In order to Achieve Success, You Must Define it: Here’s How! Feat. Former Dragon From Dragon's Den

Okay, so I guess with what it's easy to ask what makes a successful entrepreneur? How have you been successful? But what I'd like to delve into, because you're totally open about talking about stuff, is how have you fucked up? How have you. Like, like what are the mistakes you've made? What are the.

We only have 25 minutes.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna. The three days we're gonna spend talking here starts right at this moment.

Now let me do some paraphrasing really quick. So I was born in a small town in Saskatchewan. My mother was a social worker. My dad was a car salesman. And that's why I sometimes describe myself as a capitalist with a heart. Finished high school when I was 16 years old. Been bullied a lot, picked on, went off to university, first year of engineering. I'm looking around and these guys are absolute dorks. They've got jeans that are torn, shirts that are dirty, glasses that are taped. And for the first time in my life, I fit in and it was great. And I ended up getting involved with student politics. I had seven elected positions in my last two years on campus. From residence to central student body to the senate. And I started building self confidence. Probably more than I needed, but certainly lots. And ended up working as an engineer for a few years up in the Arctic, across Canada. Some extraordinary experiences. Then I ended up doing a business degree. I did an MBA at the University of Calgary. My specialization was in entrepreneurship. And I really, truly fell in love with the world of entrepreneurship. A place that I'd been afraid of. My dad had bought a grocery store when he was younger and it had failed quickly. And so my parents didn't speak glowingly of anything entrepreneurial. It was, how do you pay the bills? Well, you have a job. And so that was really my focus. Then the world of entrepreneurship stumbled along. I spent five years with one of the biggest investment banks. It was associated with Sherson Lehman. And I had some extraordinary experiences in investment banking and energy partners. And I built an investment bank from scratch. We put up 2 million of capital. It was valued at over 300 million. Ten years later we were doing 100 million of revenue. And you can imagine that in an Investment Bank, 95% goes to salary. And the partners took most of that. So we were coining it left, right and center. Everything that you ever want to celebrate in terms of recognition. I got listed as one of the top M and a specialist in the country. I got listed as one of the top 20 deal doers in the country. Recognition and philanthropy. Left, right and center. But to jump to probably the pivot point. I still remember the night vividly.

Where.

I was stuck at home babysitting. And that sentence in itself tells you almost the whole story. Stuck at home babysitting. I was parenting, not babysitting, because it was my own kid. And being stuck at home, in hindsight, was a huge mistake in my mind. Made a lot of money. So we had a big house, and the bigger your house is, the more you can spread your family out, so the less you have for connection and communication. That was really important to me at that time. And the reason I was stuck at home that night was that I had wanted to be at an art auction. There was a particular artist whose piece of art was up that was going to change my life, so I had to be there. But I decided to call in by phone. That's fine. Anyway, the phone rang regularly that night. I was in the office. I had a couple of kids in two of the other bedrooms, way at the other end of the home. And I finally phoned the auction house and said, where are you at with this, Lindner? And they said, well, we've already sold it. I was pissed. And I said, well, Peggy, I told you I wanted to call. She said, I called three times, and a little girl said, you weren't home. So now I've got every right to be pissed, and I'm going to rage at this little girl for what she did to me. I remember going up to Rebecca's room, opening the door, and she's lying on the bed, crayons, coloring, whatever she was doing. Nine years old. I don't remember what I said to her in the two minutes that I was standing there. Three minutes. But she crawled under her bed. She was so afraid of this vicious prick standing at the door. What I remember the most was the last sentence, which was, what the fuck are you doing telling someone I'm not home? And she looked up at me and said, well, you never are. That was the first time I'd ever cried standing without a reason to think. It undermined everything I'd ever done in the previous. I mean, the reason I worked hard was to show my family how much I loved them. How fucked up is that? Anyway, I sat down in another room and I just realized how screwed up things were. Everything I just told you about in terms of success and the recognition was absolutely meaningless given what I'd accomplished. And I ended up through a circuitous route, discovering a place called the Meadows, Wickenburg, Arizona. And I checked in For a month, my partners at the investment bank thought I was gone forever, that I was going to bow out and be done. I left the Meadows after a week with the encouragement of my counselor. She said, you know what you got to do? And my book really speaks to this. The book's entitled Redefining Success. And the full title would have been if they'd had room for it. Redefining Success and in a Wealth Obsessed World. And we live in a wealth obsessed world. I've heard many speakers, many coaches challenge that and I appreciate that greatly. I've loved what I've heard in the last day and a half, but we do live in a wealth obsessed world. Your first words when you define success is the size of the house, the size of the wallet, the size of the party, the size of your office, the size of the desk, the size of everything that's based on the shallow and superficial trappings of wealth. Anyway. And the subtitle on the book, by the way, is Still Making Mistakes. And I remember negotiating with HarperCollins or whoever my publisher was in terms of I wanted the longer name. And they said, well, why don't we just call the book Still Making Mistakes? I said, look, my life's not that up. I want the headline is Still Redefining Success. And let me tell you, I just spent two weeks in Hawaii with the daughter I raged at. I just spent two weeks in Hawaii with her husband and their six month old baby. The four of us were there and there was tears when we went our separate ways. So trust me, I've recovered the gap that I created that night. But a lot of it was, well, thank you. But it really came down to resetting priorities. And someone else has made the comment, it might have been Derek, but he was talking about how do you define success? And that's a really interesting question because most people define it by accomplishment. And ultimately, I'll jump to the closing line right now is my daughter who coached me and she's heard me tell this story exactly as I told you. She's been in the audience a couple of times and she just waves and.

I love you, dad.

But her comment is, why can't we define success by the size of the smile instead of the size of the wallet? And it really drives home for me the importance of how I've evolved my life. I've been to more than 50 countries with each of my daughter and my son. I've been to 30 countries with my oldest daughter. I have three kids, two girls and a boy. They have amongst them three husbands. I couldn't be more in love with all three of the husbands. I'm struggling with my relationship with my oldest daughter right now. She's just like her mother, but that's another story. And I'm learning. And actually, Amy Chan, wherever the hell you are, you gave me a couple ideas, so thank you for that. Okay, thank you. You know, my, the daughter I'm struggling with, I work with a coach. I have a full time coach and he came to me 10 or 12 years ago and we did not like each other. That's because he asked the tough questions and tough guy pissed me off. Anyway, we stuck it out and he actually offices in my offices now looking after other people. And anyway, my daughter reached out to him about three months ago to get coached on how to get through to me. So we're working on it. And it's just something I'm again, I'm working on because I care. And that goes back to the definition of success, the size of the smile, going back to definition of priorities. And that became, you know, if the night that I was stuck at home babysitting, my priorities would have been wealth, art, the car, the cars, the house, the holidays, the jet, the visits, all of those things that would have been my priority list.

Why?

Because those are the things I did to make sure my family knew I loved them. Coming out of the Meadows, my priorities shifted. Very simply, number one, health. A lot of people talk about physical health. Well, as you know, there's sexual health, physical health, emotional health, spiritual health, there's the relationship, health. There's a lot of things about health. And the reason your health is so important is that without it, you've got nothing to give the others in your life. So that became my number one priority. And a lot of us try to prioritize other people in our lives, but if you don't have your health, I mean, I'm a four time and I heard the word cancer survivor and I've evolved that to the word cancer graduate. First time I got cancer scared the off out of me. I was the C word, meant I was going to die. And I still remember driving in a car I had a friend of mine was driving, I had a 15 passenger van. We were taking all our kids up to the lake and I'm writing out my funeral plans, I'm crying, the kids don't know I've got cancer. And all of a sudden someone from the backseat, my son taps me and says, dad, all right, we'll close the book. And we're Done. And I thought I was going to have to tell him something because I was afraid he had read something in my notes. He said, dad, I have to pee. Well, that was the end of my pity party. And we stopped peed and kept going anyway. So there was a fear factor embedded in cancer. Round one, and it led to the meadows. It led to a lot of different things, but the second round of cancer was 14 years later, and that was just a learning moment. And round three was three years ago, and round four was a year ago. And to be blunt, round five is next Thursday. And because of targeted therapy, I'm completely unafraid of the cancer I deal with. So there's no problem there. But I really do believe I became a better person because cancer may have saved my life. The death spiral I was in, in terms of work, life balance, and family, cancer gave me every reason to rethink that. That's that fear factor, that scare factor. But it can wax. So number one priority would be health. Number two is family, and I've screwed that up a few times, but it is a priority. Number three is friends. I live for friends. I absolutely love my friends. I enjoy spending time with friends. I put a higher priority on friends than the charities I support, and I'm working on that more and more. Number four is education, and that's your learning. Whatever you choose to do, how you learn, whether it's online or books or university or college, I don't care. It's learning. So that's number four. Number five is the career. You got to pay your bills somehow. And number six is community. But there's many things I do that engage all six. And that's the fun factor. Whether it's taking 60 people to Mexico to build homes. Well, that sounds like charity. No, it's the best team building work I do with family and friends. It's extraordinary. We happen to build some homes. People benefit, but our benefit is multiples. And the guy who runs this program in Mexico, Shawn Lambert, Homes of Hope, as he calls it, it's mutually transformative, so there's a bunch of work there. So, anyway, reprioritizing my life allowed me to redefine success, and it's got me to a much happier place.

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, so how much of this is. It's interesting. I've been reading some of the comments. One of them was unique ability is a myth. And of course, that's not at all a accurate statement because unique ability. If I had not learned about the concept of unique ability, God knows how much time I've built, literally a multi, multimillion dollar business around interviewing people, bringing people together and connecting people. Something I do even when I don't get paid for it. I just figured out a way to do it. Secondly, how much of this is chance? How much of this is luck? How much of this is being in the right place at the right time? People will say things like, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Which is a sort of interesting statement when you talk about who, not how. And it's not even about knowing them, it's about how you utilize it. I believe this conversation will fall on. And it. There's many people here that have talked about how many copies of the book they've bought, how it's changed. There was one comment about. I've read the first 15 pages and it completely changed my life.

Joe, can I make a statement about luck? I believe 50% of all success is luck. Okay? You're born at the right time, you're born healthy, you got a good enough brain. I think that's luck. I mean, you didn't have anything. The other 50% is knowing how to take advantage of your good luck.

And so I believe people can fashion their own futures and design their futures. And certainly I deal with some people in very broken states with the work I do in addiction recovery. And I've seen people crawl out of the worst places in life ever. I mean, heck, people that know my story, When I was 18 years old, in my worst state, I weighed 105 pounds from freebasing cocaine. I nearly killed myself when I was a drug addict. So people can certainly change their lot in life. And there's certain obstacles that people overcome. So what I want to be able to do is have people that are thinking like, okay, I get the concept, I understand it, but how can I actually do it? And by the way, Ben Hardy wrote, willpower doesn't work, Personality isn't permanent. I mean, we got some serious brain power here from you guys being able to direct and guide people. Because between all of you, I mean, think about this. Dean Jackson in 1997, invented the squeeze page, where you enter your Name and email to go to the next page. I mean, think about how many hundreds of millions of people that one idea has influenced how it. You know, so, you know, you guys have done a lot of stuff. There's a lot of people saying, well, I've not. I didn't invent the squeeze page. I didn't create Strategic Coach. I'm not the number one writer in the world on medium.com. these guys have some great talent that I don't have. You know, there's that sort of thing. But the truth is, you know, I know the stories between all three of you. You've had to overcome some incredible adversities. You know, dad, you were bankrupt and divorced on the same day when you were 34 years old.

