WATCH THIS To Stay Motivated Everyday & Achieve GREATNESS! | Brian Tracy

I just get on. People say, what's the key to success? You just had it, and there's no shortcuts. And it doesn't take any genius. Well, no offense. It just takes starting and completing your most important task. And if you'll just do that, get my book. Eat that frog. And I'm not trying to sell books because you don't get very much with a book. But the thing is, the book is now 50 languages. Can you imagine 50 languages, two and a half million copies. And by the way, it's probably closer to 10 million because there are several countries, like Iran, that don't pay royalties. And others have published the book without telling anybody. So it's published all over the world, but they cheat you on their royalties. So it's probably 10 million copies of it have been sold. And so that's my starting point and everything else. Here's another thing, by the way, and I love what the lady was saying about values. I had a good friend, maybe you know him, his name is Mark Waldman. And Mark came to my office when we were doing our coaching program some years ago. And he just dropped in. He lives in Northern California, San Francisco. And he said. I said, so what's happening in your life? Is it a break? He said, well, I've come up with a new question. And he said, I'm just walking around teaching everybody, and the question is, what is my most important value in life right now? What is my most important value in life right now? And I thought, geez, that's a great question, because all of us think about values and are impressed by values. So I asked everybody in the room, what is your most important value in life right now? And he said, you have to ask this question every day, all day long, for a week, every day. Just keep asking the question. Your first answer will be love and truth and God and things like that. Just keep asking the question and keep drilling down deeper, keep drilling and drilling until you finally, the most important value pops out. And that can change your life. And so what I did is I did the same thing. I asked the question for a week, what is my most important value? And the way you can tell your values are because of your behaviors. What you do is you look at your behaviors and especially your behaviors under stress, when your behaviors in difficulty. You always demonstrate who you really are inside by what you do on the outside, when you have difficulties or challenges. So I finally concluded, my most important value is what the lady said is freedom. Freedom is my most important value. And you know something America was established by people for whom freedom was their most important value. And it changed the entire world. There is still no country in the world for which freedom is the organizing principle. Freedom is a concern for everybody, but Americans more than any other nationality.

Thank you.

Of freedom. And so therefore your job is to have freedom. How do you have freedom? Well, one of the things is you have to have enough money so that you can buy the things that you want, that you can take care of your family, that you can provide for your spouse and for your children. And when you, when you achieve freedom, more freedom, you feel happier, you have more energy, you have higher self esteem, you feel more in control. And everything that you do moves you toward having more or less freedom. So that was a turning point for me is that freedom is the key. And then I look at my family. Everything I've ever done with my four children and my wife has been to increase their freedom, give them more freedom, open doors for them, open up opportunities for them. So freedom is mine. So what is yours? That's a great question. And the way you tell is you simply look at what do you do under pressure? What do you care about more than anything else? What is really your value? And it's a great question, great organizing principle for your life.

Yeah, Brian. And as you know, most genius network members have teams, many have running multimillion dollar businesses. What is the dark side of success in the midst of building and growing? What have you noticed where things become out of control, out of hand, where people start losing it? Because as you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, because of the success they have, comes responsibility, obligations, messes, navigating things. And here we are in the middle of a pandemic. What have you found to be success traps that people have gotten themselves into that you would have any advice, suggestions or insights on either how to avoid or how to navigate if you're in the middle of it?

Well, Joe, that's a really tough question, but you and I have talked about this subject, is that what is our ultimate goal in life? Remember, the old thing is write your own obituary, your own obituary. What do you want people to say about you when you pass on? And I went for a long walk on a beach near Brisbane in Australia some years ago, and about an hour, two hours of walking and I asked myself that question. And the answer that came up for me and never changed again is that after I pass on, I want, when my children meet someone who knew me, they say, oh yeah, I knew your father, he was a really good person. That to Me was my ultimate goal in life. I knew your father, he was a good person. And I have never deviated from that. I never have done anything or said anything to anybody under any circumstances that would cause anybody to say other then he was a good person. And so you have to keep that in mind. See, this is the purpose in life. And one of the things that I learned is that success does not change you. It just makes you more of what you already are. It just makes you more of what you already are. If you're a good person, you become a better person. If you're a jerk, you become a worse jerk. If you're honest, you'll be more honest. If you're dishonest, you'll be. You'll be more dishonest. So you always have to think in terms of long term. One of the things that I found, and I've written about it extensively, I wrote a book, by the way, a couple of years ago called Get Smart. And it has 10 ways of thinking that have been developed over the ages. And basically it says that successful people think this way. And in the same way of thinking, unsuccessful people think that way. The most important, which I learned from Drucker, from many others, is long term versus short term thinking is really successful people think long term. Unsuccessful people think short term. In other words, they go for advantage, opportunity, making money. They're short term thinkers. Whereas the very best people think long term. They think, where do I want to be in five years or ten years from now? What do I want people to say about me when I'm gone? And so long term thinkers, surprisingly enough, when you think and act long term, you accomplish vastly more than if you're a short term thinker.

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.

And the book get smart has basically 10 different ways of thinking. One of them is it comes from Daniel Kahneman, who got a Nobel Prize for it. He's an economist and a philosopher. And it was, you know, it was, what is it? Two ways of thinking. Think fast, Slow, yes, thinking fast and slow. And what he says is basically successful people think slowly about important things in their life. One of the things that Kahneman sort of touches on, but which I hammer is the word consequences. And consequences, as you always ask, what are the likely consequences if I do or don't do this? And everything in life has consequences. And the true measure of how really smart you are is your ability to predict the consequences of doing something or not doing it. Milton Friedman said this, exactly this. The Nobel prize winning economist, he said, the quality of your thinking can be measured by how accurately you predict what will happen as a result. One of the greatest thinkers of history, a man named Frederick Bastiat, said he said the same thing back 200 years ago. He said that the primary consequences of everything you do are good. You eat this, drink this, do this because the primary consequences are good or why would you do it at all? He said, but it's the secondary consequences that are more important than anything else. And your ability to accurately predict the secondary consequences of a behavior determines your whole life. And so, for example, the people who belong to the genius network, one of the reasons that they belong, one of the things that they get is they get ideas that can affect their lives and work. Long term, truly superior people are long term thinkers and they make the sacrifice and they travel and they invest the time and the money. It's all aimed at long term results, consequences, what happens as a result of what you do and then what happens and then what happens? And so that's what you and I learned right at the very beginning is we started exchanging ideas. We read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and how the mastermind was the starting point of success for so many people. And then we started doing it and then it was sort of like a baton in a race. We handed off the baton and you took it and ran with it.

And here you are, you've been studying a lot lately about happiness. I mean, you're public about that and that, you know, money doesn't provide. I believe that a lot of things that can be purchased and that money gives you access to, can put a big smile on your face. That could bring some levels of happiness, but it can't buy true friends. It cannot get you your health back if you let your health deteriorate. But you're really big on this whole concept of just feeling good and being happy. What are some things you can speak to about that? That seems sort of like some people might say that's sort of a weird thing thing for a CEO of a billion dollar company to be. One of his primary focuses is happiness.

Well, it makes sense from a business perspective because if you can make employees happy and customers happy Then employees are going to be more productive, customers are going to be more loyal. So I don't think it's really. I mean, I think every CEO should be thinking about how to do that, but it's. Yeah. What's interesting is there's couple great books, there's Good to Great by Jim Collins, and there's also tribal leadership. And both of those studied companies, different types of companies in different industries, and looked at what separated the great companies from just the good ones. And what they found was one of the things was about having a vision that has meaning, that has a greater purpose than just making money or being number one in the market. So it's not just saying, oh, you should figure out a greater purpose or something you're passionate about just for your own personal happiness. It's actually good business, like figuring out those are the companies that actually end up becoming great. And on the whole science of happiness thing, like, research has shown that the same thing is true on the personal side. If you believe that you're leading a meaningful life that has a higher purpose and you're part of something that's beyond just focusing on you yourself. The research has shown those people are actually happier. So they kind of run in parallel. And so it's just kind of interesting how, you know, for me, I'm really viewing it from the scientific and research perspective, like, this is just what the data says. I'm not out there trying to say you should join a charity or anything like that, but that's just what the research shows. That's just how we're designed.

