The Seven Great Principles of Business Success You Must Master Feat. Brian Tracy & Richard Branson

I talk about what I call the greats, the seven greats in Business. And actually my three day seminar has the ten greats, but the seven greats in Business. I will give you briefly. First of all, successful companies have great leadership. And leadership is the ability to get results. But it's also the ability to allocate resources, which means it's the ability to make decisions and to make hard decisions. Because if it were easy decisions, everybody would be a leader and everybody would be rich. So making decisions, using thinking, slow thinking, using long term thinking is the critical job of the leader. Drucker says the first job of the leader is to ask what results are expected of me. And then I add to that, of all the results that are expected of you as a leader, what is the most important result that you need to get to achieve the sales and profitability for which you are responsible? One of the rules we learn in business, we never complain about anybody or anything in our business because we're the boss. We're the ones who decided this. You don't complain about your staff because you hire the person. If you don't like the person, get rid of them. Don't complain about them. You just sound like an idiot. You know, it's like picking up food from the buffet down there and saying, I don't like this food. Well, I never have liked this food. I've always hated this food. Well, why did you pick it up? Well, I don't know. The fact is you never complain about something in your business if you're in charge of it. If you don't like it, change it. If you don't want to change it, shut up now. Which allows me to jump actually forward is one of the marks of superior entrepreneurs, is that they're intensely solution oriented, is whenever something goes wrong, they immediately go calm and they say, all right, what's the solution? What's our next action? What mediocre people do is they say, who did it and who's to blame? How did this happen? They go on a witch hunt. And of course that makes them become angry and frustrated. But superior executives, when something goes wrong, problem with the customer, problem with money, problem with bills, problem with product delivery or defects, they say, okay, all right, how do we solve this? What's the solution? Now here's a wonderful thing, is your success in life will be determined by your ability to solve problems. My friend Colin Powell said, leadership is the ability to solve problems. Success is the ability to solve problems. And how do you become really excellent at problem solving? I just Finished a book by the way, called Creativity and Problem Solving that Amicom is publishing in New York at the end of this year because I did years of research on the subject. Here's the point is the way that you solve problems is simply to think about solutions. What are all the possible solutions? Be intensely solution oriented. Don't allow yourself to get bogged down, negative, upset, unhappy about the problem and who did it. Focus on the solution and the actions that you can take. And when you start to think about the solutions, remember Helen Keller's wonderful line, when you turn toward the sunshine, the shadows fall behind you. When you start thinking about solutions, we could do this and we could do that, and you could do this and I could do that. When you start thinking about solutions, your mind goes calm, your creativity turns on like lights, you start to have more energy, you start to feel more confident, and so on. Are you with me so far? Thinking about problems makes you negative and shuts down your brain. Thinking about who's to blame is even worse. But thinking about what you can do and the actions you can take puts you back in charge. Well, the second principle, and I talked about the second great is having a great product or service. And this to me wasn't, is a revelation. And it's so simple it stares you in the face. But 90% of your success in business will be to have a great product in the first place. And this is something that many people miss. They think if I have a good product and I pay thousands of dollars and go to really clever seminars, they'll teach me some marketing gimmicks and tricks so I can con people into buying it. And they spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to advertise or market what is a mediocre product. And I had a good friend, Mitch, and Mitch owned three first class restaurants and he did no advertising for the restaurants. And the restaurants were always full. And when people said, where do you want to go for dinner? Let's see if we can get into one of those restaurants. And so I asked him, I knew him very well because we worked in the same organization. Dr. Allard, my mentor, owned the three restaurants and Mitch was a part owner and he ran them and he could just start an excellent restaurant. I said, what is your secret to promotion? How come these restaurants are always full? And he said, we always put it on the plate. I said, how do you mean? He said, we put superb food at good prices on the plate and just stand back and the restaurants are full all seven days a week. And I always Thought that's the key to success in business. Put it on the plate. Put it on the plate. Put the quality, put everything into the product or service. Now. Now the Inc. Magazine does a story on the Inc 500, the 500 fastest growing companies in America taken over a three year period and every year they update it. The last edition, which came out a couple of months ago, showed that the number one fastest growing company grew 42,500%. 42,500%. Unbelievable. It grew so fast. Others grew 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50 times in two or three years. All new companies are reasonably new companies. All companies started by people like the people in this room. And they grew 5, 10, 50, 20, 100 times. Wow. What was the key? So they went back and they had outside researchers analyze it. And you know what they found is all the companies put it on the plate is every one of them was obsessed with, with quality and obsessed with quality as their customers defined it. And they were close to the customer. They were, they locked tight to the customer. As I was sharing. His idea about, what was it called? What was your wtc? What did you say about customers, Joel? Yeah, Think like a customer. I was sharing that on my conference today. Think like a customer. The very best companies. Think like a customer. What do customers want? What do customers need? And you know, the key to success is make your customers happy and then make them happier than your competitors. And then every single day wake up and think, how can I make my customers happier? And they went and they interviewed the CEOs of the 500 fastest growing companies. And every one of them was obsessed with customers. They thought about customers, they talked about, they visited customers, they called customers, they went and saw customers. They personally responded to customer complaints. They were just obsessed with it. Which again repeats that 90% of your success will be the quality of your product or service. Now, how can you tell if you have a great product or service? Well, it's a very simple test. And this is the test that predicts your future more than any other test for the rest of your business career. How often, how many people, after they have used your product or service, turn to another person and say, geez, that's a great product. Geez, that's a great service. Geez, that's a great company. Geez, those are great people. How many people say, this is a great product? What percentage? 50%, 40%. Average in America is about 30%, 35%. Top companies, companies like Apple that come out with an ipod, an iPhone and an iPad. People consume the product the next time they come out with an iPhone, they sleep on the sidewalks in rows of hundreds to be the first purchasers. They come out with an iPad, they sleep. Hundreds are sleeping on the sidewalks to buy it and pay outrageous amounts. And then they start showing everybody else, isn't this a great product? And then they have apps. Look at this app. Look what you could do with this app. How many people have an iPod? Five. An iPhone. Five. Okay. How many of you showed other people the panoramic thing, how you can take panoramic pictures. Isn't that a great concept? You know, it used to cost thousands of dollars to have panoramic cameras that could take a panorama. And now you've got it in your iPhone as one of 100 or a thousand different things you can do. So people who buy their products become their preeminent salespeople. They're running around grabbing people and bothering them and showing them the product or bragging about the product in a movie. By the way, the movie companies only have enough advertising for the one weekend. They could take big ads for one weekend to get people into the theater quickly. After that, the movie will either grow or die by word of mouth. And your movies that are successful by word of mouth, everybody's talking, have you seen that movie? Have you seen. You've got to see that movie, honey. I just heard about this movie at work. Let's go. Tonight. You weren't even planning to go to a movie, and you go there on Tuesday night, and the theater's full. Have you had this experience? You see, and everybody's talking about it. The most important key to our success. So go back to the ink study, and I'm looking for corroborations. In the ink Study, they had researchers say, what is the very best place for a company to invest if they want to increase their sales and profitability? And the answer came back after looking at everything else, is invest in improving the quality of your product. Invest in improving the quality of your product. Make the product better and better and better. Make your customers happier and happier. Make your customers so happy. I say that the key to success is to get your customers to buy from you first rather than from your competitor to buy again because they are so happy and to bring their friends. And if that becomes your operating theme, we could talk about this all day, is getting to buy from you, buy again, and tell their friends, then you're going to be successful, you're going to be wealthy, you're going to be respected, and more than anything else, you're going to be just as happy as you can be. There's nothing gives us greater joy than to make our customers happy. Number one is become a great leader, which means set clear goals, be decisive, take responsibility for results. Number two is offer a great product and never be satisfied with the quality of the product. Constantly strive to make it better in the eyes of your customers. And here's one of the great revolutions in marketing which I think is so important, is the very best companies, the four stages of the epiphany, the lean startup, are going to their customers and saying, how do you define a great product? Would you buy this? Would you pay for it? What would you want more of? What would you want less of? What can we do to improve it? They're even doing this with what they call the minimum viable product idea is they take a product idea to a customer before they even make the product, and they work with the customer shoulder to shoulder to develop the product. So the customer says, this is a great product, then they produce and market the product. So number three is you want to have a great business plan, but a great business plan simply requires that you think through on paper, the critical aspects of your business. And especially you analyze what it's going to cost, what you can sell it for, what kind of profits you can make, who are the people that you will need. There's a great story of Napoleon's generals all around this large table with maps of Europe spread out. And this is when the French armies were conquering everywhere. And they were talking about what cities or what municipalities, what duchies that they were going to attack with the army next time. And Napoleon would come in from his office, which was nearby, and he'd say, what are you doing? He said, we're talking about, we're going to move the army from here, we're going to move it to there, and so on. And he'd say, well, gentlemen, he said, I'm afraid that we can't do it. We don't have the horses. And you've heard the expression, we don't have the horses. It comes from Napoleon. And what he was saying was that the entire army was driven by horses, cavalry and horses to pull the wagons with the supplies and everything else. And they could get more men by recruiting on the march as they did. They recruited. As they went through a village, they recruited people, join the army, see the world, that sort of thing. Join the army, see the cannons, but the horses, those were scarce. And so the whole success of the army was determined. Could they get the horses that's why when, when, when Mike talks about getting the right people, is where do we get the horses? We got the ideas, we know what needs to be done, but where do we get the horses? So these are the things that you think through in a business plan. What kind of technology will you require and what will it cost to set it up and who's going to run it and operate it? What kind of advertising, publicity, promotion will you require? How much will it cost? What kind of returns will you get? So a business plan, and there's many people, I'm sure you have lots of business plan models that are quite common, is a business plan forces you to think long term and to think slowly. And you'll always make better business decisions if you think long term and you think slowly.