Is that what, 34? Yeah. Yeah. I did the divorce in the morning so could keep my credit card for lunch before I had to give it, because when you go bankrupt, you have to give in your credit card. So two things. One is that we established a no receivables business in 1984, and I based it on the movie industry. I said, when I go to a movie, when do I pay for the movie? And I said, you don't pay for a movie on the way out. You pay for the movie on the way in. And it increases your dedication to the movie that you've already paid for it. So since 84 we go, everything's up front. We never do anything. And the other thing is, I needed a great partner in both sides of my life. I needed a partner in my personal life. And on the day I was divorced, I wrote down the eight characteristics of the relationship. Not who the person had to be, but what the characteristics would be. And one year later to the date, I was at a weekend conference, and there was one seat left. I sat down and Babs was sitting next to me. And that's. And I started talking to her. And everything resonated with the sheet that I had put together about what the relationship had to be. And, you know, it's really been very magical for me to be in collaboration with Babs and Dean. You and I are great collaborators. Joe's a great collaborator. Ben's a great collaborator. And I don't ask anybody to do except the thing that they're uniquely good at and what they love at what they love doing.

Well, you said also when you met Babs, you said this one thing. You said you had made a decision that I didn't want to work on a relationship. I just wanted a relationship that worked.

Yeah.

And that doesn't mean you were not going to put, you know, I want to give the proper context because, you know, you are constantly working on your life, but you don't do it by bleeding to death. You don't do it by swimming against the grain, per se. I mean, you've learned and created a lot of thinking tools and a lot of methodologies to take adversity and turn it into usefulness. You're one of the best. I mean, I always say this all the time. Dan's the smartest entrepreneur thinker that I've ever met. I've been Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. I've interviewed Richard probably more than anyone. I've spent six weeks on Becker island and 30 minutes with Dan Sullivan is more useful than a week with Richard Branson in terms of business advice. Not that he hasn't built successful businesses, but the ability to teach and translate that to other people, and that's what these guys do so well. Dean is a great simplifier. Ben's an incredible writer. Dan with coaching all the entrepreneurs he has. So that's why I wanted to do this conversation today with everyone. One thing I want to get into is the entrepreneurial mindset. But I want to ask you and Dean something as a way to kind of frame what we're talking about. One of the things I've been doing with my team is asking everyone to share daily what's the results that they're producing. And I'm seeing how difficult it is for some of them to articulate what is actually results. So what was going on? We had this daily activity report, and I wanted everyone to produce results. And then I realized, well, I'm calling it a daily activity report, not a daily result report. Maybe that's why they're reporting activities. Right? Duh. You know, I mean, words have a lot to do with it. Dean's always talking about if you couldn't get paid for what it is that you do anymore, like, if there was some sort of law tomorrow that said you can no longer charge for your products or services or experiences or whatever the heck it is you're selling, and you could only get paid for a result, what would the result be? And I've been talking a lot about, you know, thought leaders. Everyone talks about thought leaders, but I like result leaders because anyone can come up with a thought. Right? So, Dean, how would you define a result? And I'd like to hear the same thing from you, Lee. How would you define a result? Because everyone here, they want to produce results in Their life. And in order to produce a result, they need capability. So I think they're here with us today to see what sort of inspiration, encouragement, how to ideas, that sort of thing. And then of course, you know, Ben Hardy here with the who, not how this is a great thing to, you know, frame this conversation. I want to hear what is the result? What does a result mean? So that we know if we're doing it or not. So you go first, Dean.

Okay. So I'm going to tie that back to what we were talking about. These groups. If you look at just what we've been talking about, I see in our screen right here, me and you and Lee and Ben, you were talking about those between the four of us, there's over half a million dollars a year that we've already just talked about between Strategic Coach and Genius Network of investment annually in our growth. Right. And if you don't come into something like that with a clear understanding of what is the result that you're looking for from it, then it's easy to get lost. It's easy to look at something like that as an expense. But when you look at it as an investment, that's what I look at it as a capital investment that's, you know, sanctioned by the government that gives you a tax break for doing it. To invest in ideas and contacts and relationships and being in what I call an abundance neighborhood. You know, when we talk about this idea of surrounding yourself with the people who are going to be, you know, moving forward in the same direction that you're moving forward over the next 25 years. And I'm surrounded in three environments like that with Genius Network, with Strategic Coach and with peter diamantes with Abundance360. I look at those three Abundance neighborhoods as where I want to hang out for the next 25 years. And so what I'm looking for is what is the ROI that my participation in those neighborhoods and that investment that I'm making going to yield? And the truth is that I've been playing with house money in those really in those environments for years. It doesn't take long before you get to a point where they're self sustaining. You know, I'm going to show an infographic because I'm super excited about it that if everybody can see this, this is a seven year case study that I just got the results for last week for September of 2013 till September of 2027 years that we were doing a case study with one of our real estate clients in Toronto. And this just to illustrate How I think about playing the long game on investment that you're making, both in capital, time, energy, relationships, environments, everything that you're doing, I'm looking for what's going to drive this so the components of it. And you can use this as a model for how you evaluate anything you're doing. Along the bottom are all the months from September 2013 to September 2020. The red dots along the bottom here represent the cumulative investment in postcards, newsletters, following up with the people who respond to the postcards. These green dots going up and to the right and gaining exponential traction. Here are the cumulative commissions that he's earned from people who have responded to the marketing that he's been doing along the way. And these yellow dots connected by these lines here represent when people first responded to the postcards that we sent out. If you look here, this was exciting this year, the top line, somebody responded in September of 2013 and in September of 2020 sold their house with Tony. And so that. And you can see every month in between here people are going, and if I zoomed in, he took. It was five months before he did his first transaction. But when he did that first transaction, he reached escape velocity and he's been self sustaining. All of this has been self funding for that ever since that first, that fifth month. And over time now it's been over a million 300,000 on $148,000 ad spend or investment at a 9.1 times ROI. And so when you start looking and evaluating your involvement in any sort of network, any sort of a mastermind, any sort of educational thing, you start looking at how much have I invested in this over time and then you really pay attention and look what were the ideas that I got or the people that I met or the relationship that I forged or the supplier that I learned about that generated a real result in this, an ROI and ROIs of money are the easiest thing for you to track. That's really why we're in this game of business. That's how we keep the score for things like that. So that kind of mindset, if you look at it for something in strategic coach, how can you point back if you're honestly reflecting on things that you're learning and saying what was this? That what freedom did this bring me or what result did this bring me or what insight did this bring me or who did I meet that led to this decision that got me into this outcome where I ended up with, with money? So that is certainly one of the ways that we keep scoring if you start evaluating the relationships that you get into and you start looking at them and driving that roi, not just passively sitting in there to learn and to just take it all in, you've got to actually do something. You know, you gotta, you gotta do it. You gotta find a who or tell your who's to do what you learned. I surround myself in those environments to be exposed to what's and who's that I can deploy to get a result. I don't want to do anything.

Love it, love it. Thank you. So Lee, follow up on that one.

What are your thoughts?

I love it because Dean and I.

Think a lot alike.

Of course I'm going to look at.

Return on investment in dollars, time, passion and relationships.

Right. For me personally, the roi, I'm fully content with the ROI I have in my companies already.

So now it's just adding extra value, adding extra ideas. But the relationship piece, that's the most important piece to me in the communities. Like Joe, if you look back to my first Genius X meeting with you, the very first founders meeting, people that.

I met in that group are lifelong friends. And not just that we're doing business together.

We're talking behind the scenes, we're talking about what's really going on in our.

Life and how do we improve and support each other through it.

So I think that, you know, the connections is really the most important to me.

I'm looking at return on investment on connections, but also what can I give?

I'm more of a giver. I usually come into the meetings not.

Needing anything, but I love giving and sharing and giving people public relations ideas.

And just building relationships.

And so that's my most important piece. Totally. Well, you're a giver. So you know, like my book Life Gives to the Giver. I mean, this is really about being a giver and it's about making an investment. I mean, the graphic that Dean just showed is really a visual representation of an investment in learning ideas, applying them, taking certain actions. And so, I mean, I think we all look at this from an investment standpoint in that the deeper you go with anything that is producing a result, the better the results tend to be, especially in the long term.

I said something really important though. Dean said he's looking at this and I am.

And Dan Sullivan teaches us this also.

Which is looking at it in a 25 year relationship.

This is not just about one year.

This is about building over time, time.

And I think about my tenure in.

Genius Network from the first year to now.

I mean, these are Deep relationships that I have now. But it took years seeing each other, sharing problems, having hot seats, being in the meetings, going to Arizona. It took years to get to this point.

And so now you could really see the difference between people just starting out and building those relationships versus already having them.

So I think the ones of us that have been in Genius Network for years, we actually get to be mentors to the new ones coming in and shortening their learning curve and letting them.

Know, which are great contacts for them.

And I think that's one of our.

Abilities to help blossom this group even.

More is looking at it almost like big brothers, big sisters to the next.

Generation, coming in and really connecting and being part of that.

I see Ben doing that all the time. Ben is so great about sharing those.

Little things that inspire people.

And they're like, oh, they feel so.

Much more included and so much more.

Seen because he does share that with them. So.

So I think we can all do that.

Jo, it's great to be with you.

It's so good to be here with you. So we're here in New York. We're going to talk about your new book, which is Thrive. Look at this. You need to get this immediately. The third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well being, wisdom, and wonder. So this is your 14th book?

Yes.

Why'd you write it?

Well, it was like the surprise baby. I had promised myself, my children, everybody who cared for me, that I would never write another book because it's always been so stressful and filled with deadlines and sleep deprivation, all the things I was trying to avoid. And then I gave a commencement speech at Smith where I talked about the need to redefine success and move beyond the first two metrics of money and power. Because so many people, including very successful people, were just completely burned out. And instead of finding happiness in success, they're undermining their health, their relationships, et cetera. The same happened to me, incidentally. So I was suddenly inundated with all these offers to write a book, and my agent had to sell it to me first, and finally he did. And I promised myself I would write it in a different way, and I did. It was a book which I wrote without the same kind of sense of stress and pressure that book writing has had for me before. So at least I proved to myself that it can be done in another way.

Right.

Okay.

So you're literally wanting to redefine the definition of success because you basically say in the book and you talk about this in your third Metric conferences that people can find online if they just look for it. That the definition that we currently have, that people look at money and power is what success is. And you're saying this is wrong and it's destroying people.