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, so for all of these thousands of employees and customers and everything that Zappos reaches, touches, is going to, over the years, when it's all said and done, what would you like to have been said about Zappos 20 years from now? What would you like people to to say? This is what this organization has done for me. This is what it represents.

I'd like them to say that beyond just our employees and our customers, that we've helped improve people's lives and made them happier, whether it's through what we do with them, or there's just so Many ways it can happen. Whether it's they call us and maybe they're having a bad day and they get off the phone and now their mood is lifted because they were laughing or because other organizations are learning that culture is important and learning how to improve their company culture and getting their employees happier or just sharing the stuff that we're learning about the signs of happiness with people that want to learn that stuff and apply it to their own lives or their own business.

Well, you know, one of the things I think is cool here that you do is for one, I've had a couple of public speeches that I've given and I've said, you know, let's call Zappos on, you know, speakerphone and just listen to this. And you know, it's amazing because it is really amazing customer service. And I tell people, you know, just call them. If you don't even know what the heck the company does, just call them. And you know, their phone number is right on their, you know, the page of all the pages, I think on your website have your phone number right there. You literally encourage people to call you. Not just try to be an order taking online service. But you know, when people see the tours and they come down here in person, I mean everything from picking people up at the airport to bringing them in. One of the coolest things that impresses me is you have bookshelves filled with business books and inspirational books and books that you think are just really awesome. You and other people in the company and you just say, take whatever books. Okay, here I am at the front entrance of Zappos and there's a bookshelf behind me. And so when people do a tour, they actually let the people take any of the books that they like off the shelf. For instance, here's a book by Seth Godin. Tony talked about this on our interview Tribes and any book that you want because they believe that educate people, give them knowledge. And so check it out. So you're really big on a philosophy that I don't know if you would think of it this way, but I believe that leave people in a better place than they were before you came into their life. If you're going to rent somebody's house, don't trash it. When you're done, leave it in hopefully a better condition than it was before you showed up. And it seems that's kind of the theme that happens with Zappos. I mean, you to want, want to put a smile on people's faces. You want people to come here and not Only be impressed because part of it's marketing, because hopefully they'll do business with you. But really, you want to impact people. You say, take whatever book you want. We're trying to do good stuff. You're really using entrepreneurism to create better, happier human beings, which I think is awesome. It's part of the reasons I wanted to interview you and talk about this stuff. If someone has not done that before, I asked you first, if you had started business, what would you do? If you're already in business and you're kind of just not at all happy with it, it's frustrating. You're at a place where you're just not where you want to be. What sort of advice would you say to that person? Do they need to step back? What sort of actions would you. Would you suggest that they take?

I would say it's true for anyone.

Yeah.

I would say step back and really evaluate your life. And I think a lot of people get stuck in.

Well.

So I wrote a blog post about how poker has analogies to business. And I would say a lot of people think the most important thing in poker is, you know, how well you bluff or how you bet or so on. But actually, when you go into a poker room, the most important decision that's going to have the biggest impact on how much money you make or lose that night is none of that. It's what table you decide to sit at. And if you sit at a table with bad poker players, you're going to make a lot more money than if you sit at a table with really good poker players.

Players.

And so if you think of that as an analogy to life, and, you know, one table is about making as much money as possible, and another table might be about, say, really just improving your own personal happiness, like, which one is the table? Which game do you want to be playing? And so I think most people just, without even really thinking about it, they're just of the mindset of, some people want to play the money game, and they want to personally earn as much money as possible. Some people want to play the fame game and just be recognized and be a celebrity, when really, I think the underlying motivation of all this is what they really want to play is the happiness game and maximize their happiness. And so if you're not happy with what you're doing, then you should take a step back and ask yourself, what are the assumptions of why you're doing what you're doing right now? And if you're really honest with yourself, I think a lot of people will realize, I think a lot of people just assume that making more money is going to make them happier. And even though historically that hasn't been the case, maybe they're happy the day of or a week after. But there's a saying where a raise is only a raise for a month and after that it's just what you're paid.

No, it's like anyone that's ever went out and bought what they think is the most amazing car in the world, there's probably a couple of weeks where you're like, yeah, this is really cool. And it tends to go back to.

Yeah. And the research actually supports all this. So they've done lots of studies and basically what they found is money actually does affect your happiness level when you don't have enough money to have your basic needs met, like food and shelter and so on. But once your basic needs are met, really any incremental amount of money does not, like, they've measured it, different income levels and so on, and it actually does not make people happier.

Yeah.

So the key is, as long as you're not in total struggle survival mode, once you've gotten to that level, the amount of impact is incremental at best.

With more money or none at all. Yeah, okay, but that's a very hard concept, too. I mean, even you and I might rationally understand that. But it's still, you know, I think emotionally we're very tied to the just thinking more is better.

I absolutely agree. I agree. I mean, if we were to sit in front of a room of people and say, we've got a million dollars in this hand, or we've got a book on how to make millions and millions of dollars or just how to be happy. But you got to learn it. You got to put time in understanding. You got to develop practices in your life. Most people are just going to take the money. They're not going to say, well, let's do that. So I think, yeah, just understanding.

But they've done so many studies on lottery winners where you look at their happiness level right before winning the lottery and a year later and it's the same or even lower. And actually the reverse is true, too. People that are dismembered or become blind a year later, they're just as happy as they were before that happened. But I bet if we asked your viewers, how many of them would be willing to go blind for the rest of their lives? Probably wouldn't get any tickets, it wouldn't be a good thing, and I wouldn't do it. Either. And so that's interesting. Right. So I don't think any of us would do it, even though we know the research has shown that's not going to affect our happiness level.

Well, the key, you said it earlier, though, it's about adaptation. So human beings adapt to lots of different stuff. So part of it, I think a lot of people adapt to misery, they adapt to suffering, they adapt to struggle. And I don't know if people really consciously adapt to becoming more happy. I mean, I think you really. Because you say it's just been the way it is. I mean, there's a lot of cultural influences that cause companies and individuals to kind of be the way they are. And I think you almost need to break away from what everyone else is doing and kind of create your own thing, which is exactly what you're doing at Zappos. I mean, you're complete opposite of how most companies run. And look what's happened so far.

Yeah, but there's people where their assumption might be, oh, I have to make so much money so that I can one day go travel around the world. And there's a great book, Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, where he basically woke up one day and realized, if that's what I want to do, I should just go do it. And I don't need a lot of money to be able to do that.

Tim is not a very happy guy, though. I don't really, really like him. No, I'm kidding.

No, he was just.

We were just hanging out two weeks ago. I spent nine days with him on vacation in Vietnam. So Tim's got some very good insights. The book is fantastic. I've actually interviewed him before. So you described integrity as a master virtue. Right up there. The most important virtue, love. So what is integrity? Why is it so important? And what are your thoughts, perspectives and insights on love?

Okay, well, we'll start with. We'll start with love. Yeah, I think love is. Well, I could argue love is the meaning of life. I mean, the meaning of life is love. And you won't really be happy if you don't have love in your life. But love in an organization is extremely important. And yet in most corporations, love's in the closet. It's in the corporate closet. It's hidden away. You think about why is that. Well, because people think love is weak. Yeah, love's nice. But think about the metaphors that are used.

In business.

There are three major types of metaphors. Now getting some technology metaphors, that makes four. But the longest metaphors have been war metaphors. Right? We're going to kill those guys, you know, let's roll. They're dead meat. Or they're sports metaphors, right? It's about quarterback in the game and getting the game plan and hitting home runs. And so we use sports metaphors and sports metaphors. There's winners and there's losers. Somebody wins, everybody else loses. And then you got Darwinian or biological metaphors. Survival of the fittest. Only the paranoid survive. Is a jungle out there. Well, our metaphors define how we structure reality, how we think about it. And those metaphors do not leave much of a place for love. Love is too. Yeah, that's good. When we have peace, someday we can have love, but we don't have peace. And so we've got to. We're going to go out and fight the good fight. So. And that really, organizations will not reach their highest and fullest potential until they can unleash love in the culture. And then with that, because when people feel love, when they feel safe, when they feel comfortable, they can be most creative then. So I really think that helps feed innovation. It certainly feeds loyalty and connection. So I'm a. What can I say? I'm a champion of love. I believe in love is incredibly important in life, and it's very important in business. And it's underappreciated integrity. Integrity is much more than just being honest. Integrity is about trustworthiness. It's about having ethical courage to do the right thing, even though it might cost you something doing it. In my experience in life, I'm not saying integrity is extremely rare, but it's not common. I've met very few people that I think have very much integrity. People just routinely lie, for one thing. Think about our political system. Tell me the truth. Has there ever been a president in your lifetime that wasn't kind of like a good liar? I mean, it doesn't matter what party they're from. They're just liars.