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The fourth area has to do with having a great marketing plan. And a great marketing plan is what you talk about all the time. But there's a rule in advertising. I used to work for a large advertising agency and the rule is the fastest way to kill a product, a bad product, is to advertise it or to market it. Because if you market it, what happens is more people use it. More people use it and are angry about it, then they tell more people and the product dies. So the fastest way to kill a bad product is to promote it. And many people think, oh, no, the way I can get my money back is I can sell it to people before enough people know how bad it is. No, we have the Internet today. Everybody in the world can know how many troops appeared on the streets of the Crimean with balaclava masks on their face. And they know that in three seconds. I was just in Russia, where in Russia they control all the media and they tell people that they were attacking the Ukrainians, backed by the CIA, are behind all the problems in the Ukraine. And the Russian, poor Russian people just are being sacrificed. So I'm just sending in some of my troops to help protect our. I said to my friend Sergei, I said, sergei, that's nonsense. Not a word of what you're saying is true. It's totally false. The only people in the world who believe what you're saying are people within Russia who have no access to news on the outside anyway. So I'm getting off track. My, my point is that marketing means how do you attract people to your product or service? There's a difference between marketing and sales. You know what it is? Imagine that I were to say to you at midday, this group, I say, is anybody here hungry? You raise your hand, all right, that's marketing. I'm interested in your product or service. I'm interested in the product or service generally. But anybody here like to save money, make money, lose weight, be happy, pick up girls, you know, whatever it happens to be. Then the second part is, now I have a restaurant. Let me tell you why you should come to my restaurant to satisfy your hunger rather than to go to the competitors. So those are the two. It's the marketing is to attract people who raise their hand who are interested in the benefit that your product or service offers. And selling the conversion is to get them to buy from you rather than from your competitors. So they are very different functions. You can't sell if you can't attract interested prospects. So marketing is a very complex process and you guys talk about it all the time. So you need a great marketing plan. How can you tell if you have a great marketing plan? Answer is you have a steady stream of interested prospects who are calling you, emailing you, coming in your door, sleeping on the street in front of your business each night to get to be the first ones to come in in the daytime. Number five is you need a great sales plan. And a great sales plan, of course, is a sale that consistently and predictably converts customers or converts interested people into customers. Now here's the rule. If you have a professional sales process and all 100% of all successful companies have a professional sales process, if you speak to the salesperson, I'm working with an international company that has a branch in Warsaw. And if you speak to the salesperson in Warsaw or the salesperson in Los Angeles or the Salesperson In Johannesburg, 100% of them use exactly the same sales process. The first contact will be a telephone contact to offer you a benefit and to try to set up an appointment. And the words will be word for word. The reason this company did this is almost went broken because everybody was selling their own damn way. They would say whatever fell out of their mouths whenever they ran across a prospect. And they realized that without a sales process, we have a great product, which they do, it's killing them. So they systematize the sales process. Their sales went up thousand percent if it's been proven that if you go from random selling to a proven sales process, and of course you have to debug it, you Increase your sales 500% with the same number of prospects. I've seen people get their closing rates from 1 out of 10 to 9 out of 10 by simply improving the sales process. And so selling is really important. It's one of the things we focus on. Now. There's two more points that I want to talk about in terms of grades. One is generate great numbers. And this is one of the most important parts of business. All business activities and results can be expressed in numerical form. Everything right down to the number of telephone rings or number of seconds it takes for a person phony to make connection with a person who can help them. Jeff Bezos, who, as you see, got best entrepreneur businessman of the year, both Forbes and Fortune, they're obsessed with measuring every single activity. And they look at the seconds, the number of seconds that it takes. When we first bought from Amazon, they would advertise 5 to 7 days ups. Today they offer 1 to 2 days max in cities like San Diego, where they have warehouses. You can order in the morning, it's delivered in the afternoon. Books, tapes, courses, clothes. It's Zappos. Overnight. They can deliver overnight because why? It's because they're obsessed with shortening the amount of time it takes to make customers happy. And the shorter the time, customers really value speed and they'll pay top dollar for someone who'll make them happy faster. It's just. They've determined that. So look at the numbers. And the question is, what are the most important numbers in your business? What we teach in our longer courses is about 35 numbers in any business. Some of them are unimportant, some of them are extremely important. And there's five to seven of those 35 numbers that are the A numbers. And then there's one number that's the most important number of all. And we call this. Or Jim Collins, who wrote good to great, calls it the economic denominator. And when I started doing my coaching programs with entrepreneurs, one of the first things we taught was to identify your number. What is the most important number in your business? The number that most accurately predicts your success and your future. And most people get it wrong the first three to five times. What is your number? What is your most important number? The number that you just basically obsess with all the time. And one company went from struggle written up in Entrepreneur magazine, went from struggling to bankruptcy, and then a Friend of his asked him, what was your number? What was the number you were focused on? Well, we weren't focused on any number in particular. We didn't hardly keep track. So they were just selling, by gosh. And by golly. And at the end of the day, they were bust. He had to go home and live with his mother the age of 26. So he said, no, you have to pick a number. So he sat down and he said, and he picked a number, and it's called net contribution margin. In other words, exactly how many net dollars and cents do we make from each sale? And then we compare those sales, and that's after 100% of every expense of cost of customer acquisition and lead generation and delivery and everything else. And then they compare those against the others and they reemphasize, in other words, net contribution margin. And this year he'll hit $100 million in business. And he's laughing. He said, changed our whole life to finally figure out what our number was. So a question I always ask people, what is your number? Do you know? Do you know the most important number? Do you know what most entrepreneurs say? Sales. Sales. Everybody knows that. Just sales, really. What if you're losing money on every sale, then the more sales you make, the faster you go bust. And you know that many companies are losing money on every sale because they don't add in all the costs of the sale. They leave out their own labor, they leave out rent. They leave out utilities. They leave out delivery costs. They leave out defects. They leave out packaging theft. And so there's, boy, are we selling a lot. Yeah. Well, how come you're losing more money every month? Did you see these companies, by the way, that announced they had 11 billion in sales last year? They lost 3 billion. You see them all the time. You say, how could you lose 3 billion if you sold 11 billion? Do you know why? It's because they don't know the numbers. And what they're doing is they're probably working harder and harder to sell more and more products in which they're losing more and more money. And nobody sat down and done the attributable cost. Okay, the last of the seven, and this is the one I love. And this is the future, by the way, the front end of business, the first bookend is having a great product or service to start with. The last is to have a great customer service experience. And I cannot tell you how important this is. This is what Joel and I have worked on all of our lives, make our customers so happy. At the beginning and so happy with the product and happy afterwards. It's the key to repeat business. It's the key to rapid growth. Every successful company, without exception, is obsessed with taking good care of their customers once they get them. And if they have a customer complaint, the head of the company doesn't sleep at night. They are so, so upset about customer complaints. They'll go out and personally visit them. The company president will phone an unhappy customer and talk to them because they consider customer happiness, like Tony Hsieh, to be the most important thing in the world. What Tony says is that we're not in the shoe business, we're in the customer happiness business. We just happen to sell shoes and if we were selling something else, we'd still be in the customer happiness business. What was that worth to Tony? Sold it for his idea, translated into Zappos, sold it for $1.2 billion and took home 350 million. Not a bad idea. Make your customers happy. Does it work? Yes. How often does it work? 100% of the time. So you'll find that the very best companies, the ones that you really like and want to go back to, are the companies that make you feel happy. They make you feel good as a result of having done business with them. They take good care of you and as a result, you go back over and over again and you bring your friends. So those are the seven greats that we talk about here. Great leadership, great product or service, great marketing plan, great sales plan, great numbers, great business plan and great customer service plan. And if you have those, here's the interesting thing is you're missing one of them. It's like dialing a seven digit number. If you miss one of them, your company will go broke. Miss any one of them or get them wrong, get the wrong answer or miss it completely, then your company goes broke. So now we know scientifically, basically more and more of exactly what you have to do to build a high profit business. And the wonderful thing is it's all learnable. You can learn any one of these skills. Anything I just explained to you is as simple as ditch water. All you have to do is just say, ah. And what is it you think? Yeah, I could do that, I could do more of that, I could improve that. We could do that.

