If You Want To IMPACT Lives With Your Business You Must Focus On THIS! Feat. Brian Tracy

You have been a first domino for countless people where they read one of your books, change the trajectory of their life. They heard you say a concept or teach them something you know, be it the psychology achievement who. I can't tell you how many people have told me over the years that's their all time favorite audio program. Out of all the things you taught, what do you think are the most important? Dominoes? Maybe you could just pick two or three. That's first thing I want to ask you and then I was going to ask you about what do you not talk about or haven't shared yet that are going to be in those, these upcoming nine books books. So I, I'd like to get the Brian Tracy dominoes that you think are the most important ones and maybe some future ones that you haven't yet shared with the world.

Well, I, I think of my books in terms of a single word. The, the books. The book Psychology of Achievement is really the best that I've ever done and according to my fans and friends, they say it's the best they've ever, ever read all over the world and in 50 languages. And I get emails every day. You changed my life. You changed my life. You changed my life. And I started off as a poor guy. I came from a working family. I failed out of high school. So I didn't start off with any blessings or anything else. I didn't have a great childhood. And so I consider it to be really a reward is a wonderful thing to have a positive effect on people's lives. And so I'm trying to think of what are, what are the ideas and one word that I'm going to be focusing on which is really closely related to your book and it's contribution is I'm going to write a book and it's going to be on contribution and it's going to be on the, the effects that if you want to be successful, look for ways to contribute to others. Don't worry, don't worry about what's in it for me. Just contribute to others, help other people and do it first. You don't have to expect or negotiate a return. So that's, that's a word. And responsibility is another word that can be a whole book. You could talk, talk about every, every, all the different things and different ways that you can accept responsibility and practice it so that it helps other people. And so people say, well I want to be successful, everybody wants to be rich and successful. Then what you do is you constantly look for ways to contribute to other People to, and with regard to negativity and negative thinking, accept responsibility, say, I am responsible. I'm responsible for money. Everything that happens to me or doesn't happen to me is up to me. Nobody's going to do it for me because I am responsible. And so I think of the single concept almost like a hard nut and then all the different ways that you could apply in your life, which makes it so simple and so easy to apply and there's no cost to it and you don't ask for any money. And where do I get these from? The same as you is people have told you that when they heard this from you or read it from you that it changed their life, it changed their thinking. They always thought accidentally that they should be doing it this way. And then they learned that, no, that's not, that's not efficacious, it doesn't help them. And so they follow your advice and they do something different. Earl Nightingale One of my favorite concepts from Earl's lead the field was the whole idea of service. And he talks about service comes from the Greek, the Italian servus, which is from serving, from service. So therefore what you do is you constantly look for ways to serve other people and serve them better and serve them faster and serve them earlier and serve them sooner and keep asking them what do they need from me more than anything else. And that's, that's summarized in the title of this book. And you know just by looking at the title that this is going to be a good ride. As they say in the West. It's, it's, it's going, it's going to give them ideas that they can use to really improve their lives.

And.

No, go ahead.

Sorry, yeah, constantly look for, look for ways to give, look for ways to put in what can I do for it. I, I remember when I was young and struggling and coming up and I was working for, I call, I call him the big boss. He, when he died, unfortunately he was worth $750 million. And he started off a small family. He became a doctor that, he became a surgeon and he worked his way up and he found he had a flare for business. And so he was well paid as a doctor. And then he continued invested his income in, in other things and he became one of the fourth richest man in Canada. And he was a doctor. I called him the Doc. People called him the Doc. And he was a great man. He was just a great, a great man. Very quiet, very humble, just, just a good man. And so I think, well, what a Wonderful reputation for a person to have, as there's never a person in his life who said anything but good things about him. And I still to this day. So in the back of your mind, you think, what would the doc do? What would the doc say? I remember one thing he said. He said to me several times, because he would use me sort of like a falcon would toss the. Toss the bird out to go after the game. He would give me a project. People would bring him projects starting with hundreds of thousands, going up to many, many millions of dollars. And he would say, brian, check this out for me and see if it's something that we want to get involved with. And one of the things he told me, which I keep reminding myself of, is that it's easy to get into something. It's much harder to get out.

Yeah, yeah.

So true.

