Born This Way: The 6 Traits of Real Entrepreneurs in a Hustle-Obsessed World ft. Gino Wickman

I believe these true entrepreneurs have six essential traits. Visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, responsible. And you are born with those. They can't be taught. And so you're using the term skills. I use the term traits. And so what that content is all about is basically just filtering. I believe 3 to 4% of the population are true entrepreneurs that have these six essential traits. And so what I'm trying to do is since entrepreneurialism is so popular now and everybody wants to be one, I'm trying to save people 10 years of hell that should not do this. And so I'm not trying to break hearts. I'm trying to save lives, quite frankly, and find the ones that are truly this, because the 96 or 97% that aren't, there's a thousand other career choices. It's not like entrepreneurship is like the only destination in life. It's one career and it's a man. So it's only for those people with those traits. And I would strongly recommend anyone that doesn't do not embark on this. And so I have a very specific assessment they can take, do a little checkup on themselves. They score 90 or higher, they probably have these essential traits. And if they don't, they probably shouldn't do that.

Hi, this is Joe Polish, and I am super excited to do an interview with a person who's a personal friend of mine. But just I'm not going to make too many jokes because he's really one of the smartest people ever and his name is Geno Wickman and he's written many books. Most well known for entrepreneurial operating system, which is now used by over 300,000 entrepreneurs around the world. That was one of the original companies he founded, but he's got a whole life of entrepreneurship. And so, Gino, great to be here with you, man.

Thanks, Joe. Thrilled to be here, man.

So since the last. We've done several interviews.

We have, yes.

You've spoken at Genius Network. What's the latest? How would you describe yourself today in ways that you've not done in the past?

Yeah, some big changes in the last five years. So I'd say just to cut right to the chase, I'll fill in a little context as we dig in. But this last five years has been all about going inside both myself and the entrepreneur that gets to the top of the mountain. We kill ourselves climbing it. We get there, we think we're gonna ring that bell, feel whole and complete. And we get there and we feel just as empty as we did when we started the climb. And so going into what that hole is that we're trying to fill and ultimately filling it a completely different way than what we thought.

Right. Well, did you ever know the alcoholic poet Charles Bukowski?

No.

Okay. There was a movie, Mickey Rourke, the actor, years ago called Barfly, based on the real life of Charles Bukowski. And he had this. He was a great writer and he was also an alcoholic and also an addict and he would just write about anything. And he. There's one of his poems which is take the writer away from the typewriter. All you have left is a sickness which started in writing in the first place. And I always thought of take the entrepreneur away from business and all you have left is a sickness which got them running a business in the first place. So what percentage do you think are not like that versus the obsessive, compulsive, driven, workaholic type entrepreneur?

Yeah, you're talking about specifically entrepreneurs when you say that.

Right, right, right, right.

I mean, I've not met one that wasn't. Yeah. So. And maybe that's what I attract. But I mean, a true hard charging entrepreneur that builds something with people and let's just say a good number of people, 20, 30, 100, 500 people, they're all. I've yet to meet one that doesn't have the hole they're trying to fill. Most of them don't realize it, just for the record, but I've yet to meet one that doesn't.

No, totally. Well, you know the Star wars bar in Star Wars?

Yeah.

Okay. Like you've got all these sort of. They're all tense, kind of looking at each other, have their weapons close at hand in case someone makes a move and they have to either kill them or defend themselves. So I think the world of entrepreneurship is like the Star wars bar. Right. And when I run Genius Network, it's almost kind of like that to a degree. I mean, of course, that's a bit of an exaggeration. However, there is similarities. Right. It's like just a bunch of weirdos with their ambitions and trying to do their thing. And I think a lot of it, and we've talked about this before, comes from trauma. You know, most, the most successful people that I know have seem to have come from tremendous amounts of adversity. Not everybody, but a lot of them for a lot of them for sure. So, and I'll just say this to kind of start it off, I've got a bunch of prepared questions for you because I'm just really curious as to how you would respond to some of these. So there was a lot of thought put into this interview with you. That being said, with. Let's define the term entrepreneur. And I know everything you're talking about could apply to all humans. However, most people that read our books follow us, they're in some way shape or form either running a business, a founder, or they operate and make their living in some entrepreneurial capacity. So let's define entrepreneur. I mean, I don't know if you use the same definition of entrepreneur.

Let me hear yours and I'll share mine and we'll see.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Exactly. I liked it.

Please. But you're using the.

Well, I learned from our friend Dan Sullivan, you know, that the first recorded use of the entrepreneur was in 1804 by a French guy, John Baptiste. Say. I don't know if you've traced that anywhere earlier than that.

I have not. I just trust Dan. We're both Dan Sullivan fans.

I just trust him. So I always look at that. An entrepreneur is an individual takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level, from a lower yield to a higher yield. That's entrepreneurship. The way my brain interprets that is, yeah, you can make money making people's lives worse. But I always view the term entrepreneur as making things better, not making things worse. I don't view it as like, let's just make a lot of money exploiting people and then call it entrepreneurship. Because I think whenever you make things worse, me personally, and that might be my own deciding to label something that way, but I actually think of an entrepreneur as. As someone that's actually creating value, not someone that's just figured out a way to scheme people. You know, a con artist that knows how to scam people using business principles. I wouldn't call that person entrepreneurial. I'd call that person a scumbag.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would say that I would add to the definition. Cause I agree with Dan's definition for sure. Another way that I say it is it's someone who sees a need or a problem in the world, starts a business to solve that need or that problem in the world, and builds a company with people to do so. So that's another way I look at it. And I, you know, con man or saint, whatever they are, you know, I can't control that outcome. The people that I surround myself with, the entrepreneurs I surround myself with are good people. These are wonderful good people. But, yeah, there are some criminals out there with the same skill set.

Yeah. And part of it I say by effect, I mean at the end of the day, I have an addiction recovery foundation. And if I didn't have a certain level of acceptance, I couldn't hang out with anyone. Because every person I know has had some part of their life where they're flawed, including me. I've got plenty of, you know, issues and things that I've dealt with and I've had many of amends. So I would like to think I've been more of a giver than a taker. And even though like a part of my focus is help the helpers, help the givers of the world, there are times when all of us are desperate and we're selfish and we're self centered and we're just needing to get what it is we need. It's when I look at someone and say, for the most part, is this person really trying to do good in the world or are they a sociopath, Are they a psychopath? You know, because there are those. But they're a tiny percentage. You know, most people are good, I.

Agree, but that's, you know, they unfortunately, you know, the bad ones get a little more pressed than the good ones in a lot of cases. So unfortunately it seems like it's a larger percentage, but it is a very small percentage.

Yeah, you're exactly right. So now you're focused on helping young people talk about some of these. Yeah.

Let me give the context because everything you said, I'm excited to dive into this. So I'll give a little bit of a context. And the way I describe the context is what I call the five pieces of content. Okay. Because that's basically what I've done, is created five pieces of content in the world to serve entrepreneurs. And so the first one is where you're going now, and that's called entrepreneurial leap. And that's for anyone who thinks they're an entrepreneur and wants to become one or, or an early stage entrepreneur. And what that content does is it helps them confirm whether or not they are, shows them a glimpse of the life and a path to get there. Second piece of content is called Rocket Fuel. And that's for when that entrepreneur, who I call a visionary, is ready to find their integrator counterpart to take the business to the next level. Third piece of content you alluded to is Eos or the book Traction. And that's when that entrepreneur wants to build a leadership team and run their business like a Swiss watch. Fourth piece of content is called the EOS Life. And that's when that entrepreneur and their leaders want to live what we call the ideal life, doing what they love with people they love, making a huge impact, making lots of money and having time for other passions. And then the fifth piece of content is what we touched on there, and that's called shine in the 10 disciplines and that's that if you look at what I just laid out there with those five pieces of content, that's the entrepreneur's climb. That's the climb up the mountain. And when they get up there, ring that bell and they're not feeling the satisfaction they thought that's what shine in the 10 discipline is all about. It's really about helping them live their optimal life, have more peace, make a bigger impact and greatly increase their energy. And so in that where you started, there is that first piece of content I created Entrepreneurial Leap now six years ago, but it's still very much a passion and that business continues to grow. What I never expected with that was it was always about entrepreneurs in the making. These people that have not started their business yet because everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. And so I wanted to head off a lot of train wrecks at the pass. But what happened is that content found its way into startups, early stage entrepreneurs, as we call them. And so it's serving both of those audiences and we're having a blast with it.

Yes. So, and we've talked about this for. You believe entrepreneurs are not made, they're born.

I do. 100%. Yeah.

So when you say that a lot of people want to be an entrepreneur, how many people do you think go off the cliff or waste a lot of time and energy trying to become something they're not? And that's one of my biggest dangers where I'm very hesitant to tell, oh, anybody can learn everything. Well, you can learn certain things, but it doesn't mean you're going, you know, you can take guitar lessons, it doesn't mean you're going to be great at playing guitar. And some people can naturally just pick something up and others can't. So what would you say to the dreamers out there that have tried endlessly to get to where they want to go, but the path they're doing it is not panning out for them versus the people that have the stick to it. Iveness and are really dialed in? They've got the will, they just don't have the skill. Or do they have the skill, but they don't have the will? Because I think the entrepreneurial recipe is a combination of skill and will. Combine in a certain way into an environment where you're going to operate. And it's, it's a lot easier to talk about it than to do it.

Sure, yeah. So I may say it a little bit different than what you're saying there, but. And then the five pieces of content, just to back up to that context, you can find those on my website, genowickman.com, so I don't have to refer to any of this. You'll find the sources because each content has its own company. And so you can go as far down those rabbit holes as you want. But again, we're talking about entrepreneurial Leap or E Leap for short. So my very strong belief, as you already said, is you're born with it. It can't be taught. And I believe these true entrepreneurs. Sorry, I'm gonna back up there. Have six essential traits. Visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, responsible. And you are born with those. They can't be taught. And so you're using the term skills. I use the term traits. And so what that content is all about is basically just filtering. I believe 3 to 4% of the population are true entrepreneurs that have these six essential traits. And so what I'm trying to do, since entrepreneurialism is so popular now and everybody wants to be one, I'm trying to save people 10 years of hell that should not do this. And so I'm not trying to break hearts, I'm trying to save lives, quite frankly, and find the ones that are truly this, because the 96 or 97% that aren't, there's a thousand other career choices. It's not like entrepreneurship is like the only destination in life. It's one career and it's a bitch, man. So it's only for those people with those traits. And I would strongly recommend anyone that doesn't, do not embark on this. And so I have a very specific assessment they can take. Do a little checkup on their self. They score 90 or higher, they probably have these essential traits, and if they don't, they probably shouldn't do this. Now, really important in this content, I teach something called the entrepreneurial range, because this doesn't mean you can't be self employed. And my loving way I describe this is if you have handy skills and you want to be a handyman or a handy woman, you want to be self employed, you go charge $60 an hour, make 100 grand a year, and have your one person show for the rest of your life. That's not entrepreneurship. So you could buy a franchise. And so these one person shows a franchise owner, those aren't entrepreneurs, they're business owners. And that's respectable. I'm talking about people that can't help it. And so that handyman or handy woman that starts out to be a handyman or handy woman, 10 years from now, they're going to have a construction company. You cannot stop yourself. When you have these six essential traits.

You cannot stop yourself. It's absolutely true. I mean, I always like saying to young people, if I wouldn't have known being successful is this much work, I would have stuck with being a loser, because you have no idea all the stuff you're going to go through. But let's say the last part of the trait, the responsibility. I'd love to get your take on this and then I'll get into the prepared questions I have because I'm just going off the cuff here.

Yeah, yeah.

With the people that are constantly out raising money, trying to raise money, I think a lot of them are really not entrepreneurs. They're trying to be entrepreneurs. The only thing that they know how to do is kind of paint a picture of a dream. They have no clue and in some cases, no intention. Maybe some of them deluded themselves and actually think. But I've learned after wasting tremendous amounts of money funding these big dream ideas for startups, you know, 25 grand here, 50 grand here, 100 grand there, and then it all adds up.

