Want to Build Wealth? Here’s What NOT to Do – Featuring Richard Branson & Keith Cunningham

What is the road less stupid? How would you describe it?

If I gave you the opportunity to unwind any three financial decisions you've ever made in your whole life, how much money would you have? And there's not a person in this room that if I gave them the ability to unwind any one of three financial decisions, wouldn't have more money. It turns out that the key to making more money is to doing fewer stupid things. That's true. I don't need more good ideas. I need fewer ideas that I think are good, that I've executed on. And so I've had the experience over the last 47, 48 years of being in business of having done some smart things where actually it wasn't that smart. But in reality, I was lucky. I happened to catch a big wave. And I mistook catching a big wave with being a good swimmer. And it's what Warren Buffett is very famous for saying. Most of you have heard it. You never know who's swimming naked until the tag goes out. And so the key is not can I make it? The key is can I make it and keep it? Those are two entirely different skill sets, and in fact, they are almost diametrically opposed. What it takes to make money is very different than what it takes to keep it. And most people are so obsessed with making it that as they become more successful, they do stupid things, which winds up sabotaging their overall success. And I know this story firsthand because this is one of the reasons I appreciated you so much, Paul, and your presentation is because I've had the experience of losing a lot of money, $100 million of my money that I made. I didn't inherit it, I made it. You were better off than me because you cut the bleeding at plus 600,000. I didn't cut the bleeding until I was minus 50 million. So I went from plus 100 million to minus 50 million in a matter of 24 months. And when you do that, it takes your breath away. I mean, major, major event, not only because of the size of the money, but also because it's. The loss is so devastating. And I had so much of my net worth. I have my self worth entwined with my net worth, which is a deadly combination.

How old were you during that time?

40.

40. And that was during the. For real. In real estate.

Real estate, yeah, A lot of. And what led to the loss? Look at your losses. It's not necessarily pleasant to think back on, but everybody's had some kind of loss that they've sustained as a result of a bad decision or excessive optimism. Unexamined assumptions, unexamined assumptions, faulty expectations, excessive optimism are killers. Arrogance is killers. Hubris is a killer for creating and sustaining wealth. So the goal to me is not to get it. The goal is to get it and keep it. You can get lucky and make it. And I know lots of people who got lucky. But the problem is they weren't able to keep it because they didn't have skills that would allow them to sustain. So the truth is, to me, sustainability of wealth is the holy grail. Making it, I can catch a big wave, I can get lucky. I can happen to hit a crease in the market at exactly the right point, and we can wind up being affiliate associated with you or Tony Robbins or any number of other people. And there's a degree of luck in all that, and there's a skill set in all of that. And so I'm very much about, let's make sure that if we're going to all this effort in order to create the success, and people do stupid things in the creation mode as well. People oftentimes think that if I just improve my product, that that would somehow allow me to create business or financial success. And yet the truth is, it doesn't require a great product in order to make a lot of money. If I ask you to think about your favorite restaurant, the place you would go to have a huge celebration, you're thinking about it, you know where it would be. There's not one person in this room that's thinking about McDonald's. Not one. And yet nobody has made more money in the history of mankind in the restaurant business than McDonald's. How did it happen? Is it because their cheeseburgers are so good? No, their cheeseburgers are horrible. Right? They are. Their French fries, on the other hand, are really good, but the cheeseburgers are horrible. What allowed McDonald's to make a lot of money was not an obsession with the product. It's never, write this down. This will be a takeaway. It's never what you do, it's how you do it. It's never what you do. It's how you do it. Southwest Airlines, their whole business model is put butts in seats and fly those butts from point A to point B safely. No mention of your luggage, Right? Your luggage is immaterial to the airlines. Whether it makes it or not, we don't care. Let's just make sure the person gets from point A to point B doesn't even have to be on time. Southwest Airlines has made more money in the last 10 years in the airline business than the rest of the airline industry cumulatively since Orville and Wilbur Wright. Now you think about that One airline has made more money than everybody else since Orville and Wilbur. How'd that happen? Is it because their planes are so good? Is it because their first class section is so roomy? Is it because the food is so outstanding? Is it because the hostesses and stewards and stewardesses. Is it because they're so good looking? No. I can't tell which is older, the stewardesses or the airplanes. Right. It's never what you. Southwest Airlines success is not based on what they did, it's how they did it. You name me any product or service, I don't care what it is. Give me one week. You could say chewing gum, shoelaces, seminars, pins, socks, name me any product or service. Give me one week and in one week I'll come back and name you one person who's made millions of hundred people that have gone broke with the exact same idea. The problem is, as entrepreneurs, we become obsessed with the product. We become obsessed with either the quality. And I'm not opposed to great products. That's not the message. The message is, what is it as a business person, what is it that we're focused on? The artist side of me wants to focus on the product and making it better and longer lasting and prettier and more robust. And I'm good with that. We need artists. The operator side of me wants to get busy and get a bunch of stuff done. I just, I got so much to do and holy cow, if it's going to get done, I'm going to have to do it myself because I don't know how to hire a team or keep a team or have a players or create a culture. I don't know any of that. I just got a lot to do. That's the operator side. The business person side says, wait a minute. The job is not to react to the problem du jour. What I need to do is leverage and structure. Write those two words down. That's the difference between a solopreneur and one person army. A solopreneur and a business owner. A business owner has mastered two things, structure and leverage. And without structure and leverage, there is not a way to create a sustainably successful business. I'm going to say the structure part a different way before I talk about leverage.

Yeah.

Opportunity without structure is chaos. The Achilles tendon of most entrepreneurs is structure. They hate it. That's why they started their own business is because they hate the idea of having structure. And yet structure is critical to for scaling. I hear a lot of people in here talking about scaling or scaling is just a Silicon Valley word for growth. That's all it is. How do I grow this thing? Okay, well, if I'm going to grow this thing, I need structure in order to be able to do it. Otherwise I got kind of a fire drill working with a bunch of people doing a bunch of stuff, and it's not necessarily the most productive thing that needs to happen. Leverage, one of the highest forms. When I talk about leverage, most people think, oh, he's talking about debt. In reality, I'm not. I mean, debt is a financial instrument, it's leverage. But the more powerful form of leverage is who's on your team. So I'm going to ask you a question. If I gave you an opportunity to build a world class team of A players, and the only people on your team were a players, I mean, seven footers, these are the Kevin Durants, they can do it all. If you only had a team of A players, how many of your existing problems that you have right now would go away, disappear? It turns out the problems that most of us are dealing with are not even really the problem. Unison where I need a little whiteboard if I can get one.

