Use These Rituals To Transform Your Productivity | Joe Polish

For me, it's just. It's dedication to the child inside me and what I care deeply about, which is making this, making these succeed. And ultimately it's trying to be clear about what I'm enjoying doing, right? It's surfing the stuff I love versus this is work. I'm probably not good at this work. Who else can I find that can do it and doing the stuff that I truly love better and doing more of that.

I believe that the body is the place that drives the mind the fastest. You can go inside your head all day long trying to resolve things and make excuses or freak out. But I learned early on in my life that in order to make myself do things, I had to trigger this body to feel strength and to know that when I say something, I mean it.

So I want to talk a little bit about your rituals and then I want to get into some leadership and ask you about that. So how do you. What's a typical day for you? I know you travel. There's probably not one typical day. But what are some of the things that you always do that you have found have really been useful?

So when I'm in my usual routine and in the pocket Joe, there's the 5am Club, right? And I run what I call the 202020 formula. I shared it with you, and many people around the world have found great value from it. And it's pretty simple. I mean, it sort of rolls back to what the Spartan warriors once said. And they said the person who sweats more in training bleeds less and more. And whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're an artist, whether you're a baker, whether you're a yoga teacher, whether you're a mom, whether you're a street sweeper, you know, when you walk out in the world, there's a call on your life to bring your best game to the world and release as much talent as possible. And a lot of people, what they do is they get up every morning and they sort of run their day by default, and they're chasing the day and they let life act on them in a very reactive way. And so I think what we want to do is see ourselves as warriors of some sort, where we take from five to six every morning and we prepare ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. And so to give a tactic to your many listeners, it's the 202020 formula. First 20 minutes, as soon as you get up, five to five, 20, intense exercise. And that's going to do a whole bunch of things. A lot of My work is very science based and it's going to create a pharmacy of mastery. So you're going to release dopamine, which is the motivational neurotransmitter. You're going to reduce cortisol in your brain, which is the fear chemical. You're going to release serotonin, which even if you're cranky, you start to feel good. You're going to release bdnf, which scientists are calling Miracle Grow for the brain, which actually allows your brain cells to repair from stress. I mean, this is exciting to me.

Yeah, it is, right?

So that first 20 minutes, you rewire your brain. What else do you do? You jump start your metabolic rate. What el do you do? You prepare yourself for resilience against stress. And it just goes on and on. Second part of the 202020 formula, you plan, you pull out a journal. You can do an imprint of your day, which is very powerful, or you can look at your big five, or your plan that releases hope, it releases focus.

Right.

Because an addiction to distraction is the death of creative production. Totally.

Okay.

And then the final part of the 2020 formula, learning. I mean, he or she who learns the most wins. What made Steve Jobs Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk is they know more than anyone around them. And so I believe that the more you know, the more you can achieve. And there's great value investing as much money as you have into audio books or programs like you do at the Genius, you know, the 25k conference and the Genius network or whatever it is. But, you know, every quarter I make sure I get out of my office and I go off to a call conference. I invest a lot of money in learning and training and coaching, and that's the 2020-20 formula.

Well, I will say a lot about you. I mean, one thing that I really admire, I don't think I've ever told you this, is that when you first came to one of my events I was doing, I didn't even know who you are initially. I mean, I knew your books, but I really didn't know who you were. And you had no intention of like, oh, I'm a big deal. I'm the smartest guy in the room. And there are so many authors that I know and so many speakers, and you're incredible. You're one of the best in the world that really want everyone to know that. I mean, there's like this ego that's driving them, and I've never seen any trace of that with you. And maybe it's been there before. And I'm sure there's certain levels of healthy ego, however you look at it. But you are one of the most coachable people that follows the advice that you demonstrate. I mean, you do. From everything that I've ever seen you do. I mean, maybe you've got some weird, bizarre our habits, I don't know. But what I like about the way you show up is that you just. You're extremely coachable. And even times when I'm like, hey, would you like to come up on stage? You're like, you know, I'm here to actually learn.

So where did you make it? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I really think it's a cool trait because I have seen a lot of people that are so used to the world admiring them. You know, they have fame, they've gotten notoriety, and certainly you've had plenty of that. And they literally can't sit and listen to someone else. They quit learning. And some of the people that I read their books in the beginning, that when I meet them later in life, they're actually not as good as they were when they were more hungry, when they weren't just kind of in that game. And I think you're just a student as much as you are a teacher, which I think is what makes you such a great teacher.

Well, thank you. I mean, it goes back to my dad, and he was very much about humility. I mean, he's 77 right now, and he gets up every morning and he goes off to his medical practice, and he still sees patients all day. And he said. I said, dad, why are you still doing that at 77? He said, because my patients need me. And so I think one of the core values he was so brilliant in sharing with me is to be an instrument of service. And I think the moment your ego runs your brain and the ego runs your business, and the ego runs your way of being, then your gifts and your talents and your focus and your capabilities are off. The creativity and the talents and the service that will make you great in the world. And I think it gets to a very philosophical point, if I may. I think it's relevant to any leader, any entrepreneur, any business builder, any game changer. But, you know, I mean, there is such an addiction to the shiny toys that the ego sells us and society and the matrix and our peers. And the world says, if you get a Ferrari, if you get. If you sell 10 million books, if you have lots of money in the bank, if you have the beautiful partner in the big house, then you're going to wake up every morning and look in the mirror and you are going to feel full of joy and peace and feel you're fully alive. I've had most of those in my life at a pretty exponential level. I've been very blessed, and not one of those things has provided me with enduring sustainable happiness and fulfillment. And the things that provide me with just deep happiness and deep fulfillment and energize me all come from a position of inner power. And so, you know, at the events you're talking about, I don't derive much power from all the books I've sold or bestseller. I don't care about that stuff. I really don't. I care less about that than ever before. At the end of the day, we are a bunch of people on a little planet in a huge galaxy, and before we know it, we're going to be a bunch of dust. And the great billionaires get buried next to the taxi drivers and the pizza makers, and we are not that big a deal. And I think all that really matters is while we are alive, you know, do your best to use every day as a vehicle to birth your talents into the world. And secondly, if you do that, you're going to serve the world and raise the world with you. And that all just comes from inner power. I mean, that's just deriving your power from a place within. And that's where you get grace, and that's where you get great creativity. That's where you get boundless energy. Because it's not about addicted to what the world thinks of you.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to Joe's free book and you can get a copy there. What does it require mentally and physically to perform at that level? Because I think it's a combination of both.

Yes. I mean, but the thing is that Ellen Maroulis is probably the poster woman for dedication. I mean, she went 18 months without having dessert. She didn't have Christmas dinner. You know, and we have a saying in sport. What does third place taste like? Cake. Right. So the thing is that she was very, very committed. But she, for example, learned Japanese so she could understand what the coach was telling her on the mat to her opponent so she could figure out the next move. Wow. So, you know, Helen, of all the athletes I've coached in my life, is probably the most detail orientated athlete that did every single thing. She watched YouTube videos of her fighting, she could understand her moves, you know, and now what we see is that now everybody's copying Ellen so they're trying to see what you're going to do next. And we have a plan for Tokyo for that.

Okay, awesome, awesome. So for people that are here in the room, which are like a bunch of driven, successful entrepreneurs, male and female, I want to talk about some different advice and recommendations for people here to get in as optimal condition as they can on all levels and things that anything you want to talk about to improve not only their physical bodies, but their sleep or anything that you think is important. I first met. Okay if I tell the story how we met? Yeah. So we both have a friend named Janet Atwood who actually invited both of us. Unbeknownst to both of us, we had heard about each other because I had been Bill Phillips marketing consultant since 1996 and Charles was writing for Muscle Media magazine. He's written for pretty much everyone. And basically I'd heard of him and he had a big reputation in the world of fitness and bodybuilding and powerlifting and you name it, but I never met him in person. And so we go to Fairfield, Iowa and we both go through meditation training for TM training and that's how we met. And so we spent four days together with like five other people who were all my friends going through meditation training. And it was kind of funny because we were in a hotel where there was like nothing to eat except a bunch of carbs. Right. And you were like ready to kill somebody while going through meditation training. Yes, and we shot some funny ass videos at the grocery store and stuff. But so that's where me and Charles met. So you've explored a lot of different areas of the mind and the life. So what are some just fundamentals that people need to do in order to get in great shape?