Right?

And over the, I don't know, probably the last 15 years, I have realized that many of these people's, their entire business model is never actually making anything worse work. They're actually making it worse. It's raise enough money, hope they can along the way get someone to come in and make this, like Dan says, make it up and make it real. They're making it up, but they don't make it real. And they're hoping someone comes along and buys the idea or the thing, however undeveloped or partially developed it is, however they package it. But they just, they never turn a profit into anything. And I, I think that's what a successful business is, solving problems for a profit. But a lot of people, they just keep raising money, they keep painting this grandiose picture. And I'm at the point where I wanted to ask you about it.

Like, I can't wait to answer.

Yeah, is that a fake entrepreneur? Is that an entrepreneur that just is still in that, you know, the middle stages, trying to figure this out? Like, how would you describe that? 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 joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Well, you know, I don't want to pick a fight on this podcast, so you're hitting a strong nerve with me. And I talk about this in the book Entrepreneurial Leap. And again, each one of those five pieces of content, there's a corresponding book just to make sure I'm clarifying all the resources here. And so the book is called Entrepreneur Leap. I cannot remember the statistics, but I was so thrilled to include this in one of the chapters. And it's exactly that. Raising money. Most true entrepreneurs never raise money. If they do anything, they borrow money from their family or friends, and that's the extent. So the percentage is crazy because I did the research, it's like 4% or 5% actually go outside and raise money to grow their business. So you're exactly right. Those really aren't true entrepreneurs. Some are. So where I go is to the other side of that. If you are being approached by somebody who's got a startup who's raising money, I'd ask them to fill out the entrepreneur in the making assessment and make sure you're investing in a true entrepreneur, because you are going to lose your ass investing in that person if they're not, because the odds are very high. I mean, I'd love to know the statistics and they're out there, but I'm not even sure we can get the real statistics. But the percentage of people that invest and lose money in those venture deals, I mean, it's substantial because most of them are not true entrepreneurs. And we just pissed off a few.

People with that, which, you know, it's completely fine because everyone that I've ever lost money out of the deals, I'm going to make them say, you know, just do yourself a favor. I mean, try to find where your sweet spot is and your talents, because I talk. It's in chapter two of my book. You know, what's in it for them is the things you can spend are your time, your attention, your money, your effort and your energy. I call that Tammy.

Right.

So if you're going to invest your money and someone brings their time, their attention, your money, their effort and energy, but they don't. They're not built for it. They're Just going to blow through the money. It's never going to come to fruition, and a lot of people are left holding the bag. And it's so rare to ever see any of these startups that are raising money ever come to fruition. But we always have these huge success stories. So it's kind of like there's always the one.

There's always that one out there.

It's the lottery ticket. Let's chase that lottery ticket. But I'll tell you, I'm at the point where I actually think you have a better chance of winning the lottery or just throwing something down on a craps table than most startups. Yeah.

And again, you can look at. Look at all the number of people in your world. The number of people in my world. Just look at them. I mean, how many of them are out there raising money, and it's just a very, very small percentage, and the rest are betting on themselves. And anyway, it's very, very different. Two different worlds.

Yeah. And like, I'll say this is not. There are points where people that have had a success, they get to a point where, like, all right, in order to really grow and scale, we need to raise money. But even scaling, that's one of the newest buzzwords. Everyone wants to scale. And I went and spoke a week ago at a conference. Metabolic center's being opened in Tucson by Dr. Naysha Winters. She's involved in a brilliant doctor, and she trains a bunch of other really great doctors on how to most effectively treat cancer. And I remember saying, you don't want to scale cancer. You know, you want. Like my friend Tommy Mello, I think, you know Tommy, he says, you know, nail it before you scale it. And I have a lot of people that haven't nailed anything, but they're trying to scale something, and all they're scaling is, like, disaster. They're scaling chaos. And so when people come to you, and because you have to hear it all the time, Gino, I want to scale my company. How do you interpret that?

I could go on a rant with words. So words are funny. You know, you've been around long enough. I have been around decades. Just the words, the new word, you know, they last five years.

Yeah. Monetize, which means make money, or pivot means the first thing we were doing wasn't working.

So. Yeah. So that. So scale. That word drives me crazy as well. But again, here I go using the words. I just call it growth. Okay. Just grow. You're going to grow a business. So I love what you said. Again, I would say it a little bit different, but it's all about, you know, in my simple little mind, it's about having a vision, having a plan, you know, and I'm going to indirectly talk about EOS right now and what I'm saying, but it's have a vision, have a plan, have a structure, build great people, and it will become what it's going to become. And if you want to call that scale growth, pick your word. But it's just growth, you know, so that, yeah, that word scale, there's just something about it that I can't put my finger on it, but I can read from you. You have that same feeling. So I always like to say, especially with these entrepreneurs in the, that set out wanting to build billion dollar companies, it's like there's nothing wrong with having a $4 million company that throws off a nice 20% profit. And so it's, you know, this fallacy that we've got to build $100 million companies and billion dollar companies. I mean, those are one in a million for starters. And, you know, I've got clients that have amazing $17 million companies. There's nothing wrong with that or a $1 million company. So scale grow, you know, it's all about deciding what you want as an entrepreneur and just building that, growing that into what you want. So there's my best response.

I love that response. And the reason I bring it up is, I think with you, for anyone that's watching, you have not just you've not read a bunch of books and written a bunch of books. You've been at this for your whole life. And so you really have wisdom. And oftentimes people will follow someone that has believability but no credibility. But you, you have true credibility.

I appreciate that.

Yeah. I mean, you've been doing this for, for a long time.

I'm trying. I'm trying. Yeah, Same here. Same here. Just trying to be me best I can.

Yeah. This year, this year marks for the 35th year I've actually owned a business.

Crazy.

And I've not gone bankrupt. Crazy.

You know, and you're, you're prompting a thought. You know, I, I go back to, you know, when I was working with a bunch of companies through the EOS process and when I would have a team, you know, the entrepreneur says, I want to build a $100 million company. And they're sit 15 or 20 million. I love the question because I've said it more times than I can count. And it's like, do you really want to build a $100 million. Let's talk about what that really means. Because most of them, when they really look inside, that's not what they really want. And so to figure out what they really want and start there. Oh, they'll build it faster, they'll get there faster, and they'll realize it's probably not $100 million. I just wanted to throw that little icing on the cake there.

Does anyone ever really know what they want? Oh, yeah.

I mean, I believe they do. It changes, you know, I think, I think you know, what you want for five or 10 years and then it changes. You know, my motivations have changed, my goals change. But I think you do for the period of time until you achieve it. That's my experience.

Yeah. Okay, cool. All right, well, let me, let me get into these well orchestrated questions. I got here, so. And I'll deviate if I decide I don't like these.

I look forward to the journey.

How do you build something systems and structure in a company without becoming a prisoner to them yourself?

You know, and this is why I wanted to start with the five pieces of content. Because what's going to happen in these questions and these answers is I'm going to anchor it in the content. So not only we can have this great conversation, and I love how we're going to dig and go down the rabbit hole, but for the audience, I want them to know where to go for that content that we touch on, but I'm also going to keep it as generic as I can so I don't have to go chase down some content. So you use two words, systems and structure. Right. And I love how you asked the question because you ask it in the way that the perception is that systems and structure restrict freedom. And I'm going to challenge that. It's just the opposite. Systems and structure create freedom. So hopefully I can make this make sense. But this is what I love about your style. We'll dig deep and make this clear. If I don't make it entirely clear, but I don't know how you can have freedom without it. And so let's just take a hypothetical entrepreneur and then I'll use myself a lot because I've experienced everything I teach. I've experienced every piece of content. I am one that teaches what I needed the most. Danielle Kennedy quote. So let's go back to what that entrepreneur wants. And if that entrepreneur truly wants freedom, then they have to put a structure in place. In other words, you have to decide what is the Right. And best structure to free you up. And so the way I look at this is freedom for the entrepreneur is that entrepreneur spending all of their time doing what they're genetically encoded to do. And the only way to do that is to surround yourself with great people. And the only way to surround yourself with great people is to figure out the right structure. So we call it accountability chart in eos, but call it what you call it. You've got to figure out how to build a team around you that can completely free you up to that sweet spot. That's structure. And then systems is once you figure out your product or your service. And I love how you said it. I can't remember how you said it earlier, but you got to figure out that model first before you scale, invest, whatever you want to call it.

Nail it before you scale it.

Nail it before you scale it. And so you got to spend some time nailing it. But once you nail it, when you know the product or service, when you know the business, there's a handful of core processes for how that business goes around. How you market, how you sell, how you make the product, how you provide the service, how you process the money, how you take care of that customer forever. And there's just a handful. And so systems is systemizing all of that. So there's consistency in the organization, and everybody knows the playbook, the rules we're playing by, how it works, the ABC way of doing it. And in those two things, as an entrepreneur, you're competing completely free. The opposite is all of that stuff is a clusterfuck, and you show up every day, putting out fires, pulling out your hair, doing your 2am tossing and turning a bed every night. That's not freedom. So hopefully I've made my. Have I made that clear? Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it does to the ADD mind. I don't know if you consider yourself ADD or anything.

Diagnosed. Dr. Amen diagnosed me with ADHD.

That's funny.

Yeah. When they looked at my. My brain after the scan, they said, wow, I didn't expect to see so much brain damage. I've taken a lot of hits to the head, and I have adhd. I got it all. And I've got ocd.

I'm a. I'm a. Yeah, you're a diagnosis. Yeah. Well, the reason I bring that up is I. So we were talking about this before we started recording My buddy, Dr. Edward Hollowell, nicknamed Ned, and he's the top ADDHD psychiatrist in the world.

I know of him. Well, he's actually in entrepreneur elite. I wrote about him in the book.

Okay, yes. Yes, you did.

Because it's one of the traits of a true entrepreneur. Most of them have ADD or adhd.

Right, right. And I remember talking with him, I don't know how many years ago this was, because we've known each other for a couple decades. And he said, joe, he's like, people like us, systems cramp our style. He goes, we abhor systems, but we need them. And he goes, and if you're like in a relationship, personal relationship, he goes, if you have attention deficit disorder, you want someone with attention surplus disorder, where they have an abundance of attention to kind of counteract your stuff. And he says, so within a company, like, you don't want to be fit into a box because you think that's not going to let you be spontaneous. But that actually, like you said, is a scaffolding that will help you.

Yeah, let me grab that piece. Because you're talking about, you know, a significant other needs to be that structure. Same thing in business. And so that's the concept I call the visionary and the integrator. So that that true entrepreneur, who I call visionary, needs to be counterbalanced with somebody with structure. So the entrepreneur is never going to put in place systems and structure. They're incapable of doing that. But they just need somebody who's great at doing that. And again, I've seen it more times than I can count now, hundreds, if not thousands of times, when that entrepreneur is all of a sudden in that position where they have systems and structure in place, they are free, they're more productive, they're happier, they're freer. And then going back to my crazy mind, you know, it's creating EOs, the entrepreneurial operating system. You know, people will ask, you know, how did you create that? You know, how are you capable of creating that? It's it. I believe it's the combination of my OCD and my adhd. It's the craziest combination. It's the only way to create something like that. I mean, I obsessed for five years, 500 sessions, 50 companies pulling levers, figuring it out. I mean, it's borderline crazy the way that I obsess with about trying to figure it out, But I saw it. It seems so simple. So this brain is good for some stuff. I'll never be a good accountant.

Yeah. I can't even fathom how certain skills work really well for some people, but they're the polar opposite for others. The same way. I mean, P. Ls anything like that type of work, although critically important. And I really appreciate people that have it. I mean my eyes glaze over. I can't even comprehend how I do it. But here's the thing too. There are so let's take the hunter and the farmer, you know, people that are driven and people that are not driven. So my assistant who's been with me for 30 years, she's a farmer, I'm a hunter, you know, to use Doug Brackman's worker your obviously super familiar with.

