Why You Are So Driven: The 10x Entrepreneurial Mindset Explained!

I don't think anyone would be listening to 10X Talk or any of our podcasts if they're not looking for better ways to do stuff. Which leads to my next question then, because you mentioned earlier, you have a path. So from your perspective, are there any proven paths to success as an entrepreneur? And I mean the word proven. Like, if you do this, this just works. And I know that's sort of a loaded question and stuff, but I wanted to, you know, that's. That's my question for you guys.

Yeah.

You want to go first, Dan?

Yeah, I will. I was reading, you know, I'm kind of a history buff, so I was reading about Napoleon and, you know, interesting, you know, interesting character. I mean, he born kind of poor, wasn't even born in France. He was born on Corsica, which is a island in the off the coast of France. And, you know, came up and, you know, within 15 years after he came up, he was the Emperor of Europe. You know, I mean, and bright guy, very short, probably about five foot two. You know, five foot two and. But he was really interesting. And the one thing that he really comprehended. And Joe, you've talked about a famous saying of his, that his life changed when he discovered that a man would die for a blue ribbon, for a piece of ribbon, and that he understood that people would dedicate themselves to something that was much bigger, that also recognized him as important. You know, he had this notion of giving people a sense of importance, but he had this thing about bringing up officers as fast as they could take command. And he would ask his senior officers, who all came up the same way, to describe why this person should be an officer. And Napoleon says, well, I know he's good. My next question, though, is he lucky? And I think that entrepreneurs have a keener sense for luck than the general population. And what I mean by that, and you said it right at the beginning, Gino, I'm the right person at the right time in the right place. Well, that's what luck is. Luck is being the right person at the right time. And I think if you look at entrepreneurs who are really successful, they leave a very, very large part of their thinking to, what is luck in this situation? What is luck in this situation? And luck is, you're the only one who sees this. You're the only one who understands the opportunity. You're the only one who knows how to organize it. And there's a window, not a wide open window, but a window that if you act right now and you take action, you're going to be the lucky one. And you have to be unlucky enough to know the difference. Joe, I mean, Joe, I was sitting, watching your documentary that Nick Nanton did, and I was going through it and a lot of people said, oh, that's awful. That's awful. I said, outlier, outlier, outlier, outlier, outlier. Everything about you is an outlier. I mean, antisocial, you know, everything. I said, what else could he be besides an entrepreneur?

Yeah, exactly.

Or a criminal. Or a criminal. You should have a conversation with Andre Norman, something. You know, the line between entrepreneurs and criminals is, is not that wide.

Well, there's a lot. Yeah, there's a lot of. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that are in jail because they just, you know, they chose a different path to take their entrepreneurial endeavor.

They chose badly. It's like Indiana Jones. You. You chose wisely. You chose badly. You know, they choose badly. Yeah, we know. I mean, we know the characters. We know the characters. And one is they're great salespeople. I mean, what.

Yeah, yeah, totally. No, totally. Go ahead, Gino, what are you gonna say?

I was just gonna say, and that's why I desperately want to get this book into jails and prisons, because it's, I mean, this is the book they need to read. I couldn't agree with you more that many of them, if not most, are entrepreneurs in the making. They just use their skills for evil, not good. And now they have an opportunity to use them for good. There's an opportunity there. But in answering your question, Joe, here's what I would suggest. Is there a process for becoming an entrepreneur? I really believe that there isn't one. There is no perfect system, no perfect process, no perfect method, no perfect way. And if somebody's trying to tell you there is one, I think they're selling you a bill of goods, in my humble opinion. But I always say when asked that question, if there were a process, this would be it. It's a four step process. Step one, you have an idea. Step two, you take your entrepreneurial leap and start your business. Step three, you fight like hell for 10 to 20 years. And step four, you emerge a successful entrepreneur, hopefully because you've got a 50, 50 shot at best at succeeding. The odds are challenging. With that said, now we're onto the path part of the book. And in path, what I do believe is that you can help an entrepreneur understand some guideposts, some awarenesses along their journey that again will greatly increase their odds of success and eliminate half the mistakes they'll make. And at a very high level, the chapters in path are deciding on college or not. And I give all the pros and cons and all the data for that entrepreneur in the making to decide the best path for them. How to discover your passion. Because I believe passion is vital in you becoming successful. How to, how to find a mentor, because having a mentor will get you there faster. Next is 10 year thinking. Dan subscribes to 25 year thinking. I am just trying to get him to think 10 years and then I will turn him over to Dan to get him to think 25 years. But there is power in that. I then share eight disciplines for increasing your odds of success and I share the nine stages. And devouring those chapters will absolutely give an entrepreneur in the making a clearer path, a better path. But there just is no perfect system or process.

