The 6 Traits You CAN'T Teach in Entrepreneurship ft. Richard Branson & Gino Wickman

Welcome to 10X Talk with me and Dan.

I am very excited to be here and looking forward to this.

Awesome.

Well, you know, I brought up that we're 4 months or so into the time we're recording this. What perspectives about how entrepreneurship applies to not only navigating what's going on in your own worlds, but the world in general, and who are the people that are gonna help bring solutions to a lot of the chaos, a lot of the anxiety, a lot of the fear? I'd love to hear both of your perspectives on this.

Sure. I assume I'm going first, Dan, on that one?

You are. You're the guest.

Well, one interesting observation as a jumping off point is I find that you're either on the good side of this thing or the bad side of this thing. And so it's fascinating when I look at all of my clients and the entrepreneurs I talk to because, you know, half are kicking ass and half are getting their ass kicked. So when you're on the good side, it's all about managing growth and capitalizing on these opportunities. You know, the question's probably more about the ones that are getting their ass kicked, and I find the ones that are getting their ass kicked, they fall into 2 camps. One is where they just have to do what we call a reverse accountability chart. And so if they were once a $10 million company, now a $5 million company, they just have to go back to pretending and acting like they were when they were a $5 million company and grow back to $10 million someday. And some are having to completely reinvent themselves.

Mm-hmm.

I have 2 clients with 100 locations that went to zero revenue. In that scenario, you're reinventing yourself. And so, you know, this is where the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. And if you are an entrepreneur at your core, which is one of the topics we'll talk more about when we get into Entrepreneur Elite, you will reinvent yourself. And it's all about taking a huge step back, helping lots of people, getting your ear to the ground, finding out what your customers and clients' needs. I had one client that makes robot covers for painting robots that shifted to creating PPE equipment within days. because they sew stuff and their business went to zero because every automotive plant in the country shut down. So that's just one example, but there's my kind of long dissertation and jumping off point from a contextual standpoint.

I like that. That was, that's actually a really great way to frame it. So Dan, yeah, what about, what do you think?

Well, I'm, I've got sort of a one-sided view of it, the positive side of it, because We, we flipped really quickly. Coach, that's Strategic Coach, the company. And I remember we were in Chicago on March 13th, and this is the last in-person workshop that I did, you know, where I actually had bodies in the room, and one of them was mine. And, and all through the day, Kathy Davis and Babs We're looking at the attendance records from the previous 10 days, probably from the first, you know, first of March, and we were noticing we were already at 50%. We have 50% of people were not coming to their workshop. And we, you know, we call everybody when they don't show up. And it was mostly the pressure from their families, pressure from their teams. Saying, you know, you're going to have to be quarantined if you go off to Chicago. You know, already, you know, some of the states and some of the countries were putting in rules. You know, if somebody comes back across the border, you've been someplace like that and you've been flying, you've been in airports and that, then you're going to have to be quarantined. So after the workshop, we just had a brief huddle and Babs and Kathy said, you know, we're We're going to go back to Toronto. We have scheduled workshops for Monday and Tuesday, and we're canceling all workshops from now until the 1st of June. So, you know, I took that in. I didn't, I didn't say much from it. And, and, you know, then we fortunately, we had, we had, you know, no waiting for the flight. The flight took off when it was supposed to, and we were on our way back to Toronto. I remember, you know, taking off and just pondering the, you know, what was life ahead. And by the time we landed, I said, okay, we're shifting. And I said, we got to get Zoom skillful. We got to get Zoom capable really, really fast because we got to get back out there really, really fast and connect. And we're going to probably have to do 3 times more connecting during this period. And so by the weekend, Babs and the EOS team— so kudos for Gino that we had gone live with EOS as far as having an implementer September of '19. And so we had had one meeting, two meetings, and we're just coming to our third meeting. That would have been in the middle of March. And, and so they, they decided that they wouldn't even— that they could get a hold of all the clients who were coming in for Monday and Tuesday right now and just say, you know, we're closing down. And 3 or 4 of them got caught in transit, but, you know, they were able to— it was okay.

Everybody—

and they were actually relieved because they were getting the same Kind of pressure. And then by Monday afternoon, our team had gone completely virtual. They were all at their homes. Everybody technologically was able to work as teamwork. And then a week later, we did our first 2-hour contact call, and I did about 60 of them during March, April, and May. And then we went back to full workshop schedule, but Zoom, and I just finished the first quarter, and hands down the best workshops in our 31 years. That's just terrific workshops, both from what the clients brought into the session and how we were able to handle it. So that's my report. And I would say 95% of our clients are just totally upbeat, and the ones who weren't and came to their workshop, they were upbeat when they left. So My, my view of the world is very, very different because, uh, I just celebrated, uh, on Monday, 2 years without watching television. And I think that saved me a lot of bother.

That's, you know, it's interesting what, what you had said, Gino, about, you know, having to reinvent, because a lot of how someone's kicking ass or getting their ass kicked, uh, just some of it's luck. I mean, some of it's the business you happen to be in. And there's some industries that, I mean, they just can't do it right. They can't do it right now. And who knows? I mean, all of the people that I know or that are in the fitness business, from gyms to yoga studios, I mean, even, even when it comes back or how it comes back, there's a psychological fear that's instilled. So I want to ask you about your newest book, which is Entrepreneurial Leap, and what it's all about. And, you know, Why'd you write it and all that sort of stuff. What I want to do first though, since it's the title of the book and what we're talking about constantly is entrepreneurship, I always go back to defining what is it. So, Dan, I mean, I first learned from you the origin of the word entrepreneur. Let's start with you, Gino, and let's define what an entrepreneur is, what an entrepreneurial leap actually is, aside from just, you know, why are you focusing in this particular area and on this this type of people? Because that's, you know, I mean, that's who we're really talking to right now. But a lot of people, I think, don't even understand there's different versions of what's an entrepreneur.