They just lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.

And what people want, they want leaders to have integrity. They want them to be authentic. They want them to show up as they really are. But I don't know if you'd get elected anything if you showed up that way. So I think integrity is very important. It's very important in business because if you're dealing with somebody with integrity, you know you can trust them. You know they're going to do the right thing. You don't have to be watching your back. And I think that. I know that. I strive to be A man of integrity, a person of integrity. And that's the kind of people I want to work with in Whole Foods as well.

You have 85,000, give or take, team members. When I go to Whole Foods, for the most part, very intensive, great culture. People seem to really enjoy being there compared to any other type of grocery store that I experience. How do you instill that into the organization, especially when it's so large?

Well, I mean, there's a lot of love in Whole Foods, and that's a big part of it. We've unleashed it. But, I mean, culture is very important. Culture is underrated. And people, particularly entrepreneurs, are so busy. Entrepreneurs are busy people.

We're out driving.

We're pushing things along. We take culture for granted. But what I found is that if you have a good culture, then itself replicates itself. It attracts the right people to the organization. It teaches people, enculturates them. It acts as an immune system to keep the wrong people out. So culture is very important. It starts with values. What are your core values? What's your higher purpose? What are you trying to do in the world that inspires people? Most people don't want to work for a company. If the first day somebody comes on to work and you say, okay, so welcome to Whole Foods Market. While you're here, your main job is to get shareholder value up. We got our stock price. We got to get it up. Your job's to get up to 50 bucks. That's your job. I'm afraid that's not going to inspire very many people. That may work on Wall street, but it doesn't work in Main Street America. People want to have purpose. They want to have values. They want to be part of a tribe, a culture, a family that cares about them, that genuinely cares about them and that they care about as well. People want to bring their whole selves to the workplace, and they usually don't, right? They. They compartmentalize. They bring part of who they are, but their whole authentic self doesn't show up. And so they're playing a role. They're pretending. And so the level of dissatisfaction in most corporations is like 70% of the people are not engaged. They don't care. Whole Foods Market has not solved all the problems there, but we tackle them, and we've made more progress than many other companies have to create a place where people have a sense of purpose and have a sense of belonging, feel loved, feel cared for, and that they know the company will try to do the right thing by them.

What I'm going To show you here relates to every single human being on the planet now, and there's no prediction of how any human being is going to go, okay? So it's completely non predictive how any person on the planet could go. And I call this the abundance spiral. And interesting enough, if you want to be on the plus side of the microchip, you have to be extraordinarily grateful as a human being. And gratitude is actually a skill. Okay? People say, well, people think gratitude is kind of a result of something, but it isn't. Because really being grateful is something that you make up. You don't have to be grateful. Nobody has to be grateful. People choose to be grateful. But what's really interesting about gratitude is that it's closely related to another word, which is appreciation. And appreciation and gratitude are often used interchangeably. You know, I really appreciate what you did there. I'm really grateful. And there's a crossover. But appreciation is an even more interesting word because it includes gratitude, but includes several other meanings. And one of the primary other meanings is to increase in value. So in the economic world, we talk about gold appreciating, we talk about stocks appreciating, we talk about real estate appreciating. And so very, very interestingly is that there's this one sense, an economic sense of the increase in value. And then the other one is there's another word that is used often for appreciation, and that is to full understand the situation. I've done my research and I fully appreciate what's going on there. So the interesting thing is that it's a full knowledge of something with a corresponding increase in value. And then it's got the gratitude thing of actually feeling that something is special. You're making something special in your life. So what I would say is the proper training for being incredibly wealthy in the world is to get very, very good at gratitude on a daily basis. Gratitude for what? Gratitude for anything you choose to be grateful for. Okay, so, for example, tonight each of us could actually write out to Joel, joel, you're here tomorrow. Write out a list and write down five things that you're really grateful for. Joel actually being here today. Okay? And two things will happen is Joel's value in your mind will go up, but Joel's value in his mind will go up if you give it to him. Okay? Now, you don't have to do this. You don't have to do this. But if you choose to do it, value will be created. So that's where I'm saying it's the start of the value creation chain. And what happens then is the second thing is that gratitude leads to creativity. And the reason is Steve Jobs was asked, what's creativity? And he says, putting stuff together. No, I mean really creative people. And he says, really creative people are people who put a lot of stuff together. Okay, so the interesting thing here that I find about this is that you don't put things together you don't value. So in order to be creative, just increase your level of gratitude and all of a sudden you see possibilities that you didn't see before. First of all, your understanding goes up, because that's one of the meanings of appreciation. And you will have taken the value of something up. But in doing that, you also see new potential for making it even more valuable. Okay, so one of the things that I do, if I'm having a difficult situation where I'm actually going to confront someone before I go into the meeting, I write down eight things that I really am grateful for, the person before. And I walk in and I never say any of those eight things, but the other person picks up on it. They can just tell by my tone what it is. And then all sorts of good things happen out of the meeting rather than a confrontation. All salespeople hate confrontation. How many of you, as a salesperson, absolutely hate confrontation? You can avoid it for the rest of your life if you're willing to just say what you're grateful for about the other person. Immediately their mood will change, their relationship to you will change any difficult problem. Write down the eight things you're grateful for about the situation. Immediately you'll see new possibilities. And that's the creativity. Now we start getting multipliers and you have gratitude times creativity equals cooperation. And this is very important because cooperation is the entire basis for human civilization. And there's a very famous economist by the name of Hayek. How many of you have read Hayek? FA Hayek, Road to Serfdom, the Fatal Conceit. And he said that people have capitalism completely backwards. He says capitalism isn't the cause of anything. Capitalism is the result of something. And what capitalism is is actually an ever expanding system of increased cooperation among strangers. And he says all other systems besides capitalism is that you can only have cooperation among friends and family. Capitalism is the only system that where you can have trust among friends, trust among strangers. And one of my greatest examples, because I was born before it was invented, was the ATM machine. So the ATM machine is one of the most amazing examples of cooperation that I've ever seen. And I actually had the opportunity and the pleasure of sitting one night with Dee Bach, who created the original visa system. He was the one who got all the banks in the United States to actually agree to be part of it. And it took him about 12 years to get people to see how taking this risk of being in this big system was actually going to be better for them. And I was struck by that. One day we were in Vienna, and we were staying at one of the classic famous hotels called the Soccer Hotel in Vienna. And I didn't have any Euros. I didn't have enough Euros. So I went downstairs, talked to the concierge, and I asked him, where's the atm? He immediately knew, of course, what I was talking about. He says, walk down two and a half blocks when you get to the McDonald's across the street, and it's right between the Apple store and Starbucks, Which is another story. Which is another story. And I go, and you know what? English. Do you like English? What language do you want? English. What do you want? You press and then you just hear a series of bang, out comes your money. And if Babs is with me when I do that, I turn around and I say, what a world. Because that's all cooperation among strangers. Nobody who created that system even knows who I am, except digitally. Yeah, okay. So that's what you have to understand. So this constant creating greater gratitude, lending to greater creativity, creates cooperation. And then what you start getting is massive opportunity. One of the biggest reasons why people are swimming from Cuba to the United States and not the other way. Very few cases of Americans swimming to Cuba, you know, or not massive movement of Americans to China, but massive movement of Chinese and their money and their children to the United States is because there's an inbuilt sense. That's where the opportunity is. And the reason is I'm moving from a location of just trust among friends and family to a place of trust among strangers. There's an implicit understanding that I'm moving to a place where greater things can happen without me even being born there, me even having a lot of connections there, it's just going to be massive, massively there. If you move a Mexican from 20 miles below the Texas border to 20 miles above the export, you've just multiplied that person's lifetime possibilities by roughly eight times just by putting them in another system. And it's all because the American system is really systematically built on these three things. And then what you get is the real emergence of ingenuity. So if you have someone like the Google people You have Steve Jobs, you have Jeff Bezos. They're very ingenious. But the reason is they're ingenious is because they have all this working for them. They're taking advantage of a system that's been put in place for not more. You know, it's not just 220 years since the, you know, since the beginning of the American system, but it goes back 400 years. You know, actually, the first English settlers in the United States were 1620. So we're approaching, you know, we're approaching 400 years that a model has been developed that is essentially based on this. And then with these two. Multiply this. These two. Multiply this. These two. Multiply this. And then what you start to get is these enormous exponentials that Peter Diamantis was voted one of the top 50 most influential people in the world by Fortune magazine. I complained because he was number 43.

