanted and you'd have all the customers. So what dictates. What dictates your revenue is your competition and how you position and message against your competition? I think that the same thing is true with risk. The downside. How do I need to think about the downside and be realistic with it? And if the downside happen, then can I live with it? And one of the most powerful tools I've found in this is called a pre mortem. A pre. Mortem. You know what a post mortem is? A post mortem is, you know, somebody dies, they crack them open, they look around, say, how'd they die? Well, their heart stopped, they stopped breathing, blah, blah, blah. That's how they died. A pre mortem says, I'm about to make a decision. I'm gonna project myself one year into the future. And by projecting myself one year in the future, I'm gonna look back over the course of the last year, and this decision I'm just about to make has turned into a dumpster fire. This thing is a train wreck. It is a mess. So one year into the future, I'm now thinking, as I'm looking back, it's a mess. A pre mortem says, what are all the things that went wrong that caused this thing to turn out to be screwed up? If you will exercise this muscle, which is defense on pre mortems, on identifying and evaluating, minimizing risk. It's questioning assumptions, losing some of the optimism. My God, we're optimistic. We're irrationally optimistic about the initiatives and ideas that we have. And, and I think one of the best ways to play defense, honestly, is with what you're doing with this and some of the work I'm doing with the boards that we have, which gives business owners an opportunity to have people around them that will give them advice and tell them no. Ask yourself the question, how many people do you have right now, right now, that can tell you no? That will question your assumptions, that will push you back on some of the ideas. Most of us don't have people around us that will do that. In fact, the vast majority of business owners don't have that. And so it's why they say leadership is so lonely. And it is because we don't have people around us that will push you. Look at the most successful, most successful businesses on the planet. Every one of them has a board, and every one of those boards meets once a quarter. There's a reason for that. That board is not there to inject the CEO with adrenaline. That board is there to say, whoa, cowboy, slow down just a little bit, just a little bit. Let's think this thing through. What are the second order consequences? What could go wrong? Do we have a plan that ensures success or at the very least, ensures survival, or are we going all in?

This is the biggest challenge that most of my genius network members have. When you're talented, when you're capable, when you know how to produce a result, and there is an infinite amount of people that would like your help. And that's one of the downsides. It's one of the main reasons I haven't written a book, because I have a real sensitivity when people send me letters or messages. And on average, between social media and personal emails and phone calls and even faxes, I get between 50 to 200 requests a day. I get sent about 20 books a week that people would like me to look at, like me to read and will tell people, go to hirejoepolish.com unless it's a book that genuinely I'm interested in. I mean, like right now I'm reading Brendon Burchard's. Well, almost done with that. But I read all these books and pieces. Tony Robbins book, Dave Asprey's Bulletproof Diet, Peter Diamandis book Bold. And I get books, Future crimes. Yeah, all this and these books. This is Peter Diamandis book Bold, which is going to be a massive bestseller. This comes out in February. But I get all these books well in advance, like, long before they ever come out, because I help people with marketing and stuff. There was even a gentleman here that asked me during break, do you have time for 10 minutes after this thing? And I would love to say yes to that, but I've got my girlfriend here and I don't have 10 minutes after this. I mean, if I did, I have to say no to. So everything you say yes to, you say no to something else. And I have a hard time with that. I mean, really hard time, because I wish I could help everybody. So some of the strategic ways. One of the reasons I love marketing the podcast is I needed, for lack of a better word, a dumping ground. All these people constantly. Can you help me with marketing? Yes. It's called ilovemarketing.com we have 180 hours of free content there. All kinds of examples of stuff. Go there and listen to it. And if someone doesn't listen to that, I mean, I tell people everything. Stuff that I charge people for, consulting. So having a place where you could send people where they can get training, even if it's free, is a beneficial thing. Now, what you said, Derek Sivers, who founded a company years ago called CD Baby, he has this thing where he's like, it's either a no or a hell yes. So if you have an opportunity that comes to you, if you can't say hell yes to it, it's probably not an opportunity you want to say yes to at all. So it's either no or hell yes. And that's really difficult to do. So I try to put things through a filter, and part of it has to do with the idea, and a lot of it has to do with the people. There are some people with great ideas, but they're despicable human beings. There's some people that are amazing human beings with mediocre ideas. What you want is amazing people with amazing ideas and where it's the right fit. And can you speak to the five.

Ways you get paid?

Because I know even as a company, our team now is working our best to duplicate you, to help filter a.

Lot of that by using the values.

That through Dan, his Five ways you get paid.

I imagine you could speak to that a little bit. Yeah. By the way, since we say team, the way I filter a lot of this stuff is we have a team. I mean, if I didn't have a team of people, like, how in the hell would I get anything done? I mean, I'm a starter, not a finisher. I mean, I love to start things, but I hate finishing things. So I'm like a baton runner. I'm really good right out of the starting gate with a baton, but if I don't have anyone to hand it to in order to run the rest of it, I have a big pile of batons that, like, right out of the starting gate. But you know what I do? Instead of saying, oh, we better carry that whole baton around, no, let me just go start another one. And what I learned about myself is that when I get bored, I never believed in the concept of boredom. I'm like, how could anyone ever get bored? There's so many books to read. There's so many things to do. But then I realized, boredom, the way I experience it, is frustration. Even if I'm doing a lot of stuff, a lot of activities, I just get bored with, I don't want to do it. So when I get really overwhelmed and I have mastered the art of putting myself into an overwhelmed state, if I get really overwhelmed, the one thing that takes stress off me is to add a new project to my plate temporarily. It gives me a hit. It gives me a buzz.

That right there is really fucked up. I mean, if we're going to talk about problems, right?

Listen, Listen, you little punk. All right, so. But here's the thing. Thank God that people have problems and bad news. Because all money that you're going to make, 99% of the money you'll make in your life is going to come out of other people's bad news. You know, people don't make a lot of money off good news. And I've said this right before, if you're hungry, bad news. If you own a restaurant, that's good news. If you break a leg, bad news. If there's a doctor to go to that you can pay money to help fix it, treat it, that's good news. If you die, that's not good, that's bad news. If there's a mortuary, that's good news. Now, it's not a great situation, but imagine if there were no mortuaries. Imagine if there were no doctors. Imagine if there were no restaurants. You're bored out of your Mind, that sucks. That's bad news. Go to a movie, go to a comedy club, go to a whatever, wherever you go, hang out. I mean, so transforming other people's bad news into good news is where money is made. So going back to my overwhelmed thing, I would literally add a new project to my plate. And so I finally learned that about myself and I was like, this is insane. So the five ways to get paid. I learned this from Dan Sullivan.