One of the biggest myths is that it takes a lot of work to get a good physique. And I mean, Tim Ferriss wrote a book called, called A Four Hour Body. But I think that four hours a week is plenty. Even my top level athletes, as far as strength training is concerned, it's about four hours a week. But there's no messing around when I train. And I think what people should realize, the room is full of entrepreneurs. But the difference between you and Olympic gold medalist is not that big because you're very driven. But the problem is that the way I explain to people is that you're like an oil lamp and the flame is the yang energy. So the bigger you can burn the flame, it's great. So people spend a lot of their energy, but the problem is they don't take care of the oil. That's what we call the yen reserve. So executives should be really focused on building the highest possible yen reserve to be as yang as they want to be. Because how many of you work 16 hour days? It's quite common, right? And then you cut back a lot of things. And I think that the modern trend is to say you have things like the one thing or Tim's philosophies, but you should try to shorten your workday and take care more of your yen reserve. And sleep is the limiting factor. 72.8% of Americans complain of sleep disorders.

Wow, 72%.

Okay. So where do we have most accidents in the US Is when we put the clocks forward and we lose an hour of sleep. So they put more cops on the road because there's going to be more accidents. Just one hour of sleep makes a huge difference in accident statistics. So I think that we have to take care of our sleep patterns. And there's also what I like to say to people is that the two biggest stressors or it's their mouth. In other words, it's the things we say, it's what we put in our bodies. And the thing that happens is that you never had somebody say, oh man, I was so stressed last night, all I could eat was Brussels sprouts.

Right?

So people will say, okay, I was so stressed last night, I went through three boxes of Pringles, you know, two kilos of chocolate chip cookies, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we tend to self medicate with carbohydrates.

Why?

Because we found out a long time ago that cortisol, which is a stress hormone, is lowered by insulin. Right, but the problem with insulin, it's your friend sometimes. But for most of us, it's the enemy because insulin is the hormone of aging. So the more insulin you make, the faster you age. And controlling the fat loss process is managing insulin. The more you can control your insulin, the better you will do.

Great. So when we were outside at lunch, I was doing a Facebook live video and you talked. I said, what's the best piece of health advice you could give to people that would be a total game changer. And you said, if grains were eliminated from the planet. But the caveat being that half the world's Population survives because of grains and people. If there weren't grains, people would die. If you have the availability of food like most people in this room, how would you eat?

Okay. I've worked a lot with the hockey players, football players, and I got to make it very simple for them. So I say, ask them a question. I said, ask yourself that the food you're going to put in your mouth was accessible to cavemen. And I run a test. So I go, like steak? Oh, yes, A caveman could have that. And then donuts. And they go, ooh, is there a donut tree?

No.

Pop. Is there a pop river? So if a caveman had access to the food, he can eat it. So that's a very simple rule to simplify our eating habits.

Did cavemen have. What about grains? They did have access to some grains.

Very little.

Yeah.

Grains are more linked. The grains start to get popularized in ancient Egypt. And then what we saw though, if you look at skeletal remains, is that that's when we start to have degenerative diseases. We used to be much taller, much more muscular when we were living more off a paleolithic diet.

Yeah. So when you travel, as most people here, they travel a lot. How do you eat when you're on the road?

Well, the thing that you have to realize is that I actually do a lot of my teaching schedule based on the countries where I could find the proper food. That's why I don't go to England. Right, right. It's like a third world country when you look at food.

And all those of you in England on Facebook live.

Hi there.

How are you doing?

In all seriousness, to be productive, you have to eat properly. But one of the things, for example, with jet lag, I just did a post today in some of my pages, is that the food you eat when you land in the country will make a big difference. Your brain's going to behave. So, for example, as they land and sail, we're now going to prepare for landing. Well, you should drink about 1.5 liter of water.

Why?

Because have you ever noticed it's really hard to fall asleep if you got to pee?

Right.

So basically, when you drink a lot, you activate the kidney meridian, which is the energy meridian. So you drink a lot of water. Then this thing you should pull out of your briefcase or your purse is caviar. Caviar is probably one of the best brain building foods. And you have to reset your neurotransmitters. And the yang neurotransmitters are dopamine. And that's still choline. So you could have caviar or you could have. If you don't like fish, you could have roast beef. But there has to be a meat or a fish that contains a lot of tyrosine, because to make dopamine you need tyrosine. So that would be a thing. And the second thing I would eat is macadamia nuts, because macadamia nuts contain a lot of levels of choline, and choline will fire up your brain. And, you know, and also when you look at. Sometimes I teach, I land, let's say in Estonia at seven in the morning and nine o', clock, I'm teaching. And people go, like, when did you get in? Last week? No. And they say, how come you could have so much energy teaching? Well, a lot of it with jet lag is actually your mindset. If you keep saying, for me, it's three in the morning in Boston, hey, fuck, shut up. Like, you're in Estonia, you're in Estonia. Live like an Estonian. Shut the fuck up. So, you know, that's my philosophy.

It's beautiful.

It's very, very sweet.

So what is your fitness routine? How do you exercise? How do you work out when you're at home and when you're on the road?

Basically, I wake up early, I do meditation first thing. Then I take my book and I write what I want to be most proud of before I go to bed. That sets up my mind and I write what I'm grateful for. But it's not repetitive. So he talked yesterday about lowering the bar. So sometimes I say, hey, it's a really great bed at this hotel, or whatever. So I simplify it. And then I say, what am I going to do? Then Write this down. This is the most important sentence of this interview. The first thing you put in your mouth in the morning, provided it, it's food. Okay? So the first thing you put in your mouth in the morning, provided it's food, will dictate the neurotransmitter cascade for the whole day. So that's why I'm a big advocate of the meats and breakfast, because it provides you with the raw material to make the proper neurotransmitters for the whole day. And there's lots of research from Even the early 50s on the content of your protein and the ratio between proteins and fats, and the quality of the protein you ingest in the morning dictates the energy, even in the later afternoon. So with children, what they found at Harvard is that if they eat, let's Say oatmeal or even worse, microwavable. Oatmeal?

Yeah. Or cereal or something.

Yeah. What they find is that when you give them lunch and they have to self select the food they will eat, they make worse choices if they had a carb only breakfast. Also, for example, if you give kids pancakes with that fake syrup, French, can we call that telephone pole syrup? Because telephone poles don't have SAP. So if you have, let's say telephone pole syrup and then pancakes, kids score 20% less on IQ tests because temporarily their brain's in a fog. So it's very important to set up your day with the right food. Then typically an hour after I've eaten breakfast, I train and shower up, take a post workout shake and go to work. Whether I'm at home or I'm on the road teaching, that routine doesn't change. And I think it's really important to have very steady habits in your life. And then this way you never have an excuse for missing out in the gym. You don't miss your dentist appointment or you don't miss your appointment with your tax lawyer. Well, you shouldn't miss your appointments with your fitness because you got to take care of your body.

So as you age, out of all the different things, say, you know, because I do a lot of yoga and I lift weights, which is why I'm, you know, bigger than you. But basically so strength training, stretching, cardio, good, bad, how to go about doing it.