Thank you.

Okay, so the other thing is the opportunities times the ingenuity create the exponentials. Now here's the interesting thing. People will get here and they'll forget where it started, and then they'll lose their influence and they'll lose their fortune and they'll lose their capabilities. And you don't really have to worry about this. You don't really have to worry about this. You don't have to worry about this, this and this. And the reason is they're byproducts of the first one. If you do the byproduct, you'll get this one. If you multiply this times this. So that's the new system. So we're talking about the binary system. This is the one side of the system, okay? And gratitude is its own reward because gratitude eliminates negative thoughts. You cannot be simultaneously grateful about something and feeling negative. You cannot be simultaneously grateful and feeling critical. You cannot be simultaneously grateful and be complaining. You cannot be simultaneously grateful.

How do you connect with people in a way that would be more beneficial and valuable?

So what can we teach them?

Yeah, there's connecting and then there's connecting. Since we're talking about narcissists, there are people that connect by conning people. Right? And the people that become my trust, true inner circle friends, or I look at people that are more powerful. How do they treat people that are less powerful than them? Most. I know quite a few billionaires personally and many I've met in addiction recovery. No one would even know that I know them. And I fortunately joined a high profile group for people with sexual addiction in the year 2000 that could not and there were Academy Award winning actors and actresses, NBA players, NFL players, musicians, popping politicians, clergy. I mean, people that were well known, but they couldn't go out and just admit that they were struggling with this sort of thing that has even the sound of a lot of shame attached to it. But I want to talk about sexual addiction. I publicly talk about it because for years I never did. And then once I started doing it, I would have people, a lot of high level entrepreneurs and CEOs, men and women that started coming up to me and just thanking me for how valuable it was and. And a lot of people that have gotten help as a result of doing it. So it is one of the most shameful sort of things that I've ever dealt with of this sexual addiction sort of thing. But I wanted to define it and describe it.

How do we get there from teaching people what's in it for them?

Because connection is. If you are not connected with yourself, you're going to be disconnected with other people. So this is about masturbation for you? It might be. No, this is. Dave.

No.

The reason your team set this interview up today, even though me and you kind of did it, but they were supportive, is this is an intervention. We need to talk about. We need to talk about your masturbation problem because, well, like there is a. There is a mass. Do you know there are studies out of Europe that the average person over the age of 13 years old, and this was from going several years ago, watches at least an hour a day of hardcore pornography, an hour a day of hardcore in some parts of Europe. I don't know what it is now. And there's France.

Those guys have always been there.

But here's the thing, think about it. The only thing, even though there's new studies, that they always come. I mean, there's so much we've learned about addiction and about the brain in the last 10 years. It's unbelievable.

All the dopamine stuff.

Oh, yeah. I mean, if you like sexual imagery, makes the brain light up massively. And the only thing that I think makes it light up quicker is crystal meth, which Nazi Germany actually invented. Invented in 1932.

That's what powered Hitler.

Yeah, yeah, Hitler was. I mean, I would make the case that I can explain the pandemic through the lens of addiction, which is a whole nother. We can come to that if you want. But the thing with sexual stuff, let me point it this way. And what it has to do with connection, what it has to do with power, what it has to do with influence. Everything is influenced on the Internet by porn.

That's what they built the Internet for.

Yeah, of course, the first streaming videos were pornography companies. The first 900 numbers were pornography companies. And if you show monkey butts to monkeys, their brains light up. So pornography is highly arousing and highly addictive, and the brain lights up when it sees it. So for people to just. They can make jokes about it, and it's much easier to make jokes about things that are difficult to talk about. That's like monkey jokes, like monkey butts or masturbation or whatever. But the thing is, there are. They've tried to do studies with universities and college students of what would happen if they don't masturbate for like 30 days or for 60 days. They did that for a whole year.

And tracked it and published a blog.

Yeah, but you're a guy that's a weirdo and will be willing to take.

Pictures, publish the data.

I didn't do pictures. No, no, no, but I'm saying you're a freaking biohacker. You do all these things, but they can't hardly ever even find enough people that won't do it to do studies. Do you know how hard it is to go 30 days without ejaculating?

It's like running a marathon. Yeah, it's really hard.

So how does that correlate to addiction? Okay, now think about this. Let's go back to those young people that are watching pornography. They've never held hands with someone. They've never kissed. They're watching everything through a computer. How are they even to know what love is? When my mom died when I was four and my father never remarried, and I was raped and molested as a kid and paid money to not say anything, do you think I had a sort of an experience of love as an intimate act of love and oneness? It was something you do to get off. It was something that was dirty and shitty.

How would you ever know? Because it's not in your world.

Right. So to go out into the world and try to connect with others when you're disappointed, connected, or you're using some other means of stimulation and you're supposed to deeply connect. So you're either communicating with someone, you're connecting or you're trying to escape. That's what I write about in the book.

So you're saying that porn is actually disconnecting people because of its effect on the brain, thus the need to write what's in it for them. It's a book about how to Connect to people.

Well, yeah. The reason that. What's in it for them? Well, first off the, the line, the sentence, the question, what's in it for them? Is to take the focus off of you and what you want and think about what the other. I think like genius networking is, you know, nine genius networking principles is the subtitle in order to have a genius network. A genius network is a group of people that have skills and capabilities or something. It could be fun. It doesn't have to be for business, but it usually has to do with people that have some knowledge or wisdom and some capability. Like you have a genius network, Right? You're part of my group, but you also have if you want to get in better physical shape as an example. And like you had to think of who are eight people in my life? Do I need a nutritionist? Do I need a trainer? Do I need a yoga instructor? Do I need a massage therapist? Do I need a breath coach? You know, whatever.

Yeah, the team that supports you.

The team that supports you. So in order to have a genius network, not just go out and do networking and meet people, I'm not telling people to just like networking is, is like this old archaic sounding word.

It's a waste of time anyway if you're just meeting random people without any intent and just swapping business cards and.

Maybe we can help each other someday.

That doesn't feel like it's a very productive activity if you don't know who's in the room.

Okay, so like on social media you often see a lot of people that will go out and they'll take pictures with famous people that they don't even know and then they will write up a post with a picture of them and they will say this person's really great and I really appreciate everything that they've done and all that. And what I call it is giving credit to credentialize. You give credit to someone to credentialize yourself with them as someone able to give credit.

Right.

Well, it's just you coming up with a way to try now at the end of the day, it's not like a mortal sin or anything. I mean, whatever if you want, but the point is, is like going and meeting famous people does not result in you having to successful life. You have to bring something to the dance party other than just your phone and snap a picture. What I was saying is the people that are more powerful, how do they treat people that are less powerful than them? Do they say thank you when someone opens up the door? Are they nice to servers, how do they treat their team? So if you really want to know who someone is, it's not who they are on stage. It's not the books and stuff they write, it's not their social media posts, it's who they are when that shit's when the camera's not on, how do they treat their team? And so the people that become my true friends are, you know, how are they with their families? If they have families, how are they with just normal people? Are they always kissing up to more famous people in order to curry favor sort of thing? And I wanted. And I can't leave all the sexual addiction stuff without defining intimacy because then it'll make this make sense. So. So my favorite definition of intimacy that I ever heard was given to me by this 80 year old gay man who I never met in person. I have a friend named Tim who I met in recovery in 2003. We talk about it publicly now. His name's Tim Ringgold. He wrote a book called Sonic Recovery. Great guy. He's a music therapist and stuff and just awesome dude. And he's been through hell. He had his 18 month year old daughter died and he now, you know, he does grief workshops. He sat with hundreds of people on their deathbeds and played music to them. And he's just an amazing dude. And he's like, you gotta meet this guy, talk to him.

He's great about intimacy.

