The Road Less Stupid: A Conversation Between Keith Cunningham and Joe Polish On Thinking Better and Smarter - Part 2 - Genius Network Episode #134

Life is like a university, and universities have courses. And I just took a course in the University of Life. All courses at a university have a tuition. So I took a course in the university of life that had a tuition of $100 million. First of all, there's not very many people who get to take that course. Secondly, if you've paid $100 million to take, the question is not how does it feel to have paid $100 million. The question is, did you learn anything?

If you haven't heard it, be sure to Listen to episode 133 First American Entrepreneur International speaker and acclaimed author Keith J. Cunningham is regarded as one of the foremost authorities and teachers on business mastery. With more than 45 years of business and investing experience, Keith has taught critical business skills to thousands of top executives, business own, and entrepreneurs around the world. This episode is part two of a brilliant conversation with Keith Cunningham and Joe Polish. If you'd like to join Keith Cunningham, Joe Polish, and 400 more the world's greatest entrepreneurs at this year's Genus Network annual event, then apply today for your invitation to attend. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network annual event or to apply, go to genusnetwork.com join Keith this.

Is a great story. In the early 1980s, I'm doing a deal. It was a large deal in the cable television business, and we were buying the cable television System in Atlanta, Georgia, and it was like $140 million. And our three partners, of which I was one, didn't have that much money. And so we went to Wall street and we got introduced to Drexel Burnham, which was the Goldman Sachs of Wall street back in the day. And the head dude of Drexel Burnham is a guy named Mike Milken, who was like uber famous at the time. Everybody who's doing stuff at Wall street knew Mr. Milken. So I started doing this deal and my job was to identify the deal and raise the money. So I'm raising the money and we get introduced to Drexel Burnham and they said, yeah, we want to supply all the money on this deal. So I get the whole deal negotiated. It's about, I don't know, 45, 60 days. Get the whole deal negotiated with my investment banker, who's also now very famous guy named Leon Black, who's a great friend of mine. So Leon and I do this whole deal and a week before closing, Leon calls me up and says, keith, there's only one more hoop you got to jump through in order to get this deal done. Get our Money. I said, okay, what is it? And he said, you got to go meet with Mr. Milken. I went, Holy cow, this is big. Because Mr. Milken is at the pinnacle of Wall Street. From 1978 to 1982, in that four or five years, his personal income was a billion dollars a year, which is back when a billion dollars was a lot of money, right? I mean, this is a lot of money. Nobody was doing this. And so I'm all excited about this. And I said, leon, I don't want to screw this thing up. I got to make sure I do this meeting right. What's going to happen? And Leon said, well, you're going to fly to LA, which is where Mr. Milken is headquartered, not in New York. You're going to fly to la. We'll pick you up, we'll take you to our building, 17 story building. You'll go to the 13th floor. There'll be conference rooms. There'll be 25 conference rooms. There'll be a conference table. There'll be seven chairs, five of our guys, a chair for you, and an empty chair right next to you. He said, the meeting's gonna start. You're gonna tell us why you're doing this deal. Give us the pitch. It's gonna last an hour and a half. He said, at some point during the meeting, the door's gonna open, and in is gonna walk this guy with a really bad toupee. That guy with a bad toupee is Mr. Milken. And he's gonna sit down right next to you. And whatever you do, Keith, don't talk to him. Don't say. Don't even look at him. He's going to sit there very quietly. And what we want him to do is stay for 12 to 15 minutes. That's it. If he gets up and leaves without saying anything, we're done. But if he's got a problem and he stays, this deal is toast. I'm just telling you, that's how this works. I said, I got it. So I flew out there. They picked me up, took me to the 13th floor, conference rooms, conference table went into mine. Empty chair. I start the pitch. I'm 20, 25 minutes into this thing. I hear the conference room door open, close. I hear some shuffling across the carpet. I glance out of the corner of my eye, there's a dude sitting next to me whose toupee is like this. I mean, it is the worst looking. This guy is a billionaire, and he's got this toupee, and he wears these glasses, and he Looks at you like this over these little grainy glasses. So 15 minutes goes by. He closes up as he's made some notes, closes up his little daytimer, pushes back from the table. And right then, there's a knock on the door. And I looked at Mr. Milken. He looked at me. I didn't know what to do. They didn't tell me that was going to happen. And Mr. Milken said, Give me one minute. And he turned around