It is, and we have the evidence to prove it. We have 75% of health care costs in America are because of preventable chronic stress related diseases. And I'm talking about heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Etc. And women are particularly susceptible to it because we internalize stress differently. You know, you guys are better at handling it than we are. So women in stressful jobs have a 40% greater risk of heart disease and a 60% greater risk of diabetes. So I call this the third women's movement. You know, the first was to give us the vote. The second was to give us equal access to every job at every level, equal pay, etc. And it's still an ongoing process. We're not done yet. And the third one though, which is absolutely urgent, is to make sure that we change the world in which we are competing because it's not working for women, it's not working for men, it's not working for polar bears. It's not sustainable. And we're all, in some way or another, paying a price. You know, I start the book with my own wake up call.

Yeah, talk about that. When you literally collapsed in 2007.

I literally collapsed in 2007 and hit my head on the way down on my desk, broke my cheekbone, got four stitches on my right eye. And then nobody knew exactly what was wrong with me medically. So, you know, I found myself going from MRI to echocardiogram to test after test. And doctors waiting rooms, it turns out, are good places to ask yourself the big questions. What am I doing? What is a good life? Is this really success? You know, by conventional definitions of success, I was successful. You know, I was on the Time 100 list and I was on the COVID of magazines. But by any sane definition of success, I was clearly not successful. So that's what started me on this journey that was April 6, 2007.

Do you think someone needs to have literally hit bottom or one of these? Do you see, people typically change without having a heart attack or having some sort of major breakdown.

I think yes, when the culture changes. So that's why I'm an evangelist for this now. I want people to change. And I believe there is a collective longing to change without having painful wake up calls, often much worse than mine, often life threatening wake up calls, and that's why I believe that by putting together three things, my own personal journey, the information about how the world is changing. I mean, 2013 was the year when we had the coming out of the CEOs not as gay, but as being meditators.

You know, literally.

Mark Benioff of Salesforce and Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in America, who came out and said that after his he broke his neck during a skiing accident and after being hooked on narcotics, he discovered meditation, yoga and acupuncture. And it transformed his life. Immediately made them available to his 49,000 employees and then brought Duke University in to study the results. And they found a 7% reduction in healthcare costs and a 69 minute improvement in productivity a day.

Wow.

So that was my second. The second set of threads in the book. What are people doing that is advancing our lives in terms of thriving and not just succeeding? And the third one is all the scientific studies. There have been amazing scientific studies about the importance of sleep on our health, our productivity, our creativity. Practically every university now is having a sleep division of meditation on our creativity. So this is not like a trade off. It's not like we're saying, you know, be serene and peaceful and check out of life. On the contrary, what science proves is that the more we actually connect with our own center and our own essence, the more effective we're going to be in the world.

Well, I really teach people mostly now on how to be an effective speaker. How to transfer the ideas you have in your thoughts and your brain to the eyes and ears and thinking of your audience. The fastest way to grow your business and increase your success is to be an effective speaker, because that opens the door to expertise. If you have the ability to communicate what you know in such a clear and insightful way to your audience that they get it and then they start doing those things. That's the key. So when people ask me what makes a great speaker, it's one word.

Results.

The first entry in the logbook is what's it say? One of the great experiences of my life. Thanks for a great trip. Earl Nightingale February 17, 1987. Have you ever wondered why so many men work so hard and honestly without ever achieving anything in particular?

And others don't seem to work hard.

And yet seem to get everything.

They seem to have the magic touch. You've heard them say that about someone. Everything he touches turns to gold. And have you ever noticed that a.

Man who becomes successful tends to continue.

To become successful and on the other.

Hand, have you noticed how a man who's a failure tends to continue to fail?

Well, it's because of goals. Some of us have goals, some don't.

People with goals succeed because they know where they're going.

It's that simple.

Well, I had heard the Stranger secret like you and millions of people had, and it changed my life. From a carpenter going nowhere and making 62 bucks a week. So I wrote him a very detailed thank you note and he responded and he said, if you're ever in Naples, Florida, you know, give me a call. So I called and told him I'm coming. He said, well, let's go to dinner. So we went to dinner. He said something that shocked me that I can still remember. As we were getting into his car after dinner. I said, I was just so impressed that you took the time to respond to my thank you note. You must get millions of them. And he put his arm on my shoulder and he said, joel, I don't get very many at all. That recording has changed the lives of thousands of people and hundreds that I know of. And he said, well, I, that's why I responded. I never get letters like that. And that really told me the importance of thank you notes and gratitude. It was just an amazing experience to get to know the person behind the recording that to this day is still the largest selling spoken word message ever recorded. The Stranger's Secret by O Night Yahn. You can go to YouTube and listen to it. It would make a tremendous difference in your life.

Now let's get back to our definition of success.

Who succeeds?

The only person who succeeds is the person who is progressively realizing a worthy ideal.

The progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal. That's the progressive realization. Which means, just like you said, it's a journey. And so I think that's why you say always happy. Because I'm on the journey. That's the thing. It's not the end. It's where you are now. And you say this all the time. All we have is today. So why would everything be in the future? When I get this, I'll be really happy. No, you could be really happy today with what you have. And if you see that, then you're happy. Maybe that's why you don't see me grumpy and miserable. Is, you know this place where we're now sitting 1850 of these nights and days like this on this boat over the last 30 years. And you've probably never had like a big booze party or anything on this Boat.

No.

Not doing Jagermeister shots or anything like that. No, no, no, no.

That's why today there isn't really any competition unless we make it for ourselves.

Instead of competing, all we have to do is create. So Earl taught me this statement, don't compete, create. But he said, find out what everybody else is doing and don't do it. So I knew I couldn't have a normal business card. And then I heard that statement and I went and had a printed on a label. And so over half a million people have this can. Most of them keep it on their desk as a reminder of what they can do.

Yeah.

So if you just think about that, your success comes in cans, not in cannots. And you can do it ingredients, which is commitment, courage, faith, goals, imagination, creativity. If do not open can contains inedible. What is. Is there drugs in here? Is there some sort of powder? Here's what you can do. Here's what we can do for you. And this is great. Success comes in cans. Dot com. Yes. Yes. Doesn't matter what the day is. Rain, thunder, you lost a big client. You can still make it a great day. Have a great day means you're subject to conditions. When you make it a great day, it's on you. So how many of you watch Shark Tank? All right.

How many of you.

Yeah, yeah.

How long.

How long has this been going on now?

This is my. This is the Shark Tank. It's been eight years now.

Eight years. It's the eighth season.

Yeah.

Awesome. How long have you, Jay, known Damon?

I don't know, Jay.

Has it been 8 years or 10 years or.

It's been wet to start.

Yeah.

I really wish you would have dressed up today.

Seriously.

You know, the problem is. A problem is nobody invites me anymore to cocktail parties or social functions, and I got to get use out of my clothes. Right, right. It's true. That's true. He was supposed to dress better than me.

What's this?

You built a multi billion dollar fashion thing and you're wearing.

What's it say I'm wearing?

Just casual, you know, a little tie.

No, this is good.

I like the.

Yeah, multis something.

Yeah.

So that is the biggest freaking diamond I've ever seen in someone's ear.

That is huge.

I'll tell you the story of that one day.

Okay, so first off, thank you both for being here. This is awesome. And how many of you heard the interview that I did with Damon and John? Okay. Wasn't that fantastic? Okay, awesome. So let's start with Jay. Since I Didn't give you a bio. What do people need to know about you and who you are? And you say whatever you want in under one minute. Okay, I've grown businesses for a living for 40 years.

How's that? Yeah.

Okay.

That is quick.

That's quick.

So I've got a few questions for both of you. So you're both well known and well respected for your entrepreneurial accomplishments. You both have rather outrageous background stories. What one factor do each of you think, more than anything else, determine or define what you each became and why? And how can that same factor benefit everyone in this room? We'll start with you.

I think there was a couple of factors. There was two factors, I remember, but the main one, I think, was that when my parents got divorced and I was 10 years old, I was actually in Catholic school. And I remember acting up as a kid going, you know what? If I act up, my father will come back. You know, because this is the sensibility of a child, right? My father will come back. My parents will get back together because my grades are bad. So I remember, you know, like, the last test in school, the nuns said to my mother, listen, you know what if Damon. We understand Damon's acting up, and we would normally have to leave him back, but we're going to give him one last chance. So that night before the test, I went out and played basketball with my friends. I did everything I could to not complete the test. I go in the next day, I do the test, and the test comes back, and I get like a 30 on the test. And I was very pleased with that. My mother comes into school, and the nun says, you know what? We're not going to leave him back again. We understand he's acting out because of what's going on in his life. And my mother said, no, you're gonna leave him back. So number one, I got left back. Second of all, there was public school.

Up the block, where I felt like.

They just ate their young and crawled on all fours up there. They were just nasty people, right? And my mother said, and I'm taking you out of this Catholic, cushy school where you have all your buddies you've been in since the first grade, and you're gonna go to public school. And I said, no way in the world is that gonna happen. And then she said, and you're also not going to go out the entire summer. I said, she works three jobs. How the hell can she watch over me?

No way.

My mother goes and gets a fourth job, hires a babysitter. Who watches me, takes me out of that school, and I end up back in the seventh grade in the public school with the kids stealing my sneakers every day. I realized at that point that I was responsible for my own actions. And many of our kids don't realize that. And even my daughters have a challenge with that up until, you know, 20 years old. And I try not to baby them, but at that point I realized that nobody's going to save me. And I think that was very instrumental at a very early age of my life.

Yeah, that's good, that's good.

What about you, sir? Probably the most, I guess, defining is that I had always a hopeless curiosity and an outrageous fascination for what, why, how people were doing things. And I was a business transit.

I have no education.

I got started at 18 and two kids at 20. And I jumped around, but not from job to job, industry to industry. And I would realize how totally different each industry was in the way they thought and their actions. And I have always had an obsessive desire to. To learn how many different ways, different.

Businesses, but more importantly, different industries. Think act, strategy, access vehicle, business model.

And I think that's probably made a.

Bigger difference in defining my.

If you want to talk about not just success, but the ability to add.

A lot of dimension to people.

Yeah.

I don't think anyone would be listening to 10X Talk or any of our podcasts if they're not looking for better ways to do stuff. Which leads to my next question then, because you mentioned earlier, you have a path. So from your perspective, are there any proven paths to success as an entrepreneur? And I mean the word proven. Like, if you do this, this just works. And I know that's sort of a loaded question and stuff, but I wanted to, you know, that's my question for you guys.