Well, just about addiction. And this guy devotes his time to people that have sexual addiction. And when someone hears sexual addiction, they immediately think, oh, masturbation, porn, affairs, whatever. But a lot of almost all addictions are binging and purging. It's either excess or deprivation. A big part of sexual addiction is the inability to be sexual or be sexual with someone you care about. So there's different forms, there's a lot of different fetishes, there's a lot of different ways that people express sexuality, but it's an arousal template. And we live in a world that puts out a lot of toxic messaging around sex and around relationships. And so he said intimacy is a mutual exploration of a shared safe place. Abuse is anything that takes away the safe place. And addictions are what we do to make ourselves feel good when we don't have a safe place. So if you don't feel safe in the world because you've been abused or you've been abandoned or you've experienced something or witnessed something, you're not going to feel safe. And if you don't feel safe in the world. You will do things when you don't feel safe. And we are now sitting in a world where there's been global trauma as a result of two years of isolation, of bullshit that's been fed to people by individuals that are in power, that are lying through their teeth, of companies that are doing all. I mean, it's toxic. And to think that we're not going to be in a world right now with a lot of relationship problems, especially young people. And like, imagine dating right now for the first time as a young person. What sort of mom?

Like, I am dating right now, but not as a young person.

No, no, but I'm saying as a young.

Like, I hated dating as a young person when there wasn't all this shit.

Going on in the world because I.

Was no good at it.

Right.

I can't even imagine how would you ever go about it.

Well, part of it is the ability to read energy. The ability is find who do you feel safe with? The part of it is dealing with your own shit. Because I wrote a book on connecting with people, but it's really a book on connecting with yourself. It's a book on. It's not just a capability book, it's a character book. And I hope that this book will take the givers of the world to be more empowered, better boundaried givers and protect themselves from the narcissists and from the abusers. Because the world really needs people, people like that right now. The world will. And if you can be the best, most empowered, most useful giver with the ability to discern who to develop relationships and who to stay away from. What are the landmines? What's the kryptonite? You're just going to get. You're going to meet greater people and you'll be better protected. And that's part of my goal.

So then talk to me about that. We mentioned earlier that you had a narcissist who did some traumatic business stuff. I just had another one. I've had about three major experiences with people like that who just about wrecked.

Some of my companies.

And I don't know that I'm any better equipped to spot them now than I was before. What did you change after your most recent experience in your own practice to have those boundaries where you could not let them, narcissists attach their tentacles to you?

Well, for one, I had to look at how did I allow myself to help this person in the first place? So this. I know what it was. Remember when I got completely thrown off earlier?

Yeah.

I was talking about games people play, right? Okay. And I was talking about, I have some friends, most of them women. But men and women both say this when they're single and they've been in a relationship with, where they've been hurt and there's been some, you know, pain from. And they'll say something along the lines of, you know, I want to meet someone that doesn't play any games. And it's like, well, unfortunately, humans play games because if you could just. If we were all a planet of trusting individuals and there weren't all these demonic personalities out there, and I think most people are good. So when I say this, let me not be.

It only takes like one bad one.

Take advantage of the good ones, and then you think everyone sucks. So the line that I was going to say, and I'll come back to it, is whoever cares the least controls the relationship. And that's true when you're dealing with manipulative, intimidating, power hungry people. Whoever cares the least controls the relationship. And there's something about humans where if someone doesn't approve of you, you want them to approve of you. It's this childhood thing of please validate me. And so part of it is we oftentimes. And when I say we, I'm talking about myself.

Right.

And I do believe this because I've. I've done the reps, I've done the work with a lot of people and I've gotten a lot of agreement on this. And I've had, I've sat. I've been through more therapy and I. More groups than most people.

You've done the work with a capital W?

Yeah, I've done a lot. And in no way, shape or form do I ever want to pretend like I've transcended all this. I'm a flawed human. I'm always working on stuff. I mean, it's a daily sort of activity. I mean, you know, everyone thinks they're right. And it takes a lot of awareness to realize that sometimes you think you're right and you're totally wrong. So the thing is, unless you're with a deep, bonded, caring person where you don't need to play, when someone says, I don't want to play games, what they're really saying is, I don't want to get hurt. Because if you could play games and win all day long, assuming you're. You like playing a game that you're not abusing someone, you play games all day long. It's fun to play games that you win. What people are really saying is I don't want to lose, I don't want to be hurt. So when those things happen, the first chapter of what's in it for them is to be a pain detective. And so because I believe most bonding is made when you can resonate and you can connect on either some sort of mutual suffering or the ability to have empathy for pain. And you're able to step into that relationship and first relate to it and then actually help to either eliminate it, reduce it, or sit with it. Because you don't want to handicap your kids by making their life too easy. Even though I say that without having children. But the metaphor is you don't want to take away the gift, gift of someone's pain if it is something they need to learn and need to sit through. But at the same time, if someone's really suffering and you can transform that suffering and you can bring some sunshine into the darkness, you're going to really create value for people.

You are. And there may be some value in pain in and of itself.

So you know what I'm going to talk about today? And a lot of people come up and talk to me about business, but what I'm going to talk to you about is bit a little, little bit different because in the room today we have a lot of self made entrepreneurs, self made men, self made women, people that have worked really hard to get to their station in life. And how many people consider themselves lucky? It's a fair share, right? And you know, Vince Lombardi defined, luck is where preparation meets opportunity. And I never had the chance to meet Vince Lombardi, but I'm going to disagree with him here. You know, for me, luck is really where intention, meaning what you put out there, is when intention meets gratitude. And that to me has really changed my life. Now the reason that this is important is, you know, if you live the life that you want to, you can die peacefully in your sleep really feeling confident that you've helped hundreds of people. And I learned this lesson from my grandfather because my grandfather, you know, I want to die peacefully in my sleep like he did. Not yelling and screaming like the passengers in his car. And so, you know, in order to be able to sleep well. Now I know there's some amazing men and women in this room, but I feel like I'm the luckiest person. And I'll tell you why, because what I get to do on a daily basis is exceptional. We get to help people in the areas of really getting rid of the whole time money continuum and allowing them to Create passionate lives where they're surrounded by everything that they want to create. You know, I have an amazing wife. Generally, the people that meet me and meet my wife, they like me, but they really love her. Things are just, have been unbelievable and they couldn't have been better. And I, you know, if I passed away a couple years ago, it would have said on my tombstone, he worked. And then the subhead, it would say a lot. And I worked so much, and I just wanted to change the station. I wanted to help as many people as I could. Ayn Rand in the Fountainhead said there was a character called Virgil who asked this question that Joe talked about earlier. He said, who helps the helpers? And when I read that, it changed my life. Because the answer to that is I do. And the most influential people in the world, the biggest helpers, are the people in this room, which is why I'm so grateful for your time. So anyway, we've gone over why I'm the luckiest person in the room.

So.

So when I met the woman of my dreams, I was never married. At 38 years old, I met her, this great love story. Matt, one of my business partners, we all come down to Austin. Things are extraordinary. Two weeks before my wedding, I get diagnosed with a very rare form of leukemia. So I'm thinking something very eloquent in my head and I'm thinking, oh, this is horrific. Leukemia, cancer. I had no idea. I had no idea that this was even possible. And to give you an idea, I'd been the health business for quite a long period of time. I've been drinking green smoothies, you know, just the spinach, no fruit. You know, I've been drinking green smoothies for 10 years. Frankly, I was expecting to pay greater dividends before I hit the age of 40. And so I got diagnosed and I spoke to this doctor and he told me I couldn't go to my wedding. I got married in the Cook Islands, which is in the middle of the South Pacific. And he explained you couldn't go to your wedding. And I said, excuse me. And he said, well, it's doctor's orders. And then I explained to him, Dr. Suggestions, right, and what sovereignty is. I'm still not sure if he understood what I was talking about. But against doctor's orders, non compliant, I went over to my wedding, we got married. It was unbelievable. Went on the honeymoon, New Zealand, helicopters everywhere, just amazing. And I came back and in the last year, I've had 22 rounds of chemotherapy. And I don't know what they told you. But it's not as much fun as you might expect. And it really is. And I mean, literally a year ago, I couldn't walk from my bedroom to my kitchen. And so here I am, an entrepreneur, just like many of the people in your shoes. And I really had a chance to look death in the face. And I said, God, what would I have done differently? What do I wish I knew then that I knew now what was really, really important? And I realized just how lucky I was.

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.