What makes a successful producing entrepreneur? And I'll let Marie do the honors.

Oh gosh.

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

Well, what are the business principles that have stood out for you, that just have worked really well for Virgin and for, for even building any sort of organization or cause?

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

Well, you know, I know you start so many businesses, Richard.

I mean, you have, I think, 300.

Some companies right now and, you know, so many entrepreneurs. I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who are startups, who are in their growth phase, who are even in their, you know, legacy phase. And if, if you're in a startup mode, I mean, you just talked about this painting the canvas that's really incredible. What is there like one tangible piece of advice that, that you wish that you had when you were just starting your, your first business?

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

And I got a quick follow up and the follow up would be, you know, so now you started to make it as a business owner.

So now we work with a lot.

Of seven figure, eight figure, nine figure business owners. What did you do to take it to really the whole, whole next level?

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

Talk about the resources that you have. Because it's one thing for someone to hear this. What I hope is that when someone watches one of my interviews or listens to it and I'm talking to a bright person and the person actually can help solve problems, help them get to their bigger future, where they want to go, that they have some pain. Because usually if they don't feel some pain and some hurt, they're not going to do shit about it. I mean, there has to be either some great inspiration or there has to be some frustration and annoyance. And you're like, I'm kind of sick of it. You know, Dan Sullivan has this line where he says, irritated oysters make pearls. And you know, I want people to be in a pissed off state, but also not just leading them, know, what do you do with it? Okay, yeah, I don't know what to do. But you have literally created just so much solutions for entrepreneurs. So what are some of the things that people will get out of scaling up? And also what does gazelles really offer people?

Yeah, well, and what we wanted to focus on, what Geoffrey Moore says is provide a hundred percent solution. There's so many parts and pieces out there that's frustrating for business owners to kind of pull it all together. So we thought, look, let's give business owners 100% solution. Let's get them the coaching support, let's get them the education, let's get them the technology tools, literally tools we've got in the cloud that you can run on your mobile devices so that we can help them kind of automate these components that are necessary to manage the chaos that comes with trying to scale up the business. Now, we do that in how we started the interview in these four areas. And let me give you the test. First thing, why would you look at the people side of the business? Well, there it's purely your gut feel about are you happy? Because our happiness is really tied to the people we work with. I can tell you when you're not happy is you're having an issue with your partner. You've got a salesperson who's mucking up the attitudes of the rest of the salespeople. You got a customer who's got too big a piece of you got a supplier that has you constrained. You've got a bank that is in your way of being able to scale up. You got issues at home, you got a sick child and challenges with your spouse. If you don't get or you just can't hire enough talent to keep up with the growth that you're able to handle. If you got one of those, you, you'd better focus your energy on getting that fixed. And we built tools, whether it's your personal plan, your face tool, the processes in the organization. We help you source employees, how do you manage them, how do you retain them? These are all the nitty gritty things around people. Now, generally you're happy with the relationships in the business. Then we look at strategy. And strategy is very simple. Are you growing top line and gross revenue dollars in as fast as you would like? And by the way, you can grow too fast. You know, as Andy Grove said, more companies die from indigestion than starvation. But for a lot of companies, that's not a problem. I mean, you're not growing fast enough. That tells me your strategy is wrong. You don't have enough of what people want that they literally are beating your door down and standing 10 million in line on a Monday to want to buy your phone. So then we have tools to help you really figure out this industry dominating competition crushing strategy that allows you to have a monopoly because that's what businesses want. Government doesn't want you to have it. Businesses want it. And there's the essential tension of capitalism. So we help you figure that out. Now, if revenue's growing as fast as you'd like, then we look at your profitability and how much just raw time you're having to put in the business. Let me tell you what's sad, Joe. I've had so many friends like double, triple the size of their company over 2, 3, 4, 5 years. Yet the bottom line didn't come with it. They're actually making less money, absolute money, let alone a percentage, and working more hours. And at some point you wake up and say, what am I doing all of this for? And most of them, rightfully so fire everybody, get rid of their fancy offices and go back when it was them and assistant working out of a spot bedroom and they were having more fun and making more money. And that usually is because they're sloppy in execution. And I gotta say, most entrepreneur companies are sloppy. And by the way, we know one simple metric, revenue per employee. It's crazy predictive, but I ask people today how many employees you have, multiply it times 100,000 and you pretty well have guessed the revenue. Large companies, these big bloated bureaucratic machines that we make fun of, generate two and a half times more revenue per employee than most of us mere mortals do. And that's simply because we have sloppy process within the organization. And if you come back then to what frustrates people you hire is they join your company and they have to both work with idiots. You didn't hire the other people, right? Or I got stupid process. Things are frustrating. We can't even get an invoice out the door. We can't even get our product or service out the door without us having to work 18 hours, days, eight days a week to make up for this slop that's around here. And so we really help companies tighten up that execution. And then, look, you can get by with decent people, decent strategy, decent execution, but not a day without cash. And we're not talking about making payroll. That's important. But do you have the kind of financial muscle necessary to do some of the stuff we talked about today? You need to lock up that constraint. You need to get, you know, you need to buy one of your key suppliers. There are a couple of key acquisitions you need to make. You've got the cash to bring on that chief marketing officer. That's necessary. And if you're constrained by those cash resources to do what you absolutely need to do, man, you age so much faster. And so we look at those four areas, we got tools in every one of those areas to minimize the pain that entrepreneurs feel when they're trying to scale up.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I remember the first time I interviewed you, which I don't know how many years ago it was, it might have been a decade ago, I asked you about deadlines and you said that there's this misnomer that entrepreneurs work well under pressure, but under pressure they just work. Do you still believe that to be the case? I mean, do you have any thoughts? Because a lot of, a lot of entrepreneurs put themselves on the firing line way more than they need to because they don't prepare in their just, you know, and look, I'm speaking from a guy who has gone through enormous amounts of, you know, add distractible shiny object pursuits taking on. I've become better than I ever have been. I think meditation has done more to help me than many things. But what are your thoughts about the behavior of these crazed entrepreneurs that are driven like crazy, but their drivenness is causing them enormous pain, broken relationships, poor health, all that sort of stuff?