and looked at the guy at the door and said, yes. And the guy at the door said, Mr. Milken, we have to have a decision on the takeover of Gulf Oil. I went, phew, that's a big deal. Mr. Milken said, Give me one minute. He looked at me and said, just like that. And he opens up his little paper daytimer. This is 1981, 82. And he looks and he goes, no, no. And he goes, ah, there it is. He takes his pencil and he writes in his day timer. He looks back at the guy at the door, and he says to the guy at the door, the next time I'm scheduled to think is between 3:30am and 5:30am on Thursday. This was on a Tuesday. Next time I'm scheduled to think, he said, you'll have an answer at 5:30am I looked at Mr. Milken. I know I wasn't supposed to say anything. I looked at him and I said, you must be kidding me. You schedule time to think. It's the greatest idea I've ever heard. Greatest idea I ever heard in my whole life. I wrote it down on my big chief tablet. Keith Thinking time. Has anybody here ever learned something and forgot to use it? That's what happened to me. That's why I went broke. I learned this great thing and I forgot to use it. So I went broke. I lost $100 million. Went broke. I'm in the middle of a sabbatical. I've grown a ponytail, got my ears pierced. And I did. I did. I was 18 months sabbatical, and I'm studying the world's religions. I mean, I'm in Giant. I was suicidal for a while. I was in Giant trouble. And finally, I remember this Thinking time. And through Leon, my investment banker in New York, I got a hold of Mr. Milken, and he agreed to take my call. And I got him on the phone. I said, Mr. Milken, tell me about thinking time. Because I had tried it two times, and both times I had tried it. I sat in my chair with a piece of paper. I fell asleep. I literally. I literally. I Went, I must not know how to think. And So I got Mr. Milken on the phone and I said, Mr. Milken, tell me about thinking time, because I try it and just keep taking a n. And he's the one that taught me. He said, keith, start with a question. I said, what would a question look like? He said, how big would your business be if you still had every customer that ever tried you? What if 100% of your future growth was by referral only? What don't I see? I said, what do you mean, what don't I see? He said, what you don't see is what costs you money. He said, what you can't see and what I can't see are the assumptions that we're making. What don't I see? What could go wrong? What could go right? What has to happen to make sure that we execute consistently on our plan? What has to happen? Who do I need on my team? As a players, what is the definition of an A player? I tell you one thing. A player not only has a high internal emotional need to succeed. A players, check this out. A players love to be measured. They love it. It's their favorite thing. Think about it. When you were in the fourth grade, you had some kid in your class who made straight A's. Their favorite day of the year was report card day. They would show up at school, they're all happy. On report card day, I show up and go, oh, shit, this is going to be horrible, right? Because I'd have to go home. I'd show my parents. My parents would say, oh, son, I mean, you're better than this. I mean, we had a tradition with my kids when they were little, I'd pick them up from elementary school on report card day, and I'd take them to get ice cream. So I picked up my youngest son, Jake, on report card day. He was in third grade, and we're on the way to get ice cream. And I said, jake, how's your report card? And he said, four Ds and an F. I said, jake had a little smart mouth. And I said, are you serious? He said, I am. He said, can you believe it? Four D's and an F. I said, jake, how'd that happen? He said, I don't know, dad. You think it's environment or heredity? Little smartass? I mean, that's what we do, right? We create a story around it. A players love to be measured. And so if you have someone on your team who doesn't want to be measured, you have someone on your team who doesn't want to be held accountable, you have someone on your team who doesn't want to get better. For about six months, Sandy and I love to play golf. And for about six months, I stopped keeping score because it was frustrating me, right? I mean, on the second hole, I'd have a double bogey, and I'd feel like it ruined my entire round. And so I just stopped keeping score. And I was playing golf about a year later with a friend of mine named Tom Kite, who's a professional golfer. And Tom said, what's your handicap? And I said, I don't have one. He said, why? I said, well, because I stopped keeping score. And Tom looked at me and said, oh, you decided to stop getting better. I went, phew. Dang, that one hurt. Ouch. If you don't keep score, you're not getting better. Only amateurs don't keep score. Pros always keep score. They have to have a scoreboard. They have to have a dashboard. They got to get a report card. They love to be measured. They got to know, here's what I got to do to be successful. That's an A player. So begin asking yourself the question, who do I have on my team? And are they A players? Okay.