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

Joe just handed you a piece of paper a second ago and said thank you and said write down one of your biggest problems. So I'm going to ask you right now to write down on your piece of paper one of your three biggest problems. Maybe you just did that. Maybe you can refer back to that piece of paper. Maybe you're not going to have to share this. We're not going to talk about it. It's not going to be anything. So you may want to write really, really small so that nobody else can see. Write it really small and just write down or revisit one of your three biggest problems that you think you have with your business. Let me give you a thought. The exercise is over. You don't have to complete writing it down. The exercise is over. Every person here has an is line this is reality. This is the way it looks. This is point A. Point A. And the problem that most people have, in my experience, I know I have this problem, is that I'm not particularly honest with myself about the reality of my situation. I sugarcoat it. When I was at the University of Texas, every day I'd walk past a little message etched in granite over the doors of a building. And the message was, you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. See, you know this, right? And every day for four or five years, I walked past this saying, and I went, I don't know what this means. What does that mean? You should know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Well, the reality, it dawned on me later, is that as long as I'm lying to myself or not telling the truth, I have no opportunity to make change. So it's why addicts don't stop using is because they say, well, I don't really have a problem. I can stop anytime I want. Yeah, I know it's a little. I know it's a little bit. But, you know, the reality is it's. I'm functioning right. It's why alcoholics or poor people pick a topic. People don't tend to tell themselves the truth. This is point A. We also have point B. Point B is ought. This is the way I'd like for it to look. This is point B. And it turns out that most of us are experts on point B. We have massive clarity on the way we would like for it to look. Because we've done all this visualization. We've done all this goal setting where you make a goal and then you make it vibrant, and then you turn it into black and white, then you bring it closer and farther away, and then you put music around it. And so we're really good at visualizing what ought. We tend to suck at what is. And when asked what our problem is, we describe the gap. The gap between where you are and what you want is what you typically describe as the problem, when in reality. This gap is not the problem. This gap is the symptom. I just ask you. Joe just asked you the last exercise you did, write down one of your three biggest problems, and everybody got busy real quick. We knew what the problem was because we were visualizing the gap between where we are and what we want, when in reality. That's not the problem. That's the symptom. The gap sits right here. This is. Sorry. The problem sits right here. This is the problem. This is the obstacle. That I need to overcome in order to move the needle on my is line. In order to move the needle on my is line, I need to get clarity on what it is that's truly blocking my forward progress. What's blocking my forward progress has nothing to do with where I am versus what I want. What's blocking my forward progress is the obstacle that sits right here. And it turns out, Joe, that the hardest part of thinking time is getting clarity on the problem. That is, if you don't have clarity on the problem, that is, you'll be tactical instead of strategic. So I say 10 pounds overweight. What do I want to do about it? Well, as long as I view the problem as being 10 pounds overweight, which is not the problem, that's the symptom. Hello. Hello. Are you with me that? Being 10 pounds overweight is not the problem, that's the symptom. But as long as I identify being 10 pounds overweight as being the problem, then what I will lurch to is, okay, should I buy a jump rope or should I join a gym? Should I buy Oprah's latest diet book? Or should I get a personal training? Oh, I know what I'll do. I'll get a piece of home exercise equipment. That's what I'll do. If I just had a peloton bike in my house, then I would get in shape, which is why most home exercise equipment and most diet books don't work. Because it's a tactical response to a tactical question. As long as I'm dealing with the symptom, I'm going to be dealing in tactical. And once I say it's not a tactical issue, I need to be strategic and think strategic and identify the problem that is. So here it is. And then I'll stop, Joe. If I don't have clarity on the problem that is, I'll build a machine for the problem that isn't, which is what we do 99% of the time. We identify the gap, call it the problem, when in reality it's a symptom. And we're highly tactical in our response because we have a tactical question that we've asked which winds up sabotaging our results. If you tell me your sales aren't high enough, I'm going to say that's a symptom, not a problem. If you tell me you don't have enough profits, if you tell me you have a crummy culture, if you tell me you have weak employees, if you tell me your balance sheet is screwed up, I'M going to look at you and say, all those are symptoms. What's the problem? So if I gave you an opportunity to rethink the problem that you identified a minute ago, is that really the problem? Really? Is that the problem? Is that the core root underlying problem that's blocking your forward progress? Or is there something below that, something buried where you got to get busy and figure out what in the world is going on? So business to me is an intellectual sport. It's chess. Money and business does not respond well to emotions. Warren Buffett said it. Optimism is the enemy of the rational investor. It turns out in business, optimism is your enemy, which is why one of the pieces of advice that you gave is so good, Paul, which was, we all need a board, we need advisors, we need people that we will listen to. The higher you go or the higher you want to go, the greater the requirement to have somebody around you who will tell you the truth. Because I can't smell my own breath. I can smell your breath, but I can't smell mine. I can't see my own swing. I can see the shot, I can't see the swing. I need people around me, watching me swing, who will give me advice. And then I gotta be willing to hear that advice. As long as I'm arrogant, right, Unwilling to listen, it does no good to ask. So business is an intellectual sport, and the people that win the game sustainably have got skills and tools, which is why I wrote the book Let the Road Less Stupid.

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

I think that if you don't protect the downside and you sort of treat your business a bit like going into a gambling, Gambling, gambling casino, and, you know, sort of keeping on doubling up to, you know, hoping that you're going to get out of a problem. You know, then, then you're asking for trouble. And eight out of 10 businesses do go bust. And quite often it's because people haven't thought of the, you know, the downside consequences of what they're doing. So without being too conservative, it is important, I think, to always think, you know, if I do this, what's the worst that can happen? Can I afford the worst? You know, for instance, right now, you know, some of our airlines have protected against oil. Oil going up. Now, a lot of, A lot of people within our airlines said we're looking at it can't possibly go any higher. We've got a recession on, you know, so do we really have to protect? The wiser people at Virgin said, yes, you know, we should protect against the worst happening, you know, so it was, it was good and sensible that they protected against the downside. I see that too, Richard.

I mean, just as a great example.

Is like Virgin Mobile, as we'd say in the uk, but Virgin Mobile and.

Like, just instead of buying, like building.

All the communication, all the, all the.

Infrastructure, it would take, you literally leased.

I think, Sprints lines.

And so there's very little downside and very big upside if it worked for you.

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

With all the decisions that you have coming across your desk wherever you're at your beach. I guess it could be, yeah, exactly. How do you make really tough decisions on a daily basis?

Because you're just.

You've got to be. You've got so many requests and demands of your time and people that want your attention in the world and like, what's the Richard Branson methodology of, I guess, time management, priority management, really thinking it through. I mean, how do you, how do.

You do all of this?

Well, you know, we spoke about delegation and I think the first thing is to make sure that everything is running without you. So, you know, if, you know, when I'm swimming around the island every day, you know, if a shark comes and decides that I look tasty and I disappear, that, you know, everything will continue to run. And, you know, it may not run in exactly the same way, but it will continue to run and Virgin will continue to grow. The fact that everything is running, we've got a fantastic team of people on a global basis. It means that literally I can work out how I want to spend my day. And I think it's absolutely essential for all of us that we stay fit and healthy, because if we're not fit and healthy, we're not going to be able to achieve anything. So, you know, so, you know, I will swim around the island every day or I'll, you know, go kite surfing or I'll play tennis or I'll, you know, I'll do something to make sure that the body is healthy. And the endorphins are running and, and then I can throw myself into work and I suspect at least 50% of my time is sort of setting up not for profit organizations in the world to tackle, you know, some of, some of the bigger problems of the world. And you know, the other 50%, I suspect is diving in and out on, you know, some of our businesses around the world, you know, maybe doing a bit of firefighting when things are going wrong or, you know, giving them a push, you know, when things are going right.