Yeah. You want to go first, Dan? Yeah, I will. I was reading, you know, I'm kind of a history buff, so I was reading about Napoleon and you know, interesting, you know, interesting character. I mean, he born kind of poor, wasn't even born in France. He was born on Corsica, which is an island in the. Off the coast of France. And you know, came up and, you know, within 15 years after he came up, he was the emperor of Europe, you know, I mean, and bright guy, very short, probably about five foot two. You know, five foot two and. But he was really interesting. And the one thing that he really comprehended is. And Joe, you've talked, you've talked about a famous saying of his that his life changed when he discovered that a Man would die for a blue ribbon, for a piece of ribbon, and that he understood that people would dedicate themselves to something that was much bigger, that also recognized him as important. You know, he had this notion of giving people a sense of importance, but he had this thing about bringing up officers as fast as they could take command. And he would ask his senior officers, who all came up the same way, to describe why this person should be an officer. And Napoleon says, well, I know he's good. My next question, though, is he lucky? And I think that entrepreneurs have a keener sense for luck than the general population. And what I mean by that. And you said it right at the beginning, Gino, I'm the right person at the right time in the right place. Well, that's what luck is. Luck is being the right person at the right time. And I think if you look at entrepreneurs who are really successful, they leave a very, very large part of their thinking to, what is luck in this situation? What is luck in this situation? And luck is. You're the only one who sees this. You're the only one who understands the opportunity. You're the only one who knows how to organize it. And there's a window, not a. Not a wide open window, but a window that if you act right now and you take action.

You'Re going to.

Be the lucky one. And you have to be unlucky enough to know the difference. Joe, I mean, Joe, I was sitting, watching your documentary that Nick. Nick Nanton did, and I was going through it, and a lot of people said, oh, that's awful. That's awful. I said, outlier, outlier, outlier, outlier, outlier. Everything about you is an outlier. I mean, antisocial, you know, everything. I said, what else could he be besides an entrepreneur?

Yeah, exactly.

Or a criminal. Or a criminal. You should have a conversation with Andre Norman, something. You know, the line between entrepreneurs and criminals is not that wide.

Well, there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that are in jail because they just, you know, they chose a different path to take. Their entrepreneurial.

Chose badly. It's like Indiana Jones. You. You chose wisely. You know, they choose badly. Yeah, we know. I mean, we know the characters. We know the characters. And one is, they're great salespeople. I mean, they're. What?

Yeah, yeah, totally. No, totally. Go ahead, Gino, what were you gonna say?

I was just gonna say, and that's why I desperately want to get this book into jails and prisons, because it's I mean this is the book they need to read. I couldn't agree with you more. That many of them, if not most, are entrepreneurs in the making. They just use their skills for evil, not good. And now they have an opportunity to use them for goods. There's an opportunity there. But in answering your question, Joe, here's what I would suggest. So is there a process for becoming an entrepreneur? I really believe that there isn't one. There is no perfect system, no perfect process, no perfect method, no perfect way. And if somebody's trying to tell you there is one, I think they're selling you a bill of goods, in my humble opinion. But I always say when asked that question, if there were a process, this would be it. It's a four step process. Step one, you have an idea. Step two, you take your entrepreneurial leap and start your business. Step three, you fight like hell for 10 to 20 years. And step four, you emerge a successful entrepreneur. Hopefully because you've got a 50, 50 shot at best at succeeding. The odds are challenging. With that said, now we're onto the path part of the book. And in Path, what I do believe is that you can help an entrepreneur understand some guideposts, some awarenesses along their journey that again will greatly increase their odds of success and eliminate half the mistakes they'll make. And at a very high level, the chapters in path are deciding on college or not. And I give all the pros and cons and all the data for that entrepreneur in the making to decide the best path for them. How to discover your passion because I believe passion is vital and, and you becoming successful. How to find a mentor because having a mentor will get you there faster. Next is 10 year thinking. Dan subscribes to 25 year thinking. I am just trying to get him to think 10 years and then I will turn him over to Dan to get him to think 25 years. But there is power in that. I then share eight disciplines for increasing your odds of success. And I share the nine stages. And devouring those chapters will absolutely given entrepreneur and making a clearer path a better path. But there just is no perfect system or process.

Let me ask you this Joe.

He's really shameless. I mean in his pitching. I mean have you ever, I mean has there ever been a stretch in any 10 times talk where we just had a pure pitch for like two and a half minutes? I'm honored.

He's very sneaky about it. You know, all guys under trying to help people. But you know, what are those eight disciplines? What are the nine stages. You know, you got to read the book. So it's called Entrepreneurially. Well, that's fine. So you mentioned, you know, the importance of having a mentor. And I mean, we all have businesses that bring entrepreneurs together. I mean, all three of us, we focus on the entrepreneurial world. That's, you know, Dan's got that, the great, you know, the great concept of who do you want to be a hero to? Right. Even wrote a book which is worth reading on it. And, you know, we all want to be heroes and our heroes to entrepreneurs. Those are the people that, that we, we go after. And so anyone that would be listening to this is all a potential client of all three of us. Right. Depending on where they come in.

And all at the same time.

Exactly, exactly. And so what I have found about entrepreneurs, the really smart ones, is they will pay for shortcuts, they will pay for results. And the ones that hem and haw about it, I mean, I, honest to God, I just see so many truly stupid people. And not that they don't have value, but just the decision making. I mean, some of the ways I will see people that will place more value on buying like $100,000 car than they will going out and joining a group that can teach them how to reduce the stress, make more money to buy 10 of those cars. Right. But they will belabor those sort of things. And, you know, you guys are of the same thing. We all invest getting better at our craft as much as we want to, you know, say antisocial. Is there one thing is we are, we're looking how to be better gold miners. Right. And so what, like, what would you say to that? Because I think that to me, one of the things I love about genius networking, about strategic, like, if someone's not willing to cut a check, it speaks volumes about their own future. You know, they think we're trying to sell them something and we certainly have things for sale, but they're investing. It's like what Dan said early on. He's like, you know, you make. This is your future. I mean, you're not giving, you know, the money you're. You're spending is. You're having the question, should I give Dan the money? Should I give Gino the money? Should I give Joe the money? It's like it's your future.

Yeah.

So go ahead. It looks like you're going to say something, Gino, and for people, I was.

Going to ask you. What's the question in that?

Oh, no. So the question is, what would you Say about the value, literally joining like strategic coach or pursuing a mentor, things like that, signing up to hire an EOS implementer. I mean, these are things that all of us like, every one of us, we're clients of each other, right? Which is kind of cool. But we do it because it grows our entrepreneurial enterprises.

So a thought that comes to mind is this like two contexts. If we go back 30 years ago, a mentor, because that's what launched this question is that chapter on mentoring. And so 30 years ago, when I was coming up, mentorship was free. I had free mentors. I had people that took me under their wings, spent lots of time with me and taught me. And as time has gone on, mentorship has become more of a paid engagement. I'm a paid mentor to my clients. Dan is my paid mentor. He's been my mentor for 23 years. I consider him my greatest mentor. And I cut him a really big check every year for that. So my point in this is there's still free mentorship out there. And I teach a very specific process for how to go find a free mentor, which is a one on one relationship with someone who is where you want to be. But you know, paid mentorship is the way of the future and the way of now. And so you just have to decide as that entrepreneur in the making, what is the education you're seeking. And I do share in this new book. Strategic Coach program is one of the steps on the journey. I say once you reach the minimum qualification, get in that program because I believe that will catapult an entrepreneur in the making at that phase. So I would just offer up two things to the audience. There's two types of mentors. You can find free ones and you should pay for the paid ones. And it's just a question of what you're looking for, where you want to be, and if they can get you there faster, it's a no brainer. I have spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on my education. I spend 5% of my income every year on education. I've spent enough money and time to get a PhD three times over. I never went to college. I graduated high school with a 2.3 GPA. And I couldn't be more proud of that because I knew at 18, there's no way in hell I'm spending another minute in academia. That structure is not for me. But I spent a fortune in the last 30 years because education is so important.

And I would even, I would even say when it comes to free mentorship, you know, there. It's not like they're advertising free mentors here. I mean, you can listen to podcasts. You know, this is a great way to get mentorship. Read someone's book. You can buy entrepreneurial leap, right? What I would say, though, is that anything that the three of us have gotten for free, we went out and we found it. We created value for someone, we had conversations, we did whatever it is we needed to do. You know, I've always loved the line, amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals do it with a headache. And when I didn't have any money and I was a dead broke carpet cleaner, what I did have is I had time and I had energy, because you can spend time, you can spend money, you can spend energy. And once I got money and I learned how to make money, I just started reinvesting that money. And I love giving money to people that what I get in return, I can say, wow, you know, I mean, I've never regretted cutting the check for Strategic Coach. I love cutting the check for strategic Coach. Right. I love cutting the check for eos. It's helpful. It doesn't cost me anything. It's a multiplier. You know, to use Dan's term, you're one of the most successful, you know, media moguls in the world today. So what entrepreneurial lessons could you share with everyone here as it relates to what you've discovered and thrive that would just reduce a lot of suffering in their lives and give them what you define as the real success, the ability to focus on the metrics, the third metrics.

So I think recognizing that we are our most valuable resource, you know, so often entrepreneurs somehow feel that they can just keep going and going and going and we forget the need to renew ourselves. That's what I did the first two years of Hoffman's life. And honestly, I can say without doubt, we are now nine years old, that when I changed that I was infinitely more effective. Because after all, as leaders in a business, our greatest value added is being clear about where we are going and being able to see the icebergs before they hit the Titanic. It's not micromanaging. And when we are exhausted, it's easier to micromanage because it's transactional and that's what we gravitate towards. So for me, operating as an entrepreneur from a place of renewal, and again, I'm not doing that 100%. I'm not saying any of that is 100%, but I can say now that 90% of the time I'm there. And you said something very important, Joe, which is don't try to do it through willpower. Willpower is too weak. It's like I try to do it in small steps, and then you see the reward and it becomes a magnet that draws you. Like now I've gotten to the point where I really, really do not like myself. When I'm exhausted and burned out, I feel I'm overreactive. I'm not clear. I'm foggy. So I don't like that place. While before I was oblivious, now I'm very acutely aware of it. So at the Huffington Post, for example, I've instituted nap room so people can have naps in the middle of the afternoon. At first, you know, people were rolling their eyes like, who is going to be seen walking into a nap room in New York City? Now, you know, they're perpetually full. People are asking for a third one. And I have a couch in my office. And when I want to have. When I'm tired, I have a nap. And I used to. I have a glass office. I used to close the curtain and now I don't. Because again, I think you lead by example. It's like sending the message, it's okay to be seen napping on the job. And you know what was so funny? I didn't tell you that, but when I was in London, I went to speak at the US Embassy in London and I was asked a question about the nap rooms. And the ambassador was there, and somebody said, well, it would be great to have nap rooms in the embassy. And the ambassador said, okay, let's do it. And the Washington Post wrote about it. And the State Department put out a statement saying, state Department employees do not sleep on the job. And I thought, well, that's the problem with the U.S. government. You know, they don't realize that sleeping on the job, as they put it, that is recharging would actually makes them better at their job. They're operating in the middle ages of pre scientific delusions about what makes success and effectiveness. And it was just funny to see it, like in black and white.

You know, I have a friend, Dr. Edward Hollowell, who's, you know, this is a top ADD ADHD psychiatrist. And he has the same where if you don't manage modern life, it will manage you. And he's talked about how we have almost a cultural add where it's become so normal for people to be kind of crazed that you really have to, you know, you're not going to go out to the world and get a lot of support. This is something you actually have to build on yourself. I mean, your definition of success taken to many people like, well, you're crazy. What are you talking about? And so you're. But what you're doing is you're wanting to just get more people first to recognize and be aware of it and then shift that message.