It's an interesting thing. There are Many, many startups, 11,000 startups, and every hour in the world. In fact, that means right now, hundreds of thousands of people are moving into their parents basements as we speak. And that was a JP line. I knew it wouldn't work. And 70, seriously, 76% of those companies actually have no more than just the entrepreneur as their employee, which means many of those are even overstaffed. Just let it roll, let it roll. Yet really the challenge is we have too few scale ups. And Joe was right. 92% of the job growth and the innovation since the Great Recession was driven by companies like you in this room. 10 million to a billion. You really are the unsung heroes of the ones that are doing most of the heavy lifting in the economy. And so this idea of scaling up is critical. And so our moonshot work with John and several of the others in here is we want to go into 150 cities around the globe and we're going to install scale up ecosystems to kind of go along with these already robust startup ecosystems that exist. And that's our way of impacting tens of thousands of what we think are the companies that can do these moonshots to save the planet. And we know it works. There, by the way, is one of our latest success stories. He's a unicorn down in Australia. They went public 23 months ago at 4.2 billion. And I checked just this morning, 11.74 billion just less than two years later. And so they're doing well. The latest, I think, upcoming unicorn is Paul Wedgwood with splash damage. And I had a chance to kind of hitch a ride with him and I was happy to see there in the back was a copy of the book. And so I want you to put into your mind, Ferrari equals scale up.

All right?

And you've got them both. But what is it that gets in the way? And that's this one idea that I want to share this morning. And it comes out of the second book, this history book of greatest ideas. It always reminds me of my favorite quote, the greatest Lesson of history is we fail to learn from history. And so I want to go in there and I want to look at this story about Robert Taylor. So I want to take you back to 1980, and Robert introduces soft soap. Now, a lot of you are too young in this room to know that there was a time when we actually had these things called bars of soap and we didn't know whose genitals they had touched last. I mean, I just. I want you to think about that and realize that we have solved this problem. And so he launches, and he goes to $39 million in his first year. I mean, that's back when. And that was a lot of money. And he's now faced with year two, and he's got a lot of constraints. And if you were to shout out what's going to be in his way of year two, just shout it out. What's going to get in his way? Yeah, cash, obviously, growth sucks. Cash system, supply, employment, distribution, taxes. Yet he realized, and he got wind that Colgate Palmolive was gonna rip him off yet again. And so he stepped back. And this is the decision you must discern why you're here and for your company. And that is, where is the constraint? Now, a lot of people say we gotta go out and fix problems, but I don't know. I've never found that really useful as a concept. It's hard for me to get my head around that and my arms around it. But if you can think about what is constrained, training you and your industry and your company, and you can get control of that, then you can begin to scale enormously.

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.

So he stepped back and he realized there was the constraint. It was the pump. And it's interesting. Back in 1980, there was only one company, Calmar in California, that made these pumps we're talking about many years before China came on as this kind of unbelievable manufacturing powerhouse. And so he goes out and he visits and he said, all right, what's the biggest sale you guys have ever made? And they said it was like 5 million units. And he goes, and how many of these things do you make a year? And they go, 100 million and he goes sold and he negotiated a 12 cent price and he bought the entire year supply for $12 million. Now Colgate, Paul Moller, Procter and Gamble sees, opened up the marketplace, they're going to jump in and steal it. But guess what? No pumps. And ultimately forced Colgate to buy him for a gazillion dollars. Now what do we call this strategy? Blackmail. But that's what you want. You want to understand where is the constraint and get control. And that was not lost on this young man who finally came back. I thought it was one of the greatest decisions ever made, that they brought back its founder after 10 years and the company's in trouble and he's launching this new product, the ipod. And he had already been ripped off once by his good friend Bill Gates, who took his operating system and he wasn't going to let it happen again. And he knew this case study, so he went to Bill. And that's a whole other story why he convinced him to give him $150 million. And then he took a big chunk of that change and he bought up the worldwide rights to this proprietary Toshiba flash drive. Only one in the world that could deliver his mission, which is very simply stated, the size to fit in your pocket and hold 1,000 songs. And the rest is history. There was no way that Sony or anyone else could copy him. Now, later on he realized the real constraint to this was the distribution of music. And that he fixed later on a big constraint was nobody could sell with the kind of experience he wanted. His device devices. And he was forced to launch his own retail stores. The truth of the path of the entrepreneur is always to identify the constraint and get control. Now, there's been a lot of talk up here about Elon Musk. And he's in the electric car business and the solar business. And we heard how important the solar business is going to be. Yeah, look, he's realistic. He's been giving away a lot of his technologies. He's been selling his drive chains to his competition. Why? Because what Elon understands is that where's been the fundamental constraint in both of those industries, and it was mentioned up here earlier, where has been the constraint in the battery side? The reality is if you could get that battery charged from 20 minutes down to five minutes, then you would really unleash the Tesla and everything else that's going moving forward. I thought it was interesting. Tony shared up on stage, Zappos, they talked about he and Dean, this irresistible offer. But let's dig underneath that story. Let me Tell you the rest of that story. Tony had sold his previous company over 100 million bucks, was down to their last few dollars. And this business model that they had created, that even included, we'll ship it to you and ship it back, was failing miserably. And so they had this fateful lunch. And at the lunch they really asked what I think is the question, where's the constraint? And the constraint had to be in their own business model. They were then drop shipping direct, and that was the most inexpensive way to do it yet. The manufacturers were limiting them to the supply they could get and the different various models which their stores had preference on. And his partner Fred said, look, if we could get access to all the inventory, I could triple revenue in the next 12 months. And so what they did is they went north two hours and bought a little retail store in Willows, California, so they could then get access, like all the other retailers, to the full line of product. They realized they needed to fund their own inventory, but when they did, their revenue popped five fold. In the next 12 months, you can have these brilliant, brilliant moonshots and ideas, but what's critical is for you to step back and find the constraint and get control. So we wrote a tool. I'm going to be going over some of these things on Sunday. And one of those is to create what I call the one phrase strategy. If you figure this out, you win huge. Ikea. The constraint, we have to store and ship air. And so they profess, even though only at 6.8% market share, they'll do 37 billion this year. They figured out how to take the air out of the process. By the way, I love this. Happy birthday, Ikea. There's your cake. F you. Their latest, though, they just bought TaskRabbit. They know where the market's going and that's going to remove a constraint so that elderly can now buy and have assembled their product. Southwest, let's get that hunk of metal in the air. Every decision they made was to do that. Dell, we have a melting block of ice. He took that company to a billion in seven years and lost it all. And the board fired everyone except Michael, brought in Tom Meredith, and Tom figured out that's what we've got to do to make this business model win. Even Steve Jobs understood that this thing won't scale big. And he created what today's the largest market cap company by realizing that what we can do is create a closed ecosystem. And if what you do is so distasteful, your competition won't copy you. It's the ultimate blocking strategy. Even my own team in Barcelona figured out, if we can control the ball 76% of the time, and they figured it out over a decade ago, we'll be the most winningest team on the planet. And so the question I leave with you is where is the constraint in you, your business, your business model, and ultimately the industry?