Huge fan.

My partner who's a, you know, plastic surgeon. She's a farmer, not a hunter. Like her brain does not get pr. Her brain does not operate well with all the creative marketing things. But she can sit down in front of a spreadsheet for hours and just analyze data and it's like. And she's phenomenal at it in that area, not phenomenal at creativity and ideation and drives her nuts. But me, I'm the total opposite. And so.

Right. And on that. And I purposely am stopping you there because this is why I'm hoping we're making this point come across and why I'm talking about myself because I'm hoping the listener out there, that is that ADHD entrepreneur, you know, again we're talking about true entrepreneurs were a little fucked up. And you've learned to embrace your fucked upness and I've learned to embrace mine. And that's like the beginning. As soon as you understand the gift that we have and then all of the weaknesses and to the degree we can accept both of those things again and build systems and structured around that to free ourselves up, to just spend all of our time in that greatness. It's a beautiful thing. But it starts by just accepting how quirky and odd we are to the other 96% of the world.

Right? Right. And it is finding the gifts in those areas and continually enhancing it. Because most of the time it starts off very raw, very just nuts. It doesn't make any sense to most people. But if you have the stick to itiveness which is a trait of real entrepreneurs, like when I was a Deborah carpet cleaner living off credit cards, I was going into debt. Doing hard manual labor 10, 12, 14 hours, sometimes 16 hour days was not uncommon. And I was not only making no money, I was paying money on my credit card back in 1990-1992. I'm doing, you know, I was at an age, early 20s, doing super hard manual labor and not only not making enough money to even pay my bills, I was going into debt in order to do it. And if I had to look back at that, like, what the hell was I thinking? It doesn't matter what I was thinking. What it was is, it was just, I, damn it. I wanted to make a business work. I didn't know what I was doing. I was trying to figure it out. So it just is part. It's just part of the process.

Yeah. Let's go back to two of those six essential traits of a true entrepreneur. Driven and passionate. Those are two traits you're talking about. That if you don't have that kind of drive and passion for something, I mean, you're just rarely going to make something like that work because it requires borderline insanity to get knocked down so many times and keep pushing forward and outworking everybody else else. It's just, it's. It's what you have to do most of the time to become successful as an entrepreneur.

Yeah, no, totally, totally. And here we are trying to help guide and direct our ambitions to help other ambitious entrepreneurs not get into the same traps.

Hear, hear.

Yeah.

And that is my passion, man.

Yeah. And it's funny, like, why does one do it? I mean, why does one do it? Because there's. At the end of the day, here I am sitting on a podcast with a picture of me. I don't even know if I like.

Well, that's not a picture of me. Everybody says you look alike.

I wonder how people are gonna interpret this. Yeah, two bald guys with goatees. But it's, you know, I sit and look at all of the different things that I do. Like, most of my time is actually spent. If I was to think about my time, attention, money, effort and energy, most of it is spent doing things that don't make me any money. Now if I didn't make any money doing other things, I certainly couldn't devote the time to do these non money making things, which is the beauty of a business. That's, that's one of the freedoms. And I also used to beat myself up because I'd read all these books about time management, priority management, you know, how much is your time worth per hour? I'd go to all these marketing seminars and stuff and I would find myself spending time on things or people that weren't the quote unquote, highest and best use of my time if it was only devoted to making money. And then Dan Sullivan taught me this opportunity filter process that he has, which is there's five ways to get paid, you get rewarded. Money's one of them. Second way you get paid is people appreciate you. A third way you get paid is people utilize you. A fourth way you get paid is people refer you. And then the fifth way you get paid is it enhances you. It literally makes you better. And what I learned is that money's important to me because I am a capitalist. I don't want to do business deals without making money. I mean, that's kind of silly, right? However, money is only one part. And so now I'm like, does it enhance me? First, do I work with people that utilize me because I don't like throwing pearls before swine. You know, it's kind of cool if you're going to write a book or you're going to run a group or you're going to do stuff that people actually utilize it. It's sort of like a chef that works his butt off on making food and then no one eats it or they don't, you know, so. And then I like when people appreciate me because I have low self esteem and I want people to tell me they think I'm cool. Fourth is it's great when people refer me. And fifth doesn't make me money. But all money's not equal. And so there's elf money. Easy, lucrative and fun. And then there's half which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating or hard, annoying, lucrative and frustrating. So it's different words, different language like we've talked about, but I, I kind of look at. All right, how do we get to elf? And I think the very last thing that you said on your five stages of content is Shine the 10 disciplines. To me that would be getting to elf. However, in order to build an elf business, it's often very hard. You have to set up a lot of stuff in order to get something to be elf. And I think the non entrepreneur gets really attracted to easy, lucrative and fun, but they think they're just going to jump to it. Like it just should be so easy. And if you're not willing to take many, metaphorically speaking, kick to the nuts, you probably don't have what it takes to do that. And you may want to take a look at it. And I'll tell you too, I think it's actually kind of funny if we sat here and spent like 30 minutes just discouraging people from going into business because of how horrible it is and all the painful things that could happen. And we certainly could paint that picture if we wanted to. The fact of the matter is that's actually doing people a favor.

That's what Entrepreneur Leap is all about. I'm doing everything in my power to talk them out of not doing it. And if I can't talk them out of it, then they're probably a true entrepreneur.

Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly it. Because if none of this dissuades you, then you're like, yeah, you're kind of built for this stuff. And if not, then you can thank us later because it probably save you a lot of time.

Well, so, oh my God, you said so much there. And I'm going to try and restore respond in less than three minutes. But there's some really important things I want to say to that because, you know, you jumped all the way to the fifth piece of content, the shine content. But I want to back up one again. We call it the Eos life, otherwise known as your ideal life. Okay. And so what you just described about, you know, it becoming more easy, lucrative and fun, first of all, I think you have to crawl through the mud a little bit. I think that's where we learn. And so there's stuff that's ingrained in us because we got our ass kicked for decades. And what I talk about an entrepreneur elite for these entrepreneurs in the making and these early stage entrepreneurs is I say if you will read and embrace this book, confirm, glimpse, path. I'm going to first confirm that you are show you a glimpse of the life and then show you a path. Well, in path, what I talk about is I'm going to help you avoid half the mistakes you're going to make. The other half, nobody. You cannot avoid the other half. You have to get your ass kicked. So those are all the lessons that are those things that are ingrained that become ingrained in you out there and are ingrained in us. And so we don't even remember 90% of them. They're so ingrained. And that's why it's easier and more lucrative and fun, because it's so natural. You know, it's like karate. I don't know anything about it, but it's like, you know, you get to a point where every move, it's like, you know, the Matrix, you're seeing the ones and zeros. So that's going on below the surface as well as a lot of times we've made enough money so we're past the stressful part of the making money piece and so we relax into it a little bit more. But Eos life, AKA the ideal life, remember those five points? It's doing what you love with people you love, making a Huge impact, getting paid really well for it and having time for other passions. What I would suggest is so just imagine that life, and it's so doable, and we call it the EOS life is because when you implement EOS in your business, you can't help but live the EOS life. It's going to happen like it's you. You can't stop it from happening. You're going to be put in a position where every day you're doing what you love. You're going to be surrounded by people you absolutely love working with. You're going to be making a huge impact on the world. You're going to be making lots of money. So do that math right there.

That's.

That's everything you talked about. But this fifth one is where I'm going with what you're saying. And then you have time for other passions where you can go buy a fricking city. You know, you have time to do the things you're passionate about. The things, other things that I'm passionate about, they're so simple. But I can dabble in new content. I can write a new book, whether it's going to be successful or not. I can do these other things that are other passions. But, you know, I certainly built a nice foundational foundation of a nice. Let me back up on that. I built a strong financial foundation that I can go do those things. So I killed myself, worked really hard building that foundation to free myself to spend time in other passions. And then that's gonna start to take us to that fifth piece of content that you alluded to. But the last point I wanna make is that fifth piece of content isn't so much about that, what that is about, because I'm trying to move the fifth piece of content to the first piece, and that is get the entrepreneur to become healthy before the climb. And that might be a fun little debate we can have by the end of this. So that' not about living the life you talked about. Living the life you talked about. Is that fourth piece of content, the EOS life, your ideal life, the healing begins in that fifth piece of content. I know we're not going there yet, but I just want to keep trying to create context. I'm a teacher at heart, so I just can't help but try and teach. As we're having this conversation, I'll tell.

You, I think you're a teacher at heart because you also know one of the most effective ways to learn something is teach it to other people. When I hear some Author, like, so why'd you write the book? Oh, because I'm so blessed and I want to just share my gifts with the world. And it's like, like, yeah. I mean, that could be true, of course, and that's probably valid, especially if you wrote, like, a book that's useful and good and has things that if people read it and follow it, can. Can improve their lives. But a lot of ways, I think the real people that are on the path of getting better by, you know, whoever said an unexamined life is not worth living, but I also say an unlived life is not worth examining. Right. So you're examining what it is you've done, how you've done it. You're documenting it, you're teaching it to other people. Because you can learn through the school of hard knocks. That's one way to learn. You'll get bloodied and beat up, but you'll learn. Maybe second is you learn through the experiences of others. You read their books, listen to their podcasts, go to their events. That's right. Get mentored by them. The third and more effective and accelerated way of learning something is you teach it to other people. And I think that is one of the. So, I mean, yes, you're a teacher teacher, which is great. And secondly, you're also a student, which is why you're a teacher. And the best teachers, like, I always love these. These mostly authors and coaches, where they get to a point where they've had a little bit of success or they've built a big following. You know, before, you know, before social media, it could have been, you know, whatever PR they were doing. Now social media and likes and everything, it's. It's much different sort of way to have your, you know, social equity or at least perceived. And then they quit going to events, they quit going to workshops, they quit, you know, and as long as I've known you, we both go to strategic.

Coach 30 years running.

Yeah. We're not too cool for school. Yeah. And I cannot tell you how many people that once they get a little bit of fame and notoriety, I don't go to events anymore unless I'm speaking at it. One that I know who I've built up to, where this person's had, you know, a few bestsellers, and he's like, yeah, you know, with my family and everything, I've got to make some strategic decisions where I'm only going to go to highly curated events. I'm not doing any more trainings. Oh, okay, so you're now in the ego place where and this is a person in their mid-30s. So they're in that prime, right? And I've seen it a million times. They're going to cut off all of the resources and the people that help them because now they're famous. And what's going to happen is they're going to probably continue to make money, they'll continue to build their notoriety, but what will happen is they quit training. It's like, all right, I'm a black belt now, I don't need to practice anymore. And I just think it's one of the dumbest things that I've seen. But the reason I bring it up is that this person, I'm not going to mention their name. Famous person. And I like the person. I mean, I very much care about this person. I'm bummed because I see something that even mentioning it to him will not sink in as I'm sitting there talking to you. I actually don't believe the person is a entrepreneur. I believe the person's just a really great writer. And there are people that are reporters of success and then there's people that are actually successful. And someone that's actually successful doesn't necessarily need to have money. They may have money and they probably will if they stay at it. And they just get, they have like your 5 pieces of content here. They put it all together. It is a bit of a puzzle, but I'll tell you, like, there are a lot of people that are really good at articulating success, but they themselves have never obtained it and really can't. And part of it is because they convince themselves, because they're talking about it, that they are that.

Yeah.

And, and yeah.

And for what it's worth on that like little pet peeve of mine is that saying those who can't teach, you know, like that one. So when I heard that the first time in my early 20s, I've been obsessed about. I am not going to be the teacher who couldn't.

Right.

And I'm never going to teach theory ever. I'm never going to teach anything I haven't experienced firsthand. And that's what I do. I just teach what I needed the most. Entrepreneur leap. I'm teaching my 18 year old lost soul self that was a mislabeled derelict that I knew there was something in there. So I'm teaching me. And so all the content I've lived because probably too obsessive about never wanting to be accused of being someone who couldn't. Therefore he taught Right.