The problem with cardio is most people do long slow distance, right? But if you look at research, the athletes, Olympic athletes who've done the most long slow distance cardio, have the most brain damage in later age. So a lot of cardiovascular training is actually brain damaging. And you can find it up in the research. So I prefer that people do interval type of training. But the most important thing is that you show up. Okay? So if your thing is yoga or if it's Tai chi, or if it's Taekwondo or you want to play hockey four days a week, that's great. But you got to be active, you got to sweat, right? For busy executives, I've got certain types of workouts, which I call German body comp training that people can do a lot of work. Basically it's a fat loss through weight training. And strongman training is very good. CrossFit, if it's done in a proper box, is very good. Some people need external sources of motivation. They need to be in front of a group. And you gotta be. Here's a very simple rule about exercise. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. So if you don't enjoy it and you're just doing because you need the discipline, that's bullshit, okay? And I don't believe in discipline. That's a myth. I wrote an article. It's the most popular and most plagiarized article I've ever written. It's called the Myth of Discipline. And the basic message of this article is that you make the choice and you've got to decide what you love more. You love your brain more than doughnuts. Then you'll exercise. Okay? Do you enjoy healthy joints more than Kwasa and Nutella? Right? So I don't know anybody that's ever been mugged by a dozen donuts. It doesn't happen, okay? I mean, have you ever eaten anything by accident? Doesn't happen. So this is the type of conversation you need to have with yourself. And then when I tell people, just make a conscious choice. Is this the best thing for me now? But don't tell me you don't have discipline. What you're telling me is you love donuts more than having a great physique or a healthy physique. Does that make sense?

I remember, as I said, just offline, is that I was there at the beginning of the Genius Network, the very first day, the very first day where we got together and swapped ideas at your apartment in Tempe, Arizona. And I still remember that. And I'm so happy with your success and what you've accomplished and with so many other people. It's just wonderful. You know, we talked, I believe, at that time, we talked about the Mastermind concept. And that's why. And you said, well, why don't we get together in Mastermind? And so I flew over to Phoenix and taxied out to your house for the first time. And that's something that's so important in the Genius Network is when Napoleon Hill did his work, he said that every single person, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and so on, every one of them began to be successful, and they began to mastermind with other intelligent people and just share ideas. And I have had the same experience. Because one idea in combination with your other ideas can change your life forever. I am, I'm happy to say, some years ago, about a decade ago, a publisher said, have you got any books or anything that we could publish? And I said, well, I've got a book on time management. So I sent them a manuscript, and it was called Double youe Income, Double youe Time Off. And he said, Great publisher, Barrett Kohler. And he said, well, it's kind of a boring title. He said, but the chapter 15 is 21 Great Ways to stop procrastinating and get more things done faster. That's the title of the book. And he said, well, chapter 15 is entitled Eat that frog. And this is a story from Mark Twain. And Mark Twain was the most successful speaker, writer, author in America for three or four decades. And he wrote this. He said, he said if the first thing you do in the morning is you eat a live frog, then you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that it's probably the worst thing that can happen to you all day long. And your live frog is your biggest, ugliest task. And so he said, just get up in the morning and just get it done. He said, and if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. So if you have two big tasks to do, do the most important. And then the other corollary is that if you do have to eat a frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long. In other words, get on with it. Well, so he said, let's, let's make this the title Eat that frog and 21 great ways to stop procrastinating and then run the theme through setting the table, organizing the plates and so on. And so I did, I sent it back to him and they published it. And he just told me this week, Steve Persani, my publisher is that we just hit 2,500,000 sales in 50 languages.

Wow.

Which is, which makes me the best selling time management author in history. And it has one basic concept for us with the Genius Network is pick your most important task each morning and start on that task and discipline yourself to work on that task non stop until it's done and don't do anything else. If you can do this, which takes tremendous character, takes tremendous discipline, it takes tremendous mental strength if you can do this. The first time you do this, it will be very hard. You will be so distracted and you want to check your emails and make a call and get some coffee and so on. And what you have to do is you have to discipline yourself to stay at that, wherever you are and do that task until it's done. Then I say give yourself a reward. The time management author, Julie Morgenstein says, don't check your email in the morning. And I love that as a concept. You get up in the morning, start on your most important task and discipline yourself to stay at it till it's complete, then your reward is to check your email. But unfortunately, what do most people do is they check their email in the morning and in the afternoon, and in the evening they get up at night. They just always check in their email. And each time you check your email, the estimate, it takes 17 minutes for you to get back to work, takes 17 minutes for you to get settled down and back to work and so on. And then somebody sends you an email and it goes bing, ding, bing, and you stop and you check your email again. And the email is one of the most wonderful communications devices in the world, but it'll kill you if you just keep checking it. So what you do is you turn it off. I always say, leave it off, leave it off. Start your task and discipline yourself. And your big reward when you finish your most important task is now you can check your email. And if you can do that, what happens is you start to become so productive. So many people have told me that they became millionaires with the eat that frog concept. Just start and complete your most important task. But if you can't do that, by the way, you'll always have to work for someone else who can discipline you to do it. Someone who will supervise you, someone who will check on you. What will happen is you'll always be in the bottom 80% and never be a big success. And remember this 8020 rule, it bites you in the bum all the time. 20% of people make all the money. The 80% of people, why do you think we're having riots today? Who do you think is rioting? Certainly not the top 20%. They're busy making money. It's the people in the bottom 80% who are frustrated and angry and upset and so on because they have too many bills, as they say, too much month at the end of the money. They don't know how to get out of it. The answer is, make a list of what you have to do. Pick the most important task and work at it till it's done. Your whole life will change.

When you first started and you were getting everything going, did you find it challenging at all to have like any kind of balance? And, and because I know you love your kids so much and you love your wife so much, you know, when you're getting something going, you invest a lot of time in, in the ramp up stage. Did you ever deal with that sense of guilt of like, oh man, I have to put the phone down or oh God, I have to just shut it off, you know what I mean? And spend time with My family.

Well, I've done something which is slightly unusual and I think, you know, possibly it's the advantage of owning your own company and that is. I've always worked from home, so I've never worked from an office. When I say never, not pretty well, never. I mean, you know. Right, right. In the early days, you know, I'd pop in a lot to our record, record company and so I originally worked in a, in a houseboat. You know, the kids would, you know, be crawling around on the floor. I'd be having, you know, meetings with people, might even be changing a nappy. You know, so the kids literally, you know, grew up, you know, grew up with me as we were building the Virgin, the Virgin empire. And, and then when the kids, holiday time came, you know, we would pack the bags and I would just move my office, you know, to Necker island. And you know, so I would always be around my family. I suspect, you know, we're closer than, you know, closer than a lot of families because of that, you know. Yes, I would be, you know, spend quite a lot of time on the phone and you know, I'd be busy. But we were around each other. Now I think the, if there's any lessons to be learned from that for other people, I mean, I, you know, I do think that with modern communication one shouldn't have to get stuck in an office. You know, the more one can get out and about, the better. If you've got companies, go and you know, go and live, Live your companies, live, you know, spend a lot of time with your people and spend as much time with your family as you can. And you know, I think getting that, getting that balance is, is absolutely critical and, and making sure that you bring up great kids who are happy and, you know, loving and you know, you found that time for them is critical because they, they are going to be the next generation.

You know, what is your unique ability? I mean, what makes you Richard Branson? People consider you charismatic, friendly, funny, good looking. I mean, I don't want to say good looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, that pretty much sums it up.

Yeah.

No, I mean, what, what, what, what makes you effective? I mean, so, you know, people look up to you as one of the most recognized, successful, fun entrepreneurs on the planet. I mean, what, what makes you, you.

I think, I think the, the, the sort of fun side is, is perhaps natural. I mean, I think, you know, I've always enjoyed having fun and making sure other people, you know, whether it's, you know, building a UFO and flying it Over London on April Fool's Day. You know, many, you know, I was, I was quite, quite young when I did that and caused that absolute panic with the, the police force and the army coming out and so on, you know, But I think it's sort of, it's natural. I think other people can, you know, who are maybe not naturally that way inclined. I think they can train themselves to enjoy life more than they perhaps are, and they may be taking themselves too seriously. I think they can, you know, if they made it, make a real effort. They can also find a fun side in them. And I think you can train yourself out of. I mean, I, I was a awful public speaker when I was young and, you know, some. And the amount of ERs and UMS, I mean, I can now feel them coming back again. You know, somebody once did. Did an interview with me and they cut out all my urs and, um, My urs and ums were longer than the actual words that were there. And so I think you can, I think you can train yourself, train yourself out of, you know, difficulties. Somebody said to me, the way to, you know, the way to overcome fear of public speaking is just think of yourself. You're in a living room having a chat with some friends and, and, and, yeah, and that helped me a lot. So I just, from then on, I just have a chat with friends and, and it seems to seem to manage all right. But, but let's move on to another question I can't remember.