How should business owners be thinking about this crisis in terms of risk and opportunities?

Okay, so I'll share with you five or six really cool distinctions that I've talked about a little bit. So people might have heard it in some other forums, but they're really unique perspectives on what I'll call mental arbitrage. So the first thing is, I mean, this is very, very trite, but I think in terms of dyads and triplets. So dyads mean I want to divide and conquer. So there's two types of attitudes. There's reactive defensive readiness and then there's proactive strategic, opportunist, ethical, opportunistic preparedness. So let's assume that everybody we're talking to is in the latter, not the former. So what I look at are opportunities, correlations, implications, anomalies nobody else is receiving. So I think I'll go through this very quick, what I'll call five part distillation. Number one, I don't think there will ever be another window of opportunity, by the way, If I look up, I'm just accessing my thinking. I'm not trying to be rude to anybody. I don't think there will ever be another window of opportunity as wide, deep and receptive as there is right now for doing collaborations, joint ventures, strategic alliances, endorsements, co branding, referrals of the most wide magnitude. You can take me deep on anything you want. And I'm not talking about, and no disrespect, a typical affiliate deal. I'm talking about much richer, deeper, much more involved and sustainable. Number two, there's never going to be as many companies that have been as ill prepared financially and are going to be against the ropes and in dire probability of either having to very barely make it or go broke. And they'll never be as big an opportunity to acquire. Not businesses you don't need the yoke of liability, but the assets, the buyers, the prospects, the distribution channel, the URL, the phone numbers, any key personnel. Number three, and this is really interesting is that there Now, I think 22 million people unemployed. If you look at it, Joe, it's polarized top and bottom. There's a Large number, pardon me one second. There's a large number of unskilled people which for this discussion are irrelevant, but they're very relevant human beings, men and women, fathers, mothers, husbands, et cetera. But on the upper end they're super skilled. And why that's important is these are people that had hard won very deep relationships with key decision makers for their very, very recently previous employer, for very significant things. If you can identify them on LinkedIn, which you can, because I've already done this for clients and we've done tests that validated it and you can prove that your company, your product service is superior. If they do not have a non compete or if it's not a competitive product, they will never. Because these people were making 2, 3, 4, 500,000 more and now they're sitting hoping to get unemployment which couldn't come close to paying their car payments. So if you can contact them, persuade them that your company product service is warrantable, they have all these relationships that they can feed to you. And they'll never be receptive any other time in their life to doing something on a performance. And if they do well, they can earn themselves a career opportunity finally. And there's one more after this. Finally. But finally, in these categories there's a million and a half or so salespeople that can't sell something. You can recruit them right now to do any of the three things I just talked about or anything else imaginable on a pure performance and that'll never be available to you in that way again. Finally, there's something that I call options trading. But it's not options trading like stocks, it's getting control of assets and access. I got a lot more things, but these are the five big ones. For example, if you came to me and said, Jay, I got this great idea, I want to do a J. Abraham advisory letter. You don't do one and I'll take it out and I'll give you a fee when I start of X and I'll give you so much percentage and I'll give you a piece of the back end. You can literally take that, right, and flip it to somebody in the advisory business for a bigger amount and a bigger override. And there's all kinds of stuff like that, Joe. And that's the kind of things that I sort of function on which are a little different than most people. I don't know if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, that helps. And by the way, how you're looking at me right now, if you could gaze into the eyes of everyone through their screen. The rest of the time. I think there'd be a much deeper.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, absolutely. Pardon me.

No, no, I'm just. I'm sort of messing with you. But then it's okay.

Now I tend to be. I tend to be a little bit. Not intentionally distanced. I was just trying to remember what I wanted to talk about. I'm going to. I'll be deeply focusing on the camera.

Okay, that's perfect. So, like, you've spoken in front of. What's the largest audience that you have ever spoken in front of?

I don't know. 15,000.

15,000.

Okay.

I'm just trying to check, like, on an arrogance level, how arrogant do you think you are just because, you know, so many people all over the world think you're like, just this amazing genius?

I don't think I'm arrogant as an ego. I think I'm arrogant about the concepts.

Yeah, Yeah.

I think it's a different. I think I misperceived.

I really do.

I've known Jay.

I've known Jay for, like, I don't.

Know, 25, 30 years. And he.

He's. He's mellow. He's, you know, he. He wants to be arrogant, even about his ideas.

And he's.

He's a.

He's a pussycat.

No, no, actually, I've gotten to know Jay very well. I think he's a really incredibly kind, cool, awesome guy. So, yeah, I wanted to just.

I just want to add one, like, specific. Like when Jay was talking about his.

Number one, where you've got, you know.

The companies, like a chiropractor, for example, who has an office and he can't.

Take patients, or he can.

If he wanted to go one.