So I have a question that's a little more personal in nature. I'm wondering when you first started and yes, 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 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 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 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 then when the kids holiday time came, you know, we would pack the bags and I would just move my office 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. And 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, from 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 absolutely critical. And making sure that you bring up great kids who are happy and loving and you found that time for them is critical because they are going to be the next generation.

What is your unique ability? What makes you Richard Branson? People consider you charismatic, friendly, funny, good looking.

I don't want to say good looking.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Yeah.

No, I mean, 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 makes you, you.

I think the sort of fun, fun side is, is perhaps natural. I mean, I think, you know, I've always enjoyed having fun and making sure other people have fun around me. 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 was an awful public speaker when I was young and, you know, and the amount of ERs and UMS, I can now feel them coming back again. You know, somebody once did an interview with me and they cut out all my ers and ums. And my ers 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 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 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, wait, I want to.

Go a little deeper with that one, just for a minute, though, because, I mean, you do some things that other human beings don't do, and it makes you really effective. And I've often wondered, have you ever identified that or do you really not know? I mean, 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. And become a client of your businesses? I mean, what. What is the. 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 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, they're trying to, you know, be the first to fly around the world in a balloon or, you know, the fastest across the Atlantic in boats and so on. And I think that that sort of slightly sort of sexier side of my life, you know, the fun, adventurous 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 to 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 there is some substance there. You know, hopefully then, you know, it's down to personality, whether you. 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, and hopefully I'm as good a listener, you know, which I think, as a good leader, has got to be a great listener, not not wanting to listen to themselves all the time.

Much appreciated, sir. And a few years back, Jay Leno held up one of these things on the show and he said, you know, we do everything with these things. Everything except call people. Right, so I'm going to ask everybody to hold up your phones now. Joel and I went over this six times, and I know earlier Jerry told everybody to put away their phones. So, like, all right, we got a little glitch, but if you have your phone, please hold it up. And what I'm going to ask you to do is to go to your contacts, just like me, and go to disease. Okay? So just hit the Z and then scroll all the way down to the bottom. So as you're scrolling down to the bottom, what's going to happen is when you get to the bottom, you're going to see a number, and that's how many contacts are going to be in your phones. And I ask you to put that number in the chat box, please. And I'm going to start my presentation now. All right? So Tim, can you just confirm you can see the slideshow cell phone?

Yes, sir.

Okay, excellent. So, as Tim said, the name of this talk is there's a gold mine in your pocket. And the goal for today is, is to help you to extract some of that gold from the mine. So you guys have probably seen now, if you look at the feed, 300, 500 thousands, you know, thousands of contacts in some cases. And we're typically in touch with anywhere from maybe 5 to 10% of those people. So now I want you to look at your CRM, which is your contact relationship manager, through that same lens, however, you know, and that's. That's going to be your database, right? Infusionsoft, constant contact, whatever you use. However, these CRMs typically have a lot more people, right? Like 5,000, 10,000, 50,000, probably in this room. Some of you have 500,000 people just sitting there. So we do a better job with our CRMs. We know that, but it's usually maybe 25%, 40%, and with good automation, up to 50%.

So.

So the question really for you is, how many of those people are you in contact with now? Or maybe a better question is how many of those people fell through the cracks?

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

So Dean Jackson calls these people the unconverted leads. I like to call them the gold mine opportunities, because there's hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars just sitting there waiting to be extracted. So the next question is, McKenna, how many of you now Use your phone to make sales calls. And if you're using it all the time, put a 10 in the chat. If you ever. If you never do it, use a one and then anything in between. Okay. And then. McKenna, let me know when you have a number, an average. So the purpose of today is really to help you to close more sales by reconnecting with some of these people. You know, and I understand some of you may or may not be taking on new business, which is fine, because you'll create some other opportunities by reconnecting with these people.

David, the average is seven.

Okay, so this is a pretty strong group, but we still have some opportunities, so that's excellent. So for everybody else, there's a great opportunity now to go reconnect with some of those people. And I know we all have systems in place. You know, systems like the nine word email, which is. Which is. I use it. It's fantastic. We also use Facebook ads. Same thing. I use them both. The challenge with these tools is they work great until they don't work and then you get nothing. See, what we're trying to do is get into a conversation, and then we get in a conversation, we know we can control that conversation. And the next thing we're going to get is feedback, right? When you have feedback. Now we have a way we can handle objections. We can move forward, we can move backwards. We can make suggestions. Bright Local did a study on Google Pages a few years back, and they showed 60% of people preferred to be in contact with. With their service providers over the phone, over other communication sources like email, chat, or text. So my goal today is. Listen, I'm not saying stop doing what you're doing. The purpose of this is to enhance what you're currently doing. A few years back, worked with a real estate group. They were doing about 17 million a year in volume by simply helping them hire an isa, which is an inside salesperson. This is a person professionally trained to make calls and having their top three agents just spend 45 minutes a day on the phones. They took their business the next year to 28 million. That's a 35% increase in sales. Let me ask you this. Who would like a 35% increase in sales? Okay. Like one person. Okay, well, the further. Okay, excellent. Well, great. So now that you are thinking about this and you're probably getting excited about it, a little thing called call reluctance is gonna kick in. And that's that little voice in your head that's gonna start saying weird things, Right?

We've been trying to Reach you concerning your cause.

That's the little voice right there. He's trying to reach us right now. So the little voice, because we all have one, right? And how do I know that it's exactly what Tim said? Because I've been doing this for 35 years. So what I want to do is I want to give you a gift. Okay? The gift is a copy of the sales playbook. And I'm gonna ask you right now if you could take out a pen, and I want you to write these pages down, pages 34 to 39. Because there's going to be an exercise that's going to help us through call reluctance. And there's really five types. Okay, there's five different types of call reluctance. I'm going to touch briefly on each one. The first one is fear of rejection, by far the most common. No one likes rejection. No one likes being told no. We all want to look good. We want to be right. The key to this one really is just to take your ego out of it and make the conversation about the other person. The next one is lack of role acceptance. Right? So here you're actually making calls, but in your mind, you're like, man, these calls are kind of below me. Or maybe your parents said things like, wow, you know, when you're a little kid, you heard them say things like, those damn telemarketers just won't stop calling the house. So there's an incongruency here. The next one is not knowing what to say, right? This will take a fearless salesperson. Turn them into a deer in headlights. The good news, this is an easy one to fix. The next one is over analysis, right? This is the one that actually tells you you're doing your job. You're getting ready to get ready to get ready. You know, you're getting ready so much, nothing ever gets done. It's a form of procrastination. And then the fifth one is what we call fear of success. It's a tricky one. So let's say you had success in an area, but it was way harder than you expected. Now you don't do that again. So you can see these are all mindset tricks.

So.