Well.

Yeah, Sorry.

No, no.

That was five different answers. All.

That was great. That's great. You enjoying this? Let's do this. For timing purposes, let's do a couple of questions. I'm going to see if I can chisel out some time tomorrow to maybe do some more Q and A with you, because I think there's probably a lot more than we'll have time for, at least right at this moment. But, yeah, let's just do some questions, and we're throwing the catch boxes out in the order, the hands we're seeing. So, Jim, let's go first. Okay. All right.

One. Thank you. That was awesome. You had mentioned there were three things to an eight player. You gave us the first two just in case. The third one's critical.

What's the third one?

The two that I mentioned were love to be measured, high internal emotional, need to succeed, execution intelligence. They've been there, done that. They know what to do. If I have a heart problem, I don't want to delegate my surgery to somebody where I'm their first patient. I want to delegate my surgery to somebody who's had 10,000 patients and hasn't lost one. And it turns out this whole idea of a players a resource for you on that, that is spectacular. Spectacular. It should be read before the most important thing, if you have employees and the resource is a book called who by Jeff Smart. S M A R T who. And that book is about how do you go about designing a scorecard and going through an interview process that will maximize the probability of hiring a sustainable A player. It is a world class book. Do I have two minutes to riff on this? There's something, there's something called a talent map. How many of you have employees? Good. Most of you. There's something called a talent map. And a talent map looks like this. A talent map says, before I go hire somebody, the talent map says, let me get clarity about the company's DNA. This is not vision, this is not mission. This is the company's DNA. Eunice, if you'll remind me, we'll send you the definition and the 10 questions you asked to figure out your DNA. This is the company. And where does the company want to be one to three years from now? Where does the company not what? Not what can I dream up? If the business could talk, what would it say on where the business wants to be one to three years from now? Not some stupid thing that I make up. You know, I'm going to scale, I'm going to hockey stick, all that nonsense. It's just where's the company headed? And let me get clarity on where it needs to be, where it wants to be one to three years from now. That's the company. I'm then going to think about. The position, about the role. About the role. So I may need a cfo, I may need a coo, I may need a director of sales, I may need a website dude to help me do something. And if I'm thinking about the role, there's three boxes and I'm going to start with what are the strategic outcomes that this role needs to produce in order to help move the company to. To where it wants to be one to three years from now. Strategic outcomes. And strategic outcomes are built on a scoreboard, a scorecard. A scorecard. They're built on a scorecard. So in the back of the road, less stupid, in an appendix is a scorecard for a CEO. And I'm going to suggest to you, as the owner of your company, the CEO of your company, if you don't have a scorecard on you, then you're not holding yourself accountable. I think we all need scorecards because how in the world else am I going to know whether or not you're. So if you want to know what a scorecard looks like, look at strategic outcomes These strategic outcomes are. The center box is critical drivers. Critical drivers. So these are executables. What are the things that need to be executed? Watch this. What are the things that need to be executed right here? They need to be executed to produce the strategic outcomes that will enable the business to move from where it is to where it wants to be one to three years from now. And the critical drivers are what's on a dashboard. This is a dashboard. Dashboard measures consistency of performance on tasks that produce strategic outcomes that help move the business to where it wants to be one to three years from now. As I'm thinking about this role that I want to hire, I need to have clarity on core competencies. What are the core competencies? Now watch this. What are the core competencies that the person that I hire needs to have so they can successfully execute on the critical drivers so they can successfully produce the strategic outcomes so that we successfully move the business to where it wants to be one to three years from now? And so I'm interviewing for strategic outcomes, critical drivers, and core competencies. This is what I'm interviewing for and what the mistake we tend to make is. We interview for core competencies, which is stupid. I'm not hiring you because you know how to do accounting or you know how to do sales. I'm hiring you to produce certain measurable metric. Metric. Metric outcomes. We can measure them at the end of six months, at the end of the year. The answer is either yes, we did or no, we didn't. Because this is the report card that I will have developed before I hire you. And when I'm interviewing you, I'm interviewing to make sure you're fit with my DNA. You understand my strategic outcomes, you understand the critical drivers, and I understand whether or not you have the core competencies. And when I'm building a talent map, Here it comes. I start here and work backwards. That's the key to the talent map. Start at the end and work backwards. I got to start with what are the deliverables. Otherwise, I'm hiring based on. It's the fish in the aquarium, which anybody in here have an aquarium? Seen an aquarium?

Used to.

You seen one? You seen an aquarium? You know, like, not a big one, but what are the fish you look at? It's the shiny ones. It's the ones that are all flashy. The nemos, when we hare, we typically are haring based on, is this fish flashy? As opposed to. Wait a minute. I don't care how flashy it is. They got to deliver these Outcomes by executing on these critical drivers, they got to have these core competencies. And the bottom boxes are what are the three things that this is the candidate, the candidate. So I've got the company, the role, the candidate, what are the three things my candidate must have and what are the three things I would like for him to have. And if I build this talent map, it's going to enable me to do a lot better job of not only hiring, but in some cases, Joe, rehiring the people I currently got. So a lot of times what we have to do is relook at what I've got, a bunch of well intentioned people who aren't operating within a structure to give me the outcomes that I need in order to produce the results that I want. And so sometimes I have to do a reset in order to enable me to do that. And that reset happens because I get clarity on a scorecard, clarity on a dashboard, clarity on core competencies. And if a person doesn't have core competencies, then I need to do some training because everybody wakes up in the morning and they want to do a good job. Now, all this started because you asked a question about number three. Now you know more than you probably wanted to, but it's a critical component to hiring.

Let me ask you guys, okay, if we go, if we just keep going. Okay.

Are they going to tell you no.

If you, if you were bad, they possibly would say we're getting tired, but no, this is great.

But you probably have a better question.

What's that? We've said no before to other speakers. Oh yeah, yeah, no, we have. Okay. It's actually pretty honest group, first of all. And everyone, Joe, you've already said this, but one of the best business books might be the best business book I've ever read. So fantastic. Everyone should read this book. If you read any books, in the end of the book, you talk about three questions that you'd ask yourself at the end of your life. And I thought those are really powerful and would kind of add different context and color to everything you've talked about. Can you talk about the three questions?