And that's why we all need what we call a thrive body. At least one kind of member of your tribe that you can. I mean, my first tribe body is my sister Agapenopoulos who is here with me. And it's just a great support to have.

Who's funnier out of the two of you? Is she funnier than you or what do you think?

She's everything nicer and funnier and everything and wonderful. And I feel very blessed that we share this journey together because it's just amazing to see what a difference it makes. I mean, let's say if you are tempted to binge watch House of cards instead of going to sleep, you can call your thrive buddy and they can talk you down.

It's called a sponsor in sponsor.

Exactly. I'm trying to be a little less kind of addiction language driven. Although I totally love it. And I think the AA model is fantastic. I write in the book about my own daughter in her last year at Yale getting involved in drugs and she's now been sober for almost three years and, and how much value she got from aa. And I wrote about it with her permission because I'm hoping it can help other families that are going through similar problems.

Well, you know, I like bringing that up. And maybe I talk about addiction. I maybe intermingle it more on a personal level because coming, you know, from being a former, you know, heavy drug user, When I was 18 years old, you know, I weighed 105 pounds, I think told that story to you. But you know, the thing that Dan Sullivan from Strategic coach has this whole model of who do you want to be a hero to in the world? And you know, I thought about that a lot after many conversations with Dan. And I want to be a hero to entrepreneurs because I think entrepreneurs are the ones that make things happen. They're the ones that provide jobs, they're the ones that do innovation. They're the ones that create solutions. This room is filled with them. I want to be entrepreneurs too. Hero to entrepreneurs and to addicts. Because addicts endure incredible suffering and some of the greatest people on the planet are addicts. And when, you know, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi who wrote the book Flow, he talked about the neuropathways in the human brain. The same ones that the greatest artists, entertainers, entrepreneurs use to be in a state of flow are also the same neural pathways that an addict uses for psychology. And I mean, you can see it recently with Robin Williams, you know, incredible genius redirected in pain and depression and stuff. And so a term in addiction in like AA or any 12 step group for that matter, they use the halt state. You know, halt don't make a decision when you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired. And what's great is, you know, thrive is about how to not get into that halt state. So you don't want to make a decision when you're in a halt state. But part of it is just setting your life up so you minimize any times that you get in those because you just make bad decisions.

And when we get there to catch ourselves and course correct quickly, we are going to get there. I mean, the truth is that nobody while or on this planet is going to be in a thriving state all the time. The important thing to recognize is that we can course correct really fast so we don't have to be off center as long as we have traditionally been off center. We can return to center really quickly.

Yeah, well, I'm going to, in just a minute we're going to do some Q and A with the audience. So if you have a question you want to ask Arianna, think of it and then go up to the mic. What I'd like to ask you is this is a really important message and certainly I've been behind it and I've loved your book and I've wanted to share this message with as many people as I could, which is why we've done the interview and I've, you know, we've gotten a lot of people involved with this because it's important. I mean, this will reduce suffering and I really want to reduce suffering for entrepreneurs because these are great people doing amazing things, but they don't do great work when they're burnt out, when they're exhausted, when they're not rejuvenating. And what's the whole point of making profit if you can't enjoy life?

Profit.

And so what could, what, how could we best help you with your goals and objectives with this movement? I mean, what sort of support can we help you? Because I think collaboratively you've got a huge platform, but we also are sitting in a room with some really sharp, brilliant people. So what are your thoughts on that? How can we help you?

Well, first of all, thank you for your support and for really believing in the message. And I would love to invite all of you to write on the Huffington Post about your experiences, either your experiences with burnout or wake up calls or your experiences with how you thrive and how you are prioritizing when you are prioritizing your own renewal and recovery and regeneration. And to make it super easy for you to bypass the growing Huffington Post bureaucracy, I will give you my email address so you can send it to me and we can set you up with a password and you can block whenever you want. So It's Arianna with 1R and 2 NSuffingtonpost.com and then what we do is we translate a lot of what comes on the subject in all our other editions because it's a global phenomenon and we want not just the States, but people around the world to be exposed to it. And I'm finding there is nothing more powerful than sharing our stories. You never know who is going to be moved by JJ stories or Tim stories or people are touched by different stories. So my story may touch certain people and your story may touch other people. And I feel traditionally they say that people don't change except through pain. I want us to change that paradigm. Why should it be so? Why should you all have your own wake up calls, those who haven't had them yet? Why can't you learn from mine? And that's kind of really my hope that we can accelerate a global shift that's already happening. The global shift is already happening. 2013 was an amazing year. It was the year when CEO after CEO came out not as being gay, but as being meditators. You know, it was really amazing. I was talking to Ray Dalio, who is the founder of Bridgewater, the biggest hedge fund, and he said to me, I've been meditating for 45 years. I said, why are you just saying it now? And the assumption before now was that if you're meditating, you're kind of a little New Agey, flaky, kind of vaguely Californian and not really serious. And now that's changing.

Well, I do TM every day.

Yeah.

And he actually credits meditation for his the number one thing for his most success.

Yeah.

Which is awesome.

Yes. I was at a conference recently and I was asked to lead a meditation before my session. And instead, Ray Dalio was there. I asked him to lead the meditation. And it was really great because this was a group of hardcore business people. And having Ray Dalio there say you know, meditation has been the foundation of my success and explaining why, because he could see more clearly. Because he could see the eyes of before they hit the Titanic. And connected with that is the fact that this is a global phenomenon. That all around the world, countries, business, people are taking steps. Some are pioneers, as it always happens, and ahead of the curve. And others are laggards and they're going to be the last to catch on. But it's happening everywhere. But I feel within room and the power and creativity in this room. We can help accelerate this global shift.

Good morning, Geniuses. Relationships are the key to success in your business and in your life. Why is Genius Network the most sought after network and mastermind? Well, it's the relationships. But really, why? Why are the relationships themselves so important? Well, as Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy have shared with us, relationships are your who. And it's the who's in your life that lead to a growing or declining business, a thriving and supportive marriage, or one heading towards divorce. And is the place that you fulfill the most fundamental need of being connected.

You took my part.

Wait, what?

That was supposed to be my line.

No, I said right before this that I was going to do that part. So you didn't listen. Just go with it.

You always say I'm not listening. That's not true.

No, stop. I can't believe you're doing this in front of Genius.

Because I'm not going to be the one to apologize. You always make me apologize.

Well, it's not my fault, so I'm not going to.

Fine.

How many of you can relate to having any argument ever with someone close to you? You can go ahead and type in the chat if you have ever had an argument with someone close to you. And then there's the period of time after the argument where you feel disconnected, both physically, emotionally. You feel upset or hurt by things they said or how they said it. You can even feel guilty for how you acted or how you showed up during the disagreement. We call this the argument hangover. It's that period of time between having an argument and fully resolving it emotionally. Even think about the topics that sparked a disagreement. A lot of times they're not life altering things or things that are actually that important to you. But how you act during the disagreement is what creates that argument hangover period. And how long does that last for you? Is it hours? Days, Weeks?

Months?

We've heard couples being in argument hangovers till they are able to fully resolve it and reconnect. And here's the thing. As the leaders and entrepreneurs that you are during this argument hangover period. You're not as creative, you're not showing up as the most inspiring leader. You're not modeling the best relationship you could to your children. Right? The impact of the argument hangover is even beyond how you feel. So then people mostly only see two choices. One, avoid getting into conflicts altogether or avoid that person slowly stop talking to them as much or be more distant from them. Slowly the relationship can dissolve. How many potentially great who's have been eliminated from your life because of the argument hangover?

And this topic is so impactful right now that we were given a book earlier in this year for the Argument Hangover, which actually hit shelves now on February 2nd. So this 10 minute talk is Fighting Smarter 101. And in the next seven minutes, you're going to know how to keep argument hangovers from ruining the most important relationships in your life. You're going to have the 5R process to fully repair from any argument hangover. Feel prepared to handle any challenge with the certainty that you can strengthen that relationship.

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.

Now, getting honest here and go ahead and type in the chat. Would you consider yourself a great communicator?

We want to know. Type it in the chat.

So we'll give you a second to type that in there. Yes, yes, yes. Sometimes. And honestly, this is a place to be authentic and no judgment here. So taking a look and we have to be honest with all of ourselves, we're a little biased in our own favor because it's easy to communicate when people do what you want them to. So if people are agreeing with you, they're always a yes to your requests. Is that really being a great communicator? See, masterful communicators strengthen relationships when there isn't agreement, when people do not agree with you, when they don't do exactly what you ask them to, when they don't see things your way. Now, Chris Fawson never split a difference. Said, life is a negotiation and negotiation is a game of empathy. So masterful communicators, truly masterful, do not avoid conflicts. They lean into the conversation, they stay in communication and they seek to be more understanding and be more empathetic to use that opportunity to actually strengthen that relationship.

Now, being empathetic sounds nice in theory, but what often happens instead is you do more damage by how you fight than the original cause. And here's something that's important to say for those that think, oh, I don't do damage, I just get quiet. Getting quiet and shutting down can do just as much damage because it isolates the other person. So how do you know that you're doing damage from how you fight? Well, ask yourself things. Do people in your life ever feel conversations go unresolved? Do they ever feel invalidated or misunderstood? Do people ever feel resentment is building up between you? Two important questions to really reflect on for yourself. The goal, though, is not to avoid conflict, but to shorten the argument hangover period. Now, it's counterintuitive to people to think you shouldn't avoid conflict, no, because conflict is actually where innovation can happen. Conflict is where there can be a deeper level of understanding yourself, the other person. And in romantic relationships, healthy conflict can lead to more intimacy and a deeper connection between you two. So instead of avoiding those benefits, focus on shortening that argument hangover period, which again is how long you're disconnected, both physically and emotionally. But you need a process for this, a process to repair. Because saying I'm sorry is not enough sorry to say hit to you. Sorry about sorry, but saying I'm sorry isn't enough because number one, if you always default to that, it starts to mean less to the other person. And two, it doesn't really show them that anything was learned for there to be change in the future.

That process is the five Rs to repair from a conflict. So the first R is to reflect. Request a pause for yourself to consider expectations and the root cause. So here you are in a conversation and it's getting to a place that's really not constructive because you're both really reacting. So I would say to Jocelyn, you know what? I think we just need to take a pause here. We'll come back to this in about two hours. Now, for those of you reflecting, you may also currently be in an argument hangover with somebody else. So you can reflect now about that relationship if you really wanted to strengthen. So what you're going to reflect on is your disappointments. Because all disappointments in your life and in your relationship come from unmet expectations. Now, often you aren't even aware of your unmet expectations in the moment. So it's not clear to you. So you're not even Going to share it. So they go unexpressed. And this is often what causes us to react, to have emotional triggers. So you're reflecting on what expectations that go unmet do I have about myself or this person? And what's the real root cause of either this conflict or being in an argument hangover with this person. So then the second R, while you're taking this personal time, is responsibility for the role you played and the impact your actions had. So this person was in a conversation with you, so that means you were a part of it. Now, I know often some of us say, well, it was their fault, they started it. Now, it is not a question of if you had responsibility as a leader. You will look at where you had responsibility, where you can take responsibility for the actions and the things that you said that had the impact on them. Now, it's not a place to say, oh, well, that wasn't my intention, or why did you take it that way? No, can you take responsibility that what you said and what you did had the impact that it did on them and have the responsibility for that?

