How Successful People Think!

One thing is you can never let someone else define who you are. You can never let someone tell you what makes you who you are. So you can't really please everyone. And when people criticize you, the best you can do is hold your head high knowing that you have done nothing wrong. But you can't let them control who you are. You can't control the world, but you can certainly control how you react. Other thing that I learned as an entrepreneur is that your life as an entrepreneur is like your heartbeat. You know, ups and downs of the life is what tells you that you're still alive. When you are smooth, that means you're dead. And you never want a life of an entrepreneur to be smooth. When you are absolutely at the bottom, you know, all you have to do is thrive. Just enough. As Tony said, get set for the winter, know the summer is coming, the next beat is going to be up, right? And when you are on the top of the world, don't get too cocky. Don't get too arrogant because you know the winter is coming, the next heartbeat is going to be right down. So never get too depressed when things are bad and never get too cocky when things are. You are at the top because either way, you know that seasons change.

Here's the two months mindsets that I think are crucial. One of them, and they're in short supply. I'm noticing in public life, one of them is gratitude. Gratitude. I think if you're really, really grateful, you create an abundance related to your past. That's really what gratitude is because it's. You're grateful for what has gotten you here. And gratitude is a proactive. A lot of people make it a reactive skill in the sense, well, if somebody does something for me, I'm grateful for that. But the word gratitude, being grateful is related to the word appreciation. How many of you say, well, I really appreciate that. And appreciation is a really neat word because it's got that emotional sense, psychological sense, but it's also got an economic sense that things appreciate gold, appreciates land, appreciates stocks, appreciate bitcoin, appreciates, you know, everything Peter's involved in appreciates. I hope so, because I've got. He's got some of my money, you know, I want it all to appreciate and I appreciate you. Yeah, but what appreciation, what appreciation really means is that you just give value to someone. In other words, you say, you know, there's qua, qua sitting right across from me. And I always appreciate qua. And you know, and I really appre. You know, I can Just sit there and think about qua for a half minute. And you know, I totally appreciate Babs as everyone knows. You know, without Babs, I'm just a smart drunk, worried about the rent. And you know, I just appreciate and I think about the people. I appreciate so much what Peter does and that creates a higher value for Peter in my life. So this gratitude principle is one of them. And the other one is generosity. If you truly believe in abundance, you'll be generous with what you have, not worrying about how you're going to get paid back for it. So I think that the twin and they're related to each other, but one of them is related to the past. It's appreciation because you're giving greater value to your experience up to the present moment. And then generosity is that you're making a bet on the future. See, I'm making a total bet on the future with Peter that it's just going to get bigger and better in every way. And therefore anything that I contribute to that I don't have to worry about what the return is, there's going to be a big return and I don't have to keep book on it. You know, I can't stand keeping book on things. So I see a lot of people who are super intelligent but they're not grateful. I see people who are very successful but they're not generous. And I said, you know, you've got all the, you got all the hardware but you don't have any of the software and you need the software to actually make your way in the world.

The vast majority of the self help world is, you know, and it's gotten better over the last few years certainly because we keep discovering and learning more. And there's people, I would like to think like us that really speak to people's strengths, not their weaknesses. Where so much of the self help world is, what's wrong with you and how to fix it.

Yeah.

Versus what's right with you and how to enhance it or amplify it. Right. And so that's kind of what your message is about. Like saying, okay, first off, if you think that you're f ed up, what do you think a person who constantly thinks they're fucked up is? How are they going to live into that? They're going to do, you know, they're going to feel that way. Whereas you say several times in there, there's nothing wrong with you.

Yeah.

So I'd like you. It sounds like a simple statement, but what do you mean? I mean, because there are People that are watching this going to you, trust me, there's something wrong with me. I'm addicted to Internet porn. I, like, have tendencies to go steal things. I question my integrity. I don't feel like anyone understands me. I'm surrounded by yes people. I mean, there's all these things where they can feel like they're on the outside looking in, or that the world doesn't get them, or they. That they're really ashamed or whatever. So what do you mean by there's, you know, there's nothing wrong with you?