Yes. When I had a ponytail and I was recovering from my huge financial loss, which I ultimately made all the money back, and that's a whole different story. It's not that I found out, for me, it's not that hard to make it. Keeping it, on the other hand, is the challenge for the last 20 years and we've done good at that. But when I had my ponytail and I was going through this Sabbatical, licking my wounds. I had a very, very, very wise man look at me and say the single most powerful thing I've ever heard. I still think about it every single day. He said to me this. He said, keith, hell on earth would be to meet the man you could have been. Pooh. I heard that, and it took my breath away. I went, that is extraordinary. I want to try to live my life so that I could meet the man that I could have been and look that guy in the eyeball and say, I know you. I know you because I am you. That requires elevating your game. That requires living at a level of mastery and not good enough. So, three questions at the end of the book. The first one is, did the people I love love me? I think that's an extraordinary question. The second question is, did I have an impact? Is not a big impact. An impact I love. I love. Bill Gates is known to have a very short temper and a very sharp tongue. And several years ago, he was asked by a reporter who was interviewing him what he wanted his legacy to be. And Bill heard that question and wheeled on that reporter and got in the middle of his face, and he said, that is probably the singularly stupidest question I've ever been asked. Reporter backs up, you know, goes, holy cow. I mean, I didn't mean to set this guy off. Bill said, look, if I'm concerned about my legacy, it's narcissistic. I'm doing it for me. If I'm concerned about my legacy, he said, let me tell you what my legacy will be. It will not be driven by what I want my legacy to be. It will be driven by what I decide to do to make an impact. They said, this is not about me. If this is about me, this is all screwed up. It's not about my legacy. It's about, can I make an impact? And then the third question is, was I in integrity? Was I aligned? Did I do what I said? Did I walk the talk? And I think that's probably one of the hardest things, is it's so easy to hide behind the mask. It's so easy to. To show. The success or. And not admit the mistakes. That's why I was so impressed with the work you did earlier, Paul. You had the courage to stand up and say, it's Paul, right?

Yes.

You had the courage to stand up and say, I screwed up. And it turns out. It turns out that the people with the most strength are the people who can be the most vulnerable. Most of us are attracted to strength. And men in particular tend to morph that where it shows up as macho, when in reality, macho is not strong. Macho is weak. What's strong is vulnerable. And so the question is, was I aligned in integrity? I think integrity is the source of all power. I really do. And I know that when my own life has been out of integrity, I mean, I may have been functioning, I may have had some level of success, but there's a big difference between success and fulfillment. Success is getting what you want. Fulfillment is giving what you got. And so I happen to be a stage in my life where I have an opportunity to give. I've already got all the money that I can spend, so let me see what I can give.

That's pretty good. Pretty good? No, it's awesome. Thank you. Who has it?

Okay, Keith, have you had any business partnerships?

And if you did, have you had any that broke?

Basically just ended on a bad note. And why?

What were the lessons? Yeah, I have figured out over the years that I am a lousy partner because I have a number of partnerships that did not work that well. And the common denominator is me. And so therefore, I must be the problem. I have found that I do a lot better when I do have a partner. Now, her name is Sandy. She runs the teaching world, for example, and she and I are very much partners. But we also have a lot of clarity around whose role is what. I think partnerships in order to be successful require several things. I think it requires respect. I think it requires trust. I think it requires accountability. I think it requires definition of duties. And without those, partnerships tend to get very broken. And unless there's alignment on outcomes and who's supposed to do what, partnerships can get pretty hinky. Has anybody in here besides me had difficulty in partnerships? And a lot of times they don't end well. There's a tool that I use in order to help get the divorce. Because the reality is, I mean, take a look at marriages. I mean, over half those ended in divorce. And now we're talking about people who are having sex, right? I mean, they love each other. Well, maybe not. So. So that's a good point. So people who love each other are having a hard time staying in relationship. I mean, imagine how hard it is when you don't even start out. You just happen to be partners. So there's a tool that is called a push pull agreement, which you may know about. Do you know about a push pull? It's exceptional. And you can put it into any partnership, whether it's existing or future. And what it does is it allows for the breakup to be painless. That's what it does. When I was a kid, my mom would make a pie every Saturday night. And I would have. I had a paper route which meant Sunday mornings I'd have to go throw papers at 4 o' clock in the morning. And that worked out great for about two years until my brother got a paper route as well. And now there's one piece of pie on Sunday morning and we both won it. As long as I was the only guy with paper route, I could eat the pie. And nobody said anything. But now all of a sudden, there's two of us. He wants the pie and I want the last piece of pie. And so my mom, like very quickly, first morning we started squabbling about this, she came in and said, what's the problem? And I said, well, there's one piece of pie. I mean, I was like 11 years old. And she said, okay, one of you cut the other one chews. That's the skill. One of you cut the other one chews. So my brother takes the knife and he kind of lays it down on the piece of pie and he does this little dotted line. And then he looks at the pie from this side to see the thickness, looks at this side, he takes his knife and he cuts the pie. And I mean, you talk about a perfect cut. This is a perfect cut. He didn't see this coming. I went, mine, mine. I licked both of them. Now that didn't work because he went ahead and took his piece of pie. All right, now watch this. Let's suppose you have a partnership and it's 50. 50. It could be 45, 55. It could be 60, 40. It could be 90, 10. You could have three partners. You could have 11 partners. It doesn't matter. I'm going to use two partners. I'm going to use 55, 45. I'm going to use 60, 40. That'll make the math easy. I'm going to use 60. I'm going to use 60%, 40. So this guy right here owns 60%. This guy right here owns 40%. A push, pull basically says, I got person A and person B. And person A says, I hate this, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm done. And person A then says, I think the value of the whole thing is $1,000. I'm a buyer or seller at that price. Person A, let's suppose has 60%. Person B has 40%. Person A says, I'll sell you my 60% at $1,000 valuation on the whole thing, or I'll buy your 40% at $1,000 valuation on the whole thing. I don't care. Your choice. Person B, who's the one that's fat and happy, A is the one that's unhappy. Person B then says, has one week to say, are they a buyer or seller? If they don't choose within a week, they have to sell. You can't force someone to buy. You can force them to sell. So at the end of one week, person B has said, I'm a buyer or seller, but this is the value of the whole thing. Now, if I'm person A and I kind of want you to sell, I'll say the value of the whole thing is 1200. And all of a sudden you're going to look at it and you're going, holy cow, 1200. I mean, it's not worth 1200. Shoot, I'll sell it. And if I want you to buy mine, I'll put a price on it of 900, which means I'm kind of interested in you buying mine. Now, if you do something stupid like tell me you want to sell me yours at 900, I'm happy. Here's the deal. On a partnership, we would talk about who's going to get to eat, who's going to get the last little bit of food and last little bit of water. Turns out that's not our biggest problem. Our biggest problem is how do we get short? How do we get saved? If you're in a disagreement with a partner, it's more often than not because the problem is too small. Elevate the problem until you find commonality. And once you find commonality, it's about, what are we going for? Most disagreements and partnerships are how are we going to do it? The arguments happen with how I got to shift the conversation and realign around the what. What are we trying to achieve? There's a lot of ways to do that. There's this way to do it, there's that way to do it. And so I'm open to all the different ways of doing it. Most partnerships wind up being in a fight because everybody's ego is in it, and there's a need to be right as opposed to doing what's best. Those are two different things. You need to be right. He or she needed to be right. Everybody's got their ego, and now it's an argument, and the problem is too small. Elevate.