So my tip for you today is to come from contribution, because when you're coming from contribution, you can't lose. So I'm going to share two simple reconnection scripts. The first one is the apology script. So we start the conversation with people by simply apologizing for not following up sooner. It's great for people. We had conversations with it's for people. We had relationships and we did not do a good job staying in touch. They fell through the cracks. What it does is gets people to put their guard down. I've even had people say, no, no, I apologize. This sounds like, hi, John, this is David giving you a quick call from abc. You know, I know it's been a few years and I want to start off by apologizing. You stop there, let them respond and then get right into it. You want the response. The next one is the closing the loop. Very similar to the apology. We start the conversation by getting right into it, being clear and concise. It's great for people we had conversations with. And again, we didn't do a good job of staying in touch with or maybe they didn't return our calls. Right. It gets people to put their guard down and then we get to ask great questions like have you bought yet? When do you plan to buy? And we can set up a follow up plan. Sounds like this. Hi Mary, this is David from abc. You had requested info on our site last year and we wanted to close the loop. Have you, Whatever, right. Like magic. People are going to tell you what they plan to do next. I've even had people thank me for calling and closing the loop with them. So there's two call to action today. I already gave you the first one. It's to read pages 34 to 39 in the sales playbook and do the exercise. The second one is a challenge. I want to challenge you to make 20. I want to not make content. I want you to have 25 conversations over the next 30 days. Okay. Even if you're planning to hire somebody to make these calls, it's important for you to experience the value of these calls for yourself. And you're going to see the opportunity that's in making these calls. You know, this is a normal challenge I put out and we get great results. This is not a normal group though, right? This is not an ordinary group. This is an extraordinary group. So here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to say I want you to make five. That's it. Have five simple conversations over the next five days with people. And if you do that, I think it's virtually impossible that you won't find at least one piece of business. So the most important thing I want to leave you with today is come from contribution. Because when you come in from contribution, you just can't lose with these calls. Oh, hey, there's a call coming in right Now. Gotta go.

David, do you schedule the calls via email or message, or do you just go and call?

Yeah, I mean, we. Well, we do time blocks, so we'll block times to make calls. Are you referring to, like, specific calls or.

No, I mean, if you're gonna call.

A prospect, are you gonna let them know you're gonna call, or are you just gonna call them cold?

Oh, no. Yeah, we're called. We're calling. Well, I wouldn't say cold because, remember, a lot of these people are people that we've had some engagement with in the past. But, yes, I want to get that person on the phone so that I can control the conversation.

Thank you.

All right, who else?

Just go ahead.

Unmute yourself.

Dive in.

Whose idea was it to have the phone ringing at the end? Was it yours or Joel's? I think it was mine, but actually it was Joel. Joel. You know what's funny is, I pulled it out, and Joel said, no, you got to put that back. And I said, all right, Joel. Joel's awesome. Joel's the man. Joel's awesome.

So Tim Garrigan had a question, which is, how do we connect when people.

Are working from home?

I have office numbers, but they don't.

Have a mobile number.

What's your strategy for that? And do you have any tools you use that you use to track people down and gather.

Gather phone numbers?

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the people we're going to be contacting are people whose numbers we already have, because, again, it's like a fault, you know, reconnection. However, if you want to connect with people, maybe you don't have their numbers, then there are definitely some tools out there. I mean, we use a tool called Vulcan 7, which I think that's more probably real estate specific. But they definitely can get phone numbers. There's skip tracers that you can certainly get phone numbers from. You can go on, like, upwork and hire what's called a skip tracer. They'll get you pretty much anybody's phone number for a couple bucks. So definitely ways to get phone numbers. But this is more geared, again, towards going back into that database, those people that we already have those connections with in mining that gold. But by all means. Yeah, listen, I built a business on cold calling as well. So that's how this all started.

Great. Great.

Well, I just brought up Vulcan 7 for anyone. This is that service. So it does look like this is probably.

Yeah.

Real estate.

Yeah, it's real estate. The owner's a friend of mine. So, I mean, if somebody's interested. I'm sure they're happy to. You know, they can get any phone number, so.

Okay, great.

Anyone else is here?

Hey, guy.

How you doing, man?

How you doing?

Good, good.

I can't wait to see you. Yeah, let's hear it. Spectacular job. One misconception that people don't realize during COVID is we have all the office lines and most office lines right now are being forwarded to people's cell phones. So you don't need the cell phone.

Use the office line.

It's being forwarded. Yeah, great point.

That's awesome. Really good. Jenny has a question which is what are your thoughts on voice message texts?

Yeah, I think voice message text is great. Again, like I said, I'm not trying to tell anybody to stop doing what they're doing. It's really just about enhancing. So if you're, if you're in con. If you were in contact with somebody, you haven't talked to them in a while, I want to try to get them on the phone. That's like my. So you can, if you send a text and they don't respond, then I would definitely follow up with a phone call. I mean, I'm not saying I'm not against voice and message text. I think it's a brilliant way. We talked about loom earlier, which is a great way to just kind of send a message to somebody, say, hey, here's an update. But the purpose of this is to get into a two way conversation with somebody. And I think when you, when you get into those, when we get into those two way conversations, you'll see a lot of magic happen.

Okay, good. So here's one from Richard Wilson and he asks. I get a ton of incoming calls. I don't have time to pick up the phone for 99% of these. Do you have any software for my mobile phone? So I can see the value of the person calling, who they are, where they are, estimated value of the lead, et cetera. Something that uses big data, machine learning AI to tell me which 1% of these calls I should actually take. Any ideas, Richard?

Let's invent that because that sounds amazing. I do not know of that right now, but yeah, I think that would be fantastic. I think, although thinking, I mean, if you, if you have a CRM, we all have CRMs, right? So if our CRMs are connected to our cell phones and then we're going to see the phone number that's calling. So maybe based on that phone number you could get some data that would say, okay, here's a client that was looking at a $200,000 product or something. It's a great idea, it's fantastic. But. But I'm not familiar with anything right now.

There are a couple. I just saw one. If I can ask my team, either Aaron or Marisa, I know we have it in our tools. Slack. There's a couple that analyze and look at incoming, either traffic or calls that provide real time data. But that's. Yeah, let's see if we'll see if we can dig that up. But that's a really good point. There's always room for products like that. Absolutely.

Most of the time speakers wait till the end to show the disclosures. So let me just take care of that right up front. Everyone got that? I'm going to begin by borrowing from the great book A Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I went from being very happy to very sad in a matter of seconds. I left a big brokerage firm in 1999 when Mimi and I started our own wealth management company and began our entrepreneurial journey to this moment when I realized we had netted more than a million dollars from our company. But just when I was getting excited, I scanned down the tax return to see how much we had paid in taxes that year. And I remember thinking to myself, you could buy a pretty nice home for that much money. And then I was overcome with doubt. Doubt about the way I was managing our own wealth. Had we hired the right professionals on our team? Was I making mistakes? Was I missing big opportunities? And even though we lived a great lifestyle, was it sustainable? You have to remember, at that moment of time, I thought I knew everything there was to know about wealth management for entrepreneurs. So I started asking other wealth managers I respected. And I kept hearing the same traditional answers. Then I heard about something called a family office, the way billionaires manage their wealth. And luckily I got introduced to a family office in New York City. I jumped on a plane, I flew out there and I met with the CEO and we hit it off. We just connected. And he shared with me how they would hire the best accountants, attorneys, legal, tax, insurance and investment professionals working for that one billionaire and his family as full time employees. I knew immediately that this was the best way to manage money for entrepreneurs. There was only one problem. You need about 200 or $300 million before that makes any sense. Then I thought, I wonder if I could create a virtual family office at a fraction of the cost for entrepreneurs like me and my clients who are making great money but don't yet have $200 million in assets I needed didn't exist. So I created it first for my own clients and our family. And now we do it for every new client. I'm going to cover three things with you today. I'm going to cover the entrepreneur's virtual family office. So this is the structure of how you should think about your wealth management as an entrepreneur. I'm going to go over stress testing which billionaires do and you should too. And finally, I'm going to cover some questions you can ask yourself for a self assessment to see where you are in your wealth planning journey. First, the entrepreneur's virtual family office. If I can get a slide up here. There we go. Perfect. So here's the framework. I want you to think about things. I believe that entrepreneurs are the reason for everything great in this country. You're the reason for the economy. You're the reason for innovation. You're the reason for giving. And I believe you deserve to make rich real. Now, that means different things to different entrepreneurs. So to one entrepreneur, it might mean something as simple as flying first class or flying private. For another, it might mean taking three months off a year to travel the world. For another, it might mean knowing that your great grandchildren never have to worry about the cost of an education. And for still others, it might mean serving a cause you care about both while you're on this planet and beyond. Which for Dave Asprey is 180 years in my 24 years of helping entrepreneurs. To make rich real, you need three outcomes. You need absolute confidence in your team. You need max wealth both inside and outside your company. And you need sustained wealth. I meet entrepreneurs all the time. They had a huge exit. They made a lot of money and they squandered it because as Joe said in the intro, it's a different skill set to make money than to keep money.