Well, no, no, I want to go a little deeper with that one, just for a minute though, because, I mean, you, you do some things that other human beings don't do and it makes you really effective. And I, and I've often wondered if you ever identified that or do you really not. Do you really not know?

I mean, do you.

Do you know what makes you powerful and influential and persuasive and causes people to want to surround themselves with you and get behind your causes and become a client of your businesses? I mean, what's the Richard Branson secret sauce? I mean, do you really know?

Well, look, I think you are only as good as the reputation you've built over many years. And I hope you know that I've managed to build a good reputation and, and therefore, hopefully people can, you know, can trust. Trust me. So, you know, if you, if you look back over Richard Branson's life, there's the exciting side, you know, the, the trying to, you know, be the first to fly around the world in a balloon or, you know, the fastest across the Atlantic and boats and so on. And, and I think that that sort of slightly sort of sexier side of my life, you know, the fun adventurer side, has also helped the brand and helped make the brand a bit more interesting than say, you know, British Airways, where the chairman, you know, hasn't put his life on the line too often. And then, and then there's the actual companies themselves. The fact that I think we have made it made quite a big difference people's lives in, you know, whether it's, you know, if you fly on a plane or travel on a train or, you know, or listen to music, etc. You know, I think in a lot of different areas we've made different differences to people's lives. And so I think we there, there is some substance there, you know, hopefully then, you know, it's down to personality, whether you, whether, whether you're good at dealing with people, whether people want to actually spend time with you and you know, whether you genuinely care about people. And I'm just extremely lucky. I love people, love spending time with people, love learning from people. Hopefully I'm as good a listener, you know, which I think as a good leader has got to be a great listener. Not wanting to listen to themselves all the time.

Talk about. Because one of the big tools in our 25k group is the not to do list, which people rave about all the time.

So speak to the not to do.

List and how, yeah, your not to do list is more important than your to do list. So what I would recommend you do especially this is a great time to do it at the end of the year is make a list of everything. If you need a guidance on ilovemarketing.com, type in focus Finder. Focus the word focus Finder. And then watch the 50 minute video from Dean Jackson. And it's how to do a brain dump. You just take everything that's on your mind and just go ahead and write it down. And then one of the things that I've been doing and I have apps, I have basecamp, I have assistants, I have all kinds of stuff. The thing that I've been doing, believe it or not, because it just works for me right now is I use Post it notes. I put post it notes on an office I have downstairs and I have like important things, things related to 25k and it's kind of like sort of Stephen Covey ish, you know, important, urgent, not, you know, I sort of think of it it that way. Although I don't have it categorized in those four quadrants. And I think, and I just, as soon as something is done, I just take the post it note away and if it's, you know, and then Eunice, we just start doing this. If Eunice needs to do something or if I need something for Eunice, there's a post it note that Eunice is going to do this. Anessa, who's one of my assistants, who does a lot of personal stuff with a home I've been remodeling for a year and a half. I put all the stuff related to that on a post it note. And then she can come in and say, oh, we're going to do this, we're going to do this, we're going to do this. It's painful. Some of you would look at that and be like, that is the most ridiculous thing. But that sort of works for me. And what else am I missing here? No, I mean, I think that's great.

I use a handy dandy notebook.

Yeah.

I like visual things, but I email. One of my things that I'm trying to figure out is how can I actually live without email? Hate email, freaking hate it. But it's a great tool and I make a lot of money with it and I get a lot of stuff done. So the key is use it on other people. Just don't let other people use it on you to the best of your ability. But I don't think the solution is get rid of email. The solution is just continually honing my capabilities. I'm really going to work on finding a person and there's so many personal conversations and I'm sort of paranoid that I would not want anyone else to read because of the nature of them. So it's really hard for me to just let someone read all my emails. But the thing is though, the not to do list, what I would recommend is watch the Focus Finder video from Dean Jackson. Sit down somewhere for two 50 minute sessions. You take 50 minutes and just write, write, write. Take a 20 minute break, go take a walk, you, whatever. And then do another 50 minutes and look at everything that's on there and say what should be on my not to do list? What can I delegate? What can I get rid of that sort of thing and filter it? Because one thing that I learned from Gary Halbert is don't spend your time stepping over gold coins to pick up the bronze and silver. And so look at the gold, gold coin opportunities. If you want an eight, nine or ten income, you can't do one, two and three Activities, you can't hang around one, two and three people or two threes and fours. You've got to hang out with eight nines and tens. You've got to focus on eight, nine, and ten activities. If you want a ten life. You can't turn a duck into an eagle. And when you hire someone, one of the things too is hire as talented people as you can that are preferably smarter than you because you don't want to buy a dog and then bark for it. And I have that tendency because I was childhood stuff, you got to micromanage stuff. So over the years, it's just honing it. There's a lot to be said. And hang around people that are smarter than you all the time. Because if you're playing tennis with someone, if you want to learn how to be better at tennis and you're better than them, you're not going to learn anything. So constantly challenge yourself and find people that are always going to make you up your game. And do something every day that scares you. Do something every day that scares you. One of the things that scares you is to drop stuff. Ariana says the best way to complete a project is to drop it. You can really complete a lot of your projects by saying, you know what? Fuck this, I don't need this anymore. Don't confuse activity with accomplishment. And you look around, there's a bunch of people doing fake work all day long. The the country is filled with people that are super busy doing fake work. They are busier than shit and they are accomplishing nothing. And they're like, I'm busier than hell and I can't pay my bills. What the fuck are you doing? Okay, well, I don't know how to do it. Well, that's good. Okay, well, you're learning stuff. But either you're intellectually lazy or you're just not clear. You're not focusing on things that's producing a result. Now saying all of that, we have episodes on I love marketing on all of the things in depth of everything that I've about talked touched on tonight. So if you want to go deep with this stuff, it's all there, it's free. You don't have to buy anything. So you have spoken a lot in the past, especially in your book, about integrity. I would love to have you speak to how would. Maybe another definition of how would you define integrity? And to have people really look at what it is in their life and what it means, because I think we have lot of integrity issues. And I'll Talk. Boy, do we ever even. I do lots of it. And I want to share something about that. But I want to, I want to hear your thoughts on it because I think you're really phenomenal at explaining it well. There's no top of the mountain to integrity. And even if I look through my day, I bet you I am out of integrity two or three times for sure. Those little white lies, those things that aren't quite right, showing up the one minute late for a meeting, those types of things. And I recognize that failure in myself. But what I noticed inside a company is that if you were to hire someone, you ask them if they have integrity, everyone's going to say yes. And you ask them what their definition of it is and they kind of like, they don't really know. So what I really got is that every person in a company has a different definition of integrity. Therefore there's no integrity. So what was critical inside my family and inside the business then was like, what's one definition that when we say it, that's what we mean. And it's called part of something I call a linguistic abstraction. So for me it's integrity is doing what I say I will do when I say I will do it. And if I can't get it done, then it's up to me to clean up the mess of not being in the integrity and go back and set new conditions of satisfaction with new buy when dates to get it done. I like that. So in a lot of ways, if you can't do something at a certain time, you renegotiate a timeline with someone, you just don't blow it off.

Right?