Yeah, it's such a great question. And I'm going to give, you know, 3 data points from my perspective, because there really are many, many definitions out there. And so, the first, simply put, I describe it as a person who has an idea, takes a risk to start a business and bring that idea to the world, whether that's You know, kind of reinventing something that already exists or creating something from scratch and then builds an organization with people taking that to the world and making an impact. That's, that's the first definition. The second definition in the book, I talked about what I call the entrepreneurial range. And so if you picture this arc and it says entrepreneurial range at the top, on the left side of that range, you have the words self-employed. On the right side of that range, you have the words true entrepreneur. And so everyone that is self-employed and owns a business is somewhere on that range. On the far left, the self-employed, these are the one-person shows, people with a side hustle, consultants, somebody with a lifestyle business. You get the point there, sole proprietors. On the far right side of that range, True entrepreneurs, these are the greatest entrepreneurs of all time. Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Oprah Winfrey, Sara Blakely. And so every self-employed person is somewhere on that range. To me, a true entrepreneur is somebody on that right side of that range that literally goes out and builds a business with people. The third is, I believe a true entrepreneur has 6 essential traits. And so they are, very quickly, visionary, passionate, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, and responsible, and I believe you're born with them. And so anyone that has those traits, they truly are an entrepreneur. And at the end of the day, an entrepreneur is not something you do. A true entrepreneur is not aspiring to be an entrepreneur. They're people that just have a passion, pursue their dreams and their ideas, turn them into a reality, and are considered entrepreneurs by the outside world.

Yeah.

They're not aspiring to this destination. So that would be my definition. Yeah.

Cool. Well, Dan, and you talk about, you know, Jean-Baptiste Say, give the origin of that because I think—

Yeah, this is the first time the word entrepreneur is used in, you know, how we understand it today. And it would fit in with— I think it would fit in largely with your definitions 2 and 3. You know, and so Jean-Baptiste Say, he— if he was alive today, he would be called an economist, but there was no such designation back then. And lived, you know, during the French Revolution and sort of in that period of time, kept his head. So he was prudent or he had good connections. And he said that an entrepreneur is someone who takes resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. And then he was queried about that and he said, well, what kind of resources? And he said, you know, any kind of resource could be, could be visible resources, could be material resources, could be idea resources. And he was way ahead of his time because he was anticipating, you know, a lot of Entrepreneurial— what I would say entrepreneurial successes, which were just beginning. You know, he was seeing the full scope and he very, you know, very brilliant man. And so my whole take is that what you call a lot of the self-employed people, they don't qualify by the definition. For me, and, and the reason is that they've essentially created their own job, you know, and, you know, and for one reason or another, instead of being employed by someone else, they're employed by themselves, but they're not actually improving anything, particularly the kind of job that you might get paid for working for someone else. They're getting paid for, and they work You know, they're self-employed, but they're very averse for the most part of having any other people working with them. They don't create a company. And so for me, I mean, just in terms of who I look for, my people are company builders. And, you know, and that's where we match up enormously well. Joe, with our collaboration, and also Gino, with our collaboration between Strategic Coach and EOS, which is just a dream in heaven, I think, for both of us.

Sure.

And Joe, the way that we collaborate, I think. But if you don't have a team, I just can't see that you can really progress. I just don't think you can grow. So that's my own bias and it's my bias according to what kind of checks I like to get and from what kind of people I like getting checks, but that's my bias. So mine is really the right-hand side of your arc, and it's people who really, really use teamwork well, and then they combine technology with it, and then they collaborate between their team and other teams to create even bigger multipliers in the world. And visionary, passionate, Driven, all of the above. And unless they were this, they would be misfits. They would be worthless human beings.

Exactly.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get Yeah, you know, in a lot of the ways these words are used, a lot of people fetishize the whole concept of hustle and being an entrepreneur and that sort of thing. And then there's a lot of, you know, attacks on business owners under, you know, the way words are hijacked. What's the difference? Is an entrepreneur always a capitalist?

No.

That's a great question. I mean, I'll go first. I know Dan's gonna give a better answer so that I don't have to follow him. I'm gonna go first. So I'll give my best shot at it because, you know, I think the short answer is, is it— so your question is, is an entrepreneur a capitalist, right?

Yes.

Or always a capitalist, right?

Yeah.

Are they always a capitalist? First of all, I'm a capitalist. So I wanna go on record. Most, well, I shouldn't say most, all of my clients are capitalists. You know, the world I live in, they're capitalists. So I think largely yes. But so I wanna give a quick yes, but I think it's a longer no because, you know, I do believe there are people out there building great organizations with their entrepreneurial skills that are nonprofits. It's very, very rare, just for the record, because I never thought it was gonna happen, but we have a lot of EOS clients that are nonprofits. You know, these people could go out and make millions, if not $10 million for themselves, and they're focused on building those organizations. So when I see something like that, you know, I wanna say a longer answer, that is a no, but the world that I live in, most of the entrepreneurs I'm surrounded by are capitalists.

What are your thoughts, Dan?

Yeah, well, it all, I guess it goes, what's the definition of capitalist? Again, there's a definition that I favor, and this is by F.A. Hayek, who was an actual economist in the 1940s, 1950s. And he said the tragedy of capitalism is that it was actually named by their— by the enemies. Capitalism isn't what capitalists called themselves. They would be more likely to use enterprise. They were enterprisers, you know, they created enterprises and they were enterprising. But what Hayek said, if you really look deeply at what takes place in capitalism, capital in terms of money is actually a byproduct of a much bigger process. And he says that capitalism is an ever-expanding system of increasing cooperation among strangers. Okay, and what he meant by that is in most places in the world, you can't trust people beyond your family, or you can't trust people beyond your friends in economic matters. You'll get screwed by strangers. And in places where capitalism has succeeded, you can, you can do enormous cooperation with strangers from around the world that you never actually meet personally. But both of you have rules and you have structures and you have processes that allow you to cooperate. And the outcome is so great that you're never tempted to actually be a bad guy in the process. It makes so much sense to follow the rules and, you know, be a good cooperator. And you and I, Joe, about a long time ago in 10 Times Talk, we did a series of 3 podcasts on social entrepreneurism. And I am violently opposed to the idea of social entrepreneurism, okay? And all the people who call themselves social entrepreneurs, I've always found were either cowardly or they were phonies, okay?

Mm-hmm.

And the reason is because the word social itself takes the meaning out of any word that follows it. Okay, so you talk about social justice, it means injustice. You take social equality, it talks about inequality just for our side, not for the other side. And it's— and so I, anytime I hear the word social in any context, I take my billfold out of my pocket and I stick it under my— stick it under my armpit, you know, because somebody's trying to get something for free. And the difference is, and I'm going to use a different definition here, I don't think entrepreneurism is ever involved in an organization that's an input organization. Entrepreneurism is about output organizations. So what's an input organization? Foundations are input organizations. Government is an input organization. All organizations which pride how much money they've raised are input organizations. Other people's money they've raised are input organizations. Output organizations are those who create output that's measurable and can be improved. So our Prime Minister in Canada right now is involved in a huge scandal. And I don't know if you've ever heard of the Kielburger brothers, Craig Kielburger, Mark Kielburger. And these are kids who got into social entrepreneurism when they were teenagers. And now they have— they've got a huge international organization. And sometimes they're profit-making and sometimes they're not profit-making. Okay. And it's very, very interesting to watch them operate. They're only a profit-making company when they're the ones who make the profit, and they're a nonprofit organization when other people lose the money.