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

To get these three outcomes, there's three main drivers. Entrepreneurs love to grow, but I'm going to leave that to third. The first is protect moving from vulnerable to secure manage, which is moving from uncoordinated to worry free and finally grow the Part you're excited about moving from incremental to exponential. So when you protect and manage, you get absolute confidence. When you manage and grow, you get maximum wealth. And when you grow and protect you, you get sustained wealth. For each of these protect, manage and grow, I created three catalysts and this is where the work is really done. First, asset protection. This is having a plan so your assets can't be taken by a lawsuit. Second is wealth transfer. So making sure the right people get your stuff and money when you're done with it at the right time and the right way without ruining your kids. If you don't have kids, your wisdom as an entrepreneur should be passed on through stories and videos. And then finally, the time energy shield. You should have a wealth manager on your team that protects you from other professionals, pitches and projects. Under manage business value, your business is the most valuable asset you have. You need to get a business valuation to know its worth. You need a monetization strategy, which could be a high multiple exit. Or it could be turning your company into mailbox money, where you live a great lifestyle and you go out to the mailbox and pick up a check. If you're under 30, ask an old person at your table what a mailbox is so we can move to the next one. The next is the wealth wheel. You're going to pick up advisors and professionals over your life as an entrepreneur. You're going to pick up an accountant, you're going to pick up an attorney, you're going to pick up an insurance agent. Often they're not all a players. They're not talking to each other. And the worst part is you're in the middle trying to manage that team and you shouldn't be in the middle. And then finally, the linchpin partner. This is who holds the whole thing together. This is a wealth manager who has three distinct qualifications. First, a specialization in working with entrepreneurs. Most financial advisors are generalists. Second, experience in working with entrepreneurs at least 10 or 20 years. And third, a fiduciary standard of care in all dealings with you. That's a fancy legal term. That means the advisor has to by law represent you and your interests before their own. Under grow tax planning, your largest expense as a successful entrepreneur is going to be taxes. You should have a well thought out, annually updated and implemented tax plan investments. I put these in three categories. Private equity, real estate and stocks and bonds. You want to have a smart strategy for how you're handling those areas to build wealth outside of your company. And finally, the profit accelerator. Knowing what Are your critical drivers to profitability, having a simple way to monitor and improve those key drivers and by doing that, increase your cash flow. Second thing I want to cover today is the stress test. CEG Worldwide did a study of 199 family offices. These are families that have more than $500 million and 93.5% of them do stress testing. What is stress testing? What does that look like? It's a deep dive with a wealth expert on everything that touches your wealth. So it's looking at your business insurance, your personal insurance, your liability coverages, your estate documents, your asset protection plan, your investment statements, your business tax returns, your personal tax returns, Your P&LS, your business operating agreements, your buy sell agreements, your debt, and even the plans you put together for your employees. At an event like this, I get asked a lot, Jim, what's the first thing I need to do on my wealth management? You need to get a stress test by a qualified wealth manager that does this on a regular basis. We do it for all of our clients and we do it to answer three questions for them. First, are you making any big mistakes? Second, are you missing any opportunities? And third, does your team consist of a players and are they talking to each other? The third is the self assessment. Within the nine categories that I went over earlier. I created a question for each so an entrepreneur like you can find out where are you in your wealth planning journey? I only have time to go over two today of the nine, but let's do this together. So question seven of nine is how convinced are you that your annual plan for paying less tax is delivering on all the legal opportunities available to you? This is one to ten. One is bad, ten is excellent. So one might be. Every year the US treasury sends me a birthday card. I hope that's not you. And a 10 would be my plan is second to none. And most likely you're somewhere in between one and 10. Question number five of nine, how confident are you that you could completely forget about your wealth management and still know for sure that your wealth team is proactively driving your wealth forward? A1 would be it's a hot mess and A10 totally confident. We created for the nine questions the make Rich Real scorecard. And this is my gift to you. Go to makerichreal.com and you can get the scorecard. There's no required opt in. I promise you're not going to be tagged, pixeled, prodded or poked. A lot of smart people in the room could show me how to do that, but that's not the purpose of this. I'm going to leave you today with this story. My office manager buzzed me one day and said, jim, Steve just called and Steve and Joanne are coming in tomorrow. And they said it's urgent. And that concerned me because Steve was a high flying entrepreneur. We had been working together for more than 10 years and Joanne never came in. It was always Steve. He said she didn't care about the finances and that he handled everything. The next day I walked into the lobby to greet them. First I saw Joanne. Her face was pale and she looked sad. Then I looked over and saw Steve. He was in a wheelchair and his hair had fallen out. And I knew immediately that Steve had cancer. No one mentioned the elephant in the room. I got them back into my office and as soon as we got settled, Steve went into the meeting like normal, started talking about our plan and the strategies about the professionals on the team. And when he finished, he looked at me and he said, very matter of fact, Jim, I've got pancreatic cancer. I only have a couple of months to live. Can we go over the part of the plan where I'm not here and it's just Joanne? I looked at Joanne and she had tears streaming down her face. So I went over the plan, the way it worked without Steve when he's gone. And when I finished, I looked at Steve and I was surprised to see this look on his face, this look of peace, this look of contentment. And then he looked deep into my eyes and I looked deep back into his and he simply said, you got her? I said, yeah, Steve, I've got her. And we teared up. A couple of months later, Joanne called me to tell me that Steve had passed. And as I hung up the phone, I said to myself, don't worry, Steve, I've got her. Who's got you? Who's got your family? You deserve to have a team of a players. You deserve to have a team that talks to each other. You deserve to have a team that puts your interests before their own. Now is the time to get the team that you deserve.

What were the biggest obstacles that you had early on that would be useful for people to hear about? Because you certainly have overcome. I mean, you went into an industry and dominated where you had so many forces that were not your friend at all?