Okay, let me say this too, because of timing we can do maybe some short ones. I also want to acknowledge Dr. Chip Mok over here. Raise your hand. That dude. You know, I always. I often try to look at dominoes, you know, how things occur and how I ended up really connecting with Keith is. I don't know how many years ago when we had that phone conversation about Genius Network. It was a while back. I mean, it must have been seven years ago or something. I don't even know. Maybe longer. And I was at an event before a strategic coach group, and it was like a little reception. And Chip was there with about four of his team members that he had sent to one of Keith's programs. And he was just telling. And I had already had the road less stupid, but I just had not read it yet. And so I skimmed it, but I had not really read it. And Chip was just talking to me about how valuable your stuff was. And it just made me think, like, huh? You know? And so I have to kind of go back in this book. And so I went back and I then placed emphasis on it because I heard someone that I respect say something good. And that's. There's a lot of dominoes that are happening in this room right now. That's what Genius Network is. It's like, what's the first domino? And so I started reading it, and then I was having a conversation with Jay Abraham, and I was like, have you read this book? I mean, this book is really badass. And I knew you were doing Tony's business mastery stuff, doing training there for Tony's group. And so Jay, without me even asking, had sent you a message. And then you called me. Yeah, and then you called me. And then it just kind of started. That was several months ago. And it just. I started going deep into this book. Then you had sent copies for me to send everyone, and here we are. So I don't just want this to be someone that you hear speak. I want this to become part of the process. I would like thinking time. I believe what he knows and what he has will change not just your business, but your life. And so that's why this is the starting point. So even though we're not going to get to everything that we possibly could to on this first meeting, this is going to become part of an ongoing process, us with Genius Network, to the best that we can do that if it's mutually beneficial to each of us. So, yeah, I just wanted to say that. So thank you, Chip.

Thank you, Chip.

Yeah, Dimitri, thank you. So the book has been my Roadmap. For the last several months, it's been like my new business bible. And so thank you for writing it. The question I have is around the four roles in a business. So the artist, operator, business owner and board member. And realizing where my I've seen historically my greatest strengths have been and adding the most value as an artist, solving problems. When I go to solving problems, I play operator, which makes me want to kill myself, basically. And then when I go into the business owner seat, trying to scale through that, I keep screwing things up and I go back to the artist and operator role to fill those gaps. So the question is really given the if there's so much strength in one role, is the path more so to develop the other roles or the other hats personally better, or is the path much more so to seek partnerships or find a players on a team or otherwise strategic partnerships to fill those other seats versus aiming to develop those skills myself? So if you just speak to that in general around your experience for it.