Time. Time to do your thinking is before you get committed too deeply. And I, I teach that to other people. But the other thing I do is I practice this with my children. My children, of course, my staff. Here. Here's an. Here's an interesting thing people always say to me when they come to my office, the first thing they notice is laughter. I went before my company reached its peak, we had about 35 people. And then of course, we had Covid and a whole bunch of other things, and we cut back and. But people came to our office and they would hear laughter. People laugh together. If we hire somebody, we'd only hire somebody that we liked. And we don't hire people that everybody else liked. And if we. If they didn't laugh, if they didn't contribute to a really positive environment, then we just let them go. Not angry, no. Anything else, but just a happy environment. And we're one of the most productive and most profitable businesses of our kind. I developed millions and millions of dollars worth of real estate. Not only my own, but the real estate of my clients and my bosses. And so I worked with a lot, a lot of people, and they're all happy. That was a good thing. And they look back at that of those times as. As one of the best jobs they ever had. And they said that to me, you know, one of the best jobs I ever had was working for you because everybody's happy. And that's the thing to aim at.

No, that's really important. I mean, I write about this in my book where you can often look at couples and you can tell. Engage the value of most relationships by how often they laugh together. And if there is no. Because life can be difficult. Life Is not always Kumbaya. Life can be very, very difficult. And laughter brings. Like, for instance, the first chapter of my book, what's in it for them is be a pain detective. And what I have learned, and a lot of this comes from my own journey through in recovery, is that one of the best ways to bond with someone is to identify where they have pain and struggle and suffering in their life and remove it, eliminate it, or at least bring some relief to it. And when someone's dying or they've got a terminal illness or they're really in the depth of addiction or depression, oftentimes the best thing you can do is just be a companion to them. You may not be able to fix the situation, you may not be able to dispense advice, but you can at least be there with them. And you. You can. And that is soothing, and that is comforting in and of itself, even in the midst of enormous difficulty and suffering. And so my whole thing is be a pain detective. And part of that is you can connect with people on pain. And what is a business anyway? A business is solving problems for a profit. And if you can identify the problems that exist or bring some sense of relief to that, and you're doing really good in the world. Now, there are ways to make money by exasperating the pain. And some companies unfortunately do that, but I would not. Those are not the companies that I honor and admire. I admire people that are actually in the transformation business, not the transaction business. And so this. This whole, you know, everything that you're saying, I think is critically important, especially for young people. And I think as we get older, I mean, how old are you right now?

78.

78. Okay. And I'll be 55 in February. And as.

As.

And I have a. I have a Godchild that is 5 years old that I. His birthday was day before yesterday, and I recorded a video. And it's funny because his father, Akara Chan, is. We make films together and stuff. And I know he'll store this video so his son can watch it 50 years from now. Because I said, I want you to watch this video 50 years from now. And you will. You will realize how amazing life could be or how difficult it could be, but you know that you'll be a different human at that point in time. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe's free book and you can get a copy there.