You know, Joe, I think that. So when I really started reading and I got into biographies, I didn't stop. And when you start looking at the people who have achieved. If you go back in history and you look at anyone that matters, anyone that you remember, anyone that matters to be remembered, they were just like us. And the stories where you can find them of adolescents are stories of children who struggled and who did not fit in and who didn't understand society and who it looked like things would not work out. And oftentimes, not only did they not have the resources, but maybe even physically, they weren't capable. There was handicaps, there was deficits you could see. But in all of the cases, it didn't matter what was quote, unquote, wrong with those people when they were able to hook into momentum, find the greater contribution they wanted to make, and lean on their strengths. Literally, someone who is deaf, dumb and blind changes the world for handicapped. People like Helen Keller shouldn't have been able to do anything. And so we live in a world where when you say things like every. The preamble, you said, I'm addicted to porn. I do this, I do that. You know, we have been convinced since childhood that there's something wrong with us. Every evaluation we've ever had has said, what did you get wrong? What class did you ever have in school? What evaluation have you ever had where they said, joe, let's figure out what's good about you? Like, how do we amplify what you do right? And the problem is that today the world wants you to say, there's something wrong with me and release the rest of the world to fix it. Take a pill, go to somebody to fix it for you. Change who you are, change how you look at things. Here's what I want anyone who's like us to know, is that if you look throughout history, any disease, any disorder, any issue you have, you know, I very openly share with people. I've been diagnosed with Asperger's adhd, autism, bipolar, depression, manic depression, megalomaniaca. It just depended on what day I went to see somebody, what showed up. And you know, the fact is that throughout history, anyone who did anything significant today is a 50, 50 chance they get medicated. Right? And so what I want everyone to think about is, look, if you want to sit down and list all the things that are wrong with you, that is the easiest thing in the world to do. But whatever is happening, whatever diagnosis, whatever disease, whatever you're struggling with, someone has had the same thing, has overcome it and has changed the world. So where the rest of the world says figure out what's wrong with you and change it, I want you to figure out what's right with you and pay attention to only that. Understand that there is nothing wrong with you and you are not alone.

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

Well, and you just pointed out what is the other key constraint to entrepreneurs startups being able to scale up. The reality is 76% of the companies in the United States are home based. 96% never get to a million in revenue. And the fundamental reason is the entrepreneur knows they're the best at doing things and doing everything. And it is impossible for many of them to let go and trust that somebody else can do even a piece of of that as well as they can. What's even worse is they try to get somebody else to do something for them and they didn't choose that person correctly and that person screws it up. And now they've been burnt. And once you've been burnt, you don't want to go back again. And so you're stuck having to do everything. And you only have 168 hours in a week. We don't get any more. And so, you know, Jim Collins said you got to get the right butts and the right. But we thought we ought to put together a list of seats. And so we built a tool called our face tool, the function accountability chart. And it lists what are all the functions that have to exist in any business. You know, who's going to run it, Sales, marketing, operations, accounting. And you know, when you're a startup, it's your name next to all this. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And all growing a company is is figuring out which box you can delegate next. And it's this ability to delegate that none of us were taught how to do. I didn't take a course in my MBA called delegation, and there's a real art and science to doing that correctly. And most people think delegation is here. You do that, but that's called abdication delegation. My best analogy is that thermostat I got started in the H VAC business, and we got this complex air conditioning system in here. But if you didn't have that thermostat, Joe, right over there on the wall that was constantly monitoring what's going on here and giving feedback to that system, we'd either be freezing to death or burning up here in Phoenix, Arizona, on a day it's 102 outside. So you've got to put in thermostats within the organization to make sure that you close that loop on the activities that you've got people working on. And. And then, like Richard said, you've got to then say, all right, what are the things? And Marcus Buckingham helped us here. Marcus, he helped me more than almost any thought leader when he said, when he properly defined what is a strength and what is a weakness. Because let me tell you what gets entrepreneurs in trouble. They're too good at too many darn things. That's what got them into business, because they are wicked talent, talented, but that becomes their weakness. And when Marcus said, look, a strength is not just because you're good at it, but it gives you strength, it gives you energy. A weakness, even if you're good at it, is a weakness if it makes you tired. And for me, I know how to run a company. I know how to do all this stuff that we do, but it wears me out. And I had to decide that, you know what? I love teaching. I don't love to do any of this other stuff. I need to find people who love what it is that makes me tired. And so that's what entrepreneurs have to do, is get a piece of paper out, make a list. And you know what? If you like to shop, and I know guys who do, it's almost a meditation, relaxation thing, then keep doing it. But if that wears you out, if that makes you tired, find somebody else to do it and just continue to keep removing. There's this key word again. Constraints that are draining the life and energy out of you and make sure that you spend your time on the stuff that gives you energy, and then you're going to be jazzed.