Because a lot of people think integrity is that, oh, if I don't do that then I have no integrity. No, it's impossible to do everything perfectly. But it really is interesting that when I go back and I say, I promised you I would do this on this date or I would deliver these many things, I said, I can't do that anymore, but I understand it creates problems with you. Here's what I will do in order to clean up the mess that this has caused you. And I will deliver this by this date. And people go, oh my God. Because everyone knows that they mess up in life. Is there somebody I can count on to at least give me the information so that I can run the rest of my life or my business based on what that person says? And actually it increases the integrity that I have with other people when I go back and clean up when I can't be in integrity Fascinating. It reminds me of making amends to someone messed up. And again, to go back to addiction recovery, you know, saying, I'm really, genuinely sorry. I'm surprised having not only in my own life, but witnessed it with literally hundreds of people that you would think the relationship is ruined. But when some person puts down the sword or says, you know, I really screwed up and I want to. My side of the street, it's amazing. They open or you want to help them out, huh? Oh, I know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I have a friend named Chris Widener who I had met, you know, about a year and a half ago from my buddy Harvey McKay. He's the guy who's now 86 years old. He wrote a book years ago called Swimming with the Sharks. And so he was having a small meeting, and there was a handful of people there. And this guy Chris was speaking to everyone, and he said, how many of you think we have an integrity problem in the country right now? And a bunch of people raised their head. He's like, how many of you have been screwed by other people? So he goes, how many of you have an integrity problem or screwed other people? People like, no one raises. You think that's interesting? He goes, you think it's the other person, but no one here has an integrity issue. And this is what he said. He goes, the reason why is because we judge others on. We judge ourselves on our intentions, and we judge others on their actions. And I was like, that's very interesting, because people that are ripping someone offered it, most of them actually think they're not doing anything wrong. Now, you would, you know, depending on if they're a total narcissist or sociopath or something and don't have the ability to feel empathy, maybe they're oblivious to it, but I've thought about that quite a bit, as there's, you know, most people wake up, even people you think you have issues with, they are judging themselves based on their intentions, not their actions. And I think when someone has to really look at their actions and how that's affecting someone, I don't believe a lot of people spend that much time with really looking at how they're occurring to the world because of how they occur to themselves. Well, this is like a fascinating conversation again out of this book, the Psychology Achievement by Brian Tracy. He talks, a good friend of mine. Yeah. Oh, amazing, right? And he talks about the law of attraction. So it's very easy. You just have to look at who you're surrounding yourself with. I mean, if I know I have A bunch of friends who can't, who are going to show up late, then it's probably because I show up late all the time if I fudge things, or how much I lie, how much the white lie occurs. Or more so, how much I will say in order to protect my image, which I call looking good. If I'm an Instagram person, it's all about looking good, Then I'm only going to attract other people in my life that are fake and false and pretending. Then it's a choice. Is that the type of life I want to live, or do I want to live with people that do what they say they're going to do? What I mentioned earlier about you living out of the country, what are Vern's routines? Because you mentioned in your talk today, the routines create free, set free. Whereas most people may hear that and say, well, no, I don't want to be. I don't want to be kind of imprisoned by a structure. I want to have the freedom. That's why I became a business owner. The challenge with being a business owner is that you're your own boss. One of the greatest things is you're your own boss. So talk about routines and talk about how do you do it, because you've been doing this a long time. And if there's anyone that has access to some of the great, greatest habits and rituals of successful people in business, it would be you. So I'd like to hear your perspective for the listeners of what they can take away and apply.

Yeah, I think you know two things. And one of them I took from an early, early mentor of mine, Willard Garvey. The late Willard Garvey. Garvey family was one of the Forbes 400 wealthy families. He, early on when I was in Wichita, took me underneath his wing. And Willard was just like every other business leader that had multiple interests. He had these nonprofits, he had these political. He had various businesses that he was involved in. And he did something very simple. He had these focus days that I think even Dan Sullivan talks about. And so I've just copied the same thing. So Mondays is when I deal with all of our Gazelle's companies. And it's meeting Monday, and we've got these series of half hour and hour meetings where we're just working through operations and our council and our counting and all the kind of stuff you got to get done. And because it's all batched together, I kind of can get in the flow versus them being spread out throughout the entire week. Tuesdays and Wednesdays is when I usually go out and do teaching and are most available to come out and do events like today. And I can be relaxed about it because we had a very effective Monday. And I think we get more done on a Monday than most companies get done in an entire week. Thursdays then is my day to write and I know I've got to do that writing and I look forward to it. I'm geared up to do it and I get in the flow and crank for several hours. And then Friday is my charity day. And so I'm on the chairman of the Reardon Club Clinic and several other nonprofits. I'm involved in interests that I have. And Friday's the day that I make sure that quarterly board meeting occurs at the Reardon Clinic on a Friday. Now it does. And then Saturday is fatter day. That's when I get to just. We go crazy and eat and drink and have fun and just go wild and we fall off our diets and fall off all of our other habits and just go wild. And then you can stay disciplined the other rest of the days. And then Sunday is for us, that day of rest. We attend church. It's time for family to be together and the like. Now, does it always work out?

Perfect.

No emergencies come in where I get to work on some of the charity stuff on Tuesday and something comes up with Gazelles on Wednesday, that's fine. But the fact that each of those days has a different feeling focus allows me to make sure that I can move that needle a little bit in each one of those key areas of both our lives and our companies is what's been powerful. Those are the routines that I find set me free. The other thing is what's amazing and most of the entrepreneurs that have made their journey to Europe find, is that I'm six time zones ahead of the US and so my team is asleep when I'm up at 6, 7, 8 in the morning. It's not until 3 in the afternoon that all the emails even start to come in. And so you find just because of the time arbitrage difference that you've got this uninterrupted space that no one's really reaching out to you from when you wake up in the morning till about mid afternoon. And it's this fact that you're uninterrupted for these big chunks of time that allow you to move projects forward fast.

Yeah, I think that's so key if you're not in a situation where you live like that. The whole point is building in space so you can have time to think. Because if nothing else, it's just taking the thinking time and not having all the crap that will, if you don't manage your life, it will manage you. I mean, if you don't, that's, that's modern life. And so you've done a great job with that.

Well, and by the way, one of the very simple things entrepreneurs can do, John Ratliff did it, our dear friend, and that is you need to find a half day or day a week where you go to an alternative office. You know, whether you've got to go to a friend's place, whatever it is you've got to have, or you just stay home that day to your home office, you've got to force that into the schedule and make it the same day every week where you just go. And I learned it from was Johnsonville Foods. You know, when Ralph the son took over that business and then took it to new heights. The key thing is he had an office down the road and he'd go there with a yellow pad and a pencil, we have iPads today. And he would sit there and really think about what do we got to do to take this company the next direction? I mean the next level. And so, and so it's forcing that into your schedule every week that's critical. The other one is that counsel, when we asked Jim Collins out of his books, what was the most important idea again for us mere mortals, he said the power of this thing that they discovered in good to great companies called the council. And it's different than your weekly management meeting. It's a way el nypos may be listening. It's the equivalent of having a form meeting every week. And so my council's on Monday, it's 9:00am Eastern, it's 3:00 clock in Barcelona. And it's where we bring our CEOs together, the various companies. And it's not an operations meeting, we're not checking through lists. It's one or two big topics that we just need some talk time around. I just need to get some counsel on in order to make one or two big decisions moving forward. And it's that hour with the council and then that think time that you schedule every week that are probably the two most important habits for entrepreneurs.

What is the best piece of business advice or direction? It could be business or it could be personal that you've ever gotten.

Yeah, this is going to sound so trite, but it's buy low, sell high. And you know, we all Talk about about it, but you can't believe how we violate that rule, that fundamental rule of business every single day. And that's why I talk about the second biggest weakness next to marketing is accounting. Entrepreneurs discount accounting way too much. They under invest and spend on that side of the business. Their attitude being, man, I got to keep that overhead low because I just need a statement once a month and keep the IRS off my back. But the reality is when you get better numbers every day that tell you by customer, by sku, by location, by salesperson, by geography, where I'm making, how much money I'm making versus not, it's mind boggling. So we just had one of our clients, a pharmacy in Australia, send me an email this week that said Vernon, that really caught my attention when you wrote about that and scaling up. So we went back, they have a chain of pharmacies and they looked at their 8,000 SKUs and when they really analyzed it they found out that 6,000 of the 8,000 were absolutely losing them a ton of money, draining their resources. And it's a little bit like Trader Joe's who figured out let's stock the right couple thousand SKUs versus the other hundred thousand that we need that has allowed them to be such an unbelievably successful specialty retailer. And that goes with every aspect of your business. And so pay attention to the rule, buy low, sell high. Because you're violating every day and it's killing you.