Yeah, well, first of all, I mean, the thing that was so tricky for me and was really just this huge kind of education for me, but also what I realized, how much further I was ahead of so many people was that I wasn't drinking sugar. I was drinking diet sweeteners. So there was. I mean, I take you through this kind of in the book as well, where it really started for many people with saccharin and NutraSweet and aspartame and Splenda, and today it's stevia. And how so many people today are thinking that they're actually doing better for themselves versus actually really training their brain to be addicted to the substance. And so when I started hint in 2005, that was really the epiphany there were, you know, just as an example, 2% of the population had this thing called type 2 diabetes back in 2005. Today, 45% of the population has type 2 diabetes or pre diabetes. And most of those people claim to be drinking diet or being kind of fooled to your point by this whole idea of vitamin or low fat or, you know, that. That world. So. So again, like, this is what I saw back, you know, then I had no business being in this industry because I was a, you know, media and a tech executive. And. And really what I had seen just by drinking water and getting. And in order to drink water, I was slicing up fruit and throwing it in the water. And what I realized just by doing that was that was all I needed to drink water and really change my health. So when I went to my local Whole Foods and said, hey, is this product on the shelf? You know, I saw that it wasn't there. But I thought. My initial thought was, oh, I'll just go and get a product on the shelf. How hard could it be to actually get a product on the shelf at Whole Foods? They had just opened in San Francisco. And so I went. I started talking to the guy that was like, stocking the shelves. I mean, what else do you do? And that's when I realized that there were all these other things that were like, healthy perception versus healthy reality. And once I actually got it on the shelf, that's when it's a story in and of itself. But the first overnight, I mean, literally 10 cases were sold overnight in San Francisco. I had no idea, you know, sort of what I was embarking on. I didn't know that there were 2,000 different beverage companies. Probably the most crowded industry in the world today is the beverage industry and really controlled by Coke, Pepsi, or Dr. Pepper, Snapple. And, you know, and that's when it really set in that I was probably six months into getting it on the shelf. I was kind of getting it into stores in San Francisco, but I had no idea Kind of the uphill battle. And so that's really when the doubt started setting in around like, can I actually do this? I know I'm a smart person, but you know, can I actually not only, you know, take on this industry, but also the fact that I didn't have any experience, the fact that I had no idea how to produce a shelf stable product without adding preservatives to it. There's a story in there when I finally connected after a year with an executive at Coca Cola in hopes that maybe I could do a distribution deal with them. And that's when he said something that was really kind of eye opening to me and very dismissive, which was, sweetie, Americans love sweet. This thing isn't going anywhere. The million reasons why I should have at that point given up. But what I realized when, sometimes when people say something so strong and so alarming to you like that you have a choice, you either quit or you say, wait a minute, the reason why I'm doing this is really to solve a problem. I'm on a mission and this person is not on my same mission. And so I have to that really set my mind to it and just continue to move forward and try. And so that's really the story that I wanted to share with people. Because when I've been out speaking over the last few years about building this company, which by the way, today is larger than $150 million, but is the largest non alcoholic beverage in the country that doesn't have a relationship with Coke, Pepsi or Dr. Pepper, Snapple, which, you know, we're in 30,000 locations, over 50% of our business is direct to consumer, which is not really what people in the beverage industry do. But what I realized is that everybody would ask me like, how did you do it? You know, obviously you didn't have any doubts, you didn't have any fears, you didn't have any failures, you were just perfect. Like you just went and did it. And so I would share these stories about all these doubts and about the Koch executive sharing that there was no way I was going to do it, be really condescending along the way. And I thought at the end of the day, it's really just about me getting the right mindset in place, trying being okay with failure along the way and learning from those things and then just keep moving forward and to some extent celebrating those things that have happened in the past that are part of your journey that you, you know, if you pay attention, you can learn from. And I'm such a huge believer Even meeting you, Jo, that, you know, dots connect along the way, that they're all part of your journey. And sometimes you can't figure it out right away exactly why those situations are placed in your path. But ultimately they can either make you stronger or they can, you know, if you can't connect the dots of the time and you don't have the right mindset, I'm a huge believer that that's ultimately why we quit. And so I wanted to really share this message, share my story, in hopes that other people will read this and say, if she can do it, I can do it. And because I'm no different than anyone else. And again, there's no reason why I was supposed to be able to do what we've been able to do at hint, you know, another story in the book. So I went to Arizona State University. I mean, I grew up last of five kids, super middle class, and my dad, as I used to joke, was an original settler. I think I shared this with you, Joe, in kind of Phoenix, Scottsdale area. I was. When I went to asu, I really didn't think that there was anything wrong with my education. I went there, and when I landed in New York City and working for Time, part of what I really learned was that it was an environment that was filled with all Ivy League. And again, like, I face this situation where I had a choice. I could either, like, sit there and be, you know, having a pity party for myself around what my education had been like, or I could actually just do great things. And by the end of, you know, my first year at Time, everybody, all the executives at Time were asking me if I had more friends that could come to Time because my mindset and my work ethic and my attitude and all of those things were significantly different than other people around me. And, you know, and one of the things that I talk about in the book, too, is the importance of, you know, in that journey. Along the way and working at Time and CNN and AOL and even, you know, working in my first startup, I learned a lot about culture and I learned a lot about mindset and importance of, you know, education or not having importance of education. So.

So, Kara, I've always had this funny thing where I think most people get up every day and just bumble their way through life, including myself. I've spent so much time with very successful people, and I've yet to find someone that really, you know, there are some that are like super OCD and very structured, but for the most part, most of the successful Entrepreneurs, I know they still feel like they're in the middle of a startup. So how would you describe. I mean, what is, like, your typical day?

Like?

So the one thing that I, like, have to do every single day is hike. So I live in Marin county, and that's what I do. Beyond that, I have one or two things. That's another thing that I talk a lot when I'm out speaking is that I think actually having too many things to do, actually, you set yourself up for failure. So I think that falls into what you're talking about, Joe, that it's like, have one or two things and celebrate that you actually got those things done, have a goal down the line. But that doesn't mean that you don't have small things and small things that you ultimately want to achieve so that you can actually really assess what you are accomplishing.

What did writing the book do for you? What did it do for your thinking?