Let me ask you this, Joe.

He's really shameless. I mean, in his pitching. I mean, have you ever, I mean, has there ever been a stretch in any 10 times talk where we just had a pure pitch for like two and a half minutes.

I'm honored.

He's very sneaky about it. You know, all guys under trying to help people. But you know, what are those eight disciplines? What are the nine stages? You know, you got to read the book. So it's called entrepreneurly. Well, that's fine. So you mentioned, you know, the importance of having a mentor. And I mean, we all have businesses that bring entrepreneurs together. I mean all three of us, we focus on the entrepreneurial world. That's, you know, Dan's got that, the great, you know, the great concept of who do you want to be a hero to? Right. Even wrote a book which is worth reading on it. And you know, we, we all want to be heroes and our heroes to entrepreneurs, those are the people that, that we, we go after. And so anyone that would be listening to this is all a potential client of all three of us. Right? Depending on where they come in.

And all at the same time.

Exactly, exactly. And so what I have found about entrepreneurs, the really smart ones, is they will pay for shortcuts, they will pay for results. And the ones that hem and haw about it, I mean, I honest to God, I just see so many truly stupid people. And not that they don't have value, but just the decision making. I mean, some of the ways I will see people that will place more value on buying like $100,000 car than they will going out and joining a group that can teach them how to reduce the stress, make more money to buy 10 of those cars. Right. But they will belabor those sort of things. And you know, you guys are of the same thing. We all invest getting better at our craft as much as we want to, you know, say antisocial. Is there one thing is we are, we're looking how to be better gold miners. Right. And so what, like, what would you say to that? Because I think that to me, one of the things I love about Genius Network and about strategic, like if someone's not willing to cut a check, it speaks volumes about their own future. You know, they think we're trying to sell them something and we certainly have things for sale, but they're investing. It's like what Dan said early on. He's like, you know, you make this, this is your future. I mean, you're not giving, you know, the money you're, you're spending is. You're having the question, should I give Dan the money? Should I give Gino the money? Should I give Joe the money? It's like your future.

Yeah.

So go ahead. It looks like you're going to say something, Gino, and for people, I was.

Going to ask you, what's the question in that?

Oh, no. So the question is, what would you say about the value of, of literally joining, like strategic coach or pursuing a mentor, things like that, signing up to hire an EOS implementer? I mean, these are things that all of us like, every one of us, we're clients of each other, Right. Which is kind of cool. But we do it because it grows our entrepreneurial enterprises.

So a thought that comes to mind is this like two contexts. If we go back 30 years ago, a mentor, because that's what launched this question is that chapter on mentoring. And so 30 years ago, when I was coming up, mentorship was free. I had free mentors. I had people that took me under their wings, spent lots of time with me and taught me. And as time has gone on, mentorship has become more of a paid engagement. I am a paid mentor to my clients. Dan is my paid mentor. He's been my mentor for 23 years. I consider him my greatest mentor. And I cut him a really big check every year for that. So my point in this is there's still free mentorship out there. And I teach a very specific process for how to go find a free mentor, which is a one on one relationship with someone who is where you want to be. But you know, paid mentorship is the way of the future and the way of now. And so you just have to decide as that entrepreneur in the making, what is the education you're seeking? And I do share in this new book, Strategic Coach program is one of the steps on the journey. I say once you reach the minimum qualification, get in that program because I believe that will catapult an entrepreneur in the making at that phase. So I would just offer up two things to the audience. There's two types of mentors. You can find free ones and you should pay for the paid ones. And it's just a question of what you're looking for, where you want to be, and if they can get you there faster, it's a no brainer. I have spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on my education. I spend 5% of my income every year on education. I've spent enough money and time to get a PhD three times over. I never went to college. I graduated high school with a 2.3 GPA. And I couldn't be more proud of that because I knew at 18, there's no way in hell I'm spending another minute in academia. That structure is not for me. But I spent a fortune in the last 30 years because education is so important.