Yeah.

You know, and I would add one other thought that I would add to this is, you know, it pains me that in, in some areas there's a negative connotation with capitalism. And I'm— and I don't certainly don't want to get political here, um, but, you know, another way I look at it, and, and I share this in this 3-page riff that I do in the book Entrepreneurial Leap when I'm describing an entrepreneur in vivid color. And one of those descriptions is that you want to make a lot of money. And, and, and it saddens me because, you know, more and more and more it's looked down upon if somebody wants to make a lot of money. And so whether you correlate with capital— that with capitalism or you don't, I kind of do. You know, I want to make a lot of money because of what it does for the people in my life and the freedom it creates. And the more money I make, the more people are employed, and so on and so forth. The point I'm making in all of this is, um, um, I— again, the world I live in, my 137 clients I've worked with directly, the entrepreneurs that I know, these are people that make a lot of money. And I help my clients make a lot of money, and they are incredibly generous people. I and they, we give a lot of money. We help a lot of people. And so it's, it's You know, it's, it's a misnomer that these entrepreneurs that make a lot of money are these evil people. It's just, I don't see it. I've not seen it. I don't experience it. And so maybe I'm one of the lucky ones and I'm in some kind of a bubble, but, uh, you know, I've only seen that capitalism is good. Making money is good and everybody wins.

One thing I want to get into is the entrepreneurial mindset, but I want to, I want to ask you and Dean something and as a way to, uh, 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.

Hmm.

And I'm seeing how difficult it is for some of them to articulate what is actually a result. So, what was going on, you know, 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 capabilities. 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, 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 4 of us, there's over half a million dollars a year that we've already just talked about between Strategic Coach 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, as a capital investment that's 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 moving forward in the same direction that you're moving forward, over the next 25 years. And I'm surrounded in 3 environments like that with Genius Network, with Strategic Coach, and with Peter Diamandis with Abundance 360. I look at those 3 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 environments for years. It doesn't take long before you get to a point where they're self-sustaining. I'm going to show an infographic because I'm super excited about it. If everybody can see this, this is a 7-year case study that I just got the results for last week, for September, September of 2013 till September of 2020. 7 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 investments 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. And so if you look here, this was exciting this year. The top line, somebody responded in September of 2013 And in September, 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 5 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 5th month. And over time now it's been, you know, over $1,300,000 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 a network, any sort of a mastermind, any sort of an 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, the score for things like that. So That kind of mindset, if you look at it for something in Strategic Coach, how what 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 whos to do what you learned. I surround myself in those environments to be exposed to whats and whos 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, 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.

Oh, 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. So, how do you—

Dean 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. 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 can 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, 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 I think we can all do that. You've had the experience of meeting, I'm sure, just thousands of entrepreneurs over time and also helping to create them. Is there any consistent mistake that you see entrepreneurs make in business that they could possibly avoid?

I think, I think that if you don't protect the downside, And you sort of treat your business a bit like going into a gambling casino and sort of keeping on doubling up, hoping that you're going to get out of a problem, then you're asking for trouble. And 8 out of 10 businesses do go bust. And quite often it's because people haven't thought of the downside. consequences of what they're doing. So without being too conservative, it is important, I think, to always think, you know, if I do this, what's the worst that can happen? Can I afford the worst?

Right.

You know, for instance, right now, you know, some of our airlines have protected against oil going up. Now, a lot of people within our airlines said, well, look, it can't possibly possibly go any higher, we've got a recession on, you know, so do we really have to protect? The wiser people at Virgin said, yes, you know, we should protect against the worst happening. You know, so it was good and sensible that they protected against the downside.

I see that too, Richard.

I mean, just as a great example is like Virgin Mobile, as we'd say in the UK, but Virgin Mobile, and like just instead of Buying, like building all the communication, all the infrastructure it would take.

You literally leased, I think, Sprint's lines. And so there's very little downside and very big upside if it worked for you.

We have a strong brand, and therefore we're able to avoid the enormous infrastructure costs of sometimes building new businesses. We can piggyback on other people's infrastructure. infrastructure using our brand. And we'll put in the brand, we get 50% of the company, we'll use our marketing skills and other people put in the infrastructure. And that in itself also, as you say, protects the downside.

Yeah.

You know, with all the decisions that you have coming across your desk, wherever you're at, Your beach, I guess it could be.

My house.

Yeah, exactly. How do you make really tough decisions on a daily basis? Because you've got so many requests and demands of your time and people that want your attention in the world. What's the Richard Branson methodology of, I guess, time management, priority management, really thinking it through? How do you do all of this?

Well, we spoke about delegation. And I think the first thing is to make sure that everything is running without you. So when I'm swimming around the island every day, if a shark comes and decides that I look tasty and I disappear, that everything will continue to run. You know, it may not run in exactly the same way, but it will continue to run and Virgin will continue to grow. The fact that everything is running, we've got a fantastic team of people on a global basis, it means that literally I can, you know, work out how I want to spend my day.

So your latest book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 2.0: Scaling Up, How a Few Companies Make It and Why the Rest Don't. What's this book about? Because I would recommend people get all your books and, you know, even your— all your Gazelle coaches. I mean, I've been to your events. You guys do amazing stuff. I mean, you have literally impacted— I mean, truthfully, with what your creation with EO, there are millions of people that have been impacted by the seeds that you planted. So this is your latest work.

What's it—

who's it for? What's it about? What will people get out of it?

Yeah, well, you know, a lot of companies start up, and there's this craze about startups and accelerators and incubators and that kind of stuff, but very few scale up. And it's the scale-ups, Joe, that really move economies, really drive innovation. And the problem is, because they're not young, they're not cute, they're older, more established companies, they don't get any attention.

Yeah.

And so we wrote the book for them, those that have been kind of toiling away for 5 or 50 years. And have finally figured out what they need to do and are going to take this thing from $10 million to a billion. And what are the key things that are necessary to scale up the company? Gotcha.

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

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

Yeah, yeah.

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

Yeah, for sure.