And so would it be valuable for me to share those with you today?

Cool.

So the first one, which is pretty simple. Money does not equal freedom. Do you remember when you were 20 years old, like John, and you're a young guy and you're coming in and he's got more upside than all of us because he's got more time, right? And he comes in and he says, God, I'm going to learn so much. And all of a sudden you get caught in this trap and you get caught in this trap of the working wealthy. Does anybody relate to that? You know, the working wealthy and you're working and you know, and maybe your car changes, maybe your house changes, but your days don't change. It's the same thing over and over. And so often we get caught in that trap as entrepreneurs and we think we got to help more people, we have to help more people. And the question is why? Right? And so we internalize it, we take it very seriously. But figuring out how to create the life that you want is so important. And not tomorrow and not the next day because nothing is guaranteed. And this happens so quickly. I remember when I was 18 years old, I looked at my grandfather, he was shaving and I looked at him and I said, grandpa. And he's looking in the mirror. We were both early risers. I said, grandpa, when you look in the mirror, what do you see? He said, robbie, I see an 18 year old man. And I realized that. And I bet you when Joel looks in the mirror, he still sees an 18 year old man too. And so life is so fast, whatever you do, don't get caught in that trap of the working wealthy. That's Point one, point two. I think I traded my health for wealth. Is that a good trade? No, it's horrible.

Horrible.

It's absolutely horrible. Health is the only currency that makes a difference, right? And you could go ask a college student, they said, oh, I want to make a million bucks. I want to do this, I want to do that. I had everything that I ever thought I wanted, but I traded my health to get there. And it was only because I worked so hard. I was very one sided. And if you haven't and some people trade their relationships. I've traded relationships in the past before I met my wife, you know, because work was very important. I needed to help people, I needed to do things, I needed to help the helpers. And I only know one way to work. You either do your best or you don't. And people say, well, you need a downshift. I said, so you don't want me to do my best? It just makes no sense. So I just don't have a downshift gear. And figuring out what that looks like and creating something around that is really, really important and not doing that sometime in the future. Oh, I'm going to make a new year year's resolution. Oh, I'm going to eat better. Oh, I'm going to go to the gym more. You know, the other thing, right, is sleep. You know, so many people undervalue sleep. I used to think that entrepreneurs. I used to think, I'm going to sleep when I'm dead. Well, unfortunately, that seemed to be coming sooner than anticipated. And so sleep is really, really important. You know, getting those phones and screens, you know, out of your life and out of your bedroom so you can really get, get rest and recuperate. And so that was the second one and then the third, which was interesting. So I was a paperboy. You know, Joe had a very impressive introduction. I mean, you know, it's interesting. You hear those things and it's like, wow, this is amazing. But it doesn't feel like my life. Growing up, I remember I was 8 years old, I was a paper boy. When I was nine years old, I got a second paper. Then I got an afternoon. So I had a morning and an afternoon. When I was 10, I used that money and I got a lawnmower. And when I was 16, I opened my first door. And then I had six doors by the time I was 18. And I thought back and I thought what my favorite days were. So I'm going through this chemotherapy and I'm sitting there and I'm having a Hard time going from my bedroom to my kitchen and I have my entire fan club in tow. My white blood cells count. My white blood cell counts are under 500. I'm about 460, which is essentially for the non medically inclined. It's like bubble boy. My assistant is leaving stuff in the garage. I've got my wife and my mom in the house. That's it. And we were playing board games, lots of them. And you know, it's such an interesting thing when you look and your world got so small. And I thought about my favorite days. I had a lot of time to think about my favorite days. And my favorite days were really waking up. And I remember the feeling I would wake up in the summer and the window would be open and I would hear the lawnmower. Do you guys remember that? And you remember the smell of the freshly cut grass? And I remember I'd wake up and I would look over the rail and with anticipation thinking, is it a sunny day because I want to go play. And I remember that. And I thought, oh, this is awesome. When was the last time I had a summer off, right? And what did that look like? And why am I working so hard if I can't really get back to my favorite days? So it was interesting. I had a friend named Ken McElroy and he told me he takes the summers off. And I said, God, you're in the meat of your career. How can you do it? How can you find? He said, robert, he said, my son Chris is 14, my son Kyle is 16. How can I afford not to? And all of a sudden it was like this nuclear bomb just. And it left. And it was like my whole value system changed. And whether by hook or by crook, I was going to take next summer, which by the way, is this summer off. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I had no clue. I told my business partners, they all looked at me with significant trepidation, understandably. And I said, I'm going to take this summer off. This is not going to happen. This is not going to happen to me. And so, you know, doing those three things right, not getting in the working wealthy, not trading your health for wealth, and doing something outrageous and figuring out exactly what it is that moves the needle for you, allows you to create that luck. So this summer, I'm going back up to Aspen. We go between Austin and Aspen. We live a life that I could only dream of as a child. And I'm going back up there and I'm taking the summer Off. And I start every day with a really simple thing. I write down three things that I'm going to make happen, my three intentions. And I write down three things that I'm grateful for and that simple exercise. And I do it every day when I meditate. Three intentions, three things that I'm grateful for. So I get to manifest it and I get to express gratitude. And gratitude. Gratitude. You know, again, it all starts there. And our time is our most important thing, and we never will get enough. And so you've just spent the last 10 minutes with me, and so thank you so much.

I think if you're really, really grateful, you create an abundance related to your past. That's really what gratitude is because it's. You're grateful for what has gotten you here. And gratitude is proactive skill. A lot of people make it a reactive skill in the sense, well, if somebody does something for me, I'm grateful for that. But the word gratitude, being grateful is related to the word appreciation. How many of you say, well, I really appreciate that. And appreciation is a really neat word because it's got that emotional sense, psychological sense, but it's also got an economic sense that things appreciate. Gold appreciates, land appreciates, stocks appreciate, and what appreciate.

Could we add bitcoin to your list?

Yeah, Bitcoin appreciates, you know, everything Peter's involved in appreciates. I hope so, because I've got. He's got some of my money, you know, I want it all to appreciate.

And I appreciate you.

Yeah, but what appreciation, what appreciation really means is that you just give value to something. In other words, you say, you know, there's qua. Qua sitting right across from me. And I always appreciate qua. And, you know, and I really appreciate, you know, I can just sit there and think about KWA for a half minute and, you know, I totally appreciate Babs, as everyone knows. You know, without Babs, I'm just a smart drunk, worried about the rent. And I just appreciate and I think about the people I appreciate so much what Peter does. And that creates a higher value for Peter in my life. So this gratitude principle is one of them. And the other one is generosity. If you truly believe in abundance, you'll be generous with what you have, not worrying about how you're going to get paid back for it. So I think that the twin and they're related to each other, but one of them is related to the past. It's appreciation because you're giving greater value to your experience up to the present moment. And then generosity is that you're making a bet on the future. See, I'm making a total bet on the future with Peter that it's just going to get bigger and better in every way. And therefore anything that I contribute to that, I don't have to worry about what the return is. There's going to be a big return and I don't have to keep book on it. I can't stand keeping book on things. So I see a lot of people who are super intelligent, but they're not great. I see people who are very successful, but they're not generous. And I said, you know, you've got all the. You got all the hardware, but you don't have any of the software. And you need the software to actually make your way in the world. And you won't have to worry about competing because there's going to be so many opportunities for collaboration.

Do people get how important important that is? How? The amount of wealth, the amount of opportunities. I mean, it's an abundance of opportunities that we all have.

Yeah.

And it's a matter of what do.

You choose to do?

Right.

It's saying no to 99 to focus on the 1%, which is a big problem I have. And I, you know, coach helps me focus on that.

Can we talk about the 25 years?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Can I also mention. No, no.

Can you talk for a little bit now?

I just want to highlight.

I'm just being generous here.

You're being very generous because what you just said is exactly how I'm doing my best to curate Genius Network. Because I want it filled with people that are appreciative and reciprocal and useful and contributing. Yeah, they just want to be in the more I can build a room of these types of entrepreneurs that are high achievers with this real focus and emphasis on being a giver. It just makes this community so much better. So, I mean, you just basically described exactly the goal and objective I have of filling Genius Network up with that sort of person with that mindset and that behavior. 25 years.