You know, my thoughts are just what you said and it's recognizing that this is both the source of our strength and the thing that gets in our way that the entrepreneur has to sort out. And Joe, we don't have enough time in this interview to unpack all of that kind of stuff that we just described. But I want to come back to this thing on the deadline. Let's take this big hairy, audacious goal, this 10 year goal. Jim never meant for that to have a deadline. You don't have to get it done in 10 years. It's just like a North Star that you've put out there that you head towards. And a lot of entrepreneurs beat the deadline and others take longer. It's just the fact that you know what the finish line is. And some folks run the hundred meter, you know, sub nine seconds and some take a little bit longer, right? But hey, we got at least get across the finish line and that's why you got to set those finish lines.

This question, one of the things you said is you really can't motivate anybody else. It's a lot easier to select enthusiastic people. And once you create a conscious culture, it selects for its own kind, which is interesting. A company has an immune system and the people that don't fit into the culture, the immune system begins to select them out and get rid of them. So what should entrepreneurs look for and do in order to better select talent instead of trying to motivate people? And what can entrepreneurs do to cultivate and encourage self selecting cultures?

Well, of course we can inspire people. I don't want to say you can't motivate anybody. You can inspire people, but I consider it kind of like a bucket with holes in it if people are dependent on you to fill them up with energy, and it's all going to leak out. So they eventually have to be able to create their own energy. So again, I kind of talked about it already. You've got to create a culture that really allows human beings to be creative and flirt, where they feel a sense of purpose, they have a sense of meaning, they have a sense of belonging that they're cared for, people they care about, and that they can have some fun in the workplace where they can be fully human. We need to create workplaces where humans can be fully human, in a sense, their highest potential of being a human. So I've always had that perspective, and I've. I've tried to model it, and then I try to instill the values and get the culture. I spend a lot of time thinking about the culture. I sometimes think it's like a gardener. You got to look around. If there's a few weeds that you got to pull out, you got to pull them out. There are other things you need to plant. And if you're the entrepreneur of your business, what you'll find out as your business grows, that the business begins to take on a lot of your own personality. The things that are good about you and the things that are not so good about you, and they just unconsciously model on the leader. It's just the way it works. Just like kids model on their parents and then later their peer group. That's what we are, human beings. We copy each other. So once you realize that, then you gotta get your own shit together. Because one of the things that I learned in leadership is that when I got stuck somewhere in my own life, oftentimes the company got stuck, too. And when I got unstuck, that let the company move forward. So personal growth is very important. It really is. And it used to be seen as sort of narcissistic. We focused on that. Now you grow not just for yourself, but you grow for your whole organization. So one of my goals is to continue to learn and grow until the day I die.

So you're very transparent about many issues, and sometimes it makes people mad or they criticize you. And the company can even become, you know, Whole Foods can become the subject of resistance or boycotts. And so what can entrepreneurs here learn from you about handling criticism, dealing with the media, and dialoguing with people who may disagree with their perspectives?

Well, it's a tough question for me because, I mean, I tell the joke that I failed media training in Whole Foods Market three separate times. In media training, they always teach you.

To.

Look, decide what you want to say and then just whatever they ask you. Just bridge to it. Just bridge to. But person asks me a question, I try to answer it truthfully and honestly and authentically. And that gets me in trouble sometimes. And I don't even care about people attacking me personally. You're welcome to attack me, I don't care. But they attack my baby, they attack Whole Foods and they try to hurt Whole Foods. And for those of you that are parents, you know, nothing upsets you more than having your kids attacked and beat up by bullies. So I've learned the hard way that I cannot be as open, particularly about politics in this society as I once was. I wrote an op ed piece in the Wall street journal back in 2009 that led about Whole Foods alternative to Obamacare. And it led to massive boycotts. 350,000 people signed a petition to boycott.

Whole, Whole Foods Market.

There were petitions in our stores. There were thousands of letters that were sent to the board of directors demanding that I be fired. So we live in this incredibly interesting society now where if you say things that people don't like, they just smear you and they attack you. And it's made me, I don't want to say it's made a chilling effect, but I'm a little bit more careful about giving my at least my political opinions in public, at least until I retire. Then I'm going to go on a rampage.

And I talk about this a lot, that as an entrepreneur, what is your job? Your job is to find a meaty problem and fix it. And your ability to find and fix problems is greater than any time ever in human history. There is nothing you don't have access to. I mean, I really want you to take this in. You have access to all the world's information, right? You have access to more information on Google and Baidu than the presidents and the joint chiefs of staff had 20 years ago. You have access to more computational power as an individual, including a teenager in Mumbai, has access to AWS, Amazon Web Services. You can spin up 1000 processor cores if you want. There is no limitation, right? You have access to more capital than ever before. Seed capital, angel capital, venture capital, crowd financing. You know, I'm in discussions with sovereign wealth funds right now that are coming down in to fund entrepreneurs. There is no scarcity of capital. You have access to all the expertise you need, right? If you want a quantum physicist, you can go and find a quantum physicist or molecular biologist or someone on blockchain to help you. What is the only Thing that's scarce, that's limiting, is what is your passion, right? What is your massively transformative purpose? And then within that realm, what is your moonshot? Because once you've chosen that, once you know what drives you on this planet, what lights you up, what gets you up in the morning, what keeps you going at 3 o' clock in the morning. And it's not for your mom or your dad or your friend or your wife or your teacher.

It's for you.

It's in your heart, it's in your soul. It's why you're on this planet. And once you understand that realm and then where you're going to go 10 times bigger, where the rest of the world is going 10% bigger. You're unleashed.

Mm.

You're unleashed.

Yeah.

So that being said, I would like to kind of sort of, as we wrap this up, ask you both, what are your moonshots?

Yeah.

I'll tell you, I've had, growing up, my moonshot with space. I've started a number of space companies I'm very proud of right now focused on planetary resources. Our goal is to build fuel depots. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, United Launch Alliance. All of them are depending upon fuel in space. Their entire economy is fuel in space. So we are focused on getting fuel from near Earth asteroids. We have just signed in $1 billion agreement with ULA to provide a thousand tons of fuel.

Well, I'm an investor in planetary space.

And then extending the human lifespan has been through HLA and cellularity. The moonshot that's the biggest for me is supporting entrepreneurs through the xprize, through Singular University, and through now Abundance Digital. My mission is can I get tens of thousands of entrepreneurs to get clear on their MTP and then pick a moonshot and then support them with the access to technology and the thinking and the experts to go big. And I'm so proud to have played a role in my dear brother Naveen's life and a number of your lives here to inspire you to go for those moonshots, right? So if, if through my work, I can get tens of thousands of entrepreneurs to go and solve the world's biggest problems, that's massive scalability, right? So the platform that Dan helped me create and you helped me create for a360 now abundance digi. A360.360 CEO. As abundance digital is, how do I get to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and support them to solve the world's biggest, biggest problems? Now we're talking about Something scalable.

Awesome. Awesome. You, Dan?

Yeah. Well, our Babs, you know, I have to always remind everybody that it's the teamwork between Babs and me. But we're at the point with Coach now. So I've been coaching for 43 years and we're taking a big jump in the spring and that is that I now see the ability to take a growing number of Strategic coach clients who are in the 10 times program to actually show them that their model is actually a game changer in the marketplace. You know, I'm looking at everything that Naveen said in the previous hour. I've been working with Dave, David Berg. Dave, just raise your hand right there. And Dave has actually worked out the practical on the street model of completely transforming the healthcare system in the United States at a practical level, day to day level. And very interesting. The people who are going to actually profit most by Dave's model are actually people who are making $15 or less an hour right now. He's got the complete model for transforming not health insurance, because it doesn't involve any insurance. It's actually health care for people. And then I look at the other individuals that we just have in the room. You know, I'm thinking about JJ Virgin with her mindshare, mindshare program and Bree, who's Betty Rocker. And, you know, she's gone from nowhere to 2 million people who watch her every day. And so my whole job is to create the structures, the mindsets, the frameworks by which every entrepreneur who comes into strategic Coach in the next 25 years will be a game changer of some part of the marketplace and it corresponds to what they're most passionate about. So that's really my mindset right now. What you're doing both with Genius Network and with Genius Recovery are both amazing game changers. And the whole thing is, and I would say this to everybody here, whatever you're most passionate about, commit yourself to staying and developing that as a game changer model over the next 25 years. So walk out of here. We have hundreds of people in this room and the people who are watching in the lounge. If you take the thing you're most passionate about, build it into an entrepreneurial marketplace model and extend it out 25 years. And it corresponds to what you're most fascinated with, what you're most motivated by, then you will be someone who fundamentally creates new capabilities in the marketplace.