Over the years, I've done a good deal of reading and I came across a concept that I want to share with you. And we were talking about this a little bit earlier. And the concept is the question is what is the most valuable and highest paid work that you do? It's a really interesting question because when I heard the question, I didn't know what the answer was. What do you think the highest paid and most valuable work is that you do? And the answer is thinking. Thinking is the most valuable work. Now, I am the best selling author in the world in time management. Also on goals, also on some other subjects. But I began studying time management about 30 years ago. And I came across a word in my studies and the word was consequences. And what it basically said is that something is important if it has big potential consequences and something is unimportant if it has low or no consequences. Potential consequences. Number one reason for success is people focus on things that have high potential consequences. Number one reason for failure is people focus on things that have low or no potential consequences. Exactly what Joe was saying earlier, the famous Drucker quote. Very worst use of time is to work intently on something that need not be done at all. And one of the things that is holding back entrepreneurs, business owners, it's killing them, by the way, and it's wiping out an entire generation. It's this obsession with technology. I see people that are walking with their phone. It's almost like drug addicts that are mainline. They cannot stop staring at their screen, they cannot stop pushing their buttons. I hate to say there are people in this room that had that problem, but the fact is that this obsession with looking at the screen and staying connected is killing people because it stops them from focusing. You cannot focus if you are distracted, like an attention deficit disorder dog. So you're constantly ringing and responding to bells, almost like a crazy person in a toy factory. And so just as a quick aside, if thinking is the most important thing you do because of the consequences of thinking determine the entire quality of your life, then the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. And so the more time that you spend thinking and thinking well and thinking clearly, the more successful you are. Over the years, I've worked with some very powerful people, billionaires and multi billionaires, people who are on the Forbes 400 list repeatedly, over and over. And I've had a chance to be with them during crises and at times where something was happening that was serious, it was a major problem. And I noticed that they all had one quality in common, is they all went calm. It's just they went calm. People around them were angry and upset and worried about what happened and who did it and so on. And they would just go calm, almost like a pawn would go calm. And they knew. And I learned later, I didn't know why this was. I admired it, but I didn't know why it was. Is that when your mind is calm, your entire cerebellum, the thinking and deciding brain, functions at its highest level. Like turning up all the lights on a dimmer switch, it's functioning like a Christmas tree. But when you get upset and angry, what happens is your thinking reverts to your limbic or emotional system and your ability to think clearly diminishes dramatically. And you make a lot of mistakes. That's why when you are facing a difficult situation, you have to use every skill, trick, game, whatever it is, stay calm. And that's why they teach you to meditate. And they find that meditators in business are far more successful because they can automatically trigger their mind into the calm of meditation when they're facing a crisis. It enables them to think with greater clarity. Now, a couple of years ago, a man named Daniel Kahneman, a very fine man from reading him, who had won a Nobel Prize in psychology and neuroscience, wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. And this book was a very esoteric book. And I don't recommend that you read it. It's 500 pages of hard slogging. I will give you the essence of. I will give you the essence. I do the reading, pass it on. I will give you the essence of the book. He said that there are two types of thinking. There's fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking is intuitive. It's, it's instinctive, it's automatic, it's reactionary. I think of it very much as how you would drive through busy traffic. You're not giving a lot of thought, you're just interacting. He said the other type of thinking is slow thinking. And slow thinking is where you just slow down the thinking and take time to think through issues. Now, if an issue has little or no consequences, then you can think quickly. You know, what do you have for lunch? What do you pick up on your plate from the buffet? Where do you park your car? The consequences of these decisions are almost non existent. But if it's a major issue, then you say, wait a minute, this Requires slow thinking. Here is his contention that made the book a best seller is that the biggest problem that people have is that where they should use slow thinking, they use fast thinking. And entrepreneurs are extremely guilty of that is we make important decisions that have long potential consequences, including affecting the lives of people and costing money and even leading to the bankruptcy of a business. We make those decisions with fast thinking, when in reality we should be making them with slow thinking. Now, I'm a great Drucker fan, as many people are, and Mike was saying something about hiring the right people. And hiring the right people to work with you is very important. And the biggest mistakes you make is hiring fast. You hire people quickly. The best decisions you make are you really take your time to hire slowly. And Peter Drucker said that fast people decisions are invariably wrong people decisions. Hiring an important person for an important job has tremendous potential consequences. So therefore you need to take a long time. One of the things I teach, which is in my book how to Hire and Keep the Best People, is a simple rule that will increase your hiring accuracy to 90%. And I've taught it to Fortune 500 companies and they make it a rule within their companies to use. Brian's rule is to this is you cannot hire except by doing this. And I didn't invent it. I just studied the hiring practices of the companies that hire the best people and keep them the longest. And they all, at the beginning, have a certain process that they follow. And they follow it religiously, no exceptions. And so their accuracy in hiring goes up to 90% or better because they think more. An interesting professor at the University of San Diego last year wrote a book on sort of, not sort of thinking fast and slow, but it was on decision making. What he said is the longer that you take to make an important decision, the better the decision will be, the higher quality decision. And Lord Acton once said, when it is necessary, when it's not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide. In other words, the professor said, buy as much time as you can for a decision. Put it off. If you can put it off for a day, a weekend, a week, a month, put it off. Some of the best decisions that you make will be decisions that you will allow to steep for a while, like water and tea. So thinking is the most important thing you do. We call it thinking fast and slow. So remember, anything that is important, that has long term consequences is a candidate for slow thinking. Discussing it with other people, sitting quietly, going for a walk, letting it ruminate in your mind, sleeping on it. You know, they say, if it's a big deal, sleep on it. So there's three thinking tools I want to give you and then seven ideas. So the three ways of thinking which I start off, the first way I start off every seminar is what I call zero based thinking. And everybody who knows me for any period of time knows that I harp on this. Zero based thinking is, comes from zero based accounting where you instead of increasing an expense in the next accounting period, you ask, should we be engaging in this expense at all? Now with zero based thinking, you look at your entire world and you ask this question, knowing what I now know, is there anything that I am doing that I would not start up again today if I had to do it over? This is one of the greatest thinking tools I've ever learned, because in a time of turbulence, you always have an answer for this question. Each person has an answer. Some people have multiple answers. There's lots of things that they're doing today that knowing what they now know they wouldn't get into today. They wouldn't start them up, products they wouldn't offer, people they wouldn't hire, investments they wouldn't make. And these are the greatest drags. These are sort of like a sea anchor, you know that you drop it and it drags, it slows down the boat. Well, how do you tell if you have a zero based thinking situation? And many of you were asked to write your problems, challenges, opportunities. The answer is stress is whenever you experience chronic stress, it's something that buzzes around when Joe's talking or somebody else is talking, you're busy thinking about that. You drive around and you think about it, keeps you awake at night. It's something that pisses you off, it's something that irritates you and angers you and frustrates you whenever you have chronic, which means ongoing, continuous. This is a candidate for zero based thinking. So you ask yourself the question, if I was not now in this situation, knowing what I now know, would I get into it again today? If the answer is no, the next question is, how do I get out and how fast? How do