What you guys feel are your best rituals or what it is that you are doing doing that just massively impacts you to be as effective as both of you are. If there's something simple or something that you just do that makes your life work, starting be it a morning ritual or just anything that people here could do. Watching cartoons with my kids at 7am Count. No, that may be accurate. I mean for me it's anchored in. My desiring to do to make the impossible stuff I set out happen, right? It's anchored in this infinity challenge. I'm never bored. These problems I've taken on with an amazing group of people are all sort of infinite and there's no getting there. So when they're for me, they're my guiding stars. So it's like, okay, what am I going to do right now to move the game forward this day? I wish I could say I was a great meditator or yoga person or so forth and that will come. But not right now. For me it's just dedication to the child inside me and what I care deeply about which is making these succeed. And ultimately, it's trying to be clear about what I'm enjoying doing, right? It's surfing the stuff I love versus this is work. I'm probably not good at this.

This work.

Who else can I find that can do it and doing the stuff that I truly love better and doing more of that. I mean, there's nothing sophisticated there. Tony, what do you got?

I think anyone who succeeds has something that they aspire to. There's a mission, there's a direction, there is desire, and they bring it up, right? And you do that even though you say you don't do it in a sophisticated way. Attacking the human genome and figuring out how to get meteors to feed you. What you need is a fairly large vision, somewhat sophisticated. Mine's really simple. Mind's simple. As I believe that the body is the place that drives the mind the fastest. You can go inside your head all day long trying to resolve things and make excuses or freak out. But I learned early on in my life that in order to make myself do things, I had to trigger this body to feel strength and to know that when I say something, I mean it. And so I have a simple ritual that it's actually enjoyable. May not sound enjoyable, but it is now, which is. I get up every morning and I'm privileged to have multiple homes. So if I'm in those homes, one of the homes, I have a river. The rest of them, I have cold plunges, and I go into a 56 degree temperature just for about 60 seconds. I jump straight in. Or I was just in some battle. The river is 38 degrees, a little bit cooler. And I took my nephew and said, you're about to learn how to start your day. And I bring all my friends, when they come, they all have to do this. They're like, holy shit. I know when I go, see, Tony's got something for me to do of this nature. But every cell, every nerve in your body explodes. And it's phenomenal for your lymph system, phenomenal for your health. But it also is just a simple discipline that says I say it, it happens. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna do this. I do it. And I've done it so much, it's there and it's invigorating. And then I do as you said, something I call priming. I don't, you know, you wake up and you're, you know, 22 hours off your normal time zone, and you've got to get up and take care of 10,000 people for three days and nights for 14 or 15 hours. You don't always wake up feeling, wow, is this the coolest thing in the world? Somebody wake up and go, what universe is my body in? You know? And so I do my physical ritual, but then I also do this priming. And priming for me is just. I don't hope that I'm going to show up at my best, I create a state for it. Most of you know, probably the principle of priming, you know, you can. They prove it. In so many scientific studies, we all think we make our decisions consciously, when much of our decision making that we think is conscious is being made by contextual, environmental manipulation that we're not even thinking about. One study, they took some people and then they hired actors that would go to 100 people and they'd walk up to you and they were trained to do the exact same look, same expression, and they'd say, would you hold this? They hand you a coffee cup and they reach in their pocket, grab their phone, put them back and say, thank you very much. They just kind of assume the action. And they would do it the same way, same facial expression. 100 people one way, 100 people other. And what was the only difference? Cold iced coffee versus hot coffee. An hour later they come back with some people, different people, who've got little caps on. They're saying, listen, we'll give you $10 if you'll give us two minutes. If you read this three paragraph story and give us two question answers and they read this little story, everyone reads the same story. And at the end they ask them, how would you describe the main character? What are they like as a person? 80% of the people that got warm coffee said they're warm, they're generous, they're loving. But warm is always one of the language patterns. 80%, like clockwork, people got the iced coffee, same story, say that they're very cold, that they had. They were using language like being obsessed or being about themselves. Selfish things of this nature. I give you dozens of examples. So what I do each morning is I do a breathing pattern. It's an explosive breathing pattern I learned in India, breathing your breath in and exploding it out, you know, from the gut, out the nose. And I do that. Three sets of 10, pause, three sets of 10, pause, three Sets of 10. So it alters my state. And I just do three things for 10 minutes because I have this deal with myself. If you don't have 10 minutes for yourself, you don't have a life. Who's with me on this. So I said, you know what? I don't need to have 20 minute, 30 minute, 40 minute meditations. I want 10 minutes and I don't know, I need to meditate. I don't know if I'm going to meditate. I don't, to not think. I don't know too many people can do that. And I don't even know that I want to not freaking think. So I thought what I want to do is I want to focus on the emotions that will cause me to be the better me. And the two emotions that most people are messed up by are anger and fear. And when you're grateful, you can't be angry. Try to be grateful and angry simultaneously. It'll never work. And you can't be fearful when you're grateful. So when I look at people, almost always they're reacting out of fear or they're reacting out of anger. It's some version of those two. So gratitude to me is the antidote. So I spend three minutes, just three minutes, and I think of three things I'm grateful for. Three people, three situations. But I step into it. I don't remember the roller coaster over there, riding it. I put myself in the front seat going over the edge. So I feel the moment and I make sure one of the three things I'm grateful for is something really simple like the wind on my face or something beautiful like my child's smile. And the reason I do that is because I remember interviewing some of the astronauts, Buzz Aldrin and these guys. And most of you probably know, you can imagine, to be an astronaut. This man knows, I mean, to aspire to do that and then go through the thousands of people and be picked and then to actually go to the moon and stand on the moon and look back and see that picture we've all seen that blue, green earth. I mean, you imagine and then you come home and what happens? There's a ticker tape parade and you shake the president's hand. And now what the hell do you. You're 32. What the hell do you do for the rest of your life? And you know what? If you know the story of many of these astronauts, most of them had some major emotional challenges, right? Some abused alcohol, some drugs. And they had a real rough time because they forgot to find adventure and a smile. They thought the only way to go to the moon. So I trained myself to make sure not just the big beautiful things that are part of my life, but the little things. And so I feel that for three minutes. Then I do three minutes of a blessing. Corny as it may sound. I imagine life, God, energy coming into my body, healing every muscle, every nerve in my body, strengthening everything, strengthen, strengthening the best of me, my passion, my love, my generosity, my creativity, my humor, my love. And then I see any problem that needs to be solved just being solved. Because otherwise I tend to think I gotta do it all. And then once I feel that fully and that energy comes through me and back through me multiple times, then I do a circle of my intimate family, my kids, my wife, my friends. This little character over here is one of my list. And I just circle out, all the way out to my clients and I send that same energy to them. And I imagine, as corny as it sounds, they're being healed, they're getting what they need, energy wise. They're having the life that they deserve and seeing it multiplied. So I do that for three minutes. And the last three minutes are my three to thrive. I think of three specific outcomes that matter to me and I don't think about achieving them. I see, feel and experience them as done and I see the, the impact that it has. I see people's lives touched, I see the joy. I feel it as done and I feel grateful. And it's 10 minutes, but honestly, it usually goes 15 or 20 because I'm having a damn good time. But by having a 10 minute walk, there's no excuse not to do it. And I do it every day and I don't hope I'm gonna feel good. And then what happens is you're primed, you're. You literally, you see things through a different set of filters. You make decisions from the filters. And also think of it. Most people are wired for stress. They're wired for frustration, they're wired for feeling lonely. And they, you know, they got a highway to pissed off and they've got dirt roads to happiness. So I decided I'm gonna wire myself for happiness. I wasn't born that way. I had, my view is I have to change the whole earth to be happy today. That's different for me. Now I can just wake up and be happy because I've wired myself in a different way neurologically. And then I show other people how to do this as well.