Awesome.

Awesome. And what I will say with the time we have remaining is since we're going to put this out as an episode on 10X Talk. If you're not a subscriber of 10Xtalk.com then go subscribe. Just type in my name and Dan Sullivan's in itunes. Wherever you listen to podcasts and you will get this and for people that for strategic coach strategiccoach.com an amazing program. Now my 20 years into it, 20 years, you have influenced my life in so many amazing ways. And just kind of what you said, even how moonshots and how things restructure how you think about it, I mean that's pretty much what all of these conversations are designed to do is to, is to frame what is possible. And so for you, Peter, if people want to become part of Abundance Digital, what do they do?

A360 digital is probably the best place to go.

Is that right?

Right, Sydney? Real fun. This year at a360, I'm bringing Astro Teller. He's going to spend the day with us. Astro Teller is the head of moonshots at Google. And so my goal, I focus every year with folks and just to plan what Naveen was saying. Every year I do these five year moonshot planners. Like what is your moonshot five years from now? And you can do this yourself today. What do you have to have achieved by the end of this year to get just. You don't have to get, you're not getting 20% to get 10% towards that moonshot or 5% towards that moonshot. And then what are three things you could do this week that gets you on schedule for that first year? Just to start to think incrementally a slice at a time. But Asher's going to come and talk with us about how Google creates moonshots, how they fail, how they allow failure, how they measure everything, how they digitize, how they run experiments. How do you get your team to become a moonshot team?

Right?

These are the kinds of things that are very important because each and every one of us in our hearts and our souls has a moonshot to change the world. And we just need to unleash that.

So yeah, let me say this too. Both of you have great quotes and great philosophies that are written down. Dan's got all these danisms, you've got Peter's laws and I quote Dan more than anyone. And you have a couple ones like the day before Breakthrough. It's just a crazy idea. Another one is the squeaky oil. I mean the, the squeaky wheel gets replaced.

It's not.

Yeah.

So you have some great ways about thinking of things. And both of You. One thing that I think you both have in common is where a lot of the world is scared about shit going wrong. Both of you love shit going wrong because to you, it's massive opportunity, raw material for you to create the, the, the. The future.

Fertilizer.

Exactly. Shit is fertilizer, right?

Use it.

So to the people in the room, there's a lot of resources, human resources. Here are some of the greatest. I mean, Chip Frank's with Joe Volunteer. It's basically taking human resources that want to contribute and creating a mechanism for people to link them with each other, because so many. So this is a room filled with incredible genius, wisdom, and knowledge. It's a tribe of tribal leaders. So advice on how to build yourself as a better entrepreneur, how to get the most out of this community, because both of you have done a great job with it.

Dan, you go first.

Yeah, I mean, I think I just have a couple insights about it. First of all, you have to realize that being an entrepreneur is a life sentence. And you can't go back. How many of you know that once you've gone out, you can't go back? So, you know, I mean, you're, you're condemned to be an entrepreneur for the rest of your life. And a lot of people want to play it half and half. I could do what I'm doing as an entrepreneur or I could do something else. And I want to tell you it's not true. You have no other option except to continue on the way you are. So my feeling is make it fun. And so go for the part of your entrepreneurial experience that tells you that you're always energized. And the other thing is, if everybody could just cut off today thinking about their entrepreneurial future as an individual future and start thinking about it as a team future. So I'm surrounded by teamwork. I. I'm not in control of any one of my work days. I walk in in the morning and I am controlled and managed by other people from morning till night. I'm told when to show up, I'm told what to do, but I am in charge, so I'm not in control. So one of the biggest things for entrepreneurs, you have to give up the idea of control and switch over that you're 100% in charge, but other people are 100% in control. Okay, it's like the entertainment industry or the sports industry. The top performers are not in control, but they are in charge. And, you know, and so. And the other, the other thing is, don't try to Have a complete life. Okay. The notion of bucket list and completing your life and leaving a legacy are all signals to the universe to take the parts back. Okay. I want to die in the middle of eight projects. I mean, if I die, I want it to be a surprise. And I'm in the middle of eight projects and there's no grieving for the first two or three weeks because people are so pissed off about the mess.

Yeah.

I mean, this whole dose, you know, I'm going to bring my life to completion, you know, I mean, this is a death signal, you know, I mean, you're talking yourself into the grave, you know, let you know, death needs no assistance. You know, death needs no assistance. And I'm not giving death any assistance. And, you know, we have fun with.

Peter and I have really fun with.

The longevity thing because people, you know, every time we talk about this 156 and 700 thing, the podcast goes right off the charts. Every podcast people are really interested in this topic. How many of you, if you could extend your active working career for 25 years right now, right at the top, you'd actually make a lot of investment to actually do that.

Well, I want to see who doesn't want to.

Yeah.

Who's wrapping it up within the next 12 months because I'd like to buy a life insurance policy on you and have me as the beneficiary.

So great.

Advice for entrepreneurs. Listen. We are linear and local thinkers. Our brains, 100 billion neurons in our brain, 100 trillion synaptic connections were evolved on the savannas of Africa hundreds of thousands and millions of years ago. And so we have these cognitive biases. And what we do is we take our past and we extend it into the future. And that's a linear extension. And that puts a self imposed limitation on us, on what we can do. And so I'm going to ask you to think about, are you putting those self imposed limitations on your life? Because are you building a business for what used to be possible versus what is now possible? A world of infinite information, infinite computing speed, massive amounts of capital, all of these things. So in that world of it's the best time ever to be alive in a world of near infinite opportunity, in a world of abundance? My question to you is, are you doing the most important thing that you can be doing? Are you doing something because it's a quick buck, because you inherited it, because you have a partner you're obligated to, or are you doing something that gives you joy? I cannot believe the shit I get to do. I feel so grateful, so lucky for being able to dream about opening up the cosmos with planetary resources or extending the lifespan with human longevity, or the investments I make with bold capital. I'm a kid in the candy store, and I'm just excited about life.

And.

And every one of us has that ability. You can make a career out of anything. What did you want to do as a kid? If I gave you a billion dollars of cash and said, go make the world a better place, what would you do with it? That's what I learned from you, Dan, is who do I want to be a hero to? Those kinds of thinking is where your massively transformative purpose is. And so take a second, one second and answer this question. In your heart and your soul, are you doing right now the thing that is the most important thing in your life, that gives you joy? Are you doing what you're doing right now out of obligation? Or is it truly your calling in life that at the end of your life, you can look back and say, wow, I'm so lucky to have worked on that? If you're doing the thing that is your greatest joy and that you feel so lucky to be working on, commit to 25 years. Go 10 times bigger.

Right?

And by the way, going 10 times bigger means letting go of the past. You can go 10% bigger working harder. You can't go 10 times bigger working harder. You have to reinvent the entire business to get 10 times bigger. If you're doing something out of obligation, consider selling it, letting go of it, dumping it, giving it to a friend, and making the white space to live and to live a full life.

Where would you put ethics and ethical behavior in the world of entrepreneurship or marketing? Because a lot of times we think that success equates to unethical behavior. You always see a lot of people that are cheating and lying and so on and so forth, or that if you're too ethical, you're out the door. Right?

So.