I get out and how fast? If the answer comes back that I would not get into this again today, it's too late to resolve it, it's over. The only question now is how long do you suffer? How much emotional suffering, how much financial suffering do you make before you walk? And so the most important requirement for practicing zero based thinking, which a lot of people don't like to practice, is courage. I call it The C word. You need the C word. You need to have the courage to look at every part of your life and say, is there anything that I'm doing that knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get into? Now? The starting point of zero based thinking is always with your relationships. And those are both personal and business. Whenever I give in this talk, by the way, within a short period of time, divorces take place all over that city. People go home and say, geez, if I hadn't married this person, I would never marry them again today. And that's what's making me miserable. And many people are working their heads off on the outside and to achieve success. But inside they're frustrated and unhappy because they're in a situation that, knowing what they now know, they would never get into. So I call this a quink analysis. And I'm going to ask you to do this for the rest of your life and help other people do it. K W I N K Knowing what I now know. Do a quink analysis on everything. Do a quink analysis. In my company, what we say is we look at every single person and on a regular basis and we say, if we had not hired this person and they walked in today to apply for their current job, knowing what we now know, would we hire them? If the answer is no, they're gone that day. There's a little rule, by the way, that in one of my books it says the first, the best time to fire a person is the first time it crosses your mind. Because after that it's only pain and suffering. And the longer you keep them in place, the more likely they are to sue you. And the longer they sue you, the more it's going to cost. So therefore, if you find that you've made a mistake, belly up to the bar, have the courage to admit I made a mistake and cut your losses. There was a great book by an author called the Zurich Axioms some years ago, and it was Principles of Success. And anybody who's in finance has probably read the book because a very successful New York financier, and he was talking about the gnomes of Zurich, whoever they are, and the rules that they go by. And he said the number one rule for success in business, personal life is cut your losses when you realize you made a mistake. Bad investment, bad hire, bad relationship, cut your losses quickly. What do they say in Las Vegas? Cut your losses, let your winnings ride. So in life, that's what we do. And the faster you cut your losses, fail fast, the faster you can Start doing things that are much more productive. The second area has to do with every part of your business. Joe and I were talking about what I think is a revolutionary new field. Though it's not revolutionary and it's not new, but it's business model innovation and it's based on the concept that whatever business model you're using today is probably obsolete. If you're in any kind of a business that uses technology to market it, especially an information based business, knowledge based business, consulting, services, training, anything else, chances are your business is obsolete. The way that you and the business model is your method, your step by step process of generating profitability. Now there are some companies that struggle along, struggle long, struggle long, then find a new business model and the next year their business is up five or ten times. Profits are just overwhelming. They're living in big houses on the hill, driving Cadillacs and flying private. And you say, what on earth did they do? They changed their business model. And if you don't change your business model, if it's the wrong business model, two things are going to happen. Your competitors are going to come up with a new business model and eat your lunch and, or you're going to go broke. So it doesn't mean that your business model is wrong, it just means that you must be open to the possibility that your business model is obsolete. And that just means that there is a better business model, there's a superior business model and your job is to find it. And again, there's no fixed answer to it. But I think that this is a great area of thought. I think this is a great area and it's sort of like a tool for you to have. I wonder if I need to change my business model, which is your way of generating sales, producing and delivering products and services, getting payments and achieving profitability. Well, so coming Back to the second is look @ anything in your business, look at your products, look at your services, look at your people, look at the way that you advertise market and ask is there anything that you're doing today that knowing what you now know, you wouldn't start up again today. And the only question that you ever ask is does it work? Does it work? Does it work? If it's not working and you can tweak it, then that's fine. If it's not working, have the courage to admit this isn't working and abandon it. Now the third area has to do with investments in zero based thinking, investments of time, which people hate to lose. Someone said earlier that people hate to lose it's one of the greatest emotions. We hate to lose time if we've invested a lot of time in a course of action, a project, a business, a relationship. The second is emotion. If we put a lot of emotion into a course of action, a product, course of study, a relationship or money, we hate to admit that we made a mistake and that what seemed like a good idea at the time has turned out not to be a good idea. And knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get into it and have the courage to cut your losses and run. Now, the reason I teach this first is because you can't make any progress unless you clear the decks, unless you get this 800 pound gorilla that's holding you back out of your life. And then many companies that I've worked with, literally transformed, became multimillion dollar companies, when everybody said, all right, we're going to go through and do a quick analysis on this whole company and realize that half the things we're doing and half the people working here are not the right people for us at this time. And half the products that we're offering aren't selling and never will. They've been replaced by better, cheaper, faster products in the marketplace. So cut your loss. What happens when a big, big company gets into trouble? They bring in a quick analysis man and he comes in with a chainsaw and he shuts down all the factories and all the stores that are not profitable and the company goes from profits to losses in one year anyway. The second thinking tool that I teach people is WPO thinking, which is worst possible outcome in everything that you're doing. Always ask yourself, what is the worst possible outcome of this course of action and can I survive it if it were to occur? And if not, what could I do to make sure it doesn't happen? One of the number one reasons that we worry about anything in life is because of fear. And when you ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen in this particular situation? And then if you can say, all right, if that happens, I'll live with it, then your worry goes away and your mind goes clear and calm. And now you say, now what can I do to make sure that the worst does not happen? And then you become proactive and you take charge of your life. The third thinking tool. I hope I'm not going too fast for it. The third thinking tool is called the principle of constraints. And it's one of the most important thinking tools ever discovered. It says, between you and anything that you want to accomplish, there is always a Constraint, a limiting factor or a choke point that sets the speed at which you accomplish your goal. So I was just talking, doing a teleconference a few minutes ago. So the question I said is, let's always set the goal of doubling our income. You want to double your income? Okay, want to double your income? Then why isn't your income already twice as high? Now, in business, we don't think of doubling our income. We think of doubling our profitability. What we're concerned with is net cash flow. We're concerned with the amount that we take home to our family at the end of the day. Not the gross, but the triple net. So we say, if I want to earn twice as much and everybody in here can and will earn 2, 3, 4, 5 times as much sometime in the future, if I want to earn twice as much, why aren't I already earning twice as much? And the number one reason for most people is distraction. So they're so distracted they're doing things of low or no consequences. But we found the 8020 rule applies to constraints. 80% of the constraints that are holding you back from achieving your financial goals are within yourself and within your business. They are not on the outside. They are not the competition, they are not the market. They are not the people in Washington or the taxes or regulations. 80% are within yourself. So the mark of the superior person is whenever they have a problem, they say, what is it in me that's causing this problem? Mike and I know this very, very clearly, what is it in me that's causing this problem? In illness, by the way, 85% of illness is psychosomatic. As Dennis Waitley said, it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you that's causing the problem. And so the starting point and the first thing a doctor will tell you or a psychologist is, what is it that you're not dealing with? And you go back to zero based thinking. What is it that you have.