Although I think that applies to anyone. I mean, you can really baby someone trying to start a business and you don't, you can rob them of the learning that comes from it.

Absolutely.

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

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

Well, you know, I got a lap full of stuff here that I want to talk about. that I've, you know, books and everything here.

Yeah.

So there's a bunch of growth tools that you have, and you're known for the one-page strategic plan. Talk about what that is and where people can get it, because I want the people that are watching this and listening to this to not just, you know, have some business insight, but I'd like to send them off to where they can get access to some of the things that you have literally done with thousands of companies and have created that will make a big impact for them, that will, you know, allow them to Think more strategically, more creatively. And so talk about some of the tools you've created, specifically the One Page Plan.

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

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

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

Great.

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

Well, you know, it's a challenge, this whole life side and business side. You know, everyone's talking about the balance. We see it more as a blend. And so we created a one-page personal plan to go along with the OnePage strategic plan so that if you can kind of, as the entrepreneur, get down and the executives in the company, what is it I need to do on the personal side? And then look at that in relation to what I've got to do on the business side and mesh those up. You know, we find people are much more successful in both aspects of their business. And we mirrored the same people, strategy, execution, and cash, but we said, look, let's look at the relationships, let's look at the achievements, let's take a look at those rituals. That we do on a daily basis, our exercise and other things. And then obviously there's the wealth component that we have to pay attention to. And so that's become a tool that started to really catch hold around the world as well. And then we're known for this Rockefeller Habits Checklist. What are these 10 habits, these routines, ones that John D. Rockefeller had in place over 100 years ago that made him the wealthiest guy on the planet? planet, wealthier than any of the guys that we have here today, except maybe Putin. But, and, and these are things that you can put in place in any company from startup all the way to the largest companies in the world.

And so a couple of ideas that I think are most applicable for us in this room. First is really to get out of your head what you pay people. We do these studies, comparative studies. I just spoke in front of 2,000 IT service companies last Friday, and they're all out doing their studies so that we can compete with other folks in our space. Look, I think you have a very simple decision. Would you rather have less people paid more and be smarter, or would you rather have a whole lot more lower-paid stupid people? I really think it's the fundamental decision we make. And if you're familiar with The Container Store, they've always believed that one good, great employee replaces 3 good. Steve Jobs always thought it was, the ratio was 20 to 1, 50 to 1. Bill Gates always saw it as 10,000 to 1. One great programmer can replace 10,000. And so I think a key number, if you're achieving what Brooke was able to achieve, in terms of revenue or gross margin or profit per employee, when you're at her numbers with 20 employees, you can take what off the table?

Compensation.

Compensation. And so our partner Andy Bailey, telecom storage, it's not Facebook or Google, but when he started with our habits in 2004, he was averaging about $75,000 gross margin dollars per employee. We think that's the key number. By focusing on that, he was able to quadruple it, 4 times his industry. When you've got that, guess what? You can compensate your people a lot more and still take more to the bottom line. And so what we're seeing is that it's fairness, not sameness. I think that is the most unequal thing. And if you look at sports teams, let's just take one position on a sports team And they might have 5 or 6 that play in that position. Does everybody that plays right tackle make the same amount of money that plays quarterback, that in any one of those?

No.

And if you look at the delta between first string and second string or third string, if you look at the violinists there in the orchestra, the delta is tremendous. And so rule number 1 is, what's the first thing if you've got any kind of number of employees people come into and ask? What's your number?

I would like a career path.

What is that code for? How do I make more money? But here's your issue. You don't have places for them to move up to. Brooke doesn't. And we don't want to be putting those layers in. The large companies are stripping them out. And so the first thing is you've got to have super wide pay bands. People have got to be able to make 2 to 3 times where they started in their same position but with key metrics that are driving that. So I wanna take you to my buddy John Summers in Allied Printing. Look, this isn't Facebook or Google, this is commercial printing, but his customer service reps who start at $48,000 can progress through a series of, and by the way, we think you ought to give people titles that start from beginner to wizard to maestro, 7 ways that they can get promoted in their position, They start at $48,000, they can finish at $96,000. Folks managing print projects come in at $68,000 and can make up to $140,000. Salespeople start at $60,000 and can make up to $600,000, a 10x. And so first, do you have super wide pay bands and is it clear what are the things they need to achieve in order to be able to accomplish that so you take the pressure off people saying, hey, I need a career path. Then we think it's critical to gamify games. I just wanna share a story. So we get, you know, I think it's the casino industry that understands the psychology of humans better than all of us combined. They have figured out how ways to get humans to sit in front of computer screens where we're just trying to get 'em to come back from break. I mean, have you been to a casino? Folks don't even wanna pee. If they could pee right there, they would. Right? They wanna be served up food. And by the way, you're having trouble having people work all night? It's not an issue at casinos. And which way is the compensation moving? And so I'm like, what has that industry figured out? So we get called into HSN and their call centers. We're just trying to get folks to upsell. They've got this whole pile of money they can't give away. And so what we did is rather than give money, we said, let's give people chances. To get movie tickets, dinners for 2, flat-screen TVs. We had enough money we parked a car out in front of the call centers. And the result? If we'd promise it, we'd never get the contract. Upselling increase, not 16, not 60, but 160, 260% as a result, just by gamifying the results. And last then, I think it comes back full circle to sharing. So I just wanna share one quick idea that again we got from John Summer and it comes back to bonuses. And so first of all, I don't think bonuses ought to be paid off any more, paid out any more than once every year sometime way after the end of the year. If you pay it out quarterly, it feels like what?

Part of the regular compensation.

Part of the regular compensation and so it starts to become like an entitlement. But here's what John does. Because he already pays people fairly and they can make twice as much and they know how to do that within their existing position, his retention in that industry is crazy. And when you're making twice what everyone averages in the industry, you've got it right and out of sight. So John's got the base and all of that figured out. So what he does with the bonus is he only pays out 50% sometime after the end of the year, and then the other 50% vests over the next 5 years, 10% in each of those buckets. So as people stay, what's happening to that future buckets? They're getting bigger. And so now we play to Robert Cialdini psychology. People do more to avoid a loss than to get a gain. And so I've got to think twice, am I going to leave and leave 5 years of increasing buckets of money, which by the way, you're doing employees a favor. First, the 2 reasons people also leave, you make me work with stupid people and you make me do stupid stuff. And what we want as a company is if we have great people, I want you to retain them. You lose a good person, it's hurting everybody around. And number 2, a lot of your folks don't have savings. Real tough things, even those that are high paid. Now they've got 5 buckets of money that are building out to maybe pay for college, pay for that down payment on a home or whatever. And a company's going to have to offer a huge signing bonus to make up for 5 years of vesting bonuses out to the future. You know, it's an interesting thing. There are many, many startups, 11,000 startups every hour in the world. In fact, that means right now hundreds of thousands of people are moving into their parents' basements as we speak. And that was a JP line. I knew it wouldn't work. And 70— seriously, 76% of those companies actually have no more than just the entrepreneur as their employee, which means many of those are even overstaffed. Just let it roll.