And I know that you guys each have a real kind of deep take on this. Let me ask you, Dan, start off. Where do you put ethics and ethical behavior in the realm of marketing or success?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's really interesting. And I, you know, I'll join another word to ethics, and that's morality. You know, that the, the two go together. Ethics, you know, I mean, morality has to do a lot with your mindset and, you know, the values that you have. But ethics is really about your behavior. How, you know, really the ethics is your morality in Action. And. But one of the things I've noticed, I read an article once about inner city kids, you know, who are, you know, who could be dead at 8, they could be dead at 12. South Chicago. So part of the year, I live in Chicago because our main US Company is right near o'. Hare. And. But it's a war. A war zone down there. You know, there's two postal zones. America is really organized. If you go to any big city, you go to the police, you know, police headquarters and police headquarters, and. And you talk to the officer in charge of violent crime in the city, and you bring a map and you give him a marker, and you say, where should I not go in this city? And they always do it by postal zones. And in Chicago, it's two postal zones. Isn't it interesting how Americans organize crime according to Post? I mean, what a country, you know.

And anyway.

So those kids do not have enough certainty about life that they can think more than 24 hours at a time. So when there's a possibility of stealing something, their first thought is, can I get into trouble in the next 24 hours? So what I came to is that ethics is a function of your time perspective. Okay, if, on the other hand, you have a time perspective, if I do this now, what's it look like 10 years from now? The behavior that you will exhibit during the next 24 hours will be ethical. And the reason is you don't want to be doing something today that costs you ten years from now. And so my sense is that ethics is really a function of time perspective.

Ah, very interesting. One of the things I really admire about both you guys, Dan, is you guys both have really interesting perspectives on stuff. You know, it's not just the usual that you read in books. You know, like, who else would come up with that? I mean, I think you're absolutely right, you know, but over to you, Joe. What's your. What's your take on ethics and business?

Yeah, you know, it's. It's considering for even the carpet cleaning industry, which is where I started off. I created a thing called ethical services. And I tried to. I've always tried to use the whole concept of, like, Dan. I asked Dan years ago. Let me start with this. And I'll try to share several different ideas in a little riff that I'll do here. So I asked Dan what's, you know, what's your favorite definition? What's your definition of selling? And he just blurted out, and I don't know how many years ago this was, now dan probably like 15 years ago or something, and he said selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. Now, I have that memorized because I thought about it quite a bit when he said it. Yeah. And Dan always has these very interesting quotes that he shares. And let me just say this, too. I probably should have said this early on. Do you know between both of you, do you know how many, God knows how many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe in the millions range, that both of you have inspired, encouraged, have them show up to face incredible difficulties with, you know, maybe not in the funnest of ways, but just the ability to get through life when life is very difficult. I mean, both of you have been such incredible mentors and role models, if you've intended to be that or not. It's just what you are. I mean, by the very nature of. I mean, Jesus, just look at how many reviews the War of Art has, right? And how much both of you impact people. And so, you know, everyone has something to sell. You know, part of it is a bigger future, though, in a way, to look at life. And so when I asked Dan that definition, I started asking my clients, you know, what do you think are the most important words in the definition? Getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. People would say engage, they would say action, they would say commit. And. And most people didn't get the three words good for them. And I always thought you can get someone intellectually and emotionally engaged in porn and shitty food and doing something damaging. I mean, what I've liked about the War of Art is it's always about the higher self, not about the lower self. I mean, you can, you know, yeah, you can be a degenerate and you can get involved in vices and all that that does. There's, you know, that, as you say, you know, resistance will give you a free pass on that sort of stuff. Stuff. And so as it relates to ethics, I always think of, you know, what's good for someone, and would you sell it to your best friend? Would you sell it to your mother or your father with the assumption you like your mother and your father? You know, for someone that you really care about, if you're in a situation where someone's going to go down a bad path or something, that could be damaging or it could be rotten or it could be scandalous, or not good for them, and you cared about that person, you would try to intervene. You might use words, you might use a challenge, you might use an intervention. You might try to block them from harm's way. And so who are we? In the best of terms, when we care about someone, we're selling, we're being persuasive, but we're doing it with the mindset of we're trying to care for this person and we're trying to protect them. So when it comes to. I think everything in my life is about connecting, connecting other people with ideas, with each other, with things that make them better, not always feel good. Like, for instance, you wrote the. The Warriors Ethos, which you recorded in 2011. Everyone would be very. Their lives will be enhanced if you download that book and listen to Stephen read it. It's called the Warriors Ethos. Like, I think it's less than 90 minutes, and it's great. And you talk a lot about, you know, Spartans and you have such. This deep knowledge of so much of history. But anyway, you know, there's. The whole goal of making someone better is not always going to make them feel better. It's not always about happiness. Right? And we live in this culture. Everyone wants to pursue feeling, you know, sweet and loving and all that sort of stuff. But the fact is, human progress oftentimes takes enormous effort and in many cases, sacrifice. And so when it comes to connecting, there's true connecting because you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape, you know, and when you are connecting with someone, you care about them, you're operating from a good place. Connecting, though, is when you're conning people and making it look like connecting. So there's connectors that use con artistry, and they con people and they blow smoke up their ass and they sell crap and they make promises and they. They don't that they have no intention of delivering on, or they're selling crap on a box, and the very best thing you're going to ever see from them is their sales pitch or their marketing. But then there's real people that when they sell something to somebody or when they offer something to somebody, they actually really care about that person being better off as a human. So for me, I don't. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. I mean, you might tell really crude, dirty jokes to your buddies that you would, you know, were in the military with. That could be vulgar, that could be inappropriate to many people, but you might not say that to someone's grandma. Most people have drank beer. Most people have gone to church. You usually don't drink beer in church, although I'm sure people drink beer in church. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. And I like people who understand the distinction in who operate that way, because we've all met people who that man, they just put on a great show. They really act like they care about you, but they're usually narcissists or sociopaths or they have just created a value system, you know, that is different than, you know, the ones that we made it adhere to. And the weird thing, and I'd like to ask you guys about this, you know, as I'm rambling here, what I'm thinking in my mind is that I think most people think they're right. It's that saying that, you know, we judge others by their actions, we judge ourselves by our intentions. And I first heard that when I don't know if you bought. Well, Dan, I know you know Harvey McKay. Do you happen to know Harvey McKay?

No.

Stephen, he wrote a book years ago, his most famous book. He's written a bunch of books was called how to Swim with the Sharks without being Eaten Alive.

I've heard of the book.

Yeah, yeah. Sold millions of copies. And he's now 90 years old and he's a dear friend of mine. And so Harvey, he was doing the small event that he invited me to. It was like kind of a brainstorm with a bunch of, a bunch of business owners. And one guy was, Chris Widener was talking and he said to the, to the group, he's like, how many have you ever been ripped off by someone? About half people raised their head and he's like, how many of you ever ripped off anyone? And no one raised their head and he said, he goes, huh? He goes, that's interesting. He goes, you know why? He goes, because you know, the reason you've been screwed by someone, but you don't think you screwed anyone is we judge ourselves by our intentions. We judge others by their actions. And, and I thought about that quite a bit and we all, like you could intend to do the right thing, but do your actions actually show that? So I think it takes a deep level of awareness and looking at the byproduct of your behavior and your, you know, because all of us have times where we're loving and we're caring and we're doing well in life and others where we're desperate and we're self centered and we're tired and we're exhausted and we're maybe taking advantage. And so part of it is not that there's some perfect, you know, angel human that's always operating out of, you know, perfect ethics and morality. It's just being able to set up a way you operate and way you behave and the way you conduct yourself in your character. Like, my whole book is not about capabilities, even though I share a lot of them. It's about character. My goal of my book is to not just build, you know, Hitler had enormous capabilities. I'd say it'd be really hard to say his character was a good character. I mean, look at the destruction that some of these people, you know, when, when, Dan, we were talking earlier with Stalin and Mussolini, I mean, they all had capabilities. You don't rule a country. You don't do what these people did without capability. Some of the smartest marketers I know have enormous capabilities, but their character is kind of shit. And so, but that's my opinion, because if you were to ask them their intentions, they all think their value system is their value system. So there's a lot of den of thieves. It's. I grapple with this, you know, one person's freedom fighters, another person's terrorists. So, you know, what is it? But those are my thoughts. That's. That's at least some of my thoughts about ethics and morality is what's the byproduct of what your life is about and where it leaves people? Does it leave the world and people and, you know, around you in a better place? Or does it cause destruction?

But I think you would say, Joe, that like, as a. As a marketer or an entrepreneur, that the more, and I'm sure you would say the same thing, Dan, the more good you can do, the better it is for you, for even for your. Your own selfish interests. Would you agree with that?