One patient at a time, and he wanted to fumigate the office and he.

Wanted to, you know, he could get away with it.

But while he's doing that, slowly but surely, what Jay is, you know, one.

Of the things that I was thinking.

About, because it was a chiropractor in.

My group that you coached Jay, and.

He wants to drop ship supplements for their pain.

So he can't crack their back today.

He can crack their back maybe a.

Few months from now.

So he free visit three months from.

Now, but he drop ships supplements, pain supplements, or even more.

There are companies, like, with lasers and.

All this kind of stuff that don't.

Know what to do.

I mean, they can sell stuff online.

But if they can partner with a.

Guy like this who's got the network.

Who'S got the funnel, so to speak.

Of all of what he's doing. I mean, partnerships are. I agree with you 100%, Jay. This is the best time to buy.

As opposed to make everything. And you get to test all these different things that you might not go.

Into those businesses anyway.

It's brilliant. Yeah, it's great, Brian. Thank you. And I like your beer. You look very distinguished, Joe, if you think about it, very interesting that everyone needs money and people are rudderless and they're trying to figure it out. I mean, there's a real sleeper that people don't think about. All these restaurants that are on the ropes that are closed, the independent ones, not the chains, but the independent ones have very rich, deep relationships with their clientele. And the more upscale have much more sophisticated clientele. They are great influencers you could contact to introduce all kinds of different products or services. And that's just a singular idea. And, I mean, I want to be very supportive and I want to bring to your audience as much as I possibly can. I was thinking about something, if you'll let me, that I would love to share about distinguishing between a superficial partnership and something very deep. And I can tell a couple stories when you want, if you want, and if not, I will shut my.

No, no.

Do it right now. Because there are so many people that are viewed as influencers, as experts that present themselves as actually having deep relationships with people when it's just a manipulative setup sort of game. So I'd love for have you make the distinction between superficial.

Okay, well, so let me start by telling you how we used to do what you would call an affiliate before the advent. And again, I go back, everybody knows that. Brian knows that when there were a lot of newsletters that were physical, but when we would set up a deal. And the one that I'll use as a reference is I had a very large gold brokerage company when the newsletter business was very high and most people would just try to get gold, the editor, the personality to recommend them in a letter or a little blurb in the newsletter. I did not do that. The first thing I did was set us up as the recommended provider. And every time anyone ever became a new subscriber, they got in their new subscriber welcome package. A collection of materials we created. All about hard assets, all about gold, silver, the case for it, and even the case against it. So it was balanced. Number two. Four times a year we underwrote the cost of special edition newsletters that basically focused on hard assets. The outlook had epic, iconic people. Sorry, I'm looking up again, forgive me, people that would write and they were really cool. Third is we funded quarterly regional events where we would bring an icon, we would bring the editor, we paid for everything, and then we would bring our person. Fifth is a lot of people back then would keep mailing. Brian knows this. Until they hit break even. And break even would be two different things. For some it was imputing fulfillment, which wasn't that much, $10 a year for a 2, 3, $500 newsletter. Sometimes it wasn't. When they stopped, we would take over funding it because we got joint tenancy of all the names. I would change the headline, the bonuses, the risk reversal, make it a little tighter, and we would basically turn it into viable and make money on it. But we'd get joint tenancy of the name when it stopped working. Because most newsletter promotions then I think Brian would affirm, and maybe today too, they were based on the bonuses. And we were in the gold business, which was lead generating. And lead generating would cost us sometimes $150 a lead before it was a deferred investment. We wouldn't recoup for a month or two. So we would use the mailing piece for the newsletter stripped down to just the bonus, just to get leads at a lower cost. But we basically, it was sort of like the concept, the integrated concept of becoming an integral part of the relationship. But that didn't happen until we won very, very deeply the trust of the partner and that we protected them on everything. And we. I was very good and I think I still am pretty good at preemptively thinking through all the negatives, all the concerns, not just overcoming them, but blatantly bringing them up to show that we have already protected them. I can go on and on, but that's just one example.

Michael Middleton sent me a private question and I said, you know what, why don't you just bring this up and ask Jay directly. So, Michael, if you want to unmute yourself and ask that question, let's do it.

And when he does it, I have three or four points that I think would be fun to share sometime if you'll let me before I am thrown off. Okay.

Okay.

Thanks, Joe.

Jay, you just mentioned something about restaurants.

Which.

Struck a chord with me, but.

I've been struggling to think about how to use this. But some of the high end restaurants in London.

Have been sending out to.

Their mail lists, recipes and that kind of thing, but then also linking out their food suppliers because the wholesale food suppliers, their Businesses, all the hotels and restaurants.

So.

In the world that some of.

The rest of us are in, I'm.

Struggling to think of situations where I've maybe got clients or business connections where I could use the same kind of.

Thing where we can help them.

Can I ask clarifying to make sure I hear, are we talking about restaurants or are you just using restaurants as a springboard to some other industry application?

Just as a springboard.

I'm not in the restaurant business. I have a financial planning business and a retirement coaching business.

Okay, and so your clients are whom?

My clients are corporates with. So companies with sort of 4,000 employees and more, many of whom they're sort.

Of furloughing staff, but they're looking at redundancies.

They've got people that they're going to be taking on to early retirement.

It's a new business. We had a face to face workshop program which just got shot to bits.

And Michael and Joe, I forgot. I'm embarrassed. I forgot a big part of the first element that I've been talking about and that is whatever you do now, you want to identify what else people buy before, during, after and instead. And I can go into instead. And you want to be able to make those products, services available to them also. Then you want to go to the next level, Michael, and think about this and think about what else they are buying decision makers for that the trust you create would be appropriate to introduce them to. And a lot of people are very vertical. They only think in terms of whatever they do and the transactional activity that they deal with. But if you think about the fact that that person in normal times is buying or influencing certain things, but in abnormal times, they're even new things. And most of them are indiscriminate. They don't know who to choose, they don't know who to to go with. They don't know who to really pick as a choice or a provider. If you are in a position, you've earned their trust. That trust now can basically. It can what's the word? Not crescendo. It can basically expand out to a multitude of different ways. You can very ethically monetize. And then there's two different ways to monetize now and in the future. If you know that it's only a matter of time between before certain types of, of products or services will be paid for, you can set them up. Now you're going, you're going to. Most everyone on this call is going to need money unless they're doing fabulous which some are, they're going to need money worse in six days, excuse me, in 60 days, than they do right now. I don't know if that helps or I gave you a headache.