Let it roll.

Yeah, really, the challenge is we have too few scale-ups. Joe was right. 92% of the job growth and the innovation since the Great Recession was driven by companies like you in this room, $10 million to $1 billion. You really are the unsung heroes, the ones that are doing most of the heavy lifting in the economy. This idea of scaling up is critical. Working with John and several of the others in here is we want to go into 150 cities around the globe and we're going to install scale-up ecosystems to kind of go along with these already robust startup ecosystems that exist. And that's our way of impacting tens of thousands of what we think are the companies that can do these moonshots to save the planet. And we know it works. There, by the way, is one of our latest success stories. He's a unicorn down in Australia. They went public 23 months ago at $4.2 billion, and I checked just this morning, $11.74 billion just less than 2 years later. And so they're doing well. The latest, I think, upcoming unicorn is Paul Wedgwood with Splash Damage. And I had a chance to kind of hitch a ride with him, and I was happy to see there in the back was a copy of the book. And so I want you to put into your mind Ferrari Scale up.

Scale up.

All right?

And you've got them both. But what is it that gets in the way? And that's this one idea that I want to share this morning. And it comes out of the second book, this history book of greatest ideas. It always reminds me of my favorite quote, the greatest lesson of history is we fail to learn from history. And so I want to go in there and I want to look at this story about Robert Taylor. So I want to take you So we came back to 1980 and Robert introduces Softsoap. Now, a lot of you are too young in this room to know that there was a time when we actually had these things called bars of soap and we didn't know whose genitals they had touched last. I mean, I just— I want you to think about that and realize that we have solved this problem. And so he launches and he goes to $39 million in his first year. That's back when that was a lot of money. And he's now faced with year 2, and he's got a lot of constraints. And if you were to shout out, what's going to be in his way of year 2? Just shout it out. What's going to get in his way?

Cash.

Yeah, cash. Obviously, growth sucks cash. Systems, supply, employment, distribution.

Taxes.

Taxes. Yet he realized and he got He was gonna win, that Colgate-Palmolive was gonna rip him off yet again. And so he stepped back, and this is the decision you must discern while you're here and for your company, and that is, where is the constraint? Now, a lot of people say we gotta go out and fix problems, but I don't know, I've never found that really useful as a concept. It's hard for me to get my head around that and my arms around it. But if you can think about what is constraining you and your industry and your company, and you can get control of that, then you can begin to scale enormously.

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

So he stepped back and he realized there was the constraint. It was the pump. And it's interesting, back in 1980, there was only one company, CalMar, in California that made these pumps. We're talking about many years before China came on as this kind of unbelievable manufacturing powerhouse. And so he goes out and he visits and he said, all right, what's the biggest sale you guys have ever made? And they said it was like 5 million units. And they goes, and how many of these things do you make a year? And they go, 100 million. And he goes, sold. And he negotiated a 12-cent price and he bought the entire year's supply for $12 million. Now Colgate-Palmolive, Procter& Gamble sees opened up the marketplace, they're gonna jump in and steal it, but guess what? No pumps. And ultimately forced Colgate To buy him for a gazillion dollars. Now, what do we call this strategy? Blackmail. But that's what you want. You want to understand where is the constraint and get control. And that was not lost on this young man who finally came back. I thought it was one of the greatest decisions ever made that they brought back its founder after 10 years. And the company's in trouble. And he's launching this new product, the iPod, and he had already been ripped off once by his good friend Bill Gates, who took his operating system. And he wasn't gonna let it happen again. And he knew this case study. And so he went to Bill, and that's a whole other story why he convinced him to give him $150 million. And then he took a big chunk of that change and he bought up the worldwide rights to this Proprietary Toshiba flash drive, only one in the world that could deliver his mission, which is very simply stated, the size to fit in your pocket and hold 1,000 songs. And the rest is history. There was no way that Sony or anyone else could copy him. Now, later on, he realized the real constraint to this was the distribution of music, and that he fixed later on. The big constraint was nobody could sell with the kind of experience he wanted his devices, and he was forced to launch his own retail stores. The truth of the path of the entrepreneur is always to identify the constraint and get control. Now, there's been a lot of talk up here about Elon Musk, and he's in the electric car business and the solar business, and we heard how important the solar business is going to be. Yeah, look, he's realistic. He's been giving away a lot of his technologies. He's been selling his drive chains to his competition. Why? Because what Elon understands is that where's been the fundamental constraint in both of those industries? And it was mentioned up here earlier. Where's been the constraint? In the battery side. In the battery side. The reality is if you could get that battery charge from 20 minutes down to 5 minutes, then you would really unleash the Tesla and everything else that's going moving forward. I thought it was interesting. Tony shared up on stage Zappos. They talked about he and Dean this irresistible offer. But let's dig underneath that story. Let me tell you the rest of that story. Tony had sold his previous company over $100 million, was down to their last few dollars, and this business model that they had created that even included we'll ship it to and ship it back, was failing miserably. And so they have this fateful lunch. And at the lunch, they really asked what I think is the question: where's the constraint? And the constraint had to be in their own business model. They were then dropshipping direct, and that was the most inexpensive way to do it. Yet the manufacturers were limiting them to the supply they could get and the different various models. Which their stores had preference on. And his partner Fred said, look, if we could get access to all the inventory, I could triple revenue in the next 12 months. And so what they did is they went north 2 hours and bought a little retail store in Willows, California, so they could then get access like all the other retailers to the full line of product. They realized they needed to fund their own inventory But when they did, their revenue popped fivefold in the next 12 months. You can have these brilliant, brilliant moonshots and ideas, but what's critical is for you to step back and find the constraint and get control. So we wrote a tool. I'm gonna be going over some of these things on Sunday. And one of those is to create what I call the one phrase strategy. If you figure this out, you win huge. IKEA, the constraint, we have to store and ship air. And so they perfected it. Even though only at 6.8% market share, they'll do $37 billion this year. They figured out how to take the air out of the process. By the way, I love this. Happy birthday, IKEA. There's your cake. F you. Their latest though, they just bought TaskRabbit. They know where the market's going, and that's going to remove a constraint so that elderly can now buy and have assembled their products. Southwest, let's get that hunk of metal in the air. Every decision they made was to do that. Dell, we have a melting block of ice. He took that company to a billion in 7 years and lost it all. And the board fired everyone except Michael, brought in Tom Meredith, and Tom figured out that's what we've got to do to make this business model win. Even Steve Jobs understood that this thing won't scale big, and he created what today is the largest market cap company by realizing that what we can do is create a closed ecosystem. And if what you do is so distasteful your competition won't copy you, it's the ultimate blocking strategy. Even my own team in Barcelona figured out if we can control the ball 76% of the time, and they figured it out over a decade ago, will be the most winningest team on the planet. And so the question I leave with you is, where is the constraint in you, your business, your business model, and ultimately the industry?