I mean, in a sense, the most powerful force for a human being is their social circle, their social group.

Right?

We were all hearing this research that if you kind of average out the people that are closest to you, you're that person. You know, you take the five people closest to you. That's your level of self esteem and health, income and all that kind of thing. In a certain way, the self sculpting or the self development game, it reaches, I think, its pinnacle when you figure out where you want to go in a particular line or developmental kind of vector of your life, whether that be your physical health or emotionally, how you want to feel, or your relationships or your success or money or whatever it is, where you want to live, how you want to live, figure out that one thing and then go and add a social influence to your life who already has that in their life. That's the formula, right? So if I'm. I'm bad at marketing, I don't know marketing. I don't know how to get customers. I could go read books and that works. I can get that knowledge. But it's nothing like coming and sitting down. Like with you. For example, we had lunch with, Remember we had lunch with that woman, what, a month ago or something in la? We were both at a conference. Oh, yes, we had lunch with your friend. We sat down with her. She said, here's this whole thing. She really didn't understand marketing kind of at all. We wound up having lunch with her for maybe an hour and a half. We gave her a bunch of feedback. And by the end of it, it's not just that she got what to do, because she did. We gave her some ideas on what to do. But we're so far to the next level in our own marketing development, our own lives, we're saying what we're communicating, what our kind of body language and the cultural little milieu that was set up there is communicating is it is totally normal to have the kind of success that you're trying to get here. It's not that big of a deal. Just go do the things you need to do and then you know, can I get some more water?

Right.

And that transmission is what you need to get for yourself when you're trying to achieve something because you read it in a book and it's like, I don't know, this person could have just written that down because they wanted to, whatever. Or it's abstract, or maybe it's not taught the way that you want. But when you go watch another human being do something and you go, oh, oh, you can do this. Dan Kennedy, I heard him talking and he said this great thing, he said, I think we should have National Bring a poor person to Work day. And I thought that was really a great insight so that, you know, someone that doesn't do as well financially could come to work for a day with someone that does and watch what they do. Not to learn what they do, but to just realize I could do this just to raise their esteem and like, what's possible. So the social influence is such a big deal because the ritualization, so there's like focus, blocks of time, there's the ritualization and the habit building, which is, you know, very self empowering and so forth. But it's not, these are nothing like adding social influences to your life. If you're saying like, well, I want to go work out every day and you know, you can do these other things and it's great, you could focus on that block of time. You could create the ritual, you could set it up, you could start doing it. But man, make friends with two or three people who work out every day and have been doing it for 10 years and who, that's an absolute rock solid cornerstone of their life. If you don't do that, something's wrong with your life and you go make friends with them, you start hanging out with them, you figure out other ways to add value to each other's lives, but being around them, you're gonna start going to the gym every day not because you ritualized it or you had willpower, but because there's frickin no choice.

Okay.

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Thank you.

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