In your.

Life that if you had to do over, you wouldn't do it? So ask yourself, what's holding you back? And usually it's the quality of self discipline or it's a skill. Now, one of the things that changed my life forever was when I learned that all business skills are learnable. You don't have to be a genius to learn any business skill. You can learn any form of technology. As Mike has proven that with his products. You can take a person who's basically shoveling shoe polish and shubokin and teach them how to Be technologically superior enough to earn a living from it. Every business skill is learnable. And so I say, what one skill, if you are absolutely excellent at it in your business, would help you the most to double your income? What one business skill, if you could wave a magic wand and wake up tomorrow morning superb in this area, what skill would it be? And you know, when you ask that question, everybody knows the answer. They know what it is. But here's the challenge. You don't like the skill because it involves rejection, embarrassment, ego, potential failure, loss. You've tried it in the past, you haven't been good at it. But nobody asks you what would be an easy skill to learn. They just ask you what skill would help you the most to double your income. And here's what we have found, is that most of us are only one skill away from doubling our income. And all business skills are learnable. And if you study the people who go from the top to the bottom in the Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000, they found in 25 years of research, these people learn one skill at a time, like climbing the ladder of success and the ladder of income, like sniper. One shot, one kill. They don't try to learn 50 skills skills. They learn the one skill, focus, the most important skill, and they get their company focusing on the one skill that can help you the most to generate sales and.