No, no, no, it helps a lot.

Hopefully I can read my writing with the restaurants. Anybody here who might have a whole influence sort of chain to restaurateurs. I think you could go to a lot of them and introduce them to all kinds of qualitative people that their upper level type clientele would be very receptive to. And you have to realize one of the greatest, and you guys know this because I watched some of the discussion with people that are doing the virtual events. You're never going to have also the high level decision makers captive in one place for such a period of time where they are able, when you engage them, to be very focused. I mean there's a lot of really interesting sort of adversity produces enormously unique opportunity if you understand how to first of all identify it and then seize it.

So your latest book, Mastering The Rockefeller habits 2.0 scaling how a Few Companies make it and why the Rest Don't. What's this book about? Because I would recommend people get all your books and even all your gazelle coaches. I mean, I've been to your events, you guys do amazing stuff. You have literally impacted, I mean, truthfully, with your creation with eo, there are millions of people that have been impacted by the seeds that you planted. So this is your latest work, who's it for? What's it about? What will people get out of it?

Yeah, well, you know, a lot of companies start up and there's this craze about startups and accelerators and incubators and that kind of stuff, but very few scale up. And it's the scale ups, Joe, that really move economies, really drive innovation. And the problem is because they're not young, they're not Q2, their older, more established companies, they don't get any attention. And so we wrote the book for them. Those that have been kind of toiling away for five or 50 years and have finally figured out what they need to do and are going to take this thing from 10 million to a billion. And what are the key things that are necessary to scale up the company?

Gotcha. Well, I was having a conversation with Dan Sullivan. As you know, he's one of my dear friends and he founded a company, Strategic Coach. And we were having this conversation because we have a friend, I won't mention his name, we all know him, who puts a lot of emphasis on trying to help startup entrepreneurs and putting together programs for them. Dan just made this funny comment because, I mean, I want to help anyone that really wants to grow and learn. I mean, that's why I put out my free podcast. It's like this interview. I mean, we're putting it out to the world for free just so it'll help people that come across it. And dad made this comment. He goes, you know, there's all this emphasis on funding startups. He's like, you know, if you really want to make an impact fund, people who've, like, literally had to borrow the money, had to go into debt on credit cards, no one was there to help him. He goes, that's what weeds out the ones that can make it and ones that don't. I mean, if you just hand over money to someone that's a startup just because you should give them a reward because they want to start a business. He goes, the ones that are really successful, they've gone through the crap. They've gone through the hell that they've had to. And I just thought it was kind of funny.

No, he's right on. It's one of, I think the problem with the incubators, they baby them too much, and then when they finally set him free, they didn't get some of the basic learnings from failing that are necessary to take the venture to the next level. And then what happens is, when they do fail, it's at such a bigger level that it's devastating to their families, to their own net worth. It's a mess. And so I think you got to be careful helping folks too much in the beginning.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I heard this line, and I say this speaking from ignorance because I'm not a parent. The quote was, don't handicap your children by making their lives too easy.

Yeah, for sure.

Although I think that applies to anyone. I mean, you can really baby someone trying to start a business, and you can rob them of the learning that comes from it.

Absolutely.

Well, you've created a lot of tools. What is the Buckminster Fuller quote that you gave today? I love that quote.

Yeah, I know. I'm a mechanical engineer by training. Got a worthless MBA on top of that. And Bucky had this notion that you can't really change the way people think. All you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change your thinking. And, I mean, think about what the phone has done to change our behaviors more than any other change management seminar that you might be able to go through. And so we're tool builders and we wanted to build some tools that help people make those changes.

Well, I got a lap full of stuff here that I've books and everything here. So there's a bunch of growth tools that you have and you're known for the one page strategic plan. Talk about what that is and where people can get it. Because I want the people that are watching this and listening this to not just have some business insight, but I'd like to see send them off to where they can get access to some of the things that you have literally done with thousands of companies and have created that will make a big impact for them, that will allow them to think more strategically, more creatively. Talk about some of the tools you've created, specifically the onepage plan.

Yeah, it's the thing that we're probably best known for. Today, about 40,000 companies are using this tool. And it was a very simple idea. Everyone sits around and says, man, how do I get everybody on the same page? Well, you got to have the page first for everyone to get on. And we use the analogy of jazz bands. You know, I love jazz because you can bring these players in from all over the world who have never played together, but there's got to be a few things that have in common. And one of them is we're playing the same song. And so we thought, hey, how can we put on a single sheet of paper a way for people to get down from their core values all the way to what is the thing we need to focus on the next quarter in a simple format that they can communicate that to everybody else in the organization. And it's this common set of music that people can all play together. So that's what it does.

So where do people get this? Because I know you make it available online. I'll put a link to all the different places that I put this.

So go to scalingup.com or gazelles.com, but scalingup.com and they'll see a thing that says the onepage tools. And we've got them in multiple languages from Russian to Spanish to French to English, obviously. And so it's there for people to use free of charge. We've had them up there for decades.

Great.

So what are some other tools that you've created that have been really helpful to yourself, to other business owners that, that you've done?

Well, you know, it's a challenge. This whole life side and business side, everyone's talking about the balance. We see it more as a blend and so we created a one page personal plan to go along with the one page strategic plan. So that if you can kind of as the entrepreneur get down and the executives in the company, what is I need to do on the personal side and then look at that in relation to what I've got to do on the business side and mesh those up. You know, we find people who are much more successful in both aspects of their business. And we mirrored the same people, strategy, execution and cash. But we said, look, let's look at the relationships, let's look at the achievements, let's take a look at those rituals that we do on a daily basis, our exercise and other things. And then obviously there's the wealth component that we have to pay attention to. And so that's become a tool that started to really catch hold around the world as well. And then we're not known for this. Rockefeller habits checklist. What are these 10 habits, these routines, ones that John D. Rockefeller had in place over 100 years ago that made him the wealthiest guy on the planet, wealthier than any of the guys that we have here today, except maybe Putin. And these are things that you can put in place in any company from startup all the way to the largest company companies in the world.