And I totally hear you. There's.

And so you're talking about somebody who probably can't, therefore he teaches well, because.

There is truth to that.

Probably more of those, probably more teachers out there are teaching because they can't. But, But I don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole.

Yeah, well, and it's also been important to me to be congruent with the, like, live the message I write about. If not, I'm a total hypocrite. And as I say that, everybody's hypocritical. There's no perfect scenario. There are plenty. Like, what's that line? If you ever invalidate the message because of the messenger, you'll never read another book or attend another seminar. I want to give people a lot of reasons not to invalidate me, though, because I really, really strive to not teach things I don't do. I really strive to not. I'm, I'm super self deprecating because never for a moment do I want to believe my own pr, because I think that's super dangerous. If you have a little bit of success, people start telling you how great you are and you actually take that shit seriously because it could be true. But you're also human. And there's also, you know, everyone has, has their moment. So. All right, so when you catch yourself making decisions out of fear, what do you actually do in that moment to shift. Shift it.

That is so good. I'm, I'm shifting myself and shuffling and getting ready as we move into the fifth piece of content. So I need to start with context here. Okay. And so now we're into that fifth piece of content. We're, we're, we've, we've climbed the mountain. We've achieved some level of success. We thought it was going to fill us up, up. And for some reason we're not feeling that sense of satisfaction that we thought was going to happen. And so we still feel empty and we're still searching. So this happened to me. I sold EOS worldwide roughly at age 50, embarrassed to say it, but I was sitting there in my living room celebrating my success, feeling like I created the perfect life. Because externally, I mean by every imaginable materialistic metric, I, I was successful. But then I just kind of had this awakening. It was like this rush of. I don't know what it was, but in my version is that it was my soul screaming to get out, so hopefully I can make this context make sense. And so that led me to what I call an awakening. But it Led me to just really go into inside and realize how my ego had hijacked my life at a very young age. So you're asking a question about fear, and I promise I'm going to take us right to fear. But it's going to take me about four minutes to get there because, oh, if I could make this make sense today. So in the book shine, there's actually two pieces of content in that book. There's the 10 disciplines for maximizing your energy, impact and inner peace. But then there's also three discoveries to free your true self. And so what I realized for me is my true self was trapped in this ego prison that was the perfect fucking package. And to give you the lightning fast story, just lots of trauma. Not nearly as much as you. You've always been an inspiration and how open you were about your traumas. But I finally disclosed them in this book. And so lots of trauma. And then it was age 15 when I can remember how to stuff all that pain down and create this package, this tough guy, hardworking package that served me so well for the next 35 years. And so the way I describe it is so again, the three discoveries for freeing your true self. First discovery. And this is for true entrepreneurs and driven people. The first discovery is I am driven. It's understanding the dynamic of being driven. And along this journey, I was introduced to Doug Brackman. So I'm very fond of him and we've become pretty good friends. But understanding the makeup of being driven, it's all the crazy stuff you and I have been talking about, but it's really accepting that. Second discovery is understand that all decisions are made out of love or fear. It's understanding that. And that's where I'm taking this right back to it. If you're sticking with me on this. And then just to disclose the third discovery. The third discovery is that it is possible to be driven and have peace. So that's ultimately where we're going to land with this. And that was my aha. And it took me years to get there to realize that because I thought peace would zap me of all of my drive. I was convinced that if I found peace, game over. I'd want to sit on a mountain and meditate all day long. And it's just, it's not the case. You actually become more driven. So what I want to do in answering your fear question is I want to do a deep dive into that second discovery. All decisions are made out of love or fear. And I'm going to try and tell the one minute version, but we're finally there to your question. And when I realized again the ego prison, my true self was trapped in the visual. If you can imagine this is picture this beautiful perfect bright light, okay? And you can call that your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to call it. I just call it true self because I don't want it to be religious or spiritual or anything. But I believe we have this power source inside of us. And what I clearly saw was my ego structure. And then I view that as this dark cocoon wrapped around that beautiful ball of light. And with this conversation I describe it as I just want to pierce the shield man with all people and just try to let a little light in or a little light out. One way or the other. It's going to work. And so what I then did through a series of things. So the most profound was meditation for me. But a couple great books, Untethered Soul, Letting Go by Hawkins, a little bit of plant medicine and just a deep dive, this is about, about a five year period. And I was able to clearly see my ego structure. And it's this simple. When your ego is running the show, it's all fear based. And when your true self is running the show, it's all love based. And so when you ask that question, how do I know when it's fear and what do I do about it? That's pretty much what you asked, right?

Right.

I describe it as with this discovery, starting by understanding that cocoon wrapped around that ball of light, okay. From there it's then understanding. Once you understand that your true self is trapped in that ego prison is to understand that everything I just described is pure energy. We are all pure energy. It's all energy, dark and light. The next thing is to understand that you can shed any dark energy that is the ego, that dark cocoon. And it starts with awareness. And so what I did is just became aware. It's a journey, it's a process. It took me 30 years to understand the ego, but now what happens is when I'm making a fear based decision, I can feel it. It's a sensation in my body. It's an anxiety, it's an anxiousness. I describe it as the tectonic plates are shifting and so I become more familiar. It's a process. And when it comes, when the decision comes from my true self, I. E. Love, it's just a peaceful, it's just a knowingness. So I'll stop there. And I tried to say that in four minutes, but it Took me longer. So hopefully that made sense.

No, that was really great because it's funny, it kind of leads into the next question. So instead of me just interjecting, I'm going to ask you the next question because it's like part of it is making that shift. So I think all that context was important. So the next question was for entrepreneurs who've already achieved everything that they thought would make them happy but still feel empty inside, where should they start to find real peace without losing their drive? Because you kind of address that and then the fear of whatever fear is. Because fear could be different things to different people. And I remember this conversation to go back to my buddy Ned Hallowell. Is it David Neilman, the guy that was the founder of JetBlue Airlines? Is that how you pronounce his last name? I don't know, but the guy, I remember him telling me the story and David had given him permission to tell this story where he had sold JetBlue, he had a billion dollar check, billion dollars. And he was walking down the street and in his mind he felt like a total loser. And it's just like, what the hell is that, right? You know, you work so hard, but then it's like, okay, you know, what is this sort of perception? So to, you know, where should they start to find real peace without losing the drive? If they. Because you said it, you went through this is. And see, that's the dark night of the soul that most people don't feel sorry for the rich person with the nice house or the successful business owner because they're like, they have no problem problems. Because we unfortunately live in this thing where people think if you've worked really hard and have tremendous ambition and you've done it in a way that has produced you to have financial success, that that somehow equals satiation or arrival. When in reality it could have just been like, you know, it could have been just the first stop on this grueling journey.

Yeah, well, here's what I would say to that and you know, hold me to task that I'm answering your question directly, but I've got to come at this one contextual as well. And so I call it inside out or outside in.

Okay.

And so when it's outside in, when you're living your life from the outside in, that's where you're running everything through that ego filter, which is comparing competing judging, okay, that's all the darkness, that's all the fear based stuff. And to the guy sitting in the house on top of the Mountain or whatever you describe there, you know, at a minimum, that ain't all bad, but with that, I don't think our souls are fully happy and fulfilled with that. And so at a minimum, my advice is go build that and do that thing and then you'll have some time and money to go inside, ideally utopia. That's why I'm trying to move that fifth piece of content to the front end of the five pieces of content again, so that, that the entrepreneur starts out healthier because there's actually more drive. So that outside in drive burns a lot of energy, but it does motivate the traumatized, driven person. I know firsthand. Inside out is when you're making your decisions from your true self. It's from, it's all coming from inside of you. It's an inside out approach. It literally has 10 times the energy, gives you 10 times the drive. You will become more driven because now all of your decisions are love based. And I believe everything is coming more from a calling than it is this, this desire to compete, win this, this again, this external drive. So hopefully that's making sense so far.

Absolutely. And I have something to say to that. No, keep going.

Well, go ahead and say what you're going to say because then I'll piggyback.

So I think it's, you're either in competition with yourself and others or you're in collaboration with yourself and others. And so for instance, we take our genius network members, the ones that want to. It's not forced upon anyone to go to the women's prison here in Arizona, although we've done trips to other prisons too, men's prisons. And we take them to these four hour prison visits and they go and they speak to the prisoners and it is, I know a lot of very successful wealthy people, some entrepreneurs, some not. Because I do a lot of stuff in recovery and I hang around crazy entrepreneurs all day long, kind of like know you. And I know many people that live in prisons with golden bars. So they have in some cases even less freedom from their own minds than some people I've met in prison. Even though they don't have actual freedoms to where they could go to a restaurant, they can leave, they are incarcerated. And spending time with people that imprisons, I have found to be one of the fastest, quickest ways to help remind people of what they have that they sometimes forget. Secondly, to give perspective, because I'm always searching for perspective, I can get really caught up in, oh, my life is very difficult. But the moment I think my Life sucks. If I go help someone else, all of a sudden it kind of pulls me outside of my own bullshit. And I see it happen to other people. And the other is the brain, the monkey mind, which is constantly dopamine seeking. When you have to put your phone away and you can't look at a screen and you go into an environment and it really, you know, you can watch this on tv, you can read about it. It is not the same as stepping into a prison, having the doors loudly crash behind you. And now you're in this environment where you oftentimes you have to sign a waiver that if you're taken hostage, they're not going to send someone to save you, that sort of thing. And it just creates a certain, it develops gratitude. It's really wild. And what I've learned, I cannot tell you how many Genius Network members have said to me. Going to that prison visit was worth becoming a member of the group because all the other business stuff we teach, it's. Something happens not for everyone, but for a large percentage of them. Sometimes it takes a couple of times, but it's just mind boggling. So I think, think, you know, there's, there's all kinds of weird ways to find connection and love where it's often hidden. Yeah.

So, so, oh, there's so many things I want to say. And this is where we could go two hours now that we're here. And, and so you get to control the clock obviously and stop me when it's time to stop. But you're prompting like three different thoughts. And again I'll try and clarify these, but, but what I'm going to share, you know, is five years of, you know, going deep into this stuff and experiencing the dark night of the soul. And you know, so I describe it, like I said already as a weight and awakening. And so I have this theory, but I look at it as my experience. I just don't know the fifth step in this theory, but this theory that what happens to us in life is. It's almost like these five stages. Stage one, we are born and we are born perfect. We are born our true selves. Then in stage two, somewhere the world gets ahold of us and it's typically by age 7 and fucks us all up, you know, and wounds us and conditions us and, you know, forces us into this system. And then the third stage is when we have an awakening. And the awakening, I lovingly say, happens somewhere between age 15 and 30 lifetimes from now. So I don't know where, but for me, it happened at age 50, so hallelujah, it happened to me in this lifetime. And when you talk about that prison thing, some are just not ready. Their souls are not ready. They're still climbing the mountain or whatever you want to call it. So then the fourth stage is so after the awakening and you see life as it is and you see this ego structure and you see this darkness and this fear based living. It's gross, it's disgusting, it's depressing, and it rocks your world. And so for me, it was five years of my world being rocked. For some people I think it's longer. For some people I think it's shorter. That's kind of the dark night of the soul stuff. Then the fourth stage is re entry, okay? And that's where I feel like I am in my life in this last two years is you now have to reenter this reality that we're all in as an awakened soul. And it's really hard. And so I'm not a religious guy, but Jesus said be in the world, but not of the world, you know, and so that's really hard to do. And then I believe the fifth stage is enlightenment is where it's like you fully can function in this world, you know, as your true self. So for what that theory is worth, we're all somewhere in on that journey of those five stages. And so that's the first point. And so your prison point. Like I said, for me it was a few books, meditation, a little bit of plant medicine. I think it's different for all of us. For some people it's an illness. For some people it, it's a death. For some, it's, it's, it's, it's all different things. But these are the things that wake us up and help us really understand what's going on with our egos. Because our egos are simply a tool, right? Like our eyes, like our arms, like our gut, like our intuition. It's, these are tools to help us function in this world. And when we really understand the ego for what it is and its purpose, oh, you then open these prison doors and you just shine. And then coming all the way back to your point, you become more driven. You become aware of fear based thinking. You can just see it, you can watch your ego operate. When I saw my ego for the first time, I was so disgusted by how from all the trauma and pain I experienced in the past, how it was masterful, it thought 20 steps ahead to never feel that pain again. I could head somebody off. In three moves, and there's like literally 17 more moves. You can't get to my pain. And so it's just gross to see that structure, and then to bring that structure down and realize you're safe and love yourself is incredibly powerful. And then there's one last point I want to make in this. I'm losing it. I don't want to lose it. So I'm hoping it comes right back to me because it's right there. Oh, yes. So, you know, we're talking all around this, but what we haven't talked about is how you then shed that.