So the third are after those first two, which are on your own now, you're coming back to reconnect, and you're going to share where you're taking responsibility and validating their perspective. Now, here's what's tricky about this step. That part of us, we can call it the ego in that argument hangover period can want to stay distant. You may not feel like reconnecting because you're still frustrated. You still feel like they need to say something to make it better. But the goal here is to reconnect faster. In our experience with thousands of couples, a lot of times the relationship dissolving isn't always because they're fighting too much. You know what it's related to? They're not reconnecting fast enough after a disagreement. And so resentment builds between them the longer that the two of them wait to reconnect. Now when you come to them, you're not saying, all right, tell me what you learned. Tell me how you're sorry for what happened. You're going to start with, hey, here's where I'm taking responsibility. I reflected, here's what I realized and validate their perspective. Was there a place that you were unwilling to acknowledge how they felt or how they saw the situation?

The fourth R is to remind. Remind this person of what your commitment is to the relationship and what your agreements are. So this is the place that also goes kind of overlooked because we think of relationships at Times as the function that serves us. But what is your larger purpose? What is your commitment to that relationship? So I might say to Jocelyn, inside of all this, my commitment to you is that you feel supported and that you feel loved. And my commitment to the relationship is that we both live the lives that we know we came here to live.

I'm on board for that.

So sharing your commitment for the relationship as well as reminding of what your agreements are now, right there, you might have thought, well, I don't have agreements for this relationship. Perfect. This is a time to put in place agreements you have between the two of you. And if you do have agreements for, you know, example, Jocelyn and I have agreements in times of conflict, of not to raise our voice, not to swear and not to turn our back and just leave the room without saying when we'll come back. So we remind each other if we forgot the agreements or if they're broken, we remind each other to come back to them.

So the fifth R is to reconcile. Reconcile the conflict into opportunity. You can either see conflict as something that shouldn't happen, that tears you apart and you resist it, or you can see conflict as something that leads to more connection, more understanding yourself, healing something between your relationship and those new ideas and solutions can come from that. So together, can you look at what new opportunities showed up because of this disagreement? So let's look at your personal commitment. If you would type in the chat, which step are you going to commit to being even better at in your relationships? Is it reflecting more, not just brushing things under the rug, but actually reflecting on the disagreement? Is it taking responsibility? Is it aiming to reconnect faster and not letting it be days before you reconnect? Is it reminding people in your life of what you're committed to, or is it starting to reconcile that conflict is an opportunity instead of something that shouldn't happen? All right, so since it's a little hard to see the chat, I'm going to guess there's a mix of it all. Thank you for typing in the chat.

Now, implementing this 5R process will keep unresolved argument hangovers from ruining the most important relationships in your life. And as Ben Hardy wrote in who Not How, Relationships Are the Purpose of Life. So as now, a masterful communicator, someone committed to great relationships and great who's. You don't avoid conflict. You seek to shorten your argument hangover period as well as not have them escalate through the things that you say rather than just what the root cause was. And you stay Engaged in the conversation, you get more understanding as you see this as opportunity to truly strengthen that relationship. And by doing so, you can live a truly successful and fulfilling life.

So, as everybody knows, the world has drastically changed over the last two, three years. We will never go back to the normal and business is not as usual. There is a war, and it's not the war in Ukraine or a war on drugs, but there's a war on consciousness. And the next step in this war is a global recession. And we're on the brink of it today. How do I know this? Well, besides going down deep rabbit holes myself, over the last five years I've been invited to different group of power and influence known as secret societies and have gotten a firsthand look at how money and power is accumulated and influenced at the highest levels. The key players are not politicians and the billionaires, but the shadow organizations who control them. What's going on in plain sight is that a deeply entrenched global power system is doing everything it can to preserve and expand its control and power through big tech and big finance. During the pandemic, this foundation was laid out for the next phase of this plan. Between January 20th and November, January 2020 and November 2021, four central banks pumped $9 trillion under the story of stabilizing the economy. Nine trillion. Just to give you an idea how much 9 trillion is. So just 1 trillion. If you were to stack $100 bills for just 1 trillion, you would be twice as high as the International space station. So 9 trillion would be 9 times higher than that. So what really happened with all of this money? When the news, we saw stories about historic levels of unemployment, underemployment, financial insecurity. Yet we saw the largest wealth transfer in modern history. In the US alone. There's $2.1 trillion for billionaires that masked more wealth. Secretly, health care professionals and experts like this guy became the largest landowner in the United States. The deck is stacked and now we're ready for this recession. Or are we now knowing that the next move in this war is a global recession? What can you do? Well, over the last two years, I've been putting together what I call the new millionaires playbook, a guide on how to win this war and create a life of freedom, sovereignty and abundance and help redefine millionaire as someone who positively impacts a million lives. Now, in this 10 minutes, I won't be able to go through the entire playbook, but what I'm going to do is share the four keys that will help you unlock this beautiful future that we actually have the opportunity to co create. Key number one is resilience. You need to protect your wealth. As an example, inflation, as most of you may know, is at its highest it's ever been since 1981. That means that if you are, it's at 8.6%. That means that if you are not earning at least 8.6% return on your capital right now, you're actually losing money. Most of us know that the banks aren't our friends and they certainly don't have our best interest or heart. So the question becomes how do we create a life and reality that isn't dependent on this broken system? So here's some of the things that I'm doing. For one, I'm diversifying my liquid and illiquid assets based on what's accessible and useful to me and my family. I want to be prepared for the worst case scenario that either a real or a false flag cyber attack may take down the grid. Again, I'm not a doomsdayer. As most of you guys know. I'm an eternal optimist and we'll get more into this thinking shortly. But I believe in minimizing the downside when there's a clear and present risk. Here are just a few of the ways that I am diversifying and mitigating risk and you can too.

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.

Precious metals, particularly gold. Precious metals are an excellent investment because they historically beat inflation. While it's a slower and longer investment strategy, they are also a good form of security to preserve your wealth. What you want to do is have some gold in an insured vault and have small denominations at home. Because worst case scenario, we might actually have to transact in gold coins if things do go crazy, which I wouldn't rule out these days. Next is investing in regenerative land and real estate. Land is something that you can't just keep printing. The government will keep printing money, but you can't keep printing land. One of the things that we're doing is looking at regenerative land projects that we can invest in and actually be able to grow food and feed off of the land if we need to self sufficiency. While this doesn't directly affect our financial portfolios, I see investing in self sufficiency as one of the most important investments of our time. I want to be prepared for the worst case scenario like I said. So I'm looking at energy through solar, direct water source, permaculture to grow our own food and I sound like a crazy prepper, but we're actually storing a year's worth of non perishable foods so that we could survive if things go crazy. I'm also playing volatility in the cryptocurrency markets while mitigating risk. Some of you may remember a couple years ago I did a talk at GN called Get in the Game where I shared some of the secrets of how I was using trading bots to generate a profit in crypto. As a matter of fact, I went to my dear friend Jason Fladlian and said, hey, have you heard of this? And he politely shrugged me off. And then a few months ago he has the biggest Internet launch in history and makes $58 million doing what, you guessed it, Using crypto trading bots to generate substantial profits. I'm just bugging you Jason. I love you and I'm so grateful for your friendship. I've since been investing in a company and product called Sigma that has been a secret weapon for me inside of crypto and blockchain. It has been generating up to 1% a week in yield despite the massive downturn in the markets and will produce an annual return that will be greater than the rate of inflation. Key number two is transformation and using Web three as a portal for change. As a lot of you may know, Web3 organizations are on the rise and are able to solve unique global challenges that have not yet been addressed. And to simply understand Web3 we must first quickly look at Web1 and Web2. Web1 was the basic HTML, the first iteration of the Internet web crawler, search engines basically read only. Web2 has been everything from 2005 to present day social media, mobile access, really having a more interconnected communication system. And then Web three is the new. It's the new way of money power and also where the metaverse is being built and able to process complex information through concepts like the Internet of things. I won't go too deep down that today and then decentralization is an aspect of this shifting of power because it's not going to be a centralized power anymore, it'll be actually decentralized power which is spreading power and distributing it back to the people. So how does this, what does this have to do with the talk that I'm giving today? Well, with decentralized power comes the possibility of redistributing it and not repeating the same patterns that we have in the past. The past system was designed with unconscious and misaligned incentive structures. The new system will allow us to move from win lose dynamics to omni wind dynamics. And some of you may have heard of buzzwords like DAOs, which are decentralized autonomous organizations. And they will be paramount for this paradigm shift. And so we have a unique opportunity to be builders of web3 and truly ensure it works for all. What am I doing here? Well, one of the things that I've realized as a venture capitalist is that during a recess, especially during a recession, the best place to deploy capital is into mission driven entrepreneurs who are actually solving real problem. As most of you know by firsthand experience, entrepreneurs are the most resilient SOBs alive. That's all you included. And we're wired to weather the storm and find unconventional ways to win. Especially when it is time, when it is for a deeper mission. Right now, the entrepreneurs I'm most interested in supporting and bringing to the forefront are actually to the conversation are women. Why? Because I'm an investor and I look at the numbers and just in the US 40% of business are women owned, yet just 2% of VC funding goes to women founders. And 4.9 of all VC deals were women led businesses. And McKinsey found that companies with the most women in executive positions actually deliver share performance and profits nearly 50% higher than companies with the fewest women. But it's not just about profit. Study after study shows that women leaders are more likely to drive engaged, happy, inclusive and productive teams. They're also more likely to be role role models for the change that they seek. Key number three, the inner revolution. Focus on MEPs well being. What is MEPs mental, emotional, physical and spiritual well being? Often we ignore these vital parts of ourselves for an illusion of productivity and overworking. When was the last time you took a week off to focus entirely on your MEPS well being? No phone, no email, no tech. If you haven't done it in the last six months, put it in your schedule before you leave. Genius meeting. This is the greatest investment you can make. So what am I doing? Well, for the days that I can't focus direct energy on all areas of my MEPS well being, I found the best technologies that helped me do so. Some of the products that have majorly enhanced my life and wellbeing over the last two years are the Oura ring, which a lot of you are familiar with. Tripp, which is a VR app that helps me move from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic nervous system. And also a new product and company that I've invested in called Vessel, which gives you your biomarkers. You simply pee on the strip and then you scan it and it'll tell you all your biomarkers. It's pretty next level. Why is this important in the context of the global power system and the war on consciousness? Because big media is being used to wage coordinated campaigns that fuel division, comparison, outrage and disharmony for our nervous system. The only antidote to this external control over your biology is to claim direct responsibility for it. Which brings me to the last key. Power Reclaim control over self. As I mentioned earlier, it's not billionaires or politicians who necessarily rule the world. To see how we are being controlled, we have to look at the many power systems that start at the top, which are behind the scenes. Those at the top of the power and control system use fear and the power to to attain their means. And it's trickle down to the masses. And when we're in a state of fear, we don't make good decisions. We operate from a sympathetic nervous system and constantly active and we're not as open and receptive to love. What am I doing here? The antidote I found to being taken over by fear actually comes from this really powerful book that I recommend everybody read if they haven't. It's called the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. One of the viewpoints that I learned through here is this distinction between life is happening to me when we're in victim mode to life is happening through me. Where we understand that we're an active participant in the unfolding of the universe. And when we're able to come from this place, we're able to co create the reality we wish to have before our eyes. Simple exercise you can practice around this is think of a situation in your business or life that feels out of your control and not the way that you would like it to be. And then just answer this question. If life is happening through me, what is this situation asking me to do? So to conclude, the four keys are one, build resilience. Two, invest in transformation. Three, focus on the inner revolution. And four, reclaim your power.