You've had the experience of meeting, I'm sure, just thousands of entrepreneurs over time and also helping to create them. Is there any consistent mistake that you see entrepreneurs make in business that they could possibly avoid? I think, I think that if you don't protect the downside and you sort of treat your business a bit like going into a gambling, gambling, gambling casino and, you know, so keeping on doubling up to, you know, hoping that you're going to get out of a problem, you know, then, then you're asking for trouble. And eight out of 10 businesses do go bust and quite often it's because people haven't thought of the, you know, the downside consequences of what they're doing. So without being too conservative, it is important, I think, to always think, you know, if I do this, what's the worst that can happen? Can I afford the worst? You know, for instance, right now, you know, some of our airlines have protected against oil, oil going up. Now, a lot of, a lot of people within our airlines said, well, it can't possibly go any higher. We've got a recession on, you know, so do we really have to protect the wiser people at Virgin said, yes, you know, we should protect against the worst happening, you know, so it was, it was good and sensible that they protected against the downside, I see that too, Richard.

I mean, just as a great example, is like Virgin Mobile, as we'd say in the uk, but Virgin Mobile and.

Like, just instead of buying, like, building.

All the communication, all the, all the infrastructure, it would take you literally leased, I think, Sprints lines. And so there's very little downside and very big upside if it worked for you.

We have a strong brand and therefore we're able to avoid the enormous infrastructure costs of, of sometimes of building new businesses. We can piggyback on other people's infrastructure using, using, using our brand. And, you know, we'll put in the brand, we get 50% of the company, we use our marketing skills, and other people put in the infrastructure. And that in itself also, as you say, protects the downside. You know, with all the decisions that you have coming across your desk, wherever you're at your beach, I guess it could be. Yeah, exactly. How do you make really tough decisions on a daily basis? Because you're just. You've got to be. You've got so many requests and demands of your time and people that want your attention in the world. And like, what's the Richard Branson methodology of, I guess, time management, priority management, really thinking it through. I mean, how do you do all of this? Well, you know, we spoke about delegation, and I think the first thing is to make sure that everything is running without you. So, you know, if, you know, when I'm swimming around the island every day, you know, if a shark comes and decides that I look tasty and I disappear, that, you know, everything will continue to run. And, you know, it may not run in exactly the same way, but it will continue to run and Virgin will continue to grow. The fact that everything is running, we've got a fantastic team of people on a global basis. It means that literally I can work out how I want to spend my day. How could I actually take a sabbatical? And this thought came to me over the last couple of weeks. And then I talked to my buddy, David Bach, who's also been in strategic coach on and off over the years. And David is a New York Times bestselling author. Many people know him. He wrote books like the Automatic Millionaire, Smart Women Finish Rich. His latest book is called the Latte factor. And in 2013, when he had joined the 10 Times program, he and you presented everyone, you know, how would you. 10 times your business or your life, which is the premise of this podcast, different ideas about it. Most people think of it in terms of money, either gross revenue, net revenue clients. But he really took it and did it about how could he. 10 times his free time. And that's where he came up with this thought, to do a sabbatical. And so I and Genius Network, he had given a 10 minute talk on doing a sabbatical in 2015. And I had also introduced him to a guy named Bob Roth, who is, you know, really well known for teaching people transcendental meditation. And during that year, David told me that was one of the most valuable things he'd ever done is getting trained in tm, which, you know, you've been meditating with BABS for I think, how many years now?

It'll be about half a century, about 50 years.

Those are kind of like mini sabbaticals for people daily, right? So I've been doing this whole setup and you know, I am a really driven guy and I work with a lot of people that struggle with addiction. And I see that we're on in the middle of one of the greatest mental health crisis crisis in human history with addiction and vice escapism and just mental anguish and depression. And I talk to people on a regular basis that are suicidal because of the work I do with Genius Recovery. And it just occurred to me, like, man, you know, doing a sabbatical and since you've been teaching, you're one of the, you know, you're one of the few people that I know that talks about double your business, triple your business, 10 times your business, while also taking free time. Like most small speakers, they say it sort of for window dressings. It sounds good because you think that, you know, people that are really successful have a lot of time freedom and many people do not. They may have different types of freedom. And it really occurred to me that, you know, right now, even though I teach ELF in terms of marketing and stuff, it's not been very ELF lately. And the reason is, is I got too much going on. And me and you even did a podcast on this to use your line. You know, entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform them. And I really want to kind of talk about that and tie it into sabbaticals. And I've thought that I need to rejuvenate, I need to go step back and really not be so tightly scheduled and cut off a lot of things that are really good because success traps are harder to get out of than failure traps. Right. And I have a lot of successful things in my life and I get so many good opportunities presented to me, as do you, as does anyone that has worked for a Long time laying down tracks, and we get opportunity intoxication where opportunities that I used to. Oh, my God, I can't wait. If I could only have an opportunity like that, my life would forever change. And I find myself now getting presented with these opportunities, and instead of getting excited, I sigh like, oh, another great opportunity coming my way. And so I've said, if I am going to really do a sabbatical, what would it need to look like? Why would I do it? How does one set it up? And there's no better person to talk to about this than you, because you've been teaching free days, living free days. You have the time system for entrepreneurs. And there's a lot of people out there that I don't think they could even wrap their head around it, that they could take a sabbatical. And three weeks ago, that would have been me. Like, how could I ever stop? You know, I have equity in multiple companies. I have a foundation, I have several businesses. I've, you know, lots of genius network members. I got literally, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that listen to my podcast. There's all this stuff. And so that's sort of the setup. I wanted to say that in the beginning and then kind of go into a conversation about it going back to the line. Entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves. I wanted to ask you to describe what you think about that. And for the purposes of our listeners, I'm not saying that any. You know, this is not telling you how you should live your life or run your business or whatever. I'm really just talking about the subject of it and how to. How to enter 2.0, whatever phase that is. For me, you know, Joe Polish, 2.0. Dan Sullivan, 2.0, our listener, 2.0. For me, I'm thinking in order to get there, a sabbatical seems to be one of the smartest things I could do right now. So that's. That's my thoughts.