So the answer is yes. Now you're sitting there saying, ooh, I wonder what question he's answering. There's a great. I was having dinner with several years ago with the richest guy in Austin. He's in the top 20 in the United States. He builds computers. He has four letters in his last name. His first name is Michael. So I'm having dinner with him and there's a small group of business owners. And we're chatting and we get to talking about health and difficulty of travel, which his travel schedule is insane, and the difficulty of staying fit while we travel. And Michael said, well, I'll tell you how we handle how I handle it. We all looked at him and we said, how? And he said, I have a personal chef. We all went, hmm. I mean, here's a guy worth 20 billion now. He sends his chef ahead of him. He's got multiple chefs, and he sends them ahead of where he's going to be so that they can buy groceries and then they cook for him where he stays. And so he's got this whole thing, but I mean, my God, it's probably cost him like $8 million a year. And so that was interesting to us, interesting to me. And then he said, you know what the biggest problem with having your own chef is? And I started to laugh, right? Because I'm going, yeah, this is going to be a heck of a problem here. Your biggest problem with having your own. He said, you only get to eat what they know how to cook. And I went, God, that is so true. And There's a chapter in my book that I know you've read called the Bathrobe Theory of Business, which is most consultants view business as a one size fits all. And I don't think it works that way. I think there's some people who can manage being an artist and an owner. They can manage both those roles, but it's because they built a muscle. They went to the gym and built a muscle on what does it take to be a business owner and how do I develop teams and leverage and be thoughtful about opportunities. That's what owners do. Operators, on the other hand, are. There's some people who love getting their fingernails dirty. They are plumbers, and they kind of enjoy plumbing. They're car mechanics, and they kind of enjoy getting under the hood. And. And so they're going to be kind of constrained because that's what they really enjoy. Now if they want to grow, they're going to. Either they're going to have to leave under the hood or they're going to need to get somebody. I think you can be an artist and an owner. I think it's really tough to be the operator and the owner. I think those two are tough.

Well, that's good because I hate being that.

It's what?

Well, that's good because I hate the operator piece.

You hate the operator piece now with the. With the artist piece?

Yeah.

You should have a hat, literally a hat that says artist. And when you go into artist mode, you're creating. When I'm writing my book Pure Art, when I'm creating a course, I have. I have financial software that I show Joe when I'm creating that pure artist. But I got to take that hat off and put on an operator hat in order to get some traction. And then I got to take that hat off and put on an owner hat. Once I'm going to start adding some team. And then I got to take that hat off and put it on an investor hat when I want to start evaluating risk. But I don't think it's a right or wrong. I think it's. Are you willing to go to the gym to learn business skills and tools so that you can successfully execute business strategies? If you're unwilling to go to the gym, hire somebody to do it. But you're not going to get scale, in my opinion, by being a crummy owner. That part is really, really hard. And it's a part that most people struggle with. Is the reason they're not scaling is not because they don't have a good product. It's not because they don't have a. They're not great artists. The reason they're not growing is because they're crappy owners. No wonder. I mean, think about this. If I want business success, then I need business success skills and tools. If I want to win a gold medal in ping pong, I need ping pong skills and tools. If I want to win a gold medal in downhill slalom racing, I need downhill slalom racing skills and tools. Business requires skills and tools. It doesn't. I have five. Five thoughts, five beliefs. There is no such thing as a natural business owner. Trial and error is about the dumbest way to learn anything. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent, not perfect. In order to do better, I gotta get better. And the people with the best lives have the best choices. The first one of those, there is no such thing as a natural business owner means I need skills and tools. I got to be willing to practice. I need to know what to practice, which is, you know, one of the reasons you're here. It's why I teach what I teach, like the four day mba. It's why I teach that is because it's filled with owner skills and tools that will allow you to make the transition from operator to owner. Now, not everybody wants to do that. Okay, if you don't want to do it, I'm fine. Stay an artist. But as long as you stay an artist and don't have an owner, you're going to have a hobby and not a business. I'm going to say that again. As long as you stay an artist and don't have an owner, either you or somebody else, you'll have a hobby and not a business business. Which is why most artists are starving, right? They're not getting there because they don't have the business muscle. And that's business skills and tools.

So true. Like my buddy Wylan, the artist in Laguna. So he wrote a book that he gives away to artists for free called don't be a Starving Artist. And Wylan has had years where he's done 100 million in sales. And he's, you know, he's one of the, he's made. He's one of the highest paid living artists and he has a whole operation built around his art. And people think he's successful because he's a good artist. I personally don't even like his art that much. I mean, he's incredibly talented, but it's, you know, it's all dolphins and shit, which I love dolphins. I just wouldn't want to put him up on the wall. I'd rather have pictures of Tuckerbacks than a dolphin, but not really. I'd rather have the dolphin. But, you know, he just has an operator. He has someone that just handles like this whole operation. And it's really not about the art. And last thing, there's a book I read in the 90s. I can't remember the guy's last name. It starts with an R. Joey Runyon or something. It's called Thinking for a Living. You can probably find it. Mike Reitman. Yeah. And this guy was. He had a advertising agency that was doing over 100 million a year in sales. He had 100 and something employees. And like a typical agency, they were getting paid 15% of what the client spent.

That's not it.