25 years. Two things important. About 25 years, I was again here at Genius Network. I was about to go on stage. I was talking about my Abundance 360 program, which is what I spent all year preparing for. It's 360 CEOs that I coach in Beverly Hills. And Dan says to me as I'm about to go on stage, he says, peter, you should make the commitment that you're going to do this for 25 years. And it was off the cuff and so I get up on stage and says, and I say I'm committed to doing this for 25 years. Going to be a. And really, I think, I don't know if I shocked you or surprised you, but it was interesting, right? My world changed in that moment when I said I'm committing to doing this event for 25 years and for taking this community of CEOs with me on this 25 year journey. And part of what's interesting about that time frame is that coincides with what my co founder of Singularity University, my business partner, many businesses, Ray Kurzweil, calls the Singularity. So we're on a countdown, if you would, to the Singularity. This is the moment in time when computers are far more intelligent than people and more importantly that things are moving so fast that we're unable to actually predict what's coming next. The analog comes from that of a black hole, a gravitational singularity where light cannot escape. You can't actually see beyond the event horizon. So I palpably feel, I don't know if you do as well, that the speed of change is accelerating. You can graph this and look at it. The only constant is change and the rate of change is increasing. And so I spend, I start about now, November, December and January where I, I look at what's happened over the last 12 calendar months and I come up with proof of living in 2018. And it's incredible. We as humans tend to accept what is and forget that it wasn't always that way. But when you stop and you look at how fast things are changing, it's mind boggling. And for me it's exciting and there's ability to actually predict the future. Ray Kurzweil is very good. He's got 86% prediction rate and it's really understanding the fundamentals of what's going on in computational power, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, all these things. And we're going to be disrupting every single industry. Health care, definitely, education, for sure. Every industry that you're in is going to be changing dramatically in the next 10 years. And the question is, are you the leaf on the river or are you you the river? Are you passive and letting it happen to you or are you guiding it?

The two areas to protect as an entrepreneur are your confidence and gratitude because you will do things much more effectively once you have confidence in something. If you don't have confidence, then you have to rely on courage, which never really feels good. Confidence feels good. Courage just is like you got to kind of go through it. But you can have all the money, all the relationships, all the access. But if you don't have gratitude, you can be a very miserable human. And what you were saying reminded me of this. When I was speaking at Ryan Dice event a few months ago, I asked the audience, I said, how many of you in the room are worth a million dollars? You know, a few people raised their hand. I'm like, is anyone here worth $10 million? And I think one person raised their hand. Anyone here worth a billion dollars? I said, how many of you would like to be a millionaire? And everyone raised their hand. And I said, well, how many of you in the room would like to be a millionaire? If you're not already, I'm asking you. All of you. Okay.

Yeah, okay.

So what I said, I said, well, how many of you. Would anyone here give me your eyeballs for a million bucks? Would anyone here just hand over your eyeballs for a million dollars? What about 10 million? Anyone give me your eyeballs for a million bucks? 100 million? What about lop off your thumbs? Anyone lop off their thumbs for a million bucks? Or maybe cut out your tongue or, you know, just. What's that?

10 million?

10 million you'll cut off your thumb. Shit, man, I'd almost do it if I wasn't so I got a knife. But the point is, like, all these people want to be millionaires, you know, they want to have all this stuff. And you're walking around with assets on your body, in your life that people just take for granted. That the fact that you can see and that you can hear and that you can talk and that you can eat, and it's that whole, that proverb which is, he who has their health, he or she who has their health has a thousand dreams. He does not have their health, has only one. And if you have aspirations, you're sitting here right now, you're able to do the things you're doing because you're not laid up in a hospital bed. And I, eight days ago, prior was on a 14 day liquid diet. I didn't eat food for like 14 days. And I'd never done anything like that in my entire life. I probably lost like eight pounds in the last three weeks. And basically the first day was the most difficult. The second day was pretty difficult. But on the first day, like, I just got a whole sense of gratitude. Like, I can't believe this, you know, in my soft, cushiony life that I have and I have my challenges like anyone else, it's still a Problem totally. What it made me realize is like, man, I mean, what. How painful it must be to just, like, I wake up every day and I can eat mostly what I want, you know, it's not like, am I going to eat today? So I want Mexican food, do I want Chinese food? You know, and it just got me in touch with God, how many millions of children go to bed every single night starving, you know, and how painful that is. And when you get in touch with gratitude, it actually makes you appreciate everything you have that much more, but it actually gives you the ability to do something about it. I mean, Kevin talking about his surf and surf, surf and serve. If he didn't have gratitude, he wouldn't be doing that shit. I mean, that like, value creation and contribution and being of service actually comes from a place of appreciation.

I would even say generosity is gratitude in action.

When we're generous, it's actually the activity of abundance. Throw them that box.

So I was saying generosity is gratitude in action. So that's what's so great when we're face to face. And some of these folks, you just talked about the pain of hunger. I mean, just to get an idea, they huff glue. They'll pay 5 cents to get a coffee cup full of glue. And they'll huff glue to get themselves high enough. Not because they want the high, because they want to forget that they're starving to death to get rid of the pain. And so, like, that's what, you know, I say when you give, I've been in the presence of that, where you hand that person food and you realize they haven't probably eaten in the last few days. And like you said, all of your problems disappear. And then I'm in awe. Like, it's a funny, selfish thing because what you're talking about is so great. I'm in awe of my. Of the possibility of my own generosity, like at that moment. And then Jennifer and I were looking back at the photos. We're like, my gosh, like, we created this and these kids are smiling and laughing, even if it's just for a few days. And so our moonshot is like, how could we do that longer term? But really, generosity being that gratitude of the abundance that we have and sharing with people who have no way of paying us back. And I'm a huge believer in abundance. I truly believe there's enough of everything to go around, especially if we're generous with what we have and share that. And to your point, if health is everything, how many other cancer survivors, warriors in the room oh, that's unusual.

Super unusual.

Anyone in your family? A lot of people asked if it changed who I was. It didn't. I already was a happy person, but it gave me a bigger depth of gratitude and to understand that every day is a gift and especially in this country. You know, we do have first world problems here pretty much. And when you've seen what you've seen. So what if we have to go around an accident or something? On the one on one we have cars, you know, and we have, we can eat in our car and probably talk on our phone too. So.

Yeah, yeah, Like Lee Brower, who's a buddy of mine from Coach, he said, you know, he said, how many of you hate to take out the trash? You know, a handful of people raise their hand. He's like, you know, do you know how many people in different parts of the world would love to have someone come to their home or where they live and pick up the trash and take it away? He's like, you don't have to take out the trash, you get to take out the trash. He goes, what? I mean, it's a fricking luxury for somebody. And the point is, like, not to get all touchy feely or like, whatever. I mean, I know a lot of people are going through their own private silent battles and life is difficult. I mean, look, everyone has their own shit and their own crosses to bear at all different times. It's just as much as you can keep yourself in the mindset of gratitude and appreciation, you're simply going to be a better entrepreneur. And when you're in that particular state, you're going to make more money. And I think one of the best ways to help the poor is and not be one of them. And secondly, people that say money can't buy happiness are idiots. Because I buy happiness all the time with money. I mean, there's all kinds of shit. I like nice dinners, it makes me happy. I like going to movies, that shit, it makes me happy. I like staying in nice hotels, it makes me happy. So the people that say that money can't buy happiness haven't given enough of it away. Because even if you're a miserable person with a lot of money, I mean, I've had people that have been really struggling and my ability to help them medically, education, wise out of challenges, access to people they can talk to, has helped make their lives better. And so, I mean, there's so much you can do with money. So it's not the money, it's what it gives you access to and how you do it, the experiences that it can give you. So I'm all for capitalism. I'm a capitalist. And Hayek says the biggest problem with capitalism is it was named by its enemies. And so capitalism in its purest form is simply collaboration between individuals exchanging money for value. And we live in a world where there's a lot of anti capitalist behavior and people will attack you because you're actually doing. And there is crony capitalism, there's corporatism, that is sometimes called capitalism. And there's, you know, there's bad aspects of everything. But most entrepreneurs that I know are really hard working people adding value in the world, you know, just doing good stuff. I mean most entrepreneurs I know are not evil exploitive people. They're just good people working their asses off trying to do stuff. And so anyway, thank you.

That's the genius network for sure.