Jumping in on the restaurant one, I just did a podcast with a guy who owns a restaurant in Georgia, and, you know, same thing, people not coming to the restaurant, but they do, you know, Cajun style food. And we had them cook up homestyle things like cook up jambalaya and gumbo and all these things that you can do in, in a bucket that somebody could come and get to serve over rice to feed their family. And we did video, Facebook video ads to in a radius, you know, just of their town there in the thing. Hi, this is Brett. I'm here at the restaurant. We're here right now. We're cooking up some really great home-cooked, homestyle meals for you. We got jambalaya here, we got some gumbo here, we've got all these things that you could serve over rice, and we're gonna be putting them in these containers so you can just come and pick them up and take them home. And that was like a big hit for the community, because now you've got that asset. But I wanted to talk, going back about the root of what's going on in the restaurant, thing, because this was happening, the root of it, before the coronavirus, before all of that. If we look at what's happened in the last few years of the restaurant world, we've gone from— there was, I remember when it first showed up on my radar, there was an article about a venture-funded group in New York that had what they were coining as ghost kitchens and, and that they— ghost restaurants. The article was, you know, 9 restaurants, 1 kitchen, no dining room. And this group was running 9 different restaurant brands from 1 kitchen that only existed on Grubhub and Seamless, where it's delivery services. So they had a commissary kitchen in a low-rent area, They'd cut out the most expensive and unpredictable part of the restaurant business. And that's become now a— that became a thing. And in the 3 years or so, maybe 4 years that all this has been happening, it's evolved to the point now where Travis Kalanick, the guy who was the founder of Uber, has 90% of his Uber stock sold and is into this thing where he's investing in cloud kitchens as a service where now you can go, if you have a restaurant idea, you can go and they serve— they're turning storage facilities with 10 by 10 things into commercial kitchens so that you can all get together. There's this line hallway of all of these commercial kitchens with a dispatch sort of delivery center. So if you wanna start a restaurant brand, you can just rent this 10 by 10 commercial kitchen by the day, by the week, toggle it on and off whenever you wanna show up on the app. This is really the biggest thing that's happening right now is we're on the cusp of this migration from the mainland into Cloudlandia. And in Cloudlandia, there are no limitations. All of the geographic constraints, the friction, the layers of middlemen that it takes to distribute at retail, all of that is gone. And one by one, you're seeing this cascading flow of business categories that are being toppled and that are coming and doing DTC, direct-to-consumer, where you get— the mattress industry has been disrupted by numerous people now where you can buy a mattress that comes in a box and unfolds and lays there for $1,000. Now you've got Casper, you've got Purple, you've got Leesa, you've got all of these ones that are doing the same thing. There's— we're going to see unicorn after unicorn after unicorn, meaning billion-dollar businesses that happen very quickly on the back of cutting out all the middlemen and going direct to consumer. If you've got a physical good that can fit in a box and is desirable, and you know what it is when you see a picture of it on Instagram or Facebook, and you can buy it because you saw some influencer talking about it, you've had the the reach to them. We're seeing that just happen and happen and happen now. And then you're starting to see the layers of the services that make those kinds of businesses possible. I mean, we've seen in the last year Kylie Jenner has become a billionaire on the back of— in 3 years— on the back of partnering With a white label manufacturer who does all of the technical, all of the difficult stuff of making the, making the cosmetics, packaging them, distributing them, doing all of the logistics involved in it. Her mom's business handles all of the administration of it, and she's a billionaire with a team of 7 people, and all they do is the creative work. They come up with with the idea, what do we wanna sell? We wanna do lip kits. What colors are we gonna do? What are we gonna name the colors? All of that stuff, hand it off to the distribution or the white label partner to do all of the difficult stuff. And then she just lets her Instagram followers and everybody know that it's available and they go directly and buy it, or they go through Sephora or whatever their distribution channel is, but it breaks the internet whenever it comes out. So we're starting to see all of that. And often when I tell people that story, they say, well, Kylie Jenner, she's got every advantage possible. But then the greatest gift that we've been given in the last year to counter that is Lil Nas X and Old Town Road. Here's a guy with zero advantages, 20-year-old college dropout living In his grandmother's, shipping around between his siblings, found a free beat online on YouTube by another kid living in his parents' house in the Netherlands. And he makes this song, Old Town Road, and starts pumping it out to the internet. It gets picked up on TikTok, goes viral, gets on the Billboard country charts. And Billboard immediately takes it off the charts saying, oh, wait a minute now, we can't have that on there. And he tweets out, somebody get me Billy Ray Cyrus, because what's more country than Billy Ray Cyrus? He gets Billy Ray Cyrus involved in the project and it goes to number 1 in the world, longest number 1 song of any song in the history of the Billboard charts. Not a Beatles song, Not a Rolling Stones song, not anybody. Nobody's ever had a song on Billboard longer than this song. And that's all happening right now because of our direct access to every single person in Cloudlandia with a one-to-one connection and zero friction to get to them. So our ability to see those opportunities, to assess what our assets are, because we may have assets that could collaborate with other people. We may have assets that could be in the right hands and a blessing, an opportunity for somebody else too. So you got to look and see, do I have— you know, these fall into 3 categories: vision, capabilities, and reach. And we have assets in all 3. So if we've got reach, if you've got access to relationships, Like Jay's talking about, whatever to whatever level. You know, if you're a restaurant and you've got access to whoever are your existing clients, you're a hairdresser, you're a whatever business you're in, you do have reach to your relationships. But then you start to think if you could have access or reach to somebody else's audience. I mean, at the core level, it's affiliate. marketing. It's the— that's the seed of it. But what I'm talking about is something even bigger and more in-depth than that, is the, you know, the spirit of collaboration is really what it is. It's just— I've been so, um, you know, just immersed in, in seeing all the subtleties of what's going on here, and there's so much to, to talk about. We should do another whole session at some point. Joe, you and I should definitely do a podcast about this too. But I hate to— sorry to hijack this one, but that's the spirit of what Jay's saying is exactly what's manifesting right now.