Let's dissect this a little bit. First of all, I want to set it up because you are a true master at connection, connecting and networking with people. And so I call it genius. Networking. Because my whole thing is I think any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network, which is a group of people with skills and capabilities. In order to have a genius network, you have to do genius networking and you have to be a genius networker. So it's a be, do have. And I think through that you can accomplish almost anything. Now I want to frame this with. About not just going out and connecting with people and being of value to people, but also who you really become friends with. Because the way that you know a lot of very influential leaders, I mean, Muhammad Ali was one of your best friends, and you just know everybody. And the way that I determine who's going to be part of my core inner circle and who isn't is I look at people who are more powerful. How do they treat people that are less powerful than them? Do they say thank you when someone opens the door? Are they nice to servers? Or do they only kiss ass to people that are above them or that they want something from? And they treat their teams and everyone else like crap. And so I'm always observing powerful people and how courteous they are, how caring they are, and my interactions with you, you've always been very caring around people, and that's what I've always admired about you. And you've taught literally millions of people how to connect with other people. So everyone here has the ability to deepen their relationships, bond with their clients at deeper levels, develop not only business relationships, but great friendships. And you're a master at doing this stuff. So I'd like to. And you talked about McKay, 66, right? Yeah. So I'd love for you to talk about that. Not just business relationships, but relationships in general.

Well, let me tell another story to illustrate part of your point. You better know who's buttering your bread. Very, very, very important. And there's a superstar businessman who walked into the Philadelphia restaurant, sat down, the busboy comes up with a pat of butter and a roll. And he says, I'd like another pat of butter. Busboy says, one pat of butter to a customer. Sir, don't you know who I am? He said, no. Who? My name's Bill Bradley. Graduated number one in my class. Princeton University. First string all American basketball. First string all American academic basketball, first round draft choice, NBA elected Rhodes Scholar, elected U.S. senator. Those are very impressive credentials, Mr. Bradley. Don't you know who I am? No, who? I'm the man in charge of the butter. And to your point, there will always be some. Someone in charge of the knives. And the forks and the butter and the plates. And we have to be nice to everyone. It's important to be nice, but nice to be important. And you can't ever, ever forget that I was last night for dinner, hundred people, Paradise Valley Country Club, 15 minutes from here. Piano player, violinist, playing some music. And, you know, 100 people in the room. Birthday for a fellow friend of mine. And I got up in the middle and I walked over to him because I meant it sincerely. You're not sincere. None of this counts. You must be sincere. I told him I love their music because they're playing music of the old age. People like myself, a little bit younger. But I told him how much I enjoyed his music. I'll bet he sat there for the last 10 years, not everything, but come up for background music, telling them, but that to me meant something because I love the music. And I. Well, I'm a good singer in the shower. I really. I'm big in the shower. I'm really, really big singer. So back to now, then another part of my life, major part of my life. I'm 18 years old, I go to college, got my degree, think I'm really big, know it all and so forth. And I get out of college, age 21, go to work for an envelope manufacturing company. They throw the yellow pages at me. Good luck, kid. And just didn't have a chance. I really had problems the first six months. And interesting fellow's name was Carpenter. Came back one day, and my dad asked me to find the old grizzly there. And I said, you know, asking for advice. I said, tell me, how long do you call in a customer? And he said to me, depends on which one of us dies first. And that's again when I learned my persistence. I would never, never, never give up. So then I'm calling on 300 accounts in the Twin Cities, St. Paul, Minneapolis. 21 years, age, having a problem. And one day I just decided, hey, I'm going to humanize my selling strategy. I'm going to find out as much as I can about all 300 buyers. I'm going to come up with 66 questions, and it's called the McKay 66. I want to know where they were born, I want to know where they went to school. I want to know about the spouse, I want to know about the kids. I want to know about their neighborhood. Want to know what turns him on. Want to know what his political persuasion is. Want to know him or her, how many jobs they've had, what turns them on. And I came up with these 66 questions. And for the rest of my life, till today, even last night, I have kept the 66 basically on every single human being that I want to keep in touch with. Someday I'll read you yours. Yeah, okay. But that absolutely took Swim with the Sharks to 5 million copies in one year. My guys were crazy salesperson, how can you give this away? It's crazy. I said, look, nine out of 10 people aren't going to do it. And we're 30 years ahead of the people that are going to do it. So I'm going to share it with the world. Which I in fact did do. So little aside if I can with Swim with the sharks in 5 million, being creative, I want to be the first one to say this is 30 years ago. Money back guarantee. If you don't like, swim with the sharks. I'm not sure I was the first one. I don't know. I couldn't prove it. But I had a three week fight, World War Three with my publisher, William Morrill and Company. Interesting. Okay. I finally prevailed. They sold five million copies. 27 people asked for their money back. Seven of them were my best friends. I guess they wanted to keep me humble, Right? So Back to the McKay 66 then. You want to go deep with every relationship. And what we teach at McKay Mitchell Envelope Envelope Company, which is my partner now, what we teach is, guess what? This is not just for customers. This is for suppliers. I want the best ink company in the country. I want the best box manufacturer, the best carton manufacturer. I want the best paper supplier. Anyone who walks through our front door. There is no difference between a customer and a supplier. We keep 66 on everyone. And when I'm out calling, and still call, making calls, of course, then that gatekeeper is really important. He or she very, very important. So I keep a 66 too on the gatekeeper. And it's just real simple. That's all. This is another fabulous story. Red buttons. None of you, none of you, any of you ever heard of red buttons? Oh, my God. God. I thought the median age here is about 35.

I don't know.

It's a bunch of millennials who got.

Here, loaded them anyway. Red buttons. This is just brilliant. Genius. See, one of the funniest comedians that ever lived. So he told this story that he was on the city, 52 circuits, you know, 52 cities. You go out and back, out and back for his whole life. Every time he came back to the hotel room after having dinner and meeting some people, guess what he did he made out his holiday card, his Christmas card, he put right in there. Their son is. Jody is so and so gonna graduate. Did he get the soccer team? He wrote something from what he learned because it was fresh in his mind. And he mailed them all at Christmas time. They thought he was a genius for 40 years. Best memory in the history of the world. But it's just again, little creative idea. But wow, you know what?

I've actually heard you say that before, and that's one thing I have not yet done. And that is a freaking fabulous idea. First off, I'm curious to see with the Internet age, even your terminology, we call on customers right now. You say that to a young person. I mean, this is like, there's no Internet. You physically go visit them in person, you call them on the phone, you are doing manual labor in order to go and connect with people. And we now live in this day and age where people don't make phone calls, they don't go and visit people. Some do. And the ones that do have an incredible advantage. People don't use direct mail, they don't do cards, they don't do postcards. And I mean, I've said this to thousands of people. One out of 100 ever does it. But I was like, if you want to improve your connections and your network, mail out 10 postcards, letters, anything physical. I mean, even if you text or do email, it's going to be better than what most people do. But you genuinely, every day, five days a week, you know, you don't have to do it seven days a week. It'd be, you know, 20 times a month. And if you did that for an entire year, a year from now, your network will be off the fricking charts. Your connections, your relationships, how people appreciate.

And no one does this stuff short, short notes. You, huge results. I've been sending notes all my life. No one can talk me out of this thing. Nobody can. President Bush, Father Bush and Clinton, more Bush than Clinton. Never, never, never would have been President of the United States without sending out short notes. I mean, I met Bush in an airport with his roommate who was a friend of mine. I got a note the next day. Not just a total stranger in an airport, he sent out notes his whole life. So what I do is I scan. You don't know what newspaper means, but anyway, I scan the newspaper. I listen to television. I'm looking, I'm looking to catch someone doing something right? I'm looking for someone that just became, okay, they just made an acquisition. Their daughter Again, just did this, their son did this. And I'm looking to write that note. I have a up to now 700 people that I wish happy birthday to. So every day, you know, I've got one or two or three. Sometimes I got six, sometimes I have none. Been doing that since age 21. And boy, I want to tell you when you remember someone's birthday and you just call them, that's all it is just remarkable of what happens. And then we teach our sales force they have to know the birthday of their customers, right?

Yeah.

Have to know the birthday of their customers. And guess why? Because they go see them with a creative gift. They don't buy their business, they come with a creative gift. They walk in and see them on their birthday. You can't believe how much our sales force writes up the business on someone's birthday. And I guarantee you nine out of 10 competitors, they don't think about that. And just back to the book then for a minute. Up until this book, I've gone the 25 cents cities, all seven books. And again, lucky to be on Oprah and Larry King and Good Morning America and all the shows. But then I would go to Kansas City and I'd go to Sacramento and I go to all these little towns where the big hitters don't go with my 25 cities. They roll out the red carpet. Austin, Texas, I mean I just remember all these book signings. So no one does book signings running on states, you know, unless you're a major political figure. Almost nobody but I went did all that one on one. There's no substitute for one on one. I've made, tried to make five to ten. Yeah. Somewhere about five to ten business deals where I get on the phone and I tell them I would like to come and see you for 300 seconds. That's all I need, need. And the people have said yes. I fly 4,000 miles, 2,000 over, 2,000 back for 300 seconds. Because that 300 seconds, one on one that if we get the order we will perform. I will be your 91 1, okay? You can call me 24, 7. This means a lot to us. You can say a lot in five minutes, say goodbye. I almost always get the order I've so far and this is as braggadocious as it gets and as self serving as it gets, but not intended to be. So I have never called on a person that I haven't sold my entire business career. Never. Assuming it's a piddly little account and we can't get Return on investment, anybody we wanted to sell. And my sales force, our sales force, they're way up there in the percentages, too. In 80 to 90%, everybody, they go, why McKay, 66? Little things mean a lot. Not true. Little things mean everything. And by doing all these little things over a period of a lifetime, that adds up to success. Incidentally, my definition of success is having a predetermined plan, successfully carrying it out over a long period of time, all right, and having a damn good time doing it. It's just simple 88 IQ stuff, but it's simple.