Yeah, My answer to it, I think, would be. Would have been different before the pandemic. You know, that. Because, first of all, I've got the experience of. I won't say a lot, but certainly dozens out of, you know, 20,000 that we've had in the program, 20,000 entrepreneurs. But I know dozens who've done sabbaticals, three months, six months, a year. And, you know, and in some cases, they let me in on it before they did it, so they, you know, they could ask me some thoughts about it. But I think that the current situation in the world is different from what anyone has experienced before this. And I'm 76 years old and a lot of things have happened in 76 years. And I think this is a very different one from what I've experienced before. And two things I'd like to say about this. You were talking about psychological, you know, people being really, really impacted negatively, psychologically and emotionally. And I knew a client who was in the Northbridge, California earthquake, that suburb of Los Angeles, and he was about two miles from the epicenter and you know, got a really bad shaking, I mean, everything. And it was quite long by his recollection and the video sort of supported that. He went through about 15 seconds of shaking. And he said, you know, there's one thing that gives us a sense of security as human beings. The earth doesn't move. I mean, you're born here and you know, the earth is solid, solid ground. But he said, he, he says when it does move and you feel absolutely no control, it unsettles every other belief you have about what's secure and what's not secure. So I think that the pandemic's a bit like a earthquake of that sort. You know, it has, but here it affects everybody because everybody gets intersected by other people's reactions to it. You may be pretty solid yourself, but you're being impacted by other people's turbulence. And it's global. You know, it's probably the first really truly global experience where no matter where you went in the world, meeting a stranger, you could have a conversation with that person and pretty soon you could talk about the pandemic and how it affected them, and it would have affected them in some way. The other one is a. It was just a little article I read. People have it mixed up and there's a lot of talk about computers being able to think and we're, you know, as they get faster, pretty soon computers will be able to out think human beings and just because they can process information much more quickly than human beings can. And the author, you know, and it struck me as a different, different opinion. He said, well, we don't process information, we take info, we take raw impacts in like sensations. We take sensations and then we transform them into our own sense of meaning. So he said we, we in fact don't process information like computers do, is that we get senses from all over. And there's a belief now that we have more senses than just the five, that the entire human body is a sensing organization. And could be that our sense of sight and maybe even picking up on radio Signals from other people. But we're constantly processing this and we're turning it into meaning for ourselves. So I think everybody has an absolute need on a constant basis to make meaning out of their experience. And I think that's what we are. We're kind of meaning making creatures. And you're very, very quick at taking negatives and turning them into positives. And, you know, I admire your skill in doing this, especially when it's in public. You're able to shift very, very quickly, but there's probably a price to pay for it in private, you know, And I think you've taken some huge blows just from what you've communicated to me as we've gone. We see each other quite a lot and we talk to each other a lot. And I think one is that probably your system of transforming negative into positive would just like to take a break.

Yeah, yeah.

No, you're. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

And it's tired. It's like a muscle. But you've been using the muscle extensively in overdrive almost over the last year. So. And that seems completely natural to me. Everything else gets tired. And when we're forced to continually deal with certain kinds of, you know, certain kinds of experience in a. In a skillful way, but the skill gets tired out.

Right, right. And you know, the other thing too, Dan, based on what you said, even when I've taken some free days, I find myself not rejuvenating or not being able to disconnect because via my nervous system, my, you know, sympathetic parasympathetic system, you know, the heightened state, the fact that, you know, I'm. I'm an empath, so I tend to take on the energy and the pain of others. And so it's, you know, it's pretty difficult at times. And. Yeah. So I want to take a break. What future crimes? What do you. That's the title of your book. That's your website. What does that even mean?

Right. So I thought about this long and hard, actually. Titling a book is really difficult.

Yeah.

You know, all of about this, but I run the Future Crimes Institute and I'm thinking about it. You asked me about this before. You said, am I one of the top experts who knows? There's a lot of smart people in this space. But the thing that I do know is I'm thinking about what's coming next. So rather than focusing on where we were, I'm focused on what's happening. And the thing that would surprise people is, of course, most people know if you turn on CNN or any of the news stories, you know that they're hacking banks and they're hacking your bank account and they're doing identity theft and all that stuff. People know about. And they know that there's some dangers on social media and the like. But what people don't know is that we are about to explode in the number of things that we are connecting to the Internet. It's called the Internet of Things and we've talked about that. That means everything from your blender to your car to your dishwasher, your pets, your kids, everything is going to have an Internet protocol address and online.

Yeah, I remember even the tour of the Qualcomm and just see everything that is connected, everything.

Because the price of those chips to get something online is dropping towards under a penny. So with RFID and some of these other technologies, that means that we're going to switch not to get too technical, but to something called Internet protocol version 6. We currently use Internet protocol version 4. We've run out of space. So if you think about New York City, Manhattan, the area code 212, eventually they ran out of 212. They needed to create the 718 area code 347917. The same thing has happened with the Internet. We're out of space. So they've created more addressable space. What is amazing is how much space that they've created. So if you think about it, today's Internet is kind of relatively small. It can only support about 4 1/2 billion simultaneous connections. But the Internet of tomorrow, the one that will arrive in the next three years, can support 78 octillion connections, which is 78 trillion. Trillion, trillion. Sorry, 78.

Something you couldn't even copy.

Yeah. To put in ways that people can understand. Like there's two ways I like to describe it. Today's Internet is about the size of a golf ball. Tomorrow's is going to be the size of the sun. Like literally that's the difference. We think we have the Internet today. We ain't seen nothing yet. We're in the earliest, earliest stages. We're going to have a sun sized Internet, which means everything will be online but the down. So great things will happen as a result of that. We'll have smart cities, we'll save energy, we'll have better health care through Internet of the self and all that, but all of that will become hackable. And as you well know, we can't protect the things that we have today at all. So Cisco has predicted that by 2020, we're going to add another 50 billion devices to the Internet. Intel I think, said it's going to be 200 billion. Whatever the exact number is, it's going to be a huge amount. And as you know from your time with Singularity University, this won't be a linear thing that happens 30 years from now. This is going to arrive really quickly and seem as if it's arrived overnight. So Future Crimes is all about what's coming next. It's not just hacking the things of today. It's hacking the Internet of tomorrow, which will be here tomorrow. Right. Internet of things, Robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, synthetic biology. I have specific examples in the book. Like, you wouldn't think of the bad guys hacking robots. They're actually doing it. There are robots that are carrying out crimes, that are robots that are carrying out terrorist attacks, crazy things like that.