I've been in a space where I've been committed all year long to like acting out of courage. And I've been traveling different places, like making money, going broke again, making money, going broke again. And I've been operating like out of courage and not Fear. But I'm getting really, like, a little bit exhausted of that process, to be honest. I, like, want to create stability in myself. And just listening to the limbic system note and, like, all the things you've been saying, I've been reflecting because I'm at a point where, by the way, I'm staying in Phoenix long enough to have a conversation with that gallery person that you, you know, connected with me. And thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. And I just don't want to be in a position where I'm constantly like, okay, then. Then what? And I'm, like, being in a position where I, you know, I am very elf. But I found myself at times being half too. And I don't want to ever do that again, and especially not to people that I really care about. I don't want to ever put, like, the people I love into compromising positions ever. And so I'm just realizing, like, that comes from me not feeling capable or me not feeling confident. And I'm, like, trying to find what's my plan going to be, you know, after that meeting. Right. Like, so I'm not just, like, shit out of luck, and I'm curious, like, is it possible to break these cycles in the same atmosphere as you experience trauma? Because I've been sitting here, like, maybe I should, like, go back home and just sit and get really clear and. And. And understand, like, how I want to show up in this world and who I want to work with and all of that. But I am a little bit afraid because home is not a safe place for me energetically. And so I figured this is probably the safest place I could ask a question like that. I also am starting to see really, really clearly just how capable I am and how much I do have to offer the world. But I just don't want to ever, like, be in a position where anyone even feels like I'm taking advantage of anything because I'm so much better than that. And I want to be around people who are better than that, too, and. And foster those relationships in real life. Yeah, here's. No, well, thanks for asking the question.

Here.

Here's.

I. I can speak for myself of what. When I was in the worst times in my life, I could not seem to function without falling into holes. And I was an addict, and I was a really bad addict. I was a functional addict. But I, you know, I was talking to, you know, Dr. Anna Lemke, the one that wrote Dopamine Nation, earlier today, and we had just recently met, and I was Telling her about when I was, you know, the worst state of being a drug addict. When I was 18 years old, I weighed one week, I weighed 105 pounds and my average weight at that time was 120 pounds. And when you're an 18 year old male and you weigh 120 pounds, that's pretty skinny. But one week I was not eating hardly at all. I didn't have any money to buy any food, I was just doing drugs and, and I, I got down to 105 pounds and I told her there was one day where I weighed, you know, I weighed up 105 pounds and I was smoking pot, smoking cigarettes, snorting cocaine, smoking cocaine, snorting crystal meth and I took LSD all on a single day. And I said, you know, it's amazing I didn't friggin die. And that was just in a really dark place, right? And how the hell I pulled myself out of that is, you know, grace of go odd luck. I mean whatever. But what ended up really helping me because I was really messed up for a long time and is, is I had to find other people. And where I found the community is 12 steps, right? And I will often tell people that 12 steps, even if you're not an addict, even though most people are, there's lots of support groups that cost no money and that are often better and more useful for human connection than therapy can be. Even though I'm a big fan of the right therapy and the right therapists in the right community. But it's just being able to, whenever we feel like giving up or wherever we feel like our energy reserves are exhausted, there's ways to replenish them. Now if one has money and means, you can, you know, pay for massages, you can go to gyms, you can have a nice house, you can do all that. But if you're limited then that's where it's, you know, necessity is the mother of invention sort of thing where you just start tapping into resourcing yourself and saying okay, if I was, what would I do for me? If I was my own best friend, how would I reach out? Where would I look for? And I, I cannot tell you how many times I've suggested and few people do it, but the ones that do usually give me really good feedback is to, is to go to a group, you know, go to a 12 step group and help other people that are struggling. Because when, when I feel like, and I think my life sucks and I feel like, oh, I don't, I'm So drained and I find someone that is in a painful situation and I can often lend sometimes if someone's dying because I've sat with people, I've been the primary caretaker for two people that while they were dying, one of them being my father and another being my friend, Dr. Janice Dorn. And then I've been kind of around people that were dying where I wasn't their primary caretake. And there's times where you can't, you're not going to stop some from dying, especially if they have a debilitating disease and, or it's, it's that, that time, right? So a lot of times all you can provide is, you can provide companionship. All you can do is sit there and love them or listen to them. And even if they're people you had a very difficult time with and I'm not talking about hanging out with people that it's toxic and destructive for you. I'm just talking about, it's interesting how, how we can replenish our energy when it feels like we've given everything when we're sitting down with people that are just really struggling. And, and I'm saying this, not that I'm, you know, again, none of this is for entertainment purposes only. Take what treat it like a 12 step group. Take what you like and leave the rest. It's this I, for me, I often feel really encouraged by encouraging other people. I seem to get more when I give. And that's different than sacrificing yourself. That's different than, you know, giving your last penny or neglecting sleep or you're already starving and you're trying to help someone. You're giving, you know, your last meal away. I mean you can't fix the world with broken hands. So you have to be able to, you know, keep yourself in a certain place. But all of us as humans are going to go through stages where we're selfish, self centered, desperate, broken and that's where we need to go and ask for help. And when someone's really down and out, they will walk into 12 step rooms. You know that 12 steps is interesting because they'll say built through attraction, not promotion. But no one is attracted to walking into a 12 step group. It's really desperation. You know, people that walk into a 12 step group, their life is not working and they don't know where else to go. And thank God they walk into the, into that room and, and there's a lot of people that are anti 12 step. And I understand, I could argue for both ways it's not the end all and be all of everything, but what it is is it's community. And so what I would say, even my whole. In my book, you know, I talk about your genius network. Like if you need to figure something out, make a list of who are the people that you could reach out to that could help you in a particular area where you feel you need the most help. And if you can't come up with a name, at least come up with who that person could be and then do your damnedest to go and find them or to talk to someone to reach out and do it, you know, and kind of like what you're doing now, you know, the, you know, that person and, and making those calls. So that's what I would say. And, and, and oftentimes the reason I even bring up 12 steps is almost everywhere in the world. There's rural areas and there's parts of the world where you can't, but in most places, it's usually within driving distance to go to any sort of 12 step meeting. And I've even told people that don't identify as addicts is go to an open meeting and just listen to what these people are saying. And it's. Sometimes you'll hate it, but other times you'll be like, wow, that actually is really useful just being around other people because there's a lot of people that your love and your care and your concern and your art in your skills will rejuvenate them. And by doing that, it will rejuvenate you and all. And that being said, also, sometimes you just got to go sell something, you know, sometimes it's like, you know what, I got something to pitch. I think it's going to be good. Let me find and let, you know, let me market it, let me sell it, let me shoot a video, let me ask other people to refer me. And you know, so I don't want to take any of that away. So those are, those are my thoughts. I hope that helps. That helps a lot. I mean, that's how I got myself in. The position I'm in was I literally gave my last penny away. So if I did that, then I can do all the other things you're saying. I'll probably incorporate several of those things. Thank you, Joe. Yeah, yeah, you're welcome. Good luck with everything. I remember you. I'm trying to think who you actually were talking to about it. You said that you think one of the most crucial things of keeping your mind sharp was just having a lot of different interests in a lot of different areas.

I think that's true because now I admire people who are single purpose. A brain surgeon who is really good and devotes all his attention to that, that's commendable. But that makes him more vulnerable. If you've got a lot of interests and I've seen people in my business, television, who when they were forcibly retired or elected, they got bored and they didn't know what to do with themselves. I can't imagine being bored. It was a 40 hour day, you know, and I had nothing else to do but sit and think or read. I can't imagine being bored. So it's important, I think, to keep active mentally. And the brain is like a muscle. That's a cliche observation, but if you don't use it, it's going to kind of atrophy.

Well, you've done a tremendous amount of work with just helping people. Older people, however you define it, live better lives, understand their purpose. I mean, what would be some of your tips and recommendations as people get older to keep themselves totally mentally sharp? I mean, here you are, 87 years old when I live here in Arizona. So when I went to pick you up today, you know, I was getting there a little early, called and your wife said, well, he'll be back here at 9:30. You said, you're right, you have appointments this afternoon. I mean, you stay very active and I mean you're, you're clearly a very sharp individual and you're physically, you know, in fantastic shape. I mean, at least it appears that way to me. I mean, what are some tips and recommendations that you would have that would be significant life?