I'm going to ask you some, you know, which seem like so obvious questions, but coming from you, I'd like to hear your answer. So what is your advice on someone who wants to be more successful? And you've probably heard this a million times, but what's your advice? Because you're sitting in a room right now with already, from a financial standpoint, people that are in the top, top percentage of highest income earners in the world. And there's other people that are going to listen to the recording of this.

Well, the first thing I'd say is, biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. So I don't care where you are in your station in life. All right? There's plenty to go. I have on my tombstone. Oh, he wrote it out. What does it say? He couldn't sleep fast enough. I don't want to miss anything. I want to go to sleep. I'm afraid that I'll miss something. With the whole world out there and 7.2 billion people and it's just, you know, 208 countries, approximately, things are happening every single day. They're getting their MBAs from Harvard, from Siberia. I mean, it's just unreal that there's so much out there. So we're not talking, of course, about money. Everything I write about is not, yes, it's going to unequivocally make you more money. I believe It'll make you 2, 3, 4, 4 or 5 times what your net worth is today if you have three things. I don't interview anybody for a job. Once I find out, okay, that they don't have it, I don't hire again anybody. They have to have three things. Number one, to be a hungry fighter. Number two, they have to be a hungry fighter. Number three, they have to be a hungry fighter. Now, I start with ethics and integrity first, and then that goes the rest. I don't mentor anyone. I've mentored a lot of people over A lifetime. But unless I know that they're going to practice the right concepts, then there's no question about it. All right? No sense spending any time with them. So that's all up to you. But what you're doing really here is you. Yes, you're making solid money and you want to make more. But guess what? You want to be happy and you want choices. So I love money. I just love to make money. Why is that? Because it gives me choices. Time. Time. We all started out in life with one thing in common. We all have the same amount of time. Now it's just a matter of what we do with it. And so I'm a time management freak. Just so I can get in everything. I mean, at my age, quite frankly, I always had about five to seven years. I really think I've lived seven years longer than what my age is. And that's because of time management freak, which I learned from my father. So to be successful. Back to your question. Let me just say this. Practice makes perfect. That's not true. Perfect practice makes perfect. Practice something time and time again. And if you don't know what you're doing, all you're doing is perfecting an error. You put a ceiling on how good you can become. I've studied the Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Arabic languages. Quite frankly, people think. They think I'm a heck of a linguist. Catch that? Guess you have to take my word for it. Actually, I'm a lot slower learner than most of the people whom I started my language classes with. But there's one marked difference. I started with all of them, but I finished and they didn't repeat. I started with all of them, but I finished and they didn't. In Japanese, it might take 200 hours to Chinese, 400 hours. Arabic, 300 hours. Russian, 250. But eventually the breakthrough does come. And when it does, it's like a stonecutter hammering away at his rock hundred times without a dent in it. And yet, on the 101st blow, the rock will split in two. And you know, it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before. So if you're not willing to practice and practice to get it right, you'll never make the breakthrough on the 101st blow. Real simple. Fast, fast example. Okay, let's take Chinese. Yeah, it's a tough language. No question about it. Reason why it's tough is that approximately 30% of all the words have four totally different meanings. They're all spelled the same way. Yen is an everyday word. You know, how would you pronounce yen? Four different ways. Let me help you. Yen. Yen, Yen. Yen. Now, this yen means salt. This yen means cigarettes. This yin means to perform. This yin means to swallow. So if you want to count from 1 to 10 in Chinese goes er sound perfect. Practice makes perfect. Now, I submit to everyone in this room. We make the decision. Every one of you, you're going to learn Chinese. I want to know, show of hands, how many can do it? You make a commitment, learn Chinese. How many think they can do it? If they make a commitment, make the commitment, you're going to do it. How many can get the result? All right, and we got 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 hams. Piece of cake. That's. There's over a billion 400 million people that speak Chinese. Everyone in this room can learn to speak Chinese. Quick example, my son, he's at Stanford. He's right at the absolute peak of his learning career. I'm an old fogey, okay, 20 years out of school, whatever. And we decided to go to Japan. So we take Japanese, we go to Berlitz Language School. Three weeks into the classes, I'm on page, you know, approximately 35, he's on page 100. So what? So he's three times faster than I am. I still got there, took me, you know, three times longer. And so every one of you can do that. Now, if I can talk about this for a moment, I've made a list. And I have approximately 20 coaches. I have a couple coach for everything. I have a speech coach, I have a language coach, I have a humor coach. I have a tennis coach, I have a golf coach, I have a marathon coach who's been by my side all 10 of those marathons. I have, as you know, a language coach. I have a dancing coach, according to my wife, thanks to my wife, I have a memory coach out in New York. On and on and on and on. 20 of them. Why do I have all the these coaches? Because whatever my God given talent is, whatever my God given potential is, that's it. I can't do any better. I'll have a project time and action important time and action calendar. Go get the best advice I can in the world, not the United States. Study it, practice it, try my guts out. And guess what? I don't give a damn about the result. Because I can't do anymore. I've lived my whole life that way. Can't do anymore. I've written all those columns and books and everything and basically it comes down to three words. Prepare to Win. Boring. Would you rather buy. Beware the naked man who offers you his shirt. Or prepare to win? It's rather buy this. Okay. All right. You haven't hit your peak yet. Or prepare to win. Would you rather dig your well before you're thirsty? No, but that's the three simple, basic things. Prepare to win. And as I say, very boring. But that's the reason. That's the reason why I never worry. Because the only time you're nervous is if you're not prepared to do something you're prepared supposed to do. I talked to 15,000 people in Vegas three weeks ago and launched a new company which we'll be talking about in a little while. And why should I be nervous? As long as I prepared my guts out, which I did do, but if I didn't and I have to come out there and fake it, holy cow, I'd be so nervous. So I submit to each and every one of you. Yeah. Go through your entire life and you give it all you got and you prepare to win. And you do your homework and you seek advice, and the probability goes dramatically up that you will perform well. Do you experience.

No, no.

It's good. Do you experience fear?

Do I have fear? Yeah. No. No. Fear. Fear of failure. It can be fear of anything. Be fear of living, can be fear of dying. It can be fear of. No, no.

Did you ever.

Well, these are all kinds of questions Joe had never answered before. You know, am I ever trying to think? Yes. Yeah. I can think of one time for sure. Yeah. I had very, very serious prostate cancer that had spread. And that's a real problem. Trust me. Knock on wood. All luck, I got out of it. I'm still here 25 years later. So, yes, that was a medical fear for sure. And other than that, no life threatening. Well, I guess I did have one other one. Another quick, quick story. If I get. I'm talking a thousand people. It's in New York, it's seven, eight years ago, and it's at a theater. Theater goes straight up, the floor is cement. And I'm 30 minutes into my speech and I faint dead away. Hit my head, all kinds of blood, blood everywhere. They tell me I was unconscious. They get 911 there in three minutes, and they take me to the hospital and. And two days later, what did I do? I had E. Coli in my blood system. And then I flew myself to my wife, came and got me, flew to The Mayo Clinic, 23 days in the hospital, and that was a pretty good chance. Might not make it. So that's the medical fear that I've had. Now, the reason why I tell you that story is the CEO of the company called back and he little hemming and hawing. And he said, you know, after about a couple months later, he said, and he paid me, obviously, an obnoxious honorarium. He said, you, how about you coming back and finishing that speech? And I said, well, of course, obviously I will. So roll back, same, same audience, same theater, straight up, same kind of floor.

How much further along, how many months later was it?

Four or five months, then? Five. Okay, three, four, five months. All right. And so, and they pull the curtain. And I come out from behind the curtain and see he's got the introduction. I got, you know, 30, 45 minutes left on my speech. Pulls the curtain and I'm in a wheelchair with my leg up and bandaged and, and bandages around my head. And I've got a server, you know, carriage caretaker, wheeling me out to the podium. They lift me up, okay, and I lean over and I said, as I was saying, Now, the reason I tell you that story is because creativity, and this is the most creative guy on the planet, you know that I haven't told you anything that you don't know. I admire them just tremendously. But creativity, to add creativity to your life. I wasn't creative, but I got a creative coach, and she taught me how to be creative. And everyone in you in the room, there's no correlation, zip, zero, none, nada correlation between IQ and creativity. Every person and write it down in this room can become way more creative than you ever dreamed about. That's the reason why I happen to mention it. Also, I hire after, after, after. I go for integrity, after I go for hungry fighter. Right up at the top is creative, creative people. And I just love them. And I'm doing it all the time. And I could keep here 24 hours to tell you you what I've pulled in my lifetime on creativity. Let me. That goes to ethics, if I can. I would like to read one finger though, and that is as follows, because I mentioned ethics. You got to be. You got to absolutely be. Well, don't hire anybody unless you've got the ethics. Okay? So I call this always act like your mother is watching. And I want to talk about ethics then just for a few minutes, because it's right at the top of my list. There's been a consistent, gradual decline in ethical behavior. I think American corporations and in The United States, 50 straight years, just my opinion, it's been going down. And I'M talking about from senators to congressmen to state politicians. I'm talking religious institutions. I'm talking businesses and businessmen. I'm talking athletics. I'm talking education. Harvard and Stanford, the last five years. Huge, huge cheating scandal. And it just goes on and on and on. So I want to give you an example, okay, of what ethics is. Very, very succinctly, a mother was invited for dinner at her son Brian's apartment. During the course of the meal, Brian's mother couldn't help but notice how beautiful Brian's roommate Jennifer was. Brian's mom had long suspected a relationship between Brian and Jennifer. Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between them than met the eye. Reading his mom's thoughts, Brian volunteered, I know what you must be thinking, mom, but I assure you, Jennifer and I, we're just roommates. About a week later, Jennifer came to Brian saying, you know, ever since your mother came to dinner, I've been unable to find that beautiful silver gravy ladle. You don't suppose she took it, do you? Well, I doubt it, Brian said, but I'll send her an email just to make sure. So he wrote, Dear mom, I'm not saying that you did take the gravy ladle from the house, and I'm not saying that you did not take the gravy ladle, but the fact remains that one has been missing ever since you were here for dinner. Love, Brian. Several days later, Brian receives an email back from his mother. Dear son, I'm not saying that you do sleep with Jennifer, and I'm not saying that you do not sleep with Jennifer. But the fact remains that if Jennifer had been sleeping in her own bed, she would have found the ladle by now. McKay's moral, if you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters. So anyway, I'm looking for humor all the time. I'm looking for creativity. It's everywhere there. And I just submit and challenge everybody in the audience to don't be boring, don't be predictable. Don't ever send another letter, you know, without thinking about it. Don't ever send another email, a text without thinking about it, without maybe putting a little bit of humor in there. Don't ever give a gift, you know, creativity and gifts. I could talk about that for an hour without giving it a lot of thought. Don't ever, ever make a call on anyone, any customer, someone important, without giving a lot of thought. Don't ever pick up the phone, which is just really a powerful tool like you've never seen, without thinking and writing down. Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory. I just repeat that. Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory. Write it down. Down. So when I'm calling a customer, I know exactly what my opener is. I know what the middle is. I know how I'm going to ask for the order at the end. Very, very important. And then with some humor, too. So that's my philosophy. One of them.

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