You enroll people into a giant big cause.

Now, what—

it's one thing to think big grandiose ideas and talk about changing the world, and I use— I think a lot of people use the whole, I've got an idea, That's— I mean, they'll hear you, they'll hear Peter talk about, you know, how can you impact a billion people? And so they haven't impacted one, you know, but they want to impact like the whole world. So what's— where do you take it from this big idea to actually turning, creating the team, making sure you have a viable model that works?

So essentially, when you have a big vision, never ever get distracted that this is unachievable. What you do is you take each slice of it and you start executing on slice by slice by slice, and next thing you know, you got a whole rainbow fit there. So you don't go out and boil the ocean. You say, what is the minimum viable product that I can launch today but stay with the mission? But what really happens is people along the way they lose sight of what they're trying to do and they get caught up in what I call short game, making quick money.

Mm-hmm.

And I can tell you that when I launched YOM, the quickest money was we got calls from every doctor and hospital. They said, we love what you're doing. We would love to order a lab test from you for YOM. And we told them we just don't do that. We're going to give you money and say, we do not do that. We want the consumer to become empowered. We want them to have the information of what they can do. Even today, we get calls from doctors, I can get hundreds of people signed up tomorrow, but I want to get the data, not the consumer. I will tell the consumer what they need. And by the way, when you order your blood report, the doctor says, I can't give it to you. It's your blood report. report, they don't want to share it with you. Imagine that. So one thing we made a decision was we will never ever compromise what we stand for. We will never ever let anyone get between us and the consumer who is actually buying it. We will always give them the information. We will always give them the recommendation. And what we allow is allow them to share. And you say share it with my doctor, my spouse, my kids, anyone you want. But at the end of the day, each consumer is going to become the CEO of their own health. Because once you empower someone, you will always get it right.

Right?

But the point is, we could have been distracted for short-term money. My team thought I was crazy. Why won't I take the money? Pharmaceutical companies, we want you to be part of our drug trial, but we can't give you data. We won't let you know who the consumer is. I said, my job is to kill the pharmaceutical industry. pharmaceutical companies. If you have the same goal, come join me.

Do you think perhaps you could maybe have a better chance of accomplishing this if you had more enthusiasm?

Interestingly, I am still learning from Peter. Right, I mean, honestly, it's not something you create, it's not something you become, it has to come from your heart. If you don't believe in something that you're willing to die for, you can never be enthusiastic about it.

True.

And that's one problem a lot of people have. They sell things they know they don't believe in. They say, how can I, how can I build the quickest amount of time I can build interest in someone so they will buy my product? Those are the short game. You want to play the game like Tony mentioned. Fall in love with your customer, not with your product. Do what it takes to make sure the person who is buying it is going to be thrilled and be delighted, as Jeff Bezos will say. To me, if you look at— there's a reason why Jeff has become the richest man in the world making no profit, right?

Right.

Because everyone who has bought things from Amazon will know there is nothing— when you say to Amazon you bought a product, even if it's your mistake, you tell them, I don't want this, they don't say, you bought it, it's yours to keep. They say, please send it back, and you— or you can keep the product, we'll refund the money, right? That is actually taking care of your customer. They play the long game, and that is what everyone in the room The reason you get stuck at a million dollars or ten million dollars or a hundred million dollars is because you play the short game. Believe what is possible. Think about what your moonshot is. Imagine. So that is the most beautiful word that I learned in the English language. If you just tell someone imagine, for that. Second, they are willing to open to any idea. I can say, imagine a world where whatever that is you're doing. At that point, people are open to every possibility. So don't focus on what the world is. Focus on what you want the world to be. Don't focus on is the glass half empty or half full. Focus on— Half full. Do I want to fill this glass or not? Is this glass even worth filling? Because if it's worth filling, does it matter it's half empty or half full? And if you don't want to fill the glass, does it really matter it's half empty or half full, right? The thing is, whether it's your customer, whether it's your children, whether it is your employees, you as a leader or you as a father or mother never have to take them to the world. Water or make them drink. Your job is to make them thirsty. If you make someone thirsty, they will find the water for rest of their life and they will drink. What is that thirst? It's called intellectual curiosity. Once you can create the intellectual curiosity in people, in your children, amazing things happen. They will go out and rest of their life be. Quenching their thirst to do something meaningful. The success is never going to be about how much money you have in the bank. Success is going to be defined by how many lives have you positively impacted. I tell our children, who just by the way, I'm going to brag about them in a second, but amazing children. I, when they were, you know, I grew up in a poor family. It was easy to have that hunger. How do you raise children that grew up in affluent family? And I told them when they were young, your success will never be measured by how much you own. It will be measured by what you create. And if you own a lot and you haven't created anything, you're still a piece of shit as far as the society is concerned, right? And you don't want to be that worthless piece of shit.

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

Success— the way you know, the day you know you are successful is really easy to know when you actually become successful. The day you become humble is the day you become successful. If you still have an iota of arrogance left in you, then you're still trying to prove something to someone or yourself. You're still not successful, right?

Mm-hmm.

The interesting thing that I find, Joe, is that technology, for the first time in our life, is making possible for you and I and a small group of people to do things that could only be done by nation-states. And I believe the entrepreneurs are going to be the next superpower. It is— imagine when we land on the moon as a company, not only we become the first private company to do so, and just in case anyone is wondering, we are the only company in the universe that has permission to leave Earth orbit and land on the moon. The reason we believe the entrepreneurs are going to be the superpower is they are starting to solve the problems that were that we believed only the nation-states could do. Going to space, healthcare. Healthcare is not going to be solved by Trumpcare, Obamacare. It's going to be solved by someone in this room saying enough is enough. I cannot take it anymore and we're going to fix it. And imagine education. I was going to look at both healthcare and education and I picked healthcare. And the problem in education are identical, same problems. And I can tell you exactly what needs to be done. And I hope one of you in this room goes and fixes it. Because if you fix education, instead of my going to do that next, I'll go create abundance of food, abundance of land, abundance of energy, all the problems that we need to solve. Education. What's the problem with education? Our education system was designed to teach you skills. Imagine what's happening in the world of exponential technologies. Skills are becoming obsolete every 5 to 7 years. By the time you graduate, your skill is no longer needed. Think about that for a second. What do you get? You get chronic unemployment. The skills are becoming obsolete. Our education system was designed to create these people with these so you can be employed rest of your life. Now you have to create education system learning to learn, learning to solve problems, learning to work together. Today in education system when you work together, you know what we call them?