So that's another thing. I didn't plan on being an author. It was never on that list that I wanted to eventually do. This was a journal for the last four years. So I was spending a ton of time on planes and in crappy hotels and, you know, faraway places. I mean, where we're, you know, launching, launching, hint. And so I started just journaling and sharing stories. And really that, you know, the key thing that I found along the way is that, you know, most successful people, most entrepreneurs, they may ask for the 1, 2, 3, how I do it. But I feel like what really gets people to think about their own situation is actually hearing the other people's stories on how they ultimately did it. And so by telling my stories about, you know, how do you get out of the gate? How do you take on large companies? How do you get your mindset back when you fail? All of those types of things are stories that I really share in the book. And so when I, you know, ultimately went out and decided to publish this book, I mean, I had over 600 pages. Frankly, I have another book already done because we had to whittle it down to like 200 pages. And, you know, this book will not, like I said, tell, tell you the 1, 2, 3, if this is how you do it. What this book will do is actually share stories about different topics, including, you know, when you don't feel good enough, when you don't know exactly what you're doing. You know, I have a huge belief that actually being authentic and really just sharing with people, like, I don't know how to do that Right. There's a little bit of fake it till you make it along the way. But then there's also the, you know, people think that I've got to, like, if I'm sitting there trying to actually launch a beverage at Whole Foods, of course I've got to pretend that I know what I'm doing. I actually got so much further by sharing with people. You know, I've done some really great things in my. In my previous life, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing right now at all. And there's some people that will view that as. As, like, I don't want to spend my time with her. There's other people that, you know, found it authentic, endearing, honest, whatever you want to, you know, however you want to think about it. But I feel like that's a little bit different model than maybe people think that they have to do in order to be successful.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Well, you know, when I was Bill Phillips, marketing consultant, he created a sports supplement company. It was the largest in the world at its time. In the late 90s, he actually bought the company and then built it up. It was called EAS Experimental and Applied Science. And we used to sit around in rooms at the time. And this is, you know, going back, you know, 25 years ago is when I first met Bill. I met him in 1995 at a big bodybuilding event. And at the time, you know, the advertising world would talk about mind share. You know, how much of the mind can you. And this is before the, you know, Internet marketing and whatnot. And the big beverage companies were talking about stomach share. How much of a. Of a human's stomach can you own with your soda or the water or the energy drink or whatever? How do you think about. How do you think about the beverage business and consumption and how you position. Hint.

So from day one, we put stakes in the ground around health. And so that was, again, solving my problem when I saw what this diet soda was doing. And pretty quickly I realized that the beverage industry was less concerned about actually getting me healthy and, you know, my family and my friends healthy. It was really about, you know, selling stuff to People to ultimately get them unhealthy. And, you know, and that, that's really how I view the beverage industry. I compete with them for shelf space. I compete with them for consumer confusion. Right, that's, that's out there. But I think that when we finally ended up going into direct to consumer, and, you know, it's sort of ironic because here I'd been running the direct to consumer business for AOL for seven years and built a pretty significant business, I didn't actually think that consumers would buy online and that they would buy cases online. And there were all these, you know, industry experts out there saying that, you know, food and drinks, like, are not being bought online. And so I listened to that for a while and then finally I'm like, why? And so I'm a huge believer too, that if we're thinking differently about something, that doesn't mean that you're wrong. That means that you have to go and test these theories. And if you keep thinking about it over and over again, then it's your mission, it's your job to ultimately go out and test these theories. And so today, the beverage industry, you know, while they were saying she's crazy, she's like, launching a direct to consumer business, it's not going to, you know, no one's going to end up doing that or no one's going to end up buying it. I mean, now, especially during the pandemic when we had over a million consumers in our database that we could go out to and say, okay, you're not going to go into stores. We've got plenty of stuff in the warehouse and you know, we'll send it right out to you. Seems simple, but to the beverage industry, that's just not the way they do business. Right. And so it's, it's like a huge model disruption that, that really ultimately wouldn't have happened if, if I wouldn't have, you know, really tested it and really gone out to see what else we could do. So, so that, you know, that's another piece of this too, that I think that, you know, disruption is, you know, there and so many different industries. That's another thing that, you know, I've learned that actually the people that are the industry experts and many, many different businesses are probably not the ones that are actually going to change industries and do things different. And so that, that's like a huge epiphany that I've had over the last 15 years as well.

Yeah, I've always loved the line in order to have a breakthrough, you Got to break something.

Yeah, totally. And, you know, and you and I talked about this whole concept of addiction. I mean, what I've seen so often, whether it's, you know, I've talked to so many people around, you know, whether it's alcohol or drugs or, you know, you name the addiction. So often, you know, the fallback is either cigarettes or it's diet sweeteners or sugar. But typically today it's even diet sweeteners. And unfortunately, it's a really, really scary, unhealthy addiction that I think a lot of people just aren't really realizing is maybe even more dangerous than others.

Yeah, I guess what I would say, because I don't want to. I have a tendency to go off on addiction topics if I start talking about it because it's such an interesting thing. To me, addiction is really about the craving state. It's being in it. It's in a craving state. And with. I often think of the line, it's even behind me up here, it says addiction is looking for love in all the wrong places. And when something tastes good or it feels good, physically, mentally, it's like a fantasy. And so when people start consuming something and it's. And it fills that sort of void, and you're dealing with the craving state, like in 12 step groups. I mean, I wrote about this with Anna David and Hal Elrod in our book. The miracle morning for addiction recovery is there's four things that people need in order to get sober and stay sober that will give them the biggest benefit. First is community, because I've never met anyone that recovers in isolation. Second is it's biochemical, serotonin, dopamine. It's what you consume. And 12 steps as an example, does a great job with community. It's available, it's free, it's everywhere. But you see a lot of people at 12 step groups that will drink, guzzle coffee, sodas, eat donuts, smoke cigarettes, because they're in that craving state and they're trying to look for a way to satiate the uncomfortable feelings. And it's biochemical. And so, so much of addiction recovery is literally what you put in your body. And if you're constantly consuming, you know, terrible foods, I mean, it's. It leads. I can look at almost any type of addict behavior or substance addict, and they have, you know, multiple different forms of ways they work on their addiction behavior. You know, the fourth is. I'm sorry, the third is the trauma work. The fourth is the environment. Those are the four areas. But so much of this has to do with what you consume and what you put in your body. And if you're so with. With hint, what is hint made out?

So it's just fruit and water. So we're using the skins and oils of fruit. We don't use flavor houses. I mean, that was sort of another epiphany that I had. I was asking that question back in 2004 when I was thinking about this. And, you know, so many, like Vitamin Water, just as an example, in addition to all the sweeteners and lots of other stuff that they have in the product, the. The actual flavor that they put in, where it might be, like dragon fruit, for example, where it says dragon fruit on there, it could have, like, cockroach wings or bone marrow in order to actually create these flavors. So I just wanted fruit. I just wanted, you know, something that was like, vegan, not that I'm vegan, but, you know, something that was, like, actually descriptive to the actual fruit flavors that were in drinks. And I couldn't believe how. How far off so many of these products were. And so. So we don't use flavor houses. We create all of our own extracts. We use the skins and oils of the fruit, and they're in, you know, huge vats that we actually send into all of our production that is just like two to three drops per bottle. It ends up that there's no calories in the product. But that wasn't the purpose of it either. So it was really about creating something that was real, that just gave a little bit of flavor hint to the actual product. What's fascinating, a few years ago, we actually launched a sunscreen that some of you guys may have had. It's pretty amazing. It's got no oxybenzone in it. We use the essences from the water to actually scent the sunscreen. And it was funny when we launched that the people that were the most upset with us for launching it were the people in the beverage industry. Our consumers actually came back to us and said, oh, my gosh, I was waiting for you guys to launch these new categories. And two weeks after we launched the sunscreen, some major sunscreen companies started putting no oxybenzone on their labels. They actually started reformulating. And that's when I realized that just by doing good and doing better and innovating, we can not only help the consumer, but we can really force a lot of these industries to ultimately innovate and do better for the consumer around health. And so there's a lot of examples right now not Even just in the beverage industry where some people will say, oh, you guys are getting knocked off. I mean, what we really believe is we're not only building a brand and really changing categories for the better, but we can show these large companies how to ultimately do that. So, so we've been approached over the years by not just the typical beverage companies, but many other companies, including the way that we ultimately do business and the way that we have that relationship with our community and with our customers, but also with the data around, how do we ultimately help people get healthy? I've learned about entrepreneurism and frankly I, I learned a lot from the tech industry in terms of just kind of mindset too, of. And I know Joe, you've had some time there as well, but I feel like it was a very different mindset than the food and beverage industry that felt like, and felt like it was. And this kind of goes to what Chris was talking about, that you have to have the certain resume in order to be successful. And so, you know, in the, in the beverage industry or the food industry or the beauty industry, it's about working at Procter and Gamble or Coke or Pepsi and then you get this like checkbox. In the tech industry it's really about how do we just bring really smart people into the room who can think about problem solving and let's just go solve problems and let's like keep adding on to the puzzle. Right. Versus thinking that that's the end and keep launching. And keep launching and keep launching. And that's like the mindset that we've taken with hint and growing it. And so it's I guess a 15 year old startup, overnight success just kind of on how we think about development, but how we think about ultimately having that relationship with the consumer.