And I would even say when it comes to free mentorship, you know, it's not like they're advertising free mentors here. I mean, you can listen to podcasts, you know, this is a great way to get mentorship. Read someone's book. You can buy entrepreneurial leap, right? What I would say, though, is that anything that the three of us have gotten for free, we went out and we found it. We created value for someone, we had conversations, we did whatever it is we needed to do. I've always loved the line, amateurs wait for inspiration. Professionals do it with a headache. And when I didn't have any money and I was a dead broke carpet cleaner, what I did have is I had time and I had energy. Because you can spend time, you can spend money, you can spend energy. And once I got money and I learned how to make money, I just started reinvesting that money. And I love giving money to people that what I get in return, I can say, wow. I mean, I've never regretted cutting the check for Strategic Coach. I love cutting the check for Strategic Coach. Right? I love cutting a check for eos. It's helpful. It doesn't cost me anything. It's a multiplier, you know, to use Dan's term.

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

Well, you know, what I've been doing a lot lately is I've been really.

I'm glad you gave the warning about not being political.

Here's what I'm going to say, because you know what's been really helpful as I watch this is that some people get so tied into their ideology and their belief that they become they're not able to hear the other person's side. And I have, you know, I frankly don't like party politics. It's like Mayor Hazelton, you know, remember her? And years, you know, I asked her, would she ever run for, like, you know, a higher office? Hazel McCallum, yeah, exactly. She's like, yeah, I don't like party politics because there's always something on the other side that I won't agree with, and then I'll have to go along with it. And what I've been doing in all levels, not just politically, but I put myself to position if I had to argue for the other side. So I can. Because I don't think you change anyone's mind by arguing. I mean, you have to enroll people in things and we have to constantly sell ourselves and unsell ourselves. In my entrepreneurial life, what I've learned about myself just recently is I have had to claw my way out of many messes that I've gotten myself into. And I clawed my way into every opportunity that I've tried to get into. And so I want to spend less time as I climb in, more time saying, yeah, this is either a hell yes or no, as my friend Derek Sivers said. He actually has a new book called that. And so part of it is, like, when someone disagrees with something or I disagree with something, or I don't see their perspective, I always think, well, if I had to argue on their behalf, like if I had to put myself in their shoes. And I'll tell you, it's brought a level of I can hear people who believe things and follow that I think is insane, but I don't seem to get as bothered by it. And so what I've learned as I've gotten older is that the treadmill of shit doesn't ever disappear. It's just my tolerance to it and my ability to navigate it. And that all comes from just years of Being an entrepreneur, literally learn how to deal with stuff. And so part of the purpose of this conversation with Gino is you have written a really fantastic book. I actually love entrepreneurially, believe it or not, because I'm always already a big EOS fan. And I'm like, someone writes a successful book, tons of, they keep pumping out books, it was way better than I actually even thought it would be. It's a really, really great roadmap and I think it'll really help a lot of people. And I think, you know, what you said about Trump, Dan, early on, if people love him or hate him, doesn't matter. He looks at everything from an entrepreneurial lens.

What's the deal? What's the deal?

He's a deal maker.

Bad deal. You know, there's give and take on everything. Everything requires give and take.

And he redlines every one of those six essential traits.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, here's the thing about Trump. Over the years, he's hired 60,000 people for all his companies. Do you think the mainstream media could have found one of those 60,000 to tell a bad story? They couldn't find a single former employer, existing employee to tell a bad story about Donald Trump. I mean, I mean, yeah, he's really successful. He's really, you know, and the thing, you know, the thing I love about him, he loves being rich. He thinks rich is just the best rich. And I remember he flew in someplace and he's got the big Trump plane, you know, and then he parks it right in the background. So all you see is Trump, you know, and he says, you know, people say I'm rich. He says, you don't know how rich I am. I am really rich. Then you got, you know, you got guys like Romney who are apologizing and you know, John McCain, he's got seven houses and he's apologizing. And all these people, you know, who, you know, get into put offs and they, you know, I mean, Nancy Pelosi, the one difference I will say there is about someone being elected a Republican or elect elected a Democrat, usually all the Republicans, when they get elected, they take a pay cut and all the Democrats get rich. Nancy Pelosi, she's worth $180 million. She's been a politician for 40 years. How do you get 180 million doing it? So the whole point is that, you know, I'm an American, you know, I, you know, the more I haven't been in America, so two thirds of my life I haven't lived in The US as I've lived in Toronto. And the more I realize that it's just a wide open, wild, you know, kind of rodeo, circus, jungle. And the cultural heroes are entrepreneurs. They create new things. They create new things for new people to do new things that they've never done before. And if you got any ambition at all, this is where you want to be. And I think, you know, I think Gino, I think you are the first person who's actually written a handbook to actually check yourself out. And the worst thing is that you're not an entrepreneur and you spend your whole life trying to be an entrepreneur. The other thing that's even worse than that is that you are an entrepreneur and you try try your whole life not trying not to be an entrepreneur.