Cheating.

When we do the same thing in a company, you're a team player. Imagine that. So imagine, What if you can create an education system that's adaptive, that is personalized, that is gamified, that is based on the neural feedback of how you learn and your education system gets adapted to how you learn rather than you adapting to how teacher teaches? All that can happen. And imagine if you can solve education, you can create abundance of energy, abundance of water, abundance of of land. We can bring world peace. Think about that. What do we people fight over? They fight over land. They fight over water. They fight over energy. All we have to do is look up. Where is the scarcity? We are living in a tiny pale blue dot in our own galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies in this universe. And there could be billions of universes in this multiverse. Where is the problem? Where is the problem? Look at the energy. There is nothing but energy. There is nothing but water. It's in our mindset of it's not possible. People say, how can you live on the moon? Don't you know there is a tremendous amount of radiation on the moon? And I said, yeah, but that's that's another opportunity for us to solve that problem. Nature has already solved that problem. We find the bacteria. growing in the radioactive nuclear waste. So nature has figured out not only how to protect its DNA from the radiation, it has figured out how to use the radiation as a source of energy. So imagine when you are on the moon, as opposed to eating pizza, we will be going out and eating radiation. Honey, do you want to go out and get some radiation?

Yes.

So all we have to do is Take the gene, genes from the bacteria, use CRISPR, which is a genetic editing technology, and use the gene editing to modify our own human genes so we are completely protected from radiation. Just one of the many things you can do, right? The idea is every time you see a problem, don't think of it as a problem. Think of it as an opportunity. The bigger the problem, bigger the opportunity. So every speed bump, don't say goddamn it. You say aha, there is another business opportunity. And the only thing you have to remember as an entrepreneur, you only die from indigestion rather than starvation. That means don't do too many things at the same time. Do few things, but do them really, really well. So do things that you actually are good at, focus on them. And if you see a bigger opportunity, let go of this one. You got to let the good things fall apart for better things to come together. So if you really think your marriage is— your relationship is good but not excellent, let go of the good thing to find something better.

I talked about these things that get in your way where I'm going to die. You feel like you're going to die because of an old thing. that you're not even thinking about, but your body reacts to something like that? When a cell divides, when parents have children, you share an energy field. And if you read any of the meditative traditions from whatever meditative historical stuff— acupuncture, Chinese medicine, Hinduism, ancient Christianity— they all say something like this. And yes, we can get out our crystals and chakras and You know, hum to each other and things like that. I've tried all that stuff. But the deal is, the active creation of a company, you can sabotage that. But if you don't sabotage that with these ancient behaviors like that, there's still something that happens. How many of you in the room have kids who are out of the house? So less than before. So what happens as children age is they actually separate from you energetically. And you ever see the overbearing mom who won't separate from her kids?

Okay.

A lot of entrepreneurs in the room are overbearing moms to your companies.

Yeah.

What's going on here is as a company scales up through its levels of scale, it goes from $1 million to $5 million. It's like going from a younger child to a child who can actually do a few things like tie its own shoes, right? And you get to the next level and the next level, and your job is to not feel like you're going to die as the company develops its own personality and develops its own ability to go out and execute in the world. The place where I see the most entrepreneurs get stuck on skinning their companies is that they're like the mom who won't let their kids go out and fall off a tree and do something that's dangerous because they feel like they're gonna die. And that's why parents do that, 'cause I gotta make sure the species survives. I can't let my kids out of my thing because it's Fear. You actually have fear that's keeping you from hiring the best EA on the planet. You have fear that's stopping you from saying, you know what, that great friend and partner who helped grow the company to $5 million has never grown a company beyond $5 million, and I'm not going to be the person to fund their education by letting them fail at that 3 times. I'm going to hire a new person who's failed at it 3 times and succeeded at it 3 times. and bring that person in. And I'll tell you, how I've been successful in continuing to scale Bulletproof is that dear friends and people I care about who reach their scale point, either we move them to a place in the company where they're comfortable and able to function and focus at the level where they're comfortable, or they decide they're gonna go do something else at another company. One of the great pieces of advice that I received here at Genius Network Is this idea, in fact, goes from Cameron Herold, and it's that, look, when someone's not happy at your company, and you know they're not happy, a lot of us, like, there's a sense of loyalty, there's a sense of, like, I can't lose this person. So what you end up doing is you end up saying, wait a minute, I'm gonna keep them around. But what you don't understand is they know that they hit their scale point, they know they're struggling, So they're miserable too, and they're making everyone around them miserable, including your other high performers, and they're making you miserable. And it's not because they're a bad person, it's because they hit their scale point. The kindest thing you can do for that person is to help them find the job that's right for them that may not be with you. And there will be potentially anger, but usually a sense of relief and gratitude when they leave, especially if you put— Look, if they perform for you for 3 years, Give them a nice package when they leave. It's okay to do that, right? And send them off into the world to do the right thing. That's one of the biggest secrets to scaling your company. And when you do that, your job is to continuously step back and to allow the company to grow its own personality. And then what does your job become? It becomes culture and leadership, not doing. And where people get stuck is they get stuck on continuously doing and micromanaging and controlling, just like the overbearing mom. What you gotta do is step back. All right, you're gonna do this, and then you inject your culture into that. The things that have helped Bulletproof hit its recent scale points— I recruited the general manager of Amazon Prime away from Amazon to come run operations for Bulletproof. She's run multiple businesses with more than $1 billion in revenue, including 2 businesses at Microsoft. I don't know how to do that. Are you kidding me? I haven't done that. But I've got a team of people who've done stuff like that because our culture was strong. And I've done a lot of personal work to step back and allow the company to have its own personality with my values and my— the things that I believe are important to it. This idea that we do everything— everyone at the company does something every day that makes them better. Because when you are a better person, you're nicer to people around you. That's one of the reasons we make our products the way we do. Same kind of thing.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some More videos that'll be useful and awesome. Click here.

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