Profitability. I wanted to ask you what.

Makes a successful producing entrepreneur? And I'll let Marie do the.

Honors. Ah, gosh. What makes a successful entrepreneur? I'm not sure that, that somebody will know that they're an entrepreneur from the beginning. I think they will have a desire to make a difference to other people's lives. And, you know, they'll see that, you know, that something's frustrating them. There's a gap in the markets. They feel they can do it better themselves and they'll try to, you know, fill that, fill that gap in the market and, and, you know, that's, you know, and then, and then they almost become an entrepreneur by, you know, it by default. You know, I don't think, I don't think you can sort of set out to become an entrepreneur. I think you've got, you've got to set out to make it, make a difference to other people's.

Lives. Well, what are the business principles that have stood out for you, that.

Just have worked really well for Virgin and for even building any sort of organization or.

Cause? Well, again, I don't necessarily think of them as business principles principles. And I think the word you Know, I think the word business, it becomes a business. But what you're doing is you're, you're, you know, painting a picture. You're trying to, you're trying to create, create something to make a difference to other people's lives. You have a blank canvas and you're filling in, in every little bit of that canvas to get every single little detail right. And if that canvas, you know, sings out at you at the end and it's, you know, it's a beautiful picture, your business is going to be successful if, you know, if bits of the canvas are not quite right, your business may fail. So if you set up a, if you set up to change people's lives, you've got to get every single little detail right. You've got to make sure that the people that you're working with 100% believe in what you're trying to do. And you've got to make sure that what you're trying to do is worthwhile spending your time on. And the end of the day, you want to be sure that the people's lives you've affected, you've really been. You've affected them and benefited them. And if you get all that right, you know, hopefully you'll be able to pay the bills at the end of the.

Year. Well, you know, I know you've started so many businesses, Richard. I mean, you have, I think, 300 some companies right now. And, you know, so many entrepreneurs. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are startups, who are in their growth phase, who are even in their, you know, legacy phase. And if, if you're in a startup mode. I mean, you just talked about this painting the canvas. That's really incredible. What, is there, like, one tangible piece of advice that, that you wish that you had when you were just starting your, your first.

Business. I mean, the absolute key and I, and like a old stuck gramophone record that existed in my day is how, how good you are with people. And if you, you know, if you genuinely care about people, if you can surround yourself with people that, you know, genuine, genuinely excited about what you're doing, if you, you know, if you can draw out the best in people, if you're, you know, if you're good at, you know, praise, lavishing praise on people and not criticizing your people and, and inspiring your people, you know, that's you, that's something you just have to do from day one. You know, never use the I word. I mean, it's, you know, you're a team. We're doing this we're doing that just never ever, you know, let it sort of center on yourself and, and just be a great, great leader of people. And you know, if you can do that from, from day one, even if you've got one other in person working with you or two other people working with you, then you know, you can enjoy the good times together. But there will be bad times and those that your people will pull, pull around for you. They'll, they'll work day and night to try to, you know, keep whatever it is you're creating alive and make sure that you make sure it survives. So the number one lesson is be a great people.

Person. And I got a quick follow.

Up and the follow up would be, you know, so now you started to make it as a business owner. So now we work with a lot of, you know, seven figure, eight figure, nine figure business owners. What did you do to take it to really the whole, whole next.