Well, a realization that you can mitigate hazards. You can, you can influence your longevity and your comfort and everything by habits that you clean up. When I was 25 years old, I thought it was the normal adult human condition to feel bad. I really did. Really. When I remembered when I was 15, I felt good all the time. If somebody had said when I was 25 and didn't feel good, when you're 45 and 65 and 75 and even, even 85, you will feel about like you did when you were 15, I would not have believed them. But I was too dumb to realize, realize why I felt bad. At 25, I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. I had a diet that would have not been good for a hog really. And I wasn't getting enough sleep and I drank too much and I got that all cleaned up in short order through the help of my Wife. And with a decent regimen, I realized you can influence very heavily how your well being is, you feel or how long you're going to make it. So I would advise that let nobody adopt the idea that they're going to die young because an ancestor died young. That's not necessarily true. You can do things to make things better and if people realize that, they start doing them.

You said a really important thing, which is you adopted a regimen that just turned it all around. I mean, what, what was the happiest time of your life or your career?

Oh, well, probably at points in 2020 because that was not just because it was the last, but it was because it was where I belonged really. I once said to somebody, a newspaper interviewer said, I said, I've done everything there is to do in my end of my business except play by play sports. And then I realized as soon as I said it that wasn't true because in 1939 I brought broadcast a boxing match on Radio Globe. Wow. Mercifully no recording of that still exists because it was pretty awful, I imagine. But I've done even play by play sports. So I was, I imagine that being a generalist, I belonged on 2020 and I felt that was where I felt most comfortable because it was news, but it wasn't headline news and little snatches that you had to go on from one to another. You could get in depth in a thing and do a news feature. And I loved doing that. Was the high points there that, I.

Mean, all the time that you spent doing news reporting, do you think it's gotten better, worse, or is it just kind of the same?

Well, some of, some of it's pretty good, but I think in some ways it has, it has slipped because of the competition, as I mentioned, you know, the competition got a little fiercer than it ought to be. And then you ask yourself how, how will we mitigate that? If. Do you want the government really running that right? No, Free enterprise is still the best way, but a proper regulation of free enterprise and I would like to see the, the FCC a little less supinely weak than they've been on some points. But I think a proper, a proper supervision of what's going on and then allow, allow the free enterprise aspects to flourish because that's what keeps capitalism alive.

What would you add to that, Dan, you want to say something better than that?

Yeah, well, I think he's covered, you know, a great set of checkpoints there. One of the things I'm going to look at sort of Mindset, because I think, you know, life is about having the right mindsets. And, and I think entrepreneurs are great scientists in the realm of mindset. But one of the things that a mindset. And I'll refer to you here, Joe, and I won't wait too long because I got to check this out. You got to have a fair dose of antisocial. You're antisocial. And I'm gonna explain this in about five different ways. One is whatever is in, you're out. Whatever the in group is doing, you're out of it. And part of it is because you're rejected. But the other thing is you choose to be outside of things. Okay. And the other aspect of it is your passion for shortcuts. Your passion for shortcuts. And I would say a third one is you're very indifferent to the normal educational process. I'm not saying you're against it, I'm just saying you're indifferent. You don't see formal education as a crucial doorway to your future. Okay.

And.

And so, you know, you've kind of, you know, gone along because if, you know, in most places you have to go to school and you have to go to school and there are certain credentials, I mean, if you don't have a high school diploma, probably it's going to really get in your way. Probably. A college education today is what a high school education was worth 50 years ago, in other words. But the only thing different is that high school graduates 50 years ago could read, they could write, they could spell, they could do math. And a lot of college graduates can't do this. Can't do this today. And so there are outliers. I think the best entrepreneurs are outliers. Whatever is average, they're somewhere on the chart. They're somewhere on the chart. And it's particular skill, it's a particular insight that they have. I mean, I mean, I mean, Gino tells a great story, but he's one of the most antisocial human beings I've ever met.

Yeah.

You know what? So like.

No, no. And Joe, you got real, real anti. Heather, on some levels, you got real antisocial. I do. I'm only agreeable where it suits me.

Well, I heard the same from the guy that I learned marketing from originally, crazy copywriter named Gary Halbert. And the world advanced.

There was a first class antisocial human being.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Gary was a character. So he said the world advances on the backs of its neurotics. And I always thought that to be quite interesting. Funny and accurate in many ways. I mean, there is, you know, when we do Genius Network, you know, it's the. It's the characters in the Star wars bar. I mean, they're all weird, they're all bizarre, they've all got different things, but, you know, it is what it is. And so I have the whole list from both of you here.

Yeah, no, I'd like to add that to Gene's, I mean, to Geno's, because I think, you know, at the center you got to have a checklist. And his checklist is better, but outside of that, I mean, he talks about 4%. I've always gone on 5%. You go any country in the world, whether the entrepreneurs are legal, illegal. A real good country is where the best entrepreneurs can be legal. United States is a great country because the best entrepreneurs in the United States can do it legally. In Russia, the best entrepreneurs are criminals, okay? Because you can't be a successful legal entrepreneur in a place like Russia. Probably China is the same way. You know, you're criminal. But the reason why, it's 4% or 5%, depending on what it is, that's all that's needed. Society doesn't need any more than 4 or 5% of this type of person because they create sufficient amounts of innovation. They create in amounts of shortcuts and savings that the rest of the population benefits from having 4% of their people like this. And so my sense is I, you know, I think it's really correct. And that tells you it's born. I mean, if it depended upon education, 40% of people would be entrepreneurs, you know, but it can't be taught. You can't, you know, you can't. You can't teach outlier.

Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like batteries included. Batteries not included. So context.

Right.

And I can spot him. And you can spot him. I could spot him. Someone starts talking. You know, the one who really got me, I was Jeff Madoff at US at New York, you know, at the school where he teaches marketing. And Jeff is a long time friend of our. I met him through Joe because possibly, with the exception of you, Gino, everyone in my life I've met through Joe. But anyway, I met Jeff Madoff and politically we don't talk about it. Jeff is everything. Where I would be politically, Jeff is on the other side. But I really like him. I really like him. There's something just fundamentally I really, really like about Jeff. And so we find millions of other things to talk about, but he has this course at New School, I think it's called the New School in New York. And he had Kathy Ireland as a. As an entrepreneur. He gets really great entrepreneurs. And Kathy Ireland started off, she was the tomboy model. She was on the front cover of Sports Illustrated 13 times. And she's quite tall and she's quite, you know, she's. You can tell she's got some muscle on her. And she started at 17, 32, 15 years, and then she quit and she started her own entrepreneurial company. And she's got a $2 billion global company now. But she was talking about how she formed it and how she created it and why she created it and the tough times, the good times and everything else. And I was going down my checklist of what really strikes me home, that this is an honest story, this is a true story, and it's check, check, check, check. Everything she said about entrepreneurism corresponded to my experience. Yeah. And it's really the entry. But she's an outlier. You can tell right off the bat, she's an outlier.

Well, so here's this. I mean, I just love what both of you said in terms of, you know, because my question was about struck what, you know, struggles do entrepreneurs face and when growing their companies now, do you overcome them? And, you know, so, Gino, I'll say this again, because I think it's good for everyone listening. Not having a vision, hiring the wrong people, not spending time with your people, not knowing who your customer is, not charging enough, not staying true to your core. I thought that was great. When you said, I wrote a note next to, you know, find yourself in five businesses, not one, not knowing your numbers, because at the end of the day, we're in the arithmetic business. Whatever business we're in, we're in the arithmetic business. And not crystallizing roles and responsibilities. And so this, of course, requires, you know, needing to sell, needing to go out and, you know, say what it is you say, and that that's a certain level of risk taking. So Dan says with antisocial, you know, whatever the in group is, you're out passion for shortcuts, indifference in normal educational processes, and then being, you know, the outliers. And so I think in a lot of ways, like a podcast like this or these books, these are all things where entrepreneurs seek this stuff out because, you know, it's not being given to them by the government. It's, you know, their parents aren't handing it to them. Maybe some entrepreneurial parents may try to offer things to their kids, but for the most part, you know, they're hunters. And so entrepreneurs go out and they hunt. They don't just hunt for customers and clients and opportunities, but also ways to do it. They look for recipes. They look for roadmaps. To Dan's point about a passion for shortcuts. 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.

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