You're here.

Yeah.

And I think you given a chance just for people to sort sort out. If you're not an entrepreneur, you can do it with dignity because you learn something from the test. And if you are an entrepreneur, it saves you years.

Thank you for that.

What didn't I ask you that I should have?

So the thought that how many copies you gonna buy? How many copies should I buy, Gino?

You know, well, 10,000. I like to do round numbers, so just 10,000 at a time is a good round number. So, you know, the thought that comes to mind leading into this podcast, during this podcast is the audience and the context that the audience is listening from. And what I would offer up just to connect some dots is number one, the audience member that has someone in their life that they think might be an entrepreneur. This is the book to help that person and I'm compelled to share. David Berg is one of our fellow students and strategic coach, obviously and most people know him. During our session last week with you, Dan, he sends me this chat and it says, just did last three Sunday evening book club hours with my kids and Entrepreneurial Leap, or with Entrepreneurial Leap. Best conversations about business money thinking ever with them. Thanks for this, Gino. So obviously that made my day and hopefully David's comfortable with me sharing that and I'm certain that he is. But the point there is if you have people in your life that you think might be entrepreneurs in the making, this is the tool to help you help them. Number two, if you are someone who does want to mentor entrepreneurs in the making, there's on the website, I call it the mentor track, a five step track to help you become great mentors for entrepreneurs in the making, if that's of interest to you. And then the third is Dan, what you taught me collaborators. So I built this incredible collaborator model around this. And so if anybody out there has an organization that helps teach, guides, mentors, entrepreneurs in the making, I give them my content for free to teach their people, their audience, and become heroes to their audience. And so depending on what perspective you're listening to this out there, you know, this is how this can help you and them. And certainly when an entrepreneur reads this, it relights them up. It will reinvigorate your entrepreneurial passion because you're reading your biography, quite frankly.

So that's what I would suggest.

That's really great that you said that like tomorrow we're doing our first Genius youth call with young with the entrepreneurs of Genius Network members tomorrow. And it just occurred to me that I'm going to buy a copy for every one of these kids and send them a copy of that. And as I sit and think about that, we have a Genius network member, Scott Donnell, who's also in Strategic Coach, who's built one of the largest kid camp franchises. He created a virtual event called My First Sale. And this is the first time that I ever spoke with kids that were as young as 8 years old. I was more nervous talking to these kids. But what they really liked is elf. Easy, lucrative and fun. They all like the ELF versus half concept that I teach. So I could see a lot of applications for Entrepreneur Leap. So the website for people to go to again is either-leap.com you can take a free assessment there, you can order the book, you can get a free chapter if you want. You know, when someone takes their whole, you know, life's wisdom and knowledge and they put it into a book, I mean, it should be a no brainer just to buy the darn book and then share it with anyone that you think would benefit from it. And certainly I. We appreciate the time. Anything else from you, Dan?

No, no, I just, you know, I've had great conversations with Gino for 23 years and I admire enormously the very elegant, simple process he's created in eos. And you know, I'm not the teacher of young kids. You know, it's not, it's never played any part of my daydreams. So I guess that's probably reason, you know, I. My big thing is that, you know, people who choose to be entrepreneurs always play offense, they don't play defense, you know, and so my whole thing is, you know, you have absolutely nothing to feel sorry for, you have nothing to apologize for, you know, you know, if there is such a Thing as human evolution. You're at the cutting edge of it.

Yeah.

Love it. Love it. So, well, let me ask you some business questions. Well, no, these are actually all tied together. How did you deal with failure? And what advice could you give to entrepreneurs going through difficulties or struggling? Because certainly you've had a shit ton of that.

Okay, I'm going to try to explain this because I had a download about this a couple months ago.

One of those downloads.