Level? Well, I think, I think the next stage is, you know, is to be a great delegator and not try to do everything yourself. Try to find people who are better than you all the time. Try to find people are better than you to put you, put you out of business effectively. So, you know, whatever you're spending all your day doing, try to find someone who's better than you to do that, to replace you at it so that, you know, you can go off and, you know, think about the next big picture. You know, an entrepreneur is not a man, not a manager. I mean, an entrepreneur is somebody who is great at conceiving ideas, starting, starting ideas, building ideas, but then handing over to really good managers to manage the businesses. You know, the moment you've got more than one business, you can't be hands on doing everything. You know, if on the other hand you are, you know, you're not really a great entrepreneur, but you're a really good manager, you know, then fine, just immerse yourself in the business. You know, worry about every, every detail. Don't worry about having to, you know, move on to other businesses. So it slightly depends on what kind of person you are. You know, in a strange way, Steve Jobs was more a manager than an entrepreneur. I mean, it sounds slightly strange to say that because, you know, but I mean, he, he was somebody that, you know, focused on, you know, on, you know, almost specifically on, on one subject matter, you know, immersed himself in that business. He second guessed everybody with everything. No bit of artwork could go out without his approval. And he built a formidable business but pretty specific business in One area, and it worked very well for him. But if you want to be a true entrepreneur and build a lot of different businesses, you've got to be a great.

Delegator. Give us a bit of history about you. Have you always been driven to succeed? And I know that you and your mom mortgage your house for a hundred grand to start FUBU in the.

Beginning. So talk about.

That. Talk about. Have I always been driven to succeed or the.

Home? Yeah, well.

Both. Well, you know, I've always been driven to succeed. I've always been driven to create some form of an income, but the income was really the afterthought of creating some form of an idea that was executed from beginning to end. So, you know, I opened my first business when I was six years old. It was in the first grade. I would. You know, the boys, when they liked girls in the first grade, they would. They would kick them, they'd pull their hair. So I saw a way to make a profit off of this. And I would go and I would find pencils, and I would scrape the paint off the pencils, and I'd paint the names of the prettiest girls in school on the pencils. And then I'll say, don't kick her. Sell. You know, I would sell the pencils to them to then give to the girls. And that was going pretty well, actually. The girls, because women are so vain, they bought all the pencils of their own names. But I was making a lot of money. And then my principal made me close the business after, like, one month, I think, because he didn't have any vision. He found out that I was stealing the pencils from the guys I hated in school as well. So my cost of goods was.

Zero.

Right. That was my first business, and I always wanted. After that, I just kept.

Going. You know, it's funny when you. If people that are willing to admit it, there's always kind of a little criminal background in many successful.

Entrepreneurs.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, until you kind of learn integrity or at least learn that once you know how to do things that you can actually, it's more.

Sustainable.

Yeah. You know, so borrowing money to mortgage a house, doing that sort of stuff, I mean, did it almost not.

Work? It did almost not work. You know, it was one of those, you know, how us entrepreneurs take affordable next steps and we dream big. And I was one of the people who were fortunate enough to come out of it. But that was a very dangerous time in my life. I had gotten turned down by 27 banks, and I didn't have any financial intelligence, but I had orders for $300,000 worth of goods. Not knowing that cash is a huge choke and the credit system and everything else like that. We took out a mortgage on the house for $100,000, you know, moved out everything, slept in sleeping bags, and turned the house into a factory. And that was all good, right? And we figured we'd sell the $300,000 worth of goods and we put the extra. We'd put the hundred back into the house. But of course, you know, about six months later, I'm looking at three months later on the mortgage, about to take the. Take the house from me. I have $500 in the bank. I'm selling the goods. But my lack of financial intelligence at that time, you know, I didn't understand that paying three months in advance for raw goods to come from overseas was going to take that cash. And paying for my utilities and my staff and shipping and everything was going to take that cash. And I had to give the store's terms of 60, 90, 120 days. So my ignorance, in that sense, I was fortunate to take out. My mother took out an ad in a paper for strategic partners, and she said, money's always available. Sales aren't available. So she took out an order, took out an ad, and said something to the effect of million dollars in orders, need financing. And of course, she knew how to romance the truth a little herself. I'm not saying that I was a thief and my mother was a liar, but maybe that's what it was. But 33 people, people call that ad, and one was Samsung, and 30 of them were loan sharks, and three of them were real, and one was Samsung's textile.

Division.

Okay. You know, it's funny. Dan Sullivan, who's in the audience, says that there's two things you need when starting a business. Ignorance and.

Courage.

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, totally. So what's the best piece of business advice you've ever received and how did it change your business path and your.