Totally. Yeah, totally. You know, let's talk about confidence in encourage I just as a jumping off point. And we can riff on that for a bit. So you know, Dan Sullivan has that story when he was in the, he was a cadet in the army and they had like 60 of them and they were having to do during that time in the world. He was born in 1944, so this was in the 60s I guess.

He.

Was with 60 of the other cadets. And they were the, the boot camp obstacle course that they were running through had barbed wire and trenches they had to call go through mud and water, all kinds of, you know, just obstacles they had to go through. And they used real bullets at the time and they would shoot real bullets over their head. And they said you have to stay low because if you lift your head up you could get shot in the head and die. And so Dan is explaining this story and he said, you know, the sergeant asked, you know, how many of you are scared? And no one except Dan raised his hand and said that he was scared. And he said the only person here telling the truth is, you know, Cadet Sullivan or whatever. And he said, so Dan says, you know, he learned the difference between fear and courage. He said fear is peeing your pants. Encourage is doing what you need to do with wet pants. And so in order for us to get to confidence, we, we often have to operate with courage. Like so in my book, you know, I talk quite a bit about how to align yourself with the right people. You know, there's that zig ziglar line which is you can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. But my friend Martin Howey, when he had stage four cancer, came over to my office and he said, you know, a lot of people say these lines, like, people don't want a, you know, a drill, they want a hole. Or you can get anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. He goes, but the problem is those things are often wrong, because sometimes people buy a drill not because they want a hole. They want to stir paint, because there's other things that you can do with a drill other than drill a hole. So maybe they don't want a hole. Maybe they want, you know, paint to be stirred. And he said the same thing with, you can help other people get what they want. That won't do a damn thing for you. And that's true, like all of us have been in situations where we've really helped others get what they want that not only didn't help us at all, they oftentimes took advantage and oftentimes abuse you and rip you off and betray you. And what happens is when you're a giver and it, you can become jaded by being a good human doing the right thing. Like, everyone thinks they're doing the right thing. Even when people are doing the wrong things, most people think they're right. So it takes an enormous amount of awareness to realize that even when you think you're right, you could be totally wrong. That's another discussion. But the thing is, most people think they're right. And that whole line, you know, people judge themselves on their intentions, they judge others on their actions. So, you know, the. When the actions of you being a giver and helping someone intentionally followed with action, and then someone takes advantage of you, it can leave you in a very dark place. So when you become hurt or you have your heart broken, you become betrayed, you can put up walls to connecting with other people. And oftentimes when someone wants something from you and they're so persuasive to the point of physical assertiveness, or you feel like, man, I like, I don't know how to escape this sort of situation. That's where we have to be able to muster courage and either set boundaries now, preferably if we do this in advance, you have less of those sort of difficult situations to get in with people that are half. Not people that are elf, you know, easy, lucrative and fun versus hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. So what I wanted to talk with you guys about as it relates to this, since you're talking about courage, you know, how do you. How do you muster or develop the ability to resource yourself to fight when you need to fight back? Run away when you need to run away? Ask for help when you need to ask for help. Because a lot of times when I was a dead broke entrepreneur struggling, none of this was fun. I didn't have an elf business, it wasn't enjoyable. I didn't know how to do marketing, I knew how to do any of this stuff. And I had to, I had to wake up every day and muster as much courage as I could to drag myself through the war that I somehow was in when I was going through addiction recovery. None of it was enjoyable. It sucked. And when you're, when you're doing withdrawals that you're trying to, you know, overcome, you know, the, the consequences of just life, danger, etc, it's very difficult. So I'd love to get your take don on, you know, accessing courage so that we can function in those times when we need it. Because if you, you know, whatever you fear and don't face controls you. Whatever you fear and take steps to face, you can control it or at least get better at it. And that oftentimes requires courage. And I don't think anyone here would disagree that operating with courage doesn't feel good. Operating with confidence does feel good. So to go back to the skill, you know you, when you have the skill, you know you, there's a flow that's there. When you don't, you're going to have to kind of muster this, this internal resourcefulness. So I'd love to get your take on that and anything you would say to this Dean also or anyone, anyone here, I'm totally open to hear what everyone else has to say about it because I, I think courage right now is really needed in the world, especially with givers because there's a lot of frickin takers out there.

Well, my thought on courage is what if it's a life threatening what Dan was going through situation? It makes total sense that he would feel fear, right? That's not a lack of courage. That's just the brain saying we may get our head shut off, right? So courage, you got to over still operate even though you're afraid. And what do they say? Courage is not the absence of fear, right. It's operating in spite of fear. But what I, when I work with a golfer, I don't need them to feel fear because there's nothing on the golf course. That's what I explained to them. What are you afraid of on a golf course? There's Nothing. There's nothing life threatening. But they make it into life threatening because they start seeing the bunker, they start seeing the water, they start seeing the trees, and that attracts their attention. And now it becomes a lion. And that's what I said is if, if you think that way, you're going to create all kinds of fears, but there's nothing at your skill level that you can't do. So again, courage is, is not something that would be absent just because you have skill. Especially if it's life threatening. You have to operate in spite of it.

That's good. So I used to tell myself, Don, the, the. I would imagine that everything we're seeing is just a hollow deck. That the. None of that. The ball is sitting on one little patch of the ground and you're standing on that ground, the ball's not moving, nobody's yelling at you. No, there's no, no threat. Physically, you could set up exactly the way you need to, you know, how to swing. And the sight, the sight of that water or that stuff in your eye line, that's not affecting anything that you're having to do here. You know, it's all. It's going to fly through the air and it's going to land precisely the distance that you know that that club is going to go when you swing the way that you need to swing. It's just so funny how we psych ourselves out like that.

Well, the skill level of, of golf, it's. It's the hardest sport I've ever played. Because the best explanation I heard is somebody said to me one time, think about having a nail tapped into the wall. Now take a hammer and swing as hard as you can and drive that nail straight into the wall. That takes skill. You wouldn't be able to do it the first few times. It would take a long time. You know, the guy who said that to me, Hawk Harrelson is the announcer of the White Sox. He says it's also the equivalent of playing major League baseball and hitting every ball over second base. How hard would that be?

Right?

And so the difficulty, and that's what I always try to explain to these guys. At your level, there isn't anything you can't do. They're so skilled. You go out and play with these guys. The thing that's funny is people look at these guys and they say, well, you know, I could go out and play. They don't play the same course as we do. When they go on to a professional course, it is set up completely different than what the amateurs are playing. The rough is longer, the greens are faster, the pins are in tougher places. They're playing like Tiger woods said. He said, if you're a single digit handicap and you play some of the courses we play, you'd have trouble breaking 100.

That's the truth. I played sawgrass the, the last round that you could play before the tournament. And then they, they tore it tore down the clubhouse. And the rough was, you know, you go in that and that rough is punitive. I mean, it's like.

And they get out of it like it's nothing.

Exactly right.

And we could take three shots to get out.

Yeah, it's funny. Let's see you guys talk about golf. So Dean has this great golf analogy about how he works or he, like, he likes golf. I always say it's like, you know, George Carlin, it's a waste of real estate, but he, he. There's so much more you could do with that land. But anyway, Dean is like, why do I like playing golf? So he came up with an acronym which is G stands for goal, O stands for. And I remember all this. O stands for optimal environment, L stands for limited distractions, and F stands for fixed time frame. And so Dean set up a house where he does. He calls it his evil scheme hatchery, where he goes and has a whiteboard and a chair. And he doesn't have technology in the room. If he wants to bring in a laptop or a phone, he could do that, but he has it free of like computers and stuff, unless he wants to bring stuff in. And then, and there's no. There's this whiteboard. So it's like a blank space where he can do his entrepreneurial art, which in his case is thinking. And he goes and plays golf. So he gives himself a goal. He creates an optimal environment to do it in. He has limited distractions there. That's why there's no technology and stuff there. Unless he chooses to bring it in and then a fixed time frame where he'll go in and you know, he's like, I play golf because I can, you know, I can go through 18 holes in what, three and a half, four hours or whatever. I don't ever play golf, so I don't really know this stuff. But, but, you know, it's a, it's a good thing. We actually did an I love marketing episode on how Dean how to go play golf in your own life. And applause Posted up there's a YouTube video called the 50 Minute Focus Finder and it's right there. Gina posted it up in the. In the chat. Yeah, and that's from years ago, too. That was one of our very first episodes when we started doing I Love Marketing in 2010.

Okay.

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