That.

Because that's the hard part. This pain that we locked inside of us, the trauma we experienced, the ego took it, stuffed it all the way down there in this energy field that is our body, stuffed it down there, and then created a structure to protect it so you never feel that pain again. Well, that pain is in there and it needs to be released. And that's the power of meditation or stillness or again, all of these different experiences. And what happens. We're so afraid to feel the pain because as Michael Singer says, it's going to come up, up, just as painful as it went down. So we got to re. Experience the pain, but when we do, it finally goes away forever. It goes away forever and we feel peace.

Yeah. You know, I guess my interpretation of this, you know, which is the only thing I would be able to do is see everything through my own lens, is that I like this saying, don't handicap your kids by making their life too easy. And oftentimes, if we try to. On one hand, we want to save people from wasting a lot of their life and a lot of their energy. But we also know damn well that if no one's going to lift weights and not exert any effort, if you don't lift something that is harder to lift than the previous, you're not going to grow. You'll just maintain. And on an intellectual level, I think most people can understand intellectually what it is that you're saying, but it's. I don't know if it was Stephen Covey who said this, you know, to know but not to do is not to know. To understand but not to do is not to understand. And I think a lot of what can be happening here is people will hear it. For some people, oh, it sounds good. They're going to go out, they're going to read another book, listen to another podcast, go about their thing, and they'll avoid any. Many, you know, their ego will that. Who cares what that guy says. Other people would be like, what. What's this meditation thing? Should I read the Untethered Soul? Should I read Letting Go by David Hawkins? Which are both great books, by the way. Should I do a plant medicine journey? You know, maybe you should, maybe shouldn't, because, believe me, I know a lot of my friends get high in a camper at Burning man and call it a spiritual experience.

Exactly.

And that's. That's.

We can go on a whole thing there, but maybe we shouldn't.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The point is we're planting seeds, and if people really take a look at it, that when the. You know, when it is the. When the student's ready, the teacher appears. And so I think in a lot of ways, our books, our conversations, what I do in Genius Network, the prison visits. There will come a time where we put that tool in their toolbox. They may not use it right now. It might be five years from now. It might be ten years from now. It might be never. It may not even be needed. Needed.

Yeah.

But when the time comes and you can resource yourself, that's what I think is important. And when they hear other people that have. Because I'll tell you, you know, how. How hard. Like, success traps are harder to get out of than failure traps. When you're down and out and you got nowhere to go but up. Yeah. You figure out. But when you're up here and it looks great and everyone's admiring you and you hate your life.

Life.

And you can't even come up with a logical reason as to. Why does this feel so disconnected when you could have thousands, sometimes millions of admirers and you feel empty? It's the Janis Joplin thing. You know, I go and make, you know, she died of an overdose and she. She was a singer for people that are too young to know who Janis Joplin was. And she had this line where she said, you know, I'd go out and make love to 20,000 people, and then I'd go back to my hotel room alone. And why is that? What is it? Is it. Because it doesn't even matter. The fact is, if you don't feel connected, why is that? And the more that you numb or avoid that rotting food doesn't get better in the refrigerator with age. It gets worse. So you either have to clean it out or you have to. And I'm saying that metaphorically. All humans have some part of them, some cross they have to bear, and they're holding onto that suffering, and they're not letting it go. And you could function and still be successful and be depressed half the time. And that doesn't mean your life sucks because there are a lot of people that would trade their shitstorm for someone else's shitstorm all day long. The point is though, the moment I think when you say you actually shed that, your contribution, your connectedness, your peace. You know the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein? Yeah. So he had this very, very interesting line. He died many years ago, but he, and I've thought about this a lot. He goes, you can have freedom or you can have peace. Don't ever count on having both at the same time. And I've thought, can you have both? I think you actually can. It might not be for long periods, but I've pondered that and I don't even need an answer to it. You know, it's like, I've just thought about it a lot. Like, you know, you can have freedom or you can have peace. Don't ever count on having both at the same time. And it's is like, you know, if you want freedom from tyranny and there's tyrants out there and no one's stopping it, you're not going to be very peaceful. But if you're not, but in that not being very peaceful, you might get freedom.

Yeah.

Or vice versa. Yeah, you might be really peaceful, but you're under control. So it's like, what do you mean by that? So anyway, so let me, I want.

To say three quick things of that. The first is, you know, so I describe what you're talking about, about and I urge is, I call it having your soul pinged. Okay. At some point you out there are going to, your soul is going to be pinged and if it's not being pinged now, it's okay. And so go back to the other four pieces of content and go build an empire. At some point your soul is going to get pinged. That's point one. So that's why anybody that's not feeling this part of the conversation we're having, it's perfectly fine, go build an empire. But when you do get pinged, this is like a heads up. Because when you get pinged, it's hard, it's challenging, it's disorienting and it's scary. And if anything, what we're doing is helping them understand what's going on. Because I didn't know what the hell was going on. I mean, I was pinged for the first time at age 30 and I, I've been trying to figure it out since then, but again, it was in a massive way at 52. But at some point you're going to get pinged and it's just understanding what that means and it's getting it out. And there are so many ways of getting it out because we're talking about peace. When you release the pain that you've been holding onto since age 7. And I'm just grabbing that round age because there's some science around age 7, when you release it, you will experience peace. And for some of us, especially you. But I've had a lot of trauma. There was a lot of stuff in there that came up and it came up over a five year period, but each time I would release, there was more peace and more peace. And I believe those of us that have felt an incredible amount of pain, we actually experience more peace. It's almost like the more pain, the more peace. That's just a theory of mine, but it's what I'm experiencing. And so it's just trying to help articulate, as painful as it is, what's on the other side. It's worth it. And there's just. We offer 30 different ways to shed your shit as we describe it in the book Shine, and you just pick the way that works best for you.

Yeah, that's great. Well, I will just reinforce. So I was, I was with at the Charlie Kirk memorial. I took 56 people in a chartered bus, including the former mayor of Phoenix. Bunch of different individuals and it was wild. And I was walking because we had to park the bus literally over a mile away. There were so many people there, like a couple hundred thousand trying to get in. And I'm walking with Phil Randazzo who started a group called American Dream.

You. Yeah.

And he said, you know, he's one worked with thousands of military people, a lot of stuff to prevent and stop suicide, help heal PTSD, etc. And he said, I'll tell you, like all the soldiers that have been through horrible wars and have had the worst ptsd, suicidal, he goes, the ones that had the hardest time, he goes, all of them. Them I can tra.

It's.

They think it's the war. And that certainly attributes to it. He goes, but it's. I believe he said, it's when they're 6, 7 and 8 years old, something happened and the real war started then.

Exactly.

And when they went to war, how they lived it out, how, you know, and it was really profound. And I said to him, I go, we have to do an interview just on that. Because you. He goes, I've seen it so many times. And he's convinced that it's the childhood stuff.

Yeah. I'll add to this. You know, I keep saying my theory is. And I'm speaking from experience in terms of this is what happened for me. It's why I'm calling it a theory. It's technically not a theory because I'm speaking from experience. But I also view what you described there. They're all lessons. I believe we are here to learn those lessons. It happened for a reason. It happened to teach us something. Something. And whatever that lesson is, it's ours for us to figure out what that is and just to continue to grow and ascend as beings on this planet.

Yeah. No, I agree. I agree. I think it's all about transcending suffering, whatever that is.

Fascinating that Phil said that all that military trauma is doing is bringing up the trauma from childhood.

Right. And that's what he said.

And of course, profound.

I want to dig deeper into the this, because I'm fascinated by them. Like, going, well, okay, let's say someone had a wonderful childhood. They didn't have trauma, but they're put into the middle of a war with just the most horrendous violence and torture and every despicable and horrible thing that a human could ever witness or be involved in, in the pain and the suffering. And then try to digest that and have that not impact you, but then have that tied into your upbringing.

You know, it's interesting, too, because this is nowhere near the level of trauma, but it's making me think of, you know, so that's a military example. Just imagine a spousal example. You know, so we experience trauma with a significant other when it's all our. From when we were children, you know, so it's just bringing that up in that particular situation, there's nothing that person is doing to you. It's just bringing up all your. Because that's the other thing that happens. We're here to teach each other lessons.

Yeah. I mean, I think we find people whose dents match our dents. I think there's a frequently.

I think there's a name. It's called a trauma bond. We're attracted to people with the same trauma to teach each other something.

Yeah, no, exactly.

And most unfortunately, don't learn the lesson and they die in misery together.

Yeah, yeah, very true. So one of the things I want to talk about, which I'm going to come back to, because you've mentioned climbing the mountain. Climbing the mountain. So if, in case I forget, remind me, because I. I have a. I have a great.

Remind you of the mountain.

Of climbing a mountain versus going down. Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I think. I think this will kind of be a little hint and then we'll come back to it in deeper conversation. Most books, most seminars, most podcasts, most entrepreneurs, most achievement focused things, everyone's always talking about climbing the mountain and how to climb the mountain. Climb, climb, climb. But it's not the climbing the mountain that's the most important. It's how you deal when you're going down the mountain.

And then there's something else I'd like to say on that as well. So I'll try and remind. Well, let's both co. Remember, we will somebody in the background yell mountain if we don't do a thing.

Yeah. In that end, it really comes from my partner who in a recent race, she did, which I'll bring that back up. So if you were creating eos from scratch today, knowing everything you've learned about energy, emotion and inner freedom, what would you do differently?

So what's interesting about that question is from a standpoint of tactical, practical, measurable, materialistic things, I don't think I would do a single thing different. What I would do different is I have something I lovingly call the Synchronicity Pocket. Okay? And so I recorded. We have a podcast called the Shed and Shine Podcast that's around the book Shine, and every other episode I do about a 10 to 20 minute riff. And this was one of my riffs, and it's called the Synchronicity Pocket. And so what I would do different is the Synchronicity Pocket is this intersection of two things. Forward and backward line is speed. The lines going right and left is, is. Is the contrast, the polar, the pendulum of life. Okay? And so I'm going to start with speed. And so what I would do different is I would slow down. I went slow so hard and so fast and drove people so hard and so fast. And what's really amazing about that line, the speed line, and it's called again the Synchronicity Pocket. There's a speed at which, you know, there's that old saying that says slow is fast. There's like this pocket and I'm learning and seeing it more than ever. And I see how my whole life, man, I was just my 20s and 30s, I was about 50 miles an hour too fast. But in the last 10 or 20 years, it's only been about 10 miles an hour too fast. But if I could just slow it down in that place when I hit that pocket. Some people move too slow, okay? So me, I move too fast. Most of us driven people, we move too fast. But when you find that perfect speed, you see everything. I mean, it's the craziest feeling. But time slows down. And so I wish I was smart enough to slow down. And then on the right, left line, I wish I hadn't rode the ups and downs. And so what that line is about is detaching yourself from the roller coaster. And that I. I mean, I can remember it from the youngest age up until 50, is just riding every roller coaster, every issue, every problem, every relationship. And it's like, oh, and that's just the way life works, that these pendulum swings. And I've learned to detach myself from that in a very healthy way. I'm not attaching myself to all these things that happen in life. They just happen and not making meaning out of them and just floating above the pendulum of life. And there's just this incredible peace. And so if you're floating above these huge swings in life and then again dialing in that perfect speed, I call that the Synchronicity Pocket. And that, I believe, is peace, love, God, whatever you want to call that intersection. It's a beautiful place. And so I wish I would have stayed there more because I didn't get a chance to enjoy the journey. You know, we had this big goal, 10,000 companies running on EOS that we personally took through the process. When we. When we hit that, we celebrated for about four and a half minutes in our big quarterly meeting, and that was it, because I wanted to get back to work, you know, So I just wish I would have slowed it down a little bit and didn't ride those pendulum swings.