Direction? I think it was. Well, I received a couple of them. The first one was somebody said, don't spend all your money, kid, because it's really, really hard to make money and it's 10 times harder to keep it. I think that was one of them. And I think the other one was, you know, it's all about the numbers. There's only two ways to do business. Increase sales or.

Decide. Decrease.

Cost. That's it. And don't do anything because it's an ego play. Increase sales or Decrease cost. That's it. And those things probably have been the ones and everybody else knows all the other ones. Of course, do what you love. Of course, do your research and everything else. But the room knows that.

Already. So FUBU has. It's had 6 billion in global sales. What are the key elements, secrets and requirements of building like a $6 billion brand that. That people here can utilize well.

In the days that we built it? I think that there are a couple of things. First of all, you know, in business, it's purely about distribution. I think that you can have the greatest idea in company or whatever the case is, but you don't have a way to distribute it. It's a pipeline. It's a challenge. I think that to understand and don't fall in love with your product where you think that you're creating something new, because we will never create new new. It will only be a new position or a new angle on it, a new price. You know, I would say Twitter was a. As I shared with you before, it was a note on a pigeon's leg a million years ago. And I didn't put three sleeves on a T shirt. I just created a movement around it. So it's always a different positioning. And I think those are the ways. And then after you get to a certain level where you have brand equity, I think it's of kind creating a large amount of really amazing strategic partners. You know, licensing, whether it's a territory or licensing a different angle of your product is important. I'm not going to understand what they necessarily want in Japan, even though they want FUBU in Japan, it's a different culture. As well as I can do my men's business. But you and I were two guys. If you wear 32 and I wear 32, there's two sizes, 32, there's 32 long, 32 short. If I sell a pair of seven or a pair of eight jeans to a female, there's 17 sizes because the thighs are too big, the butts too. There's gaps over here. So I would license that business to an expert in that area because I don't have a lifetime to learn the ladies business as well. So I think that strategic partners are very.

Valuable. Okay, so your friend Kevin Harrington was here earlier and he was talking about Shark Tank, and he said that Kevin O', Leary, Mr. Wonderful, was a far better and more intelligent negotiator than you. I don't know your thoughts on.

That. He didn't say.

That. I'm totally.

Kidding. I would say I Should have just let that.

Go. No, no, no. I.

Knew. I knew.

That. Kevin's a great guy, and I'm actually representing him in the speaking, and I would absolutely make sure he doesn't get any more gigs after.

That.

Yeah. If you were to get in a fight, a physical fist fight with Kevin o', Leary, you think you could.

Take him with Kevin o' Leary or Kevin.

Harrington? Kevin.

O'.

Leary. Well, both actually be interesting to Celebrity death.

Match. Well, so Kevin o' Leary I could take. Kevin Harris will crack my head to the white meat one.

Day. I.

Don'T. You know, I think he's like 100 years old, but one day we all did push ups on the set and I think I was on my 19th and he was on his, like.

107Th. No.

He'S. He's a maniac. He is something. There's a.

Problem. He.

Can'T. He came to Necker island and he was like in one of those sumo suits and everything. And I. I swear to God, he was like knocking everyone down. It was.

Bizarre. You know, if you've ever been in his office, he does not have chairs in his.

Office. He's too.

Neurotic. He just has a table right there and a bunch of crap all.

Around.

Yeah, can I get a timer up here too? So I know where we're.

At. What are the little talked about.

Factors that most successful people wouldn't want to publicly share that drive growth and.

Success? Well, anybody that's really successful, such as yourself, such as Jay Abraham and the people in this room that are especially always shared every single aspect of success, that's probably one of the things that you end up forgetting to share is that the opportunity to give somebody this knowledge only comes back to you. But I think other things that people don't share in success is. I really wouldn't know. Honestly, I don't come from that model. Any and everything that I can share in success, I will. So I don't want to take up time trying to think of.

Something. Okay, well, you have to be all hurtful about.

It. Hey, I love the whole 10 minute thing. You know what? Because I was thinking over here, all of us as public speakers, if you gave me 10 minutes, I would be.

Uncomfortable.

Right. And I'd ramble through it. But you know what? I would have been uncomfortable and it would have tested me. So I want to stay on the. Even though I got.

30. I like that.

Idea.

Yeah. Okay. In 2009, you joined Shark Tank. How have your investments worked out on the show?