It's one of those things that sounds so simple, yet it's so profound. I know. And I haven't quite the magnitude. Okay. So I saw success and failure, what we consider success and failure, like as a yin and yang, you know, like this energy. And what I saw was that at the same rate you fail. So the amount of failure that you put into. Let's just say failure is the black, you know, part of the. The yin and yang. It's the yang part. And the success is the why that the amount of energy that you put into that failure is the amount of energy that you can have in success. And I suddenly saw why My life, I'm like, my God, most my life was failure of what people consider. Right. So now I've had the success that's so big. And then I thought back to like a concert violinist. Think about how much failure there is and how many years. That's the 10,000 hours. Those 10,000 hours aren't 10,000 hours of success. Right. So there's something energetically that I haven't quite figured out. But do you guys understand what I'm talking about? So I think that we should all be aiming for failure all the time. Lots of it. Lots and lots and lots and lots of failure. Because you're going. I believe that we have a natural propensity to learn.

Yeah.

And that we're not gonna. It's just like, you know, oh, fire. Like we naturally know not to do things. And that is going to actually increase the magnitude of your success.

Yeah, that makes good point. You know, this thought's coming to me about. I'm trying to. I have a friend who actually talked about how we measure success in, let's say, love.

Relationship.

Relationships more so over not depth, but duration. Like if you've been married for 50 years. Well, it could have been 50 years of total misery. But if you were married for 50 years, you're like, that's a successful couple versus maybe you're only in a relationship for one year, but that one year had enormous depth and growth and things like that. Or you've been in business for 20 years but you fucking hate. You don't. I mean everything about it's been miserable versus you had a certain period of time where you just, you were winning and you were connected and that sort of thing. So I think depth and just squeezing the much juice out of life in all areas is a far more to me admirable than just long drawn out duration.

I think that's great. We have a saying that we just have to win more than we fail. Because I want my team to fail. I want them to because we don't take those long shots. You know, I want to take the long shots and I know I'm debt free, I don't have any loans so we're all self funded. So I make sure it doesn't hurt the organism. But I want them taking these risks because the only way and it might not work. And what's the worst thing that happened?

You know, I think here's like, I think the entrepreneurs that get rewarded the most in life is relative to their ability to take those risks and put themselves. And this could be totally taken out of context where it's like, oh, that means be crazy. Because when people hear the word risk they sometimes think, oh, that just means do crazy shit and be willing to lose it all. When you can point to those sort of stories, I mean, I remember in a meeting with Elon Musk, there was about 20 of us there and Peter Diamandis had set it up at SpaceX and one of the guys had asked Elon, you know, how did you have, you know, how did you become successful? And he said, you know, I'm willing to endure more pain than anyone that I know. That's what he said. And he also said that he was borrowing money from friends and sleeping on couches and he was borrowing everything that he had. And had that rocket not flown, he would have just been done. But he was willing to do that. And you know, and I don't know if that's necessarily a smart thing, you know, because you know, there's. Now looking back, everyone's like, of course, you know, and it's super admirable but for every one of those things there's so much human wreckage. And so. Yeah, but the thing with risk though, though is your thing on failure. No, the thing on failure though, what you're saying, here's what I'm getting at, is that every time you're willing to put yourself out there, you're building that muscle. And by doing that you develop an endurance and a Stamina that cannot come any other way. You can't just think yourself into successful entrepreneurship. You have to just do shit. You don't build a great reputation by talking about what you're going to do. You build a great reputation by doing shit that ends up leading to a, you know, a great business or a great whatever.

Yes. And I would say, you know, and maybe, hopefully that idea was so alive within him. And that's what I tell entrepreneurs. Like, wait till the idea's alive. Like, we will literally go eight months without making a video. And, you know, we've had hundreds of millions of views. That seems like a long time in marketing. You know, you would think content, you have to have all this strategic content. But we wait until that idea is so delicious that you can feel the energy and you can feel the aliveness, and then we go towards that campaign. So that's the way we operate. And so hopefully it is worth the risk. So for me, if everything failed tomorrow, which I've been in that situation before, like, I'm happy, right? There was nothing that I didn't go for that I wanted to get. Go for it, maybe love. Okay, so we already talked about that, so let's take that one off there. But as far as business, there's nothing that I really haven't shot for in our business. So that's what I want everybody to feel. Hey, we went for it. Because to me, the worst thing is when you didn't go for it, you held back and then you sold out. And I mean, that shit, it doesn't feel good. I gotta tell you, it sucks really bad.