If you were a fruit, like unlike a spirit animal, what fruit? If you had to come back in life as a fruit, what would be your favorite? What would you be? Like a pineapple or a peach or what would it be?

Maybe clementine. So yeah, so I, you know, I had, I grew up in Arcadia there and I had in an old orchard, so I missed my clementines actually. So that would probably, that would probably be. Be it. But yeah, I mean, you know, I think more than anything this, this book for me is, is trying to get it out there to, you know, really share that. And really what I hope is that people will, you know, figure out and, and I feel like talking to this group, honestly Joe too is like people are already one step ahead of so many people out there. In the world. I've met so, so many people who, you know, aren't actually getting out of, getting out of bed, getting out of, you know, the gate, or getting out of their own mindset because they believe that they can't for some reason. Right. You've all met them and. But I feel like, you know, yes, there's college students who believe that. They think that, you know, there's. There's this world of people. They think that entrepreneurs or, you know, successful people are really the people that are, you know, they've got superpowers. And, you know, while I believe that, you know, they may have superpowers, they're not the same superpowers that you might think that they have. The superpower is really that they actually try and they live undaunted and they, you know, go out and do great things because they have this mindset in place that really, you know, allows them to go and do.

How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? So 10 is a feeling of well being and 0 is the pits. What's your happiness number and how do you get more of that? During today's talk, you're going to know what the happiness rules are and how to implement happiness rules into your life so that you can become happier. You're going to get a detailed handout of all the material in the presentation. And ideally, if this makes sense to you, you're going to come out of this happier. You've been misled. You were given a formula that told you that success, that happiness was the result of hard work and success. Happiness came from working hard and becoming successful. Success is defined as the progressive realization of a worthy goal by Earl Nightingale. He's a motivational speaker. I followed those rules. I followed that formula. I wanted to become a doctor. I worked hard, college, med school, residency, started a private practice, became successful. What I found at the end was burnout. And burnout is defined as exhaustion detached from work, becoming bitter, becoming cynical, and losing effectiveness at work. My burnout got really bad. It got to a point that something had to change. In September 2008, I was sitting in a darkened room. I was staring across at a picture, my sister Magdalena. We're twins. And in this picture, she's beaming. And what you can't tell is that she's wearing a wig because she's going through chemotherapy. Three years before, she'd been diagnosed with brain cancer and had a terrible prognosis. In the month before, on August 24, 2008, she had passed away. It was so striking. To me, in that moment, I was healthy, I was successful, I had a thriving private practice, and I was miserable. And Magdalena, with a terrible prognosis, lived life with a smile on her face. In that moment, there was a line in the sand, a moment of truth. I committed to enjoying the ride and becoming happ happy no matter what. And over the years, that's what I've been able to do. And now that's what I like to teach other people. What I've come to discover is that happiness is really the engine that drives success instead of the outcome of success. Here's a definition of you from Sean Achor. He's a happiness researcher from Harvard. The feeling of joy that you get as you strive to fulfill your potential, it's the definition of happiness. What I love about that definition is it's got embedded two key parts. Number one, embrace the sock. And number two is Dan Sullivan's elegant idea. Make your future bigger than your past.

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

The happiness rules do not work. They get broken. If what you're dealing with are things like, you know, PTSD or clinical depression or anxiety, they can be helpful. But with those conditions, you need to get some professional help as well. There's a whole area of psychology that's opened up which is called the positive psychology movement. And there's many theories about how to flourish and how to have happiness. And they're all working with the same basic ingredients that we pick and choose from. And we put these ingredients together, and that's how we define or achieve happiness. Where happiness rules stands out. What's completely different from the happiness rules and other methods is that they were not named by a psychiatrist who's listened to 417 episodes of I Love Marketing. We've got three big rules, two parts to each rule. First, fitness rules. Part one of fitness rules are the physical fitness rules. Sleep, optimize for eight or more hours a day. Move more, eat well. Mental fitness. Cut out negativity in your life as much as you can. Limit your exposure to negativity. We've got a lot of negative thoughts frequently in our head. Don't wrestle and try to push them out of your head. Put a blinder to them. When you try to push the thoughts out, they get bigger. Develop a gratitude. Practice R and R Play time off. But this is also where resiliency lives techniques like Jason teaches us. Breathing, meditation, taking a walk. Adding five minutes four to six times a day of active recovery is incredibly helpful. Reset your nervous system. Develop a sense of awe. Cultivate a sense of wonder. Second set of rules Growth rules First part of growth rules Learning and growing. Work with a growth mindset. We are never finished products. We can always get better. We talked about this last month's meeting. Jim Rohn Work on yourself as hard as you work on your business. The past is for learning. This comes from the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Second part of growth Rules Connection. We've been talking about that all day long, today and yesterday. There's an incredibly tight correlation as we age with our health and happiness and the quality of the connections that we have. Focus on your relationships. Find your tribe. One of the big findings of all of the positive psychology research that's been done is that other people matter. Purpose rules first. Blaze your own trail. This is where courage lives. But Wiesen was talking about that. What are you interested in? What's your vision? Not that vision. This vision. What's the impact that you want to have in your life? What are you curious about? What are you good at? David Evans and Bill Burnett are teachers at Stanford. They've got a course in the book Designing youg Life. David Evans was asked to summarize how to design your life. He came up with a 10 word answer. Get curious. Talk to people. Try stuff. Tell your story. In the last section, committing to Enjoying the ride, I have two quotes for you. The first from Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for meaning. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms. To choose one's attitude in any given circumstances. To choose one's own way. And the second is more recent. It's from Jason Tzedukas. I saw this quote recently. Jason Sudoukis is the actor on Ted Lasso. He said if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an avenger. All these concepts are familiar to you. All the happiness rules gives you a handle and a way to think about them so that you can remember them. Things that are easy to do are also easy not to do. According to Jim Rohn. For the next week. Commit to living life intentionally, by design, putting the happiness rules at the center. If it makes sense, share the happiness rules with the people around you. Family, friends, loved ones. And imagine, in a year, we get back together, and everybody has moved up their level of happiness, and the people around them have moved their level of happiness up. What the world starts to look like. Living the happiness rules can change your life. I know. It's changed mine, and it can change yours. So go out there and be happy.

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