And that's a really good insight because I equate it to. I've said in my head and a few times out loud that I like driving, you know, fast. Like, let's say, you know, 150 miles an hour. But if you drive 200, well, that's even too fast. 150. But let's just say, you know, you're driving 80 miles an hour, and you're in the sweet spot, but you like driving fast. So you're at 100, then you're 120, then you're 150, then you're crashing, right? And that is a trait that we see when you're driving too fast.

And it's great place to see it as a Driven person. Because this is where it is for me is with my family and friends. Like, I now see how fast family vacations. I'd have 50 things planned if we would have just done three, you know, so it's. But that's where it shows up for me. Fast. And when I see it there with family and friends. So clearly now I can apply that to the business. And it's like, ah, that intensity, that speed, that driving everything you could just. It's only 10 miles an hour slower. And then, boom, you're right in that pocket and everything is just a better experience.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like cold plunging. If it's. If it's pure ice, you're gonna. Yeah, it's not gonna work.

Yeah. Don't get me wrong, it's still fast and you're still getting stuff done, but it just doesn't have to be 150 miles an hour.

So I don't know if you know Keith Cunningham. He's a friend of mine for sure. Okay. So Keith, he has this great line, and we've talked about it on a couple of interviews I've done with him where he said as many business owners die from indigestion as they do from starvation.

It's a Jim Collins quote as well. I'm not sure who said it first. Yeah.

Okay.

But what he says is, he said, you're more. This is Jim Collins quote. You're more likely to die of indigestion of too many opportunities than from starvation of not enough. In other words, there's more so successful you become, the more comes at you. And entrepreneurs try to grab it all.

Right.

And they kill themselves in opportunities. So it's just another way of saying it. I don't know who said it, but I'm sure someone else said it and they both grabbed it.

Yeah. No, yeah.

Every one of these things go back 2000 years, so.

Exactly. Yeah. So what's your thoughts on that? So, like, how do you. How do you filter what gets your time, attention, money, effort, and energy? Like, how do you decide? Because certainly if you're anything like me and most other driven entrepreneurs, you get excited by ideas.

There's no question. But I am, you know, I'm a toot my horn. I am masterful at weeding out shiny stuff. Okay. I'm gonna bring two things together. So now we're.

Were you always that way?

Yeah, it goes back to taking over the family business at 25 years old. I'll give an example there. So what we're getting into now is is in both the EOS Life and the Shine content, we teach something called the ten Disciplines. Okay, so we're starting to get into some test 10 discipline stuff. But also there's an EOS tool called Core Focus. A business's core focus is a combination of what its passion and its niche is. The two things coming together, this very emotional and this very logical thing coming together. And that's the company. Company sweet spot. And what we teach is you got to keep your eye on that ball and not get distracted by shiny stuff. And that's where the Jim Collins quote comes in. Because the idea is to then align every single person, every system, every resource around your core focus and not get distracted by shiny stuff. And that's what happens. And so for me, from experience, I'm just masterful. I mean, it's, it's, it's. I've turned down a thousand opportunities. I want to say 10,000. So it goes back to the taking over the family business, doing a big turnaround with that company, and spinning off all the shit they shouldn't be in. And so at a very young age, I just had this ability to focus on what's most important. And then, same thing with that whole EOS Worldwide run. I mean, the opportunities would come at us on a daily basis, and it was no, no, no, no. You have to get so good in business at saying no. So I don't know where it comes from, but it's ingrained in me that I can just. I'm so clear on the core focus. So the core focus of EOS Worldwide is helping people get everything they want from their business. And the niche is traction. Helping entrepreneurial leadership team, entrepreneurial leadership teams gain traction. That's the core focus in Sweet Spot. We should only be doing that all day, every day. And every day there's a new opportunity to bolt something onto that, and all it's going to do is kill the company. Company. I'm convinced of it. I've seen it so many times. And then my clients, I've personally taken 135 companies through the EOS process in the last 25 years. And so I'm fanatical with them. I see the shiny stuff, and I teach them how to really embrace that core focus and not get distracted by shiny stuff. So I don't know where I got it from, but it's ingrained in me and it will kill a company taking advantage of all those opportunities. I've just seen it so many times.

Yeah, yeah. You know what's what? Because I'M really listening to what it is you say. And I'm thinking about my tendency to want to bolt on something to everything. And I can see leverage in everything. And I've gotten way better at it over the years. Way better. And so I pause a lot before I say, yeah, we should take that on, or I allow myself to get excited in the moment, but not obligate myself. And that doesn't mean I don't get. Get into the trap, because I'm masterful at getting into the opportunity trap. Right.

But if I may hold that thought. Don't lose your thought. But here's the beauty or here's the thing that's so important. I would suggest to you that most of those ideas are great fucking ideas. You just don't have the time, the resource, the capacity to take advantage of them all. So five great ideas with limited capacity, you're gonna fail at all five. That's why you gotta pick one. And if you do see another one, it probably needs to be its own business. Business with its own resources and its own leadership team. So I'm validating that your ideas were probably great ones, but it's humanly impossible for little old Joe to execute all of those perfectly within this amazing genius network business that you have. Hopefully that makes sense.

No, no, it's great. So I think this is one of the biggest traps that entrepreneurs get into, and they usually have. Yeah. So what. What is execution? How would you define execution? And more importantly, how would you define integration? Because I see a lot of people that execute, but then they don't integrate. And if you have a team of people or there's anyone other than just you, or let's say you're one of these people trying to build your entire business utilizing AI, and you don't, you know, you're trying to piece it all together to make it work.

Like, what.

What does execution mean? Like, how do you know what good execution is? And. And what? I'd love to get your perspective for sure. Integration. Because I've been thinking about, like, give.

Me your definition of integration. What does that mean to you? I get execution. I don't get what you mean by integration.

Well, let's say people that have never done a plant medicine journey, they may not understand this, but let's say you go on an ayahuasca journey, or MDMA journey, or a psilocybin journey, or you've done ibogaine, whatever, and you. It's the before, during and after. Yeah, right. Like with someone that goes into a treatment Program for addiction and they spend 30 days in rehab, which I don't believe is enough. I think the longer the better in order to integrate. So what I mean by integration is you actually make it part of your being. You make it part of your culture, you make it part of your behavior. You don't just understand it intellectually, but it becomes part of what it is you do. Like you can, you can read about a carnivore diet, right? One of the things I'm big on is don't eat seed oils. Because we live in a culture where everyone is reading different books and following different diets on what to eat, but there's very little on what they're actually eating is bathed in. Is it put in shitty.

So I get all that now. Take it to a business integration in a business. So I understand what you need to do.

Yeah, let me finish the thing about like the diet thing, because that's where I'm actually trying to go. So you can have the diet, but if everything about your diet is super clean, but the oil is like toxic vegetable oil, it's processed, it's in. It's not good for you. You can't integrate a healthy diet if you have something part of it polluted. So in a business you can have a lot of the. You can have one person that's designing the website and is making it look really good and you could have the chief financial officer tracking the numbers and everything. But if it's not working with the strategy or you're not executing upon the right strategy, it's not integrated. So you may have, have people executing.

I love it. I totally get what you're saying now it's in, you know, it's. What this is making me think of that's so important is, you know, business is so much fricking fun, you know. So we're talking about this healthy, true, self, heal yourself, peace stuff. But what I really believe is these entrepreneurs out there, there's a balance. You can make an impact and have peace. And so now we're on the impact side and, and business becomes more fun. So, you know, I get just as giddy talking about the building a great business stuff as I do the piece stuff. So I would say a couple things to what you're saying. So you use two words, integration and execution. What does that mean? Or how do you do it? So I'm going to use EOS as the example because that's what I did. I created an operating system that helps you execute and integrate. We don't Necessarily use those words. We use the word traction. Traction is the execution piece. And integration is kind of all of it working together.

And so, yeah, like a band, you know, if you have a great guitarist.

Exactly.

But they're playing different styles of music, they're not integrating.

So I'm going to try and show you how to do it in three minutes, if that's possible. So what EOS is, is it's the entrepreneurial operating system. It's a system for managing human energy. And so you implement it into your business and it orchestrates all that human energy. And in its simplest form, it's vision traction healthy. It will help you and your leadership team get 100% on the same page with the vision, help you gain more traction, execute better, bring more accountability, and help you become a more healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team as go you. So goes the rest of the company get to a point where not only your leadership team is there, but your whole company. So now that's the high level. Now let's get into some real specific stuff here.

Here.

So it all begins with the leadership team. So what we do as EOS implementers is we work with the leadership team and only the leadership team. And it's really freaking hard to get a leadership team on the same page. And so I created a tool called the Vision Traction Organizer. It's eight questions they have to answer about the business and they cannot finalize that document until they agree. A leadership team is the three to seven people at the helm of the organization. They have to agree degree so it's two full days of beating the hell out of each other and us facilitating that process, and me as a fanatical EOS implementer, along with the other 850 around the world, is we are facilitating this, orchestrating this. I mean, there's battles that go on and sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes a year. And what will happen almost every single time is one of those leadership team members will go, they don't belong there. They never bought into your vision, they never wanted it. And here you are, are in this murky organization that you can't see it. But when we create that clarity, you see the ones that don't buy in. And so we get the bad ones out. And again, bad isn't the right word, but it's just the ones that don't want your vision, they're bad for what.

Your vision, they don't fit.

And so just imagine that now all of a sudden you've got a leadership team on the same page that's integration, a form of integration. Next we then create a structure, the accountability chart. We make sure you, your organization is structured correctly and then we get all the right people in those seats and right people, right seat means they have your core values and they get it. Want to have the capacity to do the job. Anyone that doesn't have your core values, get them the fuck out of your organization as fast as humanly possible. And so that's what happens. We have weak leaders and managers that are terrified of getting rid of people. And so that's vital. Get it. Want a capacity means they get the job. They want the job, they have the capacity. And so we have bad leaders and managers that, that won't make those tough decisions. So it takes about a year on average. The turnover with a client going through the process is 20%. 20% of your people are going bye bye in the first 12 months. My most extreme is a client that was 50%. Low end is 10%. But people are going to go if you're going to commit to this, right? And so if I made any sense and I just gave you two tools, there's 20 tools in the EOS toolbox, five foundational tools. But you can start to see the heavy lifting, the important work you have to do. But once you're there, holy shit. When a leadership team is 100% on the same page, and we're fanatical about that, imagine what happens with issue solving. And so on average, you're solving five to 15 issues a week and 30 to 50 issues every quarter. When you're on the same page, 80% of those issues are solved because the root of the issue was you just didn't agree. So I've yet to see a company without a vision. It's just that the leadership team doesn't agree. And so all of a sudden you start to get execution. Because now I don't want to get into all the other tools, but priorities are clear, execution is clear. They know what they need to get done, they're holding each other accountable. Boom, we got execution. Everything I said prior to that, that's all integration. Now you're building a culture. It takes one, two, three years at a minimum to build a culture. And so these people that try to build a culture fast, you can't build a culture fast. And so with a powerful culture in place that's going to attract people, hiring becomes easier. And so I'll stop myself because I could keep going for 30 more minutes. But those are some high level examples of where you get execution and you get integration.