We even talked last night, we had dinner. You were talking about how kilos of drugs are being delivered via drones and all kinds of stuff.

Absolutely, yeah. People would be surprised to know that the Cali cartel in Colombia has like a $5 million R&D budget for robotics. So think about it. They're trying to disintermediate all the humans. Humans that can.

Is it 5 billion?

No. 5 million things. No, no. 5 million. 5 million dollar budget. Who knows? It may go up.

But for the moment.

Right, exactly. But for the moment, no. 5 million bucks that they are spending on autonomous robotics so that they can send autonomous submarines carrying hundreds of kilos of cocaine up to the United States. The DEA picks up about 20 of these subs a year. Right. And now they're using drones. So there are like thousands, literally, again, according to DEA and Homeland Security, thousands of kilos that are being flown on unmanned drones over the border from Mexico into the United States with narcotics. So again, people think. Well, they think drones, they think the military, they think the U.S. government, you know, killing Al Qaeda. But in fact, bad guys are using these technologies, too. They're using artificial intelligence in just ways that would blow your mind.

Interesting. So fascinating. Yeah. And so here. But the thing is, like you said, this is just the start, because it's going to get so.

Exactly.

We're going into this whole new realm that's never existed before.

Exactly. And it's just the start. But it's already begun. That's the really big point that I want people to understand, is we call it future crimes. But bad guys are using robots today. Bad guys are using artificial intelligence today.

And.

And in the book, I have like hundreds of cases of crazy stuff that criminals and terrorists are doing with technology.

Well, let's keep going down this path. What I want to do, like I said, and I want to remind the listener, is that I want to make you aware of this stuff, but we will offer solutions. Because what I hate is when some people do documentaries and they're bitching and complaining about how horrible the world is, but then there's no solution on what are you doing? Kind of how do you do it? So now it's so easy to share online. I mean, obviously we're so interconnected with our phones and there's a website, it leads to websites like things like pleaserob me.com and that sort of thing. So how can people go online and share things and not be minimize the risk?

Yeah, for sure. So this is an other area where technology is being used against you. Remember I said there are people that understand technology, you know how to use it. Other people understand what goes on behind the screen and how it really works. So in the book I try to turn around the screen and give you that other perspective. So there's lots of people that are taking advantage of the information that you're sharing. And I'll talk about companies that are doing it and then I'll talk about bad guys that are doing it. On the company front. I actually have a chapter in the book called you'd're not the customer, you're the product. So I do polls when I speak all the time and I say, hey, raise your hand if you're customer of Facebook. And everybody and the audience raises their hand and I'm like, oh, how much do you pay for that? And they're like, pay for that? I don't pay for that. It's like, okay, so you're not. So why have the Internet gods given this to you? I'm like, you're not paying for it because you're the product, right? You're the thing that Facebook sells to advertisers. And that's why Facebook has a multi billion dollar valuation. And you get free status updates. That's the deal that you've made as long as you understand it. So people share online. And all of these social media sites are just great ways. They provide excellent services. And I'm not saying that in any way they may not be useful. Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, they're all great and there's lots of good reasons to use them, but you just need to understand the bargain that you're making. So that's from the corporate side, on the bad guy side, bad guys are absolutely paying attention to every tweet that you put out there, every Facebook posting. And I'll give you a few specific examples. I always run into people who will post on LinkedIn, I'm going to be at this conference in Orlando or we're going on vacation to Bahamas or Provincetown, whatever it is. And they post it online, and everybody else gives it the thumbs up. Hey, that's great. So you mentioned a website called pleaserob me.com and that was based out of Amsterdam. And what they did is they just created spiders, little programs that would pull down everybody's vacation postings, and they aggregate it into one database so that criminals, burglars, could go in there and just put in a postal code and see all the people in the neighborhood that were going to be on vacation. So you think, well, this is just. Nobody will pay attention to this. Or, I've set my privacy settings, which Facebook changes all the time. And even if you think you're private, you're probably not. Another important, important statistic. Would it surprise you, Joe? You're very plugged into all this. Would it surprise you to know that Facebook is hacked 600,000 times a year?

That probably would not surprise me, considering everything. See the thing, even with hacking, you know how Facebook had the hackathons. So that's why I even asked you about hacking, because there's a lot of stuff where portrait is a very. Yeah.

Positive thing. Absolutely.

And there's this other side of it. But, yeah, I would have not guessed that much coming from you.

I need to correct that. So I told you that just to gauge it. But actually, it's not 600,000 a year. It's 600,000 accounts a day.

Wow.

There are 600,000 accounts a day hacked on Facebook. That's not me saying that. That statistic was posted on the blog of the chief security officer of Facebook. Right. So these are their own data that are coming out there. So not only. Even if you've got your privacy settings, which they change all the time, kind of screw with you, so you lose out there. Bad guys are breaking into it. There was a study done, which I really want folks to know about in the UK and they interviewed, I think it was 1,000 convicted burglars. And they said to them, when you're going out there and trying to find a home to burglarize, how do you go about it? 70% of burglars, convicted burglars in the UK today say that they're using Facebook and other social media. So before they're choosing your house, 70% of burglars are going in there and doing it. There was a funny article written on what they're calling Zucker burglars that are going out there and using this. And they have. Cops have arrested groups of mostly young, teenage or young 20 year old guys that are in New Hampshire and elsewhere that are using this data to go online and burglarize people.

That is nuts. So how do you yourself use social media then, knowing this stuff? And of course, you know things that the average person doesn't. So, I mean, a lot of people, you know, they're going to be like, what the hell? What do I do?

Well, I mean, the key thing is never to use the Internet or touch a keyboard. It's very dangerous. Don't do that under any circumstances.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, you're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.