I would. I would totally agree with that. And Dan, I'd love to. Love to hear your thoughts on it. And I have more thoughts on it, but I want to, you know, kind of. Yeah, sure.

Well, I think the other thing is.

That, you know, that there's a matter of, you know, leading a very complicated life for a simple life. And, you know, I'm a straight ticket Republican ever since I could vote. And in Canada, I'm a state straight ticket conservative. But one of the. One of the presidents that I admire most was Harry Truman. And after, you know, because he's the one that had the big decisions, you know, I mean, so many big decisions. And you know, and I remember there's a story, it might be apocryphal, but the day after Roosevelt died, of course, he was sworn in as the President and he met with Roosevelt's cabinet. And he came in and he said, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you know, you know, here comes Harry, a hick from Missouri. And he said, and you, you, you're used to Roosevelt, one of the great gods of American politics. But he says, here's the facts of it. I'm as powerful as he is because I'm President of the United States. And guess what, you're still cabinet cabinet secretaries. And I can fire you just as easy as he could fire you, you know, and it just put everybody straight because he knew they were going to scheme against him. He knew what they were doing because they schemed against Roosevelt. You know, they do that. But he's had a great saying. He says, always tell the truth. It's more economical. You only have to remember one version. And I think that ethics is a form of truth and that is you can be the same person in all situations. And I think that, you know, a lot of people, they have to check out their surroundings to figure out who they're going to be, but in that situation, or they have to figure out who they've told what, what to make sure that, you know, they're keeping their story straight. And their story is so complicated, it's very, very hard to keep it straight. Yeah. And I said that that all comes at the price of what you're really good at. You know, that comes all that. I mean, if you do that, you're totally non creative, you're a totally reactive human being. And I think that ethics gives you a, a very simple, energizing path into the future where you only have to be the same person all the time.

Yeah, I mean, another way of looking, I haven't really thought this one through. I'm going to be blathering as I say this, but another word for it, it seems to me, could be authenticity in the sense of when you open your mouth and you speak, you're really saying what you really think and not what you think is the other is going to create a, you know, a favorable impression in somebody else's mind.

Yeah, one of your, you know, in the, in your current book, the books coming out, you were talking about what your attitude has to be when you're writing and you can't think about, oh, this is, is this a great book? Is it, you know, is it, you Know, am I, you know, is this really going to move people? You say, I'm going to throw myself completely in it, and I'm going to finish it, you know, and get the book. And I remember Reagan. I'm kind of a Reagan type of writer. And when Reagan, you know, got to governor, I don't think so much when he was governor of California, but when he became president, people say, yeah, everybody laughs at me because of the movies I was in. You know, what about crappy movies? And he said, well, I have to tell you, back then, they didn't tell us that the movie had to be good. They said they didn't want the movie good. They wanted the movie Tuesday. And it's kind of like that. And I think that's a copywriter's attitude. In other words, you got a deadline. I mean, people say Shakespeare. Shakespeare. Oh, I could be like Shakespeare. I said, there's two things you have to remember. He did it for money and on deadline.

Yeah, yeah. And Dickens, like Dickens, too, that was.

Writing, you know, install he did for money. And so my feeling is that. And Joe brought it up at the beginning. Joe brought it up or you brought it up, Stephen, that the best way to be really good in yourself is have it be for value for other people. In other words, that you have in mind who you're doing this for. And so is it going to make a difference in that person's life? And how are they going to feel after? You know, I mean, how are they going to feel about the value that they got from you? If you have your emphasis on that, you're taken care of. You know, your friend who is in 24 that you visit with in Sundance, the actor. Glenn Marshaw. And he's fascinating guy. And I have to say that if you looked at his life, you know, he's, you know, Hollywood, Hollywood actor. He does movies, he does TV and everything. I bet he is the most fully employed actor in the history of the United States over the last 50 years. And he was telling Joe, he said, well, you know, he says, you got to look at it from the standpoint of a director. He says, you can't look at it from any other standpoint of the director. And the director needs two or three stars to even get on the board. He said, so I'm not a star, okay? And then he comes down to about number five. And he said, who am I going to put in number five? And he says, I'm always number five in the directors. In the directors. And he said, I always prepared I always show up on time. I'm always a great team member. And he said, I'm always grateful and thankful for every role I get. And then he's employed nonstop for 50 years because it isn't about him. It's about the. It isn't about him that when the director gets to number five, oh, we'll put in Glenn, because that's an easy one. And my sense is the other thing is also to know your value to other people and what can they always count on you for? You know, I spent a lot of.

Time saying that can be a hard one, you know? Yeah, yeah.

What can. You know, I always show up on time. I'm always prepared. I always come up with something new, you know, and my team just depends upon that. My clients.

By the way, I was going to ask you, Stephen, do you know who Glenn Morshauer is?

No. No.

Yeah. So he's not like Dan said, he's not like some, you know, a list celebrity.

But no, that's why he doesn't. That's why he saw his face.

I'm sure I would know.

But every director. Every director everywhere knows who he is.

Yeah. Let me share a story that Dan knows this one, but years ago, me and. Me and Glenn were speaking at an event in Las Veg, and it was. I think it was 2009. 2000. Yeah, I think it was around 2009, 2010. And Glenn has been in more military roles than any living actor. And so he's. Yeah, he was on every episode of 24. Other than Kiefer Sutherland, who was the main star, he was on every episode of 24. And at the time, there were pictures of Kiefer Sutherland on People magazine, I believe, National Enquirer, basically all the tabloid type of magazines on the COVID with him drunk on the sidewalk outside of the Viper Room in la. And I was asking him, I said, so what's.

You were asking Glenn, correct?

Yeah, I was asking Glenn, what's the story on Kiefer? He goes, well, now that he's been outed, he goes, you know, I can maybe, you know, say a few things. He said, great guy, super professional, shows up, does a great job. Everyone likes working with him. Awesome guy. And he said, at the end of, you know, at the end of his. Of the day, he finds it sometimes easier to sit and hang around and, you know, drink in his trailer and on set than go home to his mansion alone. That's he said. And at this point in Kiefer's life, he goes, his fame is Globally inescapable. He said, there's nowhere on the planet that he could go without being recognized. And he said, you know, a single piranha won't do much damage, but a swarm of them will take down a great creature. And he said, if you get into this business. He was referring to the entertainment business. Without knowing who you are, it will misinform you. That was the statement he made. And I was like, yeah. I go, that's really interesting. And when I first met him at Sundance, we were having lunch, a friend introduced us, and all these people were coming up to him asking for autographs. And I said to him, I go, does that ever bother you? And he said. He goes, you know, sometimes, if you have to really be somewhere in a hurry, it could sometimes be challenging. He goes, but I am. He goes, I wouldn't even have a career if it wasn't for these people. He's like, I am so appreciative that anyone likes what it is I do. He goes, how would I even do it, what it is I do without these people that like what I do, like my work. And appreciative. He goes, why on earth would I have anything other than gratitude for these individuals? And he had an incredible work ethic, and he was genuine. I've seen him in many situations, and he is always loves. His wife, is just a super caring, grateful, appreciative person. And therefore, he gets roles and gets opportunities that others do not, because he just comes from that place. But he also has done a tremendous amount of work on himself, and he's really quite aware of, you know, don't take yourself too seriously, you know, like my dear friend, you know, Dave Keckage, who unfortunately passed away at 78 years old last year from kind of a malpractice surgery. It was horrible. And Dave wrote, you know, he was my friend who was paralyzed from the chest down for half of his life. And he had one of his credos. He had 100 credos called kekich. Credos. Credos. He had an interesting last name. And he said, things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they're going wrong or seldom as great as they seem when they're going, well, lighten up. You'll live longer. You know, just having the state of mind on how you approach things. 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. Can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

If we can go back and pick up on the ethics, the ethics topic. So I looked at your biography. So I looked and I got to the end of your biography, and I said, oh, another guy who went to a university, and these were all the classes he took, all the different occupations you were in the oil fields, you were. You were a fruit picker, you know, and you did Airbnb. Airbnb in your own car or somebody else's car and everything else. So lots of different kinds of people, lots of different kinds of situations, including Hollywood, you know, being in Hollywood and, you know, being in the, you know, in a movie, writing scripts and writing books and everything else, but from the standpoint is that ethics in one area of life is the same as ethics in another area of life.