No, that's not it. It's a different one. It's got like some cartoon green cover with like a man's face or something. Anyway, and his first name is Joey. So he really. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. See, I knew, man. Yeah, I read that book years ago, like 20 something years ago. And he basically looked at his whole business and he's like, I don't like this. Because our very best skill, the artistic skill, which is the creative, we give away for free when we're pitching a client in the hopes that they hire us so that we can then have to implement and execute upon all this servicing. He's like, I just want to get paid for the ideas. So he shut everything down, kept less than 10 employees, and created, I think he called it an idea factory. And he's like, I just want to get paid for our great ideas, not for having to do all the execution of it. So he started charging, I think $250,000 or more just to come up with the idea. And the same thing he used to give away for free, they started charging for because the very best thing that got them hired was what they were giving away for free. And sometimes they got paid and sometimes they didn't. And in your particular case, knowing you, you love doing spoken word shit. And you got this whole business that requires a lot of logistical. And I know I'm one of the clients, I pay you to do this shit. So it's, you know, I think there's something to this. But the funny thing is it's like thinking for a living. And you sit there thinking time. How did he come up with that? He came up with it because he's like, I'm doing all this thinking, but I'm not getting paid for what it is that I really do well. And he just totally turned the whole model on its head, became much happier, made a lot more money, didn't have all the complexity because he actually knew what lane he best spent his time in and he wanted to. And that's the beauty of it. When you wake up every morning as the owner, as the human, you're and you're looking at the mirror, it's either good morning, let the stress begin or good morning, I'm totally into this. But you're looking at the problem in the mirror and you're also looking at the solution. It just depends on what frame of reference. So anyway, it's true.

Thank you.

Yeah. So after Joe mentioned you in the last May meeting, I listened to a podcast. I've not read the book yet. I definitely want to come do the four day mba because I'm really seeing myself in much of what you're saying. I'm a real estate developer. I've been in the business last 20 years, last eight years on my own dime. So I managed to lose a lot of equity in the downturn, but not a lot of cash. This cycle has been really, really good. And admittedly I see myself kind of falling into a lot of the same things that I'm hearing you talk about kind of believing that we're good and maybe you know, better than we are. Maybe it's, you know, more the market than us and getting into some other things and maybe, you know, falling into some of those same traps. And so I can see, you know, and thanks to Genius network and strategic coach and things like this, I'm learning how to be a better business owner person. I don't know if I want to be. So I'm also building a team, hopefully full of a players. But I guess my question for you is how much of this do you think might have more application in certain businesses, in certain industries or specific to real estate? What's your feeling on that? Industry or asset based business businesses, you know, businesses similar to real estate or real estate specifically. Have you kind of changed your thinking about what industry or segment knowledge based business or something not asset debt based, you know, is there some kind of feeling about being in those businesses at all?