No, I love it. That was very, very useful. So I got to ask you then hiring, firing and compensating talent. So love to get some suggestions on. Let's go to the firing part where you like, like weak managers have people there that are just, they're not right fits.

Yeah.

And I also, even though, correct me if I'm wrong, I think most people show up to work not wanting to do a bad job. Even though I do think some people show up like kind of taking advantage.

Right. And there's some. There's. Yeah. Yes, there's something. 10% are taking advantage. And when there's weak leaders and managers, the other 10%, they just need direction. They're not being managed well. Expectations aren't clear.

So how do you know? Because this is the number one complaint that I hear from most genius network members and entrepreneurs. When you really get into it, I mean there's used all this other stuff but if you get right down to it, they're bad entrepreneurs. Something's going on. Not leading the people or they are leading the people and they just got the wrong. There's not alignment.

Yeah. So watch this. So now pretend what I just said a minute ago happens. You and your leadership team are 100% on the same page with the answers to the eight questions in the Vision Traction organizer. What are our core values? What is our core focus? What is our 10 year target? What is our marketing strategy? Three year, one year quarterly rocks issues list 100% in unison. Let's pretend you have a five person leadership team. We all agree we are now rowing in the same direction. We created a structure to get us there I. E. Accountability chart. We know all the seats we need to out figure. So here's how you fire people and get surround yourself with great people top to bottom. So we call it right people, right seat. I'm grabbing Jim Collins terminology, but Jim Collins who I have a man crush on and I love that guy, he just simply shares the term. What I did is created some tools to make that happen. The first tool is called the People Analyzer which sounds terribly cold but I beg everybody out there to just please trust this 300,000 companies strong. The People analyzer is a tool that you put your core values across the top and then GWC and it's measuring are they the right people in the right seat. And there's a bar. You set a bar as a leadership team, it's the minimum acceptable standard. And then you rate each person. This is all in my book Traction. You can self implement this stuff or hire one of our implementers. But you simply people analyze them and if they're below the bar in core values, that's a wrong person person. If it's not, three yeses and get it want it capacity, they're in the wrong seat. So ultimately the goal if you have a hundred people in your company is you need a hundred right people, right seat. Okay? And so what happens as you go forward? There's only two types of people issues. Wrong person right seat or right person wrong seat. In both of those cases, you need to make a change. Right person, wrong seat means you've got one that fits in your culture. Sure, but you just gotta find them a seat. But if there are no seats and you're a for profit business, you gotta make a tough people decision. You can't keep them around just because you love them. If they're wrong, if they're right seat, wrong person means they totally get it. Want to have the capacity, they are incredibly productive. But they don't have your core values, they're gonna kill you in the long run. They're poison. They're chipping away at your culture. So you just go forward and you make those decisions. Here's how you do it. You implement what I call the three strike rule. I love crude. Punch you in the face language. You can call it a pip, a performance improvement plan. You can water it down. It's three strikes. You sit down with them. You show them where they stack up in the people analyzer. You give three data points for each poor result. You give them 30 days to improve. Most will pleasantly surprise you and improve because you're finally sharing your expectations. Some won't. You then meet again in 30 days if there's no improvement. You give them one more chance. I'm going to give you 30 more days. Three data points for each pro. The good news is by the third strike, they leave. So you don't have to fire people anymore. But what you gotta do is this kind of tough work. Have these conversations and get the bad ones out. And then all of a sudden you look up a year later, they're all the right people in the right seats. It's a completely different world. And your people will thank you because they've been putting up with assholes that you kept around that they don't want to work with. You completely change a culture. It is literally that simple. It's just hard. Hard. But what we see with our clients is you get rid of the first one. You get rid of the Second one, you get rid of the third one, it's building a muscle. Then it's just automatic because you see the lift. I'm getting bad people out and good ones in. It's like a no brainer once you build that muscle. But it's a muscle that you build.

Yeah. So I guess, yeah, instead of belaboring it, you build the muscle, you just keep doing it.

Right. Tough stuff.

Alrighty.

Well, here's what I always say. I always say, so, you know, the entrepreneur says, well, I want to build a $10 million company. I say, well, you can't do it with bad people. But I don't want to fire my people. Well then you're going to have 10 million. Well, I want to have 10 million. Well, they got. So it's this crazy trap that entrepreneurs are and they're wimpy when it comes to making tough people decisions. So you have to make a choice. You're not going to get the thing you want from your business if you keep bad people around. So just agree, just say, okay, I'm a wimp. I'm not going to fire these people. Therefore my company will always be mediocre. Just admit that to yourself and move on and accept it. But I can't live with that. So I'm gonna do everything in my power to convince you to make the tough decisions.

Yeah, well, look, I mean, it is one of the hardest psychological things for me to let people go. And I think, you know, because I'm sitting there thinking, is it because I'm wimpy? Yeah, certainly I've been times where I've been wimpy and I didn't want to do it and I don't, whatever. There's another part of me that I think is the a bit of a trap. And I don't say this just for me because I've had lots of conversations about this. I've had full blown genius network meeting conversations with dozens of entrepreneurs about this where there's part of us that believes in people more than they believe in themselves. And we actually think because we're ambitious, somehow we can.

That's the trap.

And so the question is often thinking about being women because I see possibilities and I'll find myself spending a lot of time, read this book, watch it, you know, and they get excited and they'll show things, but then their behavior does not live.

Just for the record. Me too. I love everybody. This is why I don't hire anyone. Because I would hire them all. I'm the worst hire on the planet. I have three people in my life for the last 35 years that no one gets hired unless they go through those filters. They got to get through them first because those people are great at reading people. I love them all. I would give everybody a chance. So as tough as I'm acting, but that's why I don't ever want to manage another person. I did all that tough stuff. I did all that tough stuff for 20 something years. I don't want to do it anymore. It's really hard. That's why you need great managers around you that can do that. Tough, heavy lifting.

Yeah. Compensation. How do you decide what to pay someone? Because years ago, I interviewed a guy named Barry Seamus and he said an employee is a behavior rental agreement. You're renting their behavior.

Simple format. Here's what I would say to that. You know, first I'd like to say, you know, we're talking about firing on the hiring front. My clients don't have hiring problems. And the reason they don't is because they got the right person in the right seat that takes care of hiring. They have such a strong culture. People are being referred into the company. They reek and they exude greatness. And people want to work for great companies. So please know out there, if you're having trouble hiring, it's you, it's your culture. So I wanted to say that first, but to jump to your question. Compensation is like snowflakes. I have tried to. I thought I could find the perfect compensation. Jim Collins talks about this, and I believe it's good to great where there just isn't one out there. Every culture is different. So I want to give you two extremes, and then I'll tell you my philosophy. So one extreme is you have these turnstile companies that kind of bring in young talent, underpay them, get them experience, and they tend to move on. And they just have this turnstile. And that totally works. They're these recruiting machines. The other side is you have these companies that overpay for top talent and they never lose anybody. Both work. Both work. You have to decide your philosophy. You have some people that give equity to their leadership team. You have some people that give no equity. I have all of these as clients. Clients. You can't find the per. It's all cultural. So my style is always. I like to just pay a little bit above market. My people do stay with me forever, but I always pay a little above market. And then I have such a great culture and it's such a passionate organization that these People are passionate about the cause. They're so passionate about the cause, I'm paying them more than what they can go anywhere else to get a little more, not a lot more. And that's my philosophy. But there's the two extremes. And so you all out there, you're somewhere on that spectrum and you just got to know yourself. Because the problem is, is the company that's trying to be both. Let's see if we can get that guy for five grand under market and then we need to pay this one 20. Like you can't have two philosophies in one company. Pick your philosophy and go forward. And in low margin businesses, unfortunately you're commoditized and you're stuck in that hellhole of having you can't pay competitively, then you have these high margin businesses that should be paying competitively. Potato, potato. It's all, it's just cultural. It's all cultural and both work.

I love it. Very good. So, okay, so here's, let me see out of all the questions because we could, we might have to do a part two down the road here. So after everything you've built and sold, how do you define greatness now? Not just in business, but as a human being.

So what comes to mind immediately on that one is content piece number four, the EOS life, AKA your ideal life. And so to me, greatness is doing what I love with people that I love, making a huge impact, getting paid really well for it and having time for other passions. So again, like we talked about earlier, those first four are all business. The fifth one is about me then having time to do my passions. And my passions are as simple as time with my wife, time with my kids, time with my friends, time by myself, traveling. My passions are so simple. I don't helis ski, I don't race car drive. I have no interest in any of the that. So it's the most simplest, silly stuff, reading a book. So I have time for all of those things. Like we talked about dabbling in a passion project, you know, maybe you go tinker with writing a book as a little side fun project, whatever it is, I have enough time for other passions and so I. These things light me up. And that, that's the litmus test. Look at everything you're doing in your life and if it's not all lighting you up, you know, that's not greatness to me. And it probably is going to require you to make some really tough decisions. Yeah, so I'm with the right friends that light Me up. And time with my wife lights me up. And time with my kids and my grandkids. Now three grandkids lights me up. Reading a book lights me up. Going for my three mile walk, lights. It's the silliest stuff just as much as business lights me up. So I work 40 weeks a year, 40 hours a week. Now it used to be 40 weeks a year, 55 hours a week, so I cut that back. But those 40 hours every week and those 40 weeks, I am in heaven. I am doing what I love. To me, that's greatness.

I like it. I like it. So let's go to. Let's talk to some people for a moment. Then we're gonna. Then we'll talk about the mountain and then we'll wrap up.

Yeah.

Yeah. So good. The moment for the person that's out there listening. Couple of freaking dudes with no hair and they're.

Can I say I'm sorry to do this? I have to say this because in what I described with the eos, life in those five points going back to peace and health, what I realized, because it's such a simple formula and anyone can do that, any entrepreneur can do that. And I'm dumbfounded at how many don't. And what I've learned is most of them don't feel they deserve it. At the core, it's this pain, it's this trauma. They don't feel like they deserve it. And so I have this thing where I look in the camera and I say, you deserve it. You deserve it, you deserve it. And I'm speaking right into that soul in all that pain. It's so simple. You can all have that life, but there's something in you that you don't feel like you deserve it. Sorry, I needed to say that.

Let's. Well, I believe it or not, last night finally watched this Charlie Sheen two part documentary.

Yeah, I watched it too.

Okay. And he has his, his, his black friend Tony or Troy or whatever the guy's name. I think it was he. I could be wrong where I don't know if it was him or you know, the dude that directed or created Two and a Half Men, some one of them said. I don't think he. In his mind he believes he deserves it. So throughout his success when he was making the highest paid per like he. Then he self sabotages everything. So if you tell someone, you just, if you look in the camera, you deserve it. You deserve it. But they're filled with shame, you know, because I like the distinction of Guilt is I feel bad. Shame is I am bad. I'm fundamentally bad. And if you feel. If you have some unresolved trauma or you have done something where you need to make amends, or you've been a real shitty person and how do they become congruent with I deserve it.

Hear, hear. And that's all that shit we've been talking about that needs to come up and let's go back to greatness for a minute, because I would add this now to it. It's loving yourself. It's absolutely. I mean, at this point in my life, I love myself. And I'm so proud to say that I got no problem. I fucking love myself. I love being with myself. I just like three hours with myself. It's heaven. And so think about all the people that they can't be with themselves because all that stuff starts to stir and come up. I mean, I truly love myself. And that I believe at the root is, you know, when you talk about shame, anybody that's experienced shame, which I did, I didn't know what shame meant until I read David Hawkins book and that chapter on shame. And then I'm like, fuck, I got shame. And so you can't love yourself with shame. And so you got to shed the shame. You got to shed the stuff. You got to do the work. And you're sitting there going, how, how? How? All you need to do is acknowledge that you have pain and you want it gone. And I promise you, the universe will put in front of you. If you're serious in the next week, it will put the solution in front of you, because there's a hundred different ways to shed that shit. But you gotta love yourself. You can love, your soul loves you. You just haven't heard from your soul in a long time because your ego has it tucked down there real tight. I don't even know where we are now in the conversation, but sorry for the t. Tangent.