Definitely.

There isn't any industry that's more ethical than any other industry.

No. And like, like you were saying about the actor, your actor friend. I mean, showing up and being ready to, you know, hit. Hit your mark and say your lines and, and not, you know, be shafting anybody else is at least as important as talent, you know, and. Because somebody will bring you back, you know, and. And you will bring them back, you know, that's really like. Joe, you. One of the things you've always said, and this actually comes from Dan, too, that part of being an entrepreneur is not only doing what you want to do, but doing it with the people you want to do it with, you know, and so in. In order to be with those people, you have to be for them what you want them to be for you, right? You have to show up for them and deliver the goods for them and be somebody that, you know, that's. That's ethical, right? That's not gonna throw their buddies under the bus when. When the heat gets applied, you know?

Well, I mean, I just want to.

Say this before I forget it. You were talking about how we judge other people by their actions, but our own selves by our intentions. And that one of the axioms in. In screenwriting or also in novel writing, in any kind of story writing, is that the villain never thinks he's the villain. From the villain's point of view, he's doing the right thing, Right? And that's, that's, you know, if you think of any of sort of the great villain speeches like Jack Nicholson's one in a few Good Men, you know, where he says, you know, you can't handle the truth. And he, you know, he's the guy that, you know, basically, you know, okayed the murder of this young Marine.

Right.

But from his point of view, he goes, this wonderful, great speech that Aaron Sorkin wrote about, we have to stand on a wall, There are bad guys on the other side of the wall, and God damn it, you need people like me on that wall, you know.

So it was one of the finest movie speeches of all time, by the way.

It's a great one. Yeah.

But sort of ethics, too, and a crazy.

Oh, it is.

I'm sure. You know, if we had Putin on the. On that show right now, he would say, God damn it. The worst thing that ever happened was when the Soviet Union broke up. My people were crushed mentally by that and psychological.

Greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

I'm going to bring the USSR back, and I don't care who I have to kill or what I have to do to do it. And I'm sure that in his mind, he's a saint. And to, you know, tens of millions of Russians, he's a saint, too.

What is the greatest misconception that people have regarding PR in terms of what it can and can't do?

That is a great question. And recently I was with two CEOs that each of their companies went over $500 million. And one of the things we did was we reverse engineered. How did they get to those points? One is Tom Shoes and the other one is Shazam. Right? So I'm with the CEOs, and we reverse engineer it. Do you know, each of these milestones that took them and added a 0 had a PR component involved. Right. When I look at Tom Shoes, he said once he got on the Today show, he started seeing people wear shoes that weren't just people he knew, but every single time the company was struggling and trying to get to the next level, they would just infuse a PR opportunity and it would just catapult their sales, catapult their vision. The misconception about media is media people are still real people, Right? These are journalists that have a job to do, which is to fill a hole in a paper. So they often run out of time. If you can show up and be a person that actually builds a relationship with your media, and you're like, for me in veterinary medicine, all of them know me personally, right? So me in veterinary medicine, when I call them, they want to hear what's going on in the industry. But also, if they have a whole hole in the paper. They will call me and ask me if I have a story that they could just put in. So the more that you build a relationship with media, the more that they will call on you as a resource. But they're also going to trust you, they're going to want to include you. But it's still a relationship. And the number one way to build that relationship is actually read their stuff and then write them a note and tell them how you read it and it affected you. Don't sell them something, don't pitch them something in the beginning. Let them know you actually read what they write. Let them know that you actually care about what they write. Let them know if you don't agree with it, they want to hear that. But the number one thing media want is to know you're actually paying attention. Don't just call them and pitch something unless you've read it, made a comment and built that relationship. So the more that you do that, the more you'll get actual bang for your buck in media. The other thing is for pr. I wouldn't really start outside of your company. I mean, you could do your own PR in the beginning. Joe always talks about like, do not delegate your marketing, right, because it's your voice and what you're doing. I think in the beginning a lot of people hire somebody else to do their PR and their story isn't even really set in place yet. If you do your own and you talk to the media and you ask them what are you working on right now and then figure out a way that you can add value to them. That's how you build the relationships and just build it for them first before you ask for anything. And I think that's been really valuable for us. And now media just come knocking on our door, see the other day and they're just like, can we interview you right now? But it took years to get to that point where they see us as the resource and they're so comfortable they'll just show up. But you could build that. It's just like building any other relationship. It just takes a little time and consistency.

Can I ask a follow up, Joe?

Sure, go ahead.

Okay, so the follow up is this. What can't PR do? You know, I mean, there are certain things that people, people want exposure, but maybe it's premature, maybe they're not ready for it yet. And so what is it that it cannot do? We know what it can do if it works well.

Well right now there's just so many stories out there. And so getting through the noise is the big part of it. Actually, Narina, who's one of my assistants on here, who does news releases with me, Nerena and I send news releases through a press wire that's in London. So when we send our releases, it's a global release. We usually get about four or 500 hits. But of the four or 500 hits, maybe we pick a dozen and we deep dive with them. When we deep dive with them, that's when we have the opportunities to build a relationship. It's just not going to happen on its own. So it just takes some time and effort and consistency. Again, maybe you pick five media right now and over the next week, every day you do something to connect with them. Either read it or put it out there. It's not just going to take your company to the next level on its own without your effort. You have to be involved. And I think a lot of people make it hands on, assign it to someone else and think they're going to do it for them in the beginning. You want to be part of it. What's that?

I was going to say one of.

The most amazing things that I've seen. I start to pay attention to these things whenever I see something like that happen. And one of the ones that really stood out in the most recent memory is the state of Nebraska came out with their official slogan, which was we're not for everyone.

And that was such a amazing thing.

That you talked about filling things at the end of every local or regional newscast thing. You know, they're wrapping up and well enough. Did you hear about Nebraska?

They came out with talk about honesty and advertising.

Their official slogan is we're not for everyone.

And it's kind of like ha, ha ha.

Everybody's joking about it, but when you.

Follow up on it, we're not for everyone.

Unless you like outdoor adventure and you like outdoor stuff and you like nature and you like this.

All the wonderful things that Nebraska has. But talk about the millions and millions of dollars of exposure that that got.

With people talking about, talking about Nebraska, you know, so, so interesting how just.

Thinking through what you really want to.

Have happen with this.

Absolutely. It's powerful though, Joe. I will say Internet marketers have not figured this piece out. I've been doing it for years and it is definitely a game changer. Once you figure out what's your niche, who are your people, build that relationship. It has brought so many opportunities for us. I got my husband on the Doctors TV show. We were doing A project for two years trying to get a law changed in the state of California. I got so tired of it sitting on the governor's desk. I get him on doctors TV show on a Tuesday, was signed on that Friday. That just shows the power of pr. Two years, nothing happens three days after it's on tv. Signed and moved on. So you use it as needed. It is a powerful tool. I will say sometimes I think the PR people, people rule the world because they rule the headlines. And a lot of news journalists run out of time and they'll take the entire news release and put it in there and then the PR person gets their whole story out there. But do not call media and just pitch do call them and be interested in them. They're not used to it and they will pay attention to you because they're just used to everyone calling them with a pitch and they're kind of tired of it.

I mean, look, I think one of the best rules of thumb is just treat people like humans. You people don't do business with a company, they do business with a person. They don't do business with an idea unless your idea is so earth shattering that they're willing to overlook any other thing. There are those particular stories, but in terms of relationship building, if you want to be transactional, if you want to be episodic, it just doesn't have a lot of depth. And most people are very shallow with how they approach any business. And a lot of marketers are very episodic. And so they're thinking you can make up with a good headline or a great offer or a great video or something shocking. The lack of substance. So a substance relationship is really critical. And just getting to know someone someone and being just caring and personable and useful goes a long way. 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 will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead, you're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.