So we. The problem with real estate in particular is also its greatest advantage. And that is during good times, credit is easy and so the temptation is to over borrow. And when you over borrow during the good times, you wind up with a mess when there's a bad time. And it gets bad enough because now all Of a sudden, your asset value is below the debt and you got problems. And so what caught me was having 250 or $300 million worth of personal liability debt and the market turns upside down. So I had lots of equity, I had lots of cash, but I also had lots of debt. And so today I am. Now, keep in mind, I'm 69 years old, so. And I mean, there's not a. There's probably not a. Look, I'm rich. I've done very, very well. And so we have a lot of real estate, but it also has no debt. So I've built a house that can withstand a hurricane that lasts 100 years. But I'm also somebody who lost everything. And it was so painful. I was giving an interview in. So I like real estate, but I like real estate if I've controlled the exposure, which is the debt. I was giving an interview about 10 years ago in Ireland. I was about to do an event the next day. A promoter had hired me to come and do a speech. And the day before the event, the promoter called me on the phone and said, keith, would you go on a radio station and do a live interview? Because we want to sell a few more tickets at the last minute. I said, I'd be glad to. So at 2:00 in the afternoon, they took me to this Irish radio station and the disc jockey. I walked into the studio, put on the headphones. The DJ said, okay, look, I've read about your bio. I know about you. I know your story. He said, I'll ask you a few questions and I'll give you an opportunity to really promote this event. I said, great. He said, is there anything you don't want me to talk about? I said, yeah. I said, don't ask me how it feels to lose $100 million. I mean, I'm going to tell you right now, it does not feel good. It is a bad, bad thing when you lose that much money. Guy said, okay, no problem. So we were on a commercial just then. So then we come back from the commercial and he says, okay, so here I am with Keith Cunningham. He's getting an event tomorrow, da, da da. And Keith, Keith is the guy that lost $100 million. Keith had. How does it feel to lose? So I'm sitting there listening to this. I'm thinking, you know, this is not cool what you just did. I mean, that's why I did it. So I sat there and I thought about it for a minute and I said, let me tell you, let me tell you what this is. Life is like a university, and universities have courses. And I just took a course in the university of life. All courses at a university have a tuition. So I took a course in the university of life that had a tuition of $100 million. First of all, there's not very many people who get to take that course. It's kind of expensive. Secondly, if you've paid $100 million to take a course, the question is not how does it feel to have paid $100 million. The question is, did you learn anything? Did you get your money's worth? I said, let me tell you the answer to that. The answer to that is, yes, I got my money's worth. I got $200 million worth of value, and it only cost me 100 million. I'm good. That's how I view it. And so, to me, it's not as much about an asset class as it is about structuring so that you can withstand a hurricane. Warren Buffett has made an incredible amount of money largely by having a very narrow focus on what he will and won't do. And what's cool about Warren is that Warren, like every professional investor. Thank you. Warren, like every professional investor, has a lot of clarity around their core competence. And it's what screwed me up. It's what screwed Paul up. And based on what you described, kind of venturing into other things, hey, I'm pretty good at this. I kind of can tell a good deal from a bad one. You start all of a sudden, spread the money around. And what allows Warren to be really, really good is he has a lot of clarity on the hard edge right here. He knows exactly what's inside of his core competence and what's outside of his core competence. And anytime he's investing, putting money behind something that's in his core competence, he's investing. And anytime he's outside of his core competence, he's speculating. He's hoping to get lucky because he doesn't know what he's doing. That's the key. The key to being successful in investing and business is to know what you're doing. The only way you can do that is if you have clarity around this hard edge. Now, here's what most of us do. We see something exactly like what you're talking about. You know, it kind of rhymes. I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm pretty good. I got a ton of money. And so we build a little nipple to go right around. And we say, oh, okay, I'm just gonna. I'm Just gonna take this. It's kind of close. And we build this little nipple. And so we wind up then investing money, and we wind up losing it. And the reason is because we don't have core competence. I think one of the hardest things to do as an investor, as a business owner is to get clarity on the is line. What am I good at? What am I not good at? I don't have to make money with everything I see. If I can just stay in my wheelhouse, stay in my lane, I can do just fine. I don't need it. Warren Buffett says it. Warren Buffett says the United States is the largest economy in the world. Why do I need to go to Europe to try to trot my stuff? If I can't do it in the United States, I probably don't need to be doing it. He's made a few exceptions, but he's got rules. So I would ask you, do you have rules of the game that dictate your guardrails on investing? And if you don't, Eunice, will you ask me to please send you my rules on Investing? I have 10 rules, and these are my guardrails that protect me from me. I have a worst enemy. His name is Keith. That little sucker wakes up every morning and says, how can we sabotage the other Keith? So I got to have rules that protect me from me. Otherwise, I wind up doing all kinds of things that I have no business doing because I don't know anything about it. So you and I were talking about this, making a bunch of tiny investments in a bunch of different deals. That's crazy. The only people who make money at that serious money consistently are venture capitalists because they spread 50 bets. Well, we're going to a crap table, and we're placing one bet on. We're not even placing it in the corner. We're placing it on a number, and we're hoping to get lucky. And then when we lose, we go, oh, well, I must be a bad crap player. No, you're not spreading your risk. You take a look at the pros. They spread the risk. They know what we wind up. We don't know what we're doing because we have no guardrails. So I'm gonna send you. I'll send Eunice. She'll send you my guardrails. And those guardrails are protecting me from me. They're not to protect me from you. So you need your own guardrails. But I like real estate as an asset. But it's not for everybody, right? Just be careful of the debt. Be careful you don't morph. Bill Gates said this. The problem with success is that it lulls smart people into believing they know what they're doing. And, boy, is that true. Kenny get a little sloppy. You go, ooh, coming natural. I'm kind of Haley's comment, right? Be careful.

Thank you.

Be careful.

Well, let me say this. So in the book, you say, there are no secrets. There's this stuff you haven't learned yet. And the interesting thing about marketers is secrets is really just a very compelling way to say, I've got some secrets over here, which just means there's stuff that they don't know and you're hoping to offer it to them. And this pursuit of secrets, thinking there's going to be some magic formula. The thinking time is what I believe will unearth that. So I'd like to see. Maybe tomorrow we can try and exercise on that and go a little bit deeper in this area. But Keith is going to be at this year's annual event. I'd love everyone to leave here and not just read the book, but get the audio, too. I've actually, It's. You can tell by the way he talks. There's a tonality and an emphasis on the written word. And I know that you doing the audiobook was grueling for you, and you were adamantly against doing it, but you ended up doing it, and it's great. So I've actually sat down, like, you know, this is my copy of the book, and it's just, you know, it's just got everything on here. And so I go through. Thank you. I go through the book while listening to it because I'm. There are some books that I think you're better off mastering one book than reading 50 books. And so this is a book that I really want to master. And my level of that is go to the direct source, get involved with him and that sort of thing. And as you read it, I think this is just such a great roadmap for every business owner. And I would love to also help Keith share this book with as many people humanly possible. Not because he needs the money, because he doesn't. It's just really valuable. And it will not only help people have a lot more success, but it will reduce a tremendous amount of suffering. And the truth is, I'm more into reducing people's suffering than just giving them pleasure, because if you can reduce pain, it's helpful. And so I think this book will potentially save you from an enormous amount of grief that will come your way if you you do not know what is in here. And he gives you a great process for it. And I just cannot thank you enough for coming out here and sharing this. And I just love the path that we're on. And thank you.

I want you to know how powerful this is. Thank you very much.

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