Have you. Have you ever read Love Yourself like your life depends on it by Kamal Ravikant?

No.

Yeah, he's a good buddy of mine. I've got a great interview with him on YouTube, but he's. Yeah, that's one of the best books for that particular. I think you'd really like it.

And then your point about forgiveness, if you did do bad shit to bad people, confront all that shit, man. That's one of the reasons you don't love yourself. We all fucked up, so fix it.

Yeah, you're as sick as your secrets. If you hold on to that, it will Eat you alive.

Hear, hear, ma'. Am.

So here's. Okay, so here's the analogy. So my partner, 10 years ago, she was in a Alcatraz triathlon and she had already completed the race. She was on the bike, she was heading downhill and there was a malfunction with the, with the handlebar. She had a crash, she fractured her face, was unconscious for 18 minutes, woke up in a hospital. And she used to be a trauma surgeon, now she's a plastic surgeon, right. And she never completed the race. Really messed herself up, had a lot of physical injuries and took a long time to heal. So after the physical healing happened there, the mental healing was a whole nother thing. So when I met her over five years ago, she was always wearing jerseys these race because she used to be in, you know, races and triathlons and whatnot, but she wasn't racing. She was like the identity of having been an athlete. And then through our friend Ann Atkinson, a little bit of trickery and some, I would say smart persuasion and coercion, whatever you want to call it, we kind of got her to, you know, to apply for the lottery. And she did not expect to get pulled. And sure enough, they pick her. And then she's confronted with, oh, shit, like, do I do this race? And you know, I got her. I paid for the first, like for Christmas the year prior, I paid. Last year I paid for her trainer and said, I'll pay for the whole trainer. And that lasted. She wanted to pay for it himself after the first initial one. So she starts training and she's going through this whole process. Sure enough, in July, she's in this 10 years later, escaped from Alcatraz Triathlon and she completes the race after it's all said and done, there's little, you know, there was a nine minute mini documentary that's been put together on it with a testimonial from. Or not testimonial, but just a shout out from, you know, James Lawrence, who's the Iron Cowboy, and Whitney Jones, former Miss Fitness Olympia. Like, really cool story congratulating her and everything that she's been through. But we started talking about this and what did you learn from it? And she said, you know, it's really not the race, it's how you handled the downhill. And when she was going downhill at this, the recent race that she completed at the exact same spot where she crashed 10 years prior, there was someone there. Crash with an ambulance.

Come on.

And like, what are the chances, right? Exact same, same spot. And so the, you know, but what she went into it going, I'm going to enjoy the race. I'm not going to try to. I'm not, you know, and it was like, you, it reminded me of what you're saying about slowing down. She's like, I'm going to be in the race. I'm not going to try to win the race or try to. You know, she just wanted to complete it, but she wanted to enjoy it. And going into it, it's like, you know, jumping into freaking freezing ass cold weather, swimming up whatever, a mile and a half and then jumping on a bike and then doing the run at the end and she completes it and she finishes it where she's running back and forth like smiling, which something I couldn't do, you know, I'm not in the physical condition to do that. But what she said after it's all said and done. And this is a person who has billionaires that pay her 50 grand a year to be the concierge doctor. She knows some very quote, unquote successful people. And I've met a lot of her patients and a lot of them are financially successful, but they've really wrecked their health. Just how driven they were.

Right.

It's the dark side of success. And so she has a unique perspective on it. And she used to be a trauma surgeon, so she has seen broken bodies, you know, mind, body, spirit, the whole things. And she's like, it's not what you do to climb the mountain, it's how you prepare when you're going down and, and what goes up must come down. And if you're going to sell your business for a lot of money, you're going to have a part where you might go into a depression or you might lose your identity or you might, you're going to have a betrayal. Someone's going to like, life is going to hit us with these difficulties. For you, it happened when you were 50 years old, although it happens, I think constantly. I think the up and down are all day long. Right. You could have ups and downs and it's 20 in one day, you know, so, so my, my, I guess my, I love that analogy. I think most people that are trying to encourage and inspire always giving people advice like scaling. Climb the mountain. Climb the mountain. And, and I think a big part of you is like, to what end? You know, yeah, climb the mountain if that's your path. But how do you prepare for the, for the downhill? And that's, that's what I wanted to get your.

Yeah, and that's. So you know, I'm gonna. This is so. This is the final chapter of the book Shine. Because after all this five pieces of content stuff and climbing the mountain, and we driven entrepreneurs and driven people were climbing that mountain trying to fill the hole. The punchline in the whole thing is there is no mountain. There never was.

The mountain is you.

Well, I'm not gonna say that. I think there's a book or something like that.

Oh yeah, that's beyond.

Yeah, she's a great writer, but there is no mountain. The whole thing is just a journey. And I get that that's trite and it's been said a million ways, but it's true. It's the craziest thing when you see it. The whole thing is just a journey. And it's like now when I look at business, you know, scale, grow, whatever you want to call it, I have this way of looking at it now that you're just, you're just doing the basics and you're just doing the fundamentals. And it's almost like this spreading it just naturally is going to become what it's supposed to become. It's not up, it's not scale, it's not grow. It just becomes what it's supposed to become. You become what you're supposed to become. Ascending is another way of looking at it. But that is this upward thing. There is no mountain. It's a journey. And so this aha, the big aha I've had, I realize like I don't fully get the hero's journey and how it works, but I can explain it enough to be dangerous because I realize as I look back, back, I've had this like five year hero's journey, this like 30 year hero's journey and this 50 something year hero's journey. But it's this recent one that came so clear where I set out to find peace when I had my awakening. And I thought at the end of that I was going to be this completely different person. I'm the exact same person from a standpoint of same gifts, same guy, same. But the foundation, my nervous system, the tectonic plates don't shift like they used to. I don't have that angst anymore. So same gifts on a foundation of peace, very, very different world when it's those same gifts on a foundation of angst and pain and trauma. So I don't know if that makes sense. But it's just this. If the whole thing is just a journey, let's just keep moving forward, forward, moving forward, moving forward. Learn from the lessons. Ascend whatever word you want to use. There is no freaking mountain, right? Yeah.

I love it. Well, one of the things in Cherie's. The end of her videos, the Joseph Campbell quote, you know, you're talking about the hero's journey. The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.

That's it, man.

So I think a lot of the. On the other side of that fear is where a lot of life is, and it is going to be there. And if it's not there anymore, then you're a truly enlightened individual, which I couldn't even begin to comprehend because I still have all those things. But I see it as.

And the only way out is through. We can throw all these one liners that seem so trite, but they're all so profound and powerful. The answer is within. It's all looking within. And that used to make me crazy hearing people say that. That. Because that seems too simple. And what's the other thing that's funny is, you know, I think we figured it out like 10,000 years ago and we just keep it up and making it up and remaking it up and changing the words because there aren't any words to describe this thing. Just picture the ball of light inside of you and go into that ball of light and shed the cocoon, man. I don't know what words you want to put on that, but we learned this 10,000 years ago, and for some reason we just, just can't figure it out and all agree on the set of words that it means because it all means the same thing.

Right? Right. Well, okay.

So the kingdom of heaven is within you.

Yes. What did I not ask you? What did we not mention that would make this conversation incomplete if we do not share it? Wow.

You know, that's so interesting because, you know, I've been asked that question on podcast before, and I'm talking while I'm thinking, and something always comes up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And like nothing is coming. And when it comes up, it comes up instantly.

Well, the creative brain usually has to. Doesn't want to just stop at one thing. So it's always like, how do you make that transition to put the final bow on this?

So it just makes me feel. And then again, I'm going to turn it back over to you on that quest. Same question. But it makes me feel like I think we may have covered it all because. Because something always comes to mind. So I would turn it over to you. Are you anything that's coming up for you that you feel like we should have touched on thinking about these entrepreneurs and their journey.

Well, so I think with someone like, here's what I would say to that. So you created Eos, you created context. You packaged all of these different ways. You looked at all of the shit that wasn't working in your own business, all the mistakes, all of the failures, all of the challenges, and you came up with recipes. Because what is a successful business, it is a series of things done in a certain way, with a certain steps that produce a certain result. It's just like you could have all the ingredients to bread. Even though I don't eat much bread, if you don't have yeast, it ain't gonna rise. You could have everything out there.

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

So you got all these sort of things. And I remember when we were in a. I think it was an Uber or something. I don't think it was a cab, but we're on our way to the Chicago airport, and I said, hey, you know, I have Genius Network, and I have, you know, you have Eos. And I'm thinking of, what is a genius operating system? Not like what you're doing with Eos, But I'm sitting there thinking, I crowdsource genius in Genius Network. Like, I bring smart people together in one of my, however, favorite ways to learn is just in discussions with other people. So in a lot of ways, me and you are having a discussion, and we're recording it so other people can, you know, listen to it, hopefully learn, and it'll be valuable, right? And so, like, I like getting into these discussions, and when you put smart geniuses together and you crowdsource, things come out of it. And I said, you know, would you care if I, you know, create? And you're like, no, I think it's actually a great idea. I like the sound of it. And part of it is we're all trying to figure out what. Maybe that's wrong. I think most of us that are ambitious are trying to figure out how to make real what our ambition is. And so I still think you have a shit ton of ambition.

Yeah, I'm not questioning about.

I just finished an Audible original that's not out yet. It'll be out soon. Published by Hay House with Dan Sullivan, where I talk about connection and I talk about ambition, because those are really important things. You got to connect your ambitions with something that actually matters. So when you went through this whole process, what I will say is that we planted a seed here. And if anyone listening wants to go deeper, look up Gino wickman.

Go to genoickman.com you'll see the five pieces of content. But I'll tell you what you did prompt, and I'll share this. And I have not shared this with too many people, but I'm going to share it here. So I have this visual in my mind. You talk about ambition.

Okay?

So with the five pieces of content, I see each one of those pieces of content impacting a million entrepreneurs on its own. And then with that foundation in place and strong, because each one of those is a company, there's this visual that comes to me that I float up above that and the number is 70 million. So I'm going to impact 70 million. I don't know how. I don't know why. So for what that's worth. Yeah. I mean, I. I feel like I am just getting started. I feel like I'm like I've scratched 1% of the surface.

Yeah.

So I don't even know what that means, but, yeah, I. I am not done yet.

Good. Good. And part of. Part of this is I just want to put stuff out into the world for no other reason. Maybe I want people to pay attention to me. Maybe I want. Who knows? What I will say, though, is that anyone witnessing this and like, I've never read a book. I can't do all that sort of stuff. I will say that this is the evolution of many years of doing it. And I cannot tell you how many people I run into that's like, I want to impact 10,000 people, 100,000 people. You know, there's that big moonshot thing with a billion people. How do you. And they've not impacted one. And I'm like, impact one person. Go change one person's life. If you have a formula or a process. So here's what I would say. Pick one or two things you learned from listening to us talk today. Go put it into your company. Go put it into your family. Go put it into your life. Don't try to, you know, eat the whole elephant. Just do one thing and teach something to someone.

And if the peace stuff was overwhelming, go build your empire, man. The peace stuff will come.

Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Everyone has their stages. So I would just say it's always great to chat with you. I. I not only find it enjoyable, I learn a lot. I appreciate, and it makes me. It reinforces a lot of stuff that I know. And I know what we're talking about. You're not someone that's, like, talking about. You don't build a great reputation by talking about what you're going to do. You build a great reputation by actually doing it. So you've walked the path. You've got, I mean, tens of thousands of people's lives who's been positively changed as a result of your work and so you know your shit. So I'm talking to someone who's the real deal and it's great to spend that time with you and for the person watching or listening, do good with it. That's all I have to say. Appreciate that. Thank you, sir.

Means a lot. Pleasure.

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