Yeah, well, you're either winning or you're learning. That's one thing I learned from Tony. And I remember telling that back to Tony when he was going through some media shit that he was dealing with. And it's like, yep, you're either winning or you're learning. He's like, yeah, hello, this is Joe Polish, and this is a very historical moment. And you'll know why in just a moment. I'm sitting in a very nice restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona, with three of the most fascinating and coolest people that I know. And that would include Kathy Colby, the creator of Colby.com, which many of you have heard about and have done. Mr. Dan Sullivan, founder of the Strategic Coach program, the highest level coaching program in the world for successful entrepreneurs, and Bab Smith, who actually runs Strategic Coach and is phenomenal. And so we're here today, and the.

Historical moment is this.

Dan actually showed Kathy Colby for the.

Very first time, the multiplier game, which.

Is a series of of cards of some of the world's greatest thinkers. And Dan's twist on it, which I'll ask Dan about in just a moment, But I first want to ask Kathy. Colby has created this cool thing called.

The Colby profile that literally, God knows.

How many people have done the Colby. You have any idea, Kathy?

About a million.

About a million. Okay. And we're all quick starts at this table. At this table.

All of us, quick starts.

And what is your Colby, Kathy?

I am a two, in fact, finder. Itty bitty, when I comes to details. I'm a generalist. I'm a six in follow through and an eight in quick start. That makes me the theorist and a 4 in implementer. So I'm in my jeans today. I'm going to go garden shortly.

Awesome.

Now we're all quick starts, which means we're very much idea people, low follow through from my standpoint, where I have lots, you know, come up with a lot of ideas, but I don't get anything done without having a team around me. And that's what you help people do. And I was first introduced to Quick Colby through Strategic Coach. And so our quick starts.

Are they crazy?

Oh, no. We're just insanely original and come up with ideas that may or may not work, and we need other people to sort through them and figure out what the good ones are. This is a good one, Dan. And so we need collaboration, but so does everybody.

Well, there you go.

We need collaboration, and we all want to. So now Dan has created the Strategic Coach program. So real quickly, Dan, a strategic coach. Anyone that knows me has heard me quote you a bazillion times. I think you are the most amazing thinker I've ever met in understanding entrepreneurial thinkers and how to make entrepreneurs better. And that's what Strategic Coach does, right? Pretty much.

Well, really, I looked at the most productive people, and the most productive people were entrepreneurs. And I just decided to spend my whole life making the most productive people more productive. So that's our mission statement. And one of the things along the line that we've taken a look at is how do entrepreneurs continually multiply themselves? So that's really the reason why I created this game for entrepreneurs, but I think it applies to everybody. And so Babs and I in our company, what we're looking at is we're constantly trying to multiply ourselves inside of our companies so that our company has greater impact in the the world. But the best way to do that is to actually help all of our clientele multiply themselves.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Now the Babs. In a moment, I'm going to ask you, and I don't want to be too sneaky on you, what it's like to be married to Dan Sullivan.

So are you ready?

Are you ready for that?

Okay. What's it like? What's it like?

I love being married to Dan Sullivan.

Because I have a lot of great.

Ideas, and he and I collaborate a lot on all these different ideas.

So when I met him, I was.

Really into helping good people get better, and I just wanted to help a whole lot of people, and I loved all the stuff he was creating, and.

So I thought we could get together.

And do it for more people.

But it's a lot of fun because.

I'm a 2, 2, 3. Sorry, I'm a 3, 3, 9, 2.

So our Colbys are really, really similar.

Dan, did you say what you call these?

No, I'm in two dudes. 2, 2, 10, 4.

He's a 22, 10, 4.

Well, for the record, I'm a 5293. Okay.

Yeah.

And so, you know, we just have lots of fun because we have people surrounding us who can help make things work.

Right, Right.

Because otherwise we'd be in trouble.

And you guys have created, literally, Strategic Coach has some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs helping them become better and. And what Dan refers to them as industry transformers. So if you're an industry transformer or you have the making of transforming your industry or uniquely packaging yourself, that's what Strategic Coach is all about. So going back to the historical moment, the Multiplier game, Dan created this thing called the Multiplier game and showed it to Kathy Colby for the very first time. What are your thoughts on it, Kathy? What did it do for you?

It is so neat. It is so fascinating. One of the things that's tough for people with all our quick start and our ideas that flow out, it's being able to synthesize them into something that we can focus on and make them work and be able to share our process. And what Dan's done is taken the historical wisdom from so many people. Yeah. Way too many old white guys about some women in here. But aside from that, it's taking these wonderful philosophical points of view and helping us pick, narrow and discuss just how we need to do what we're doing. And it's au courant because it's what do I need to do today? We just had the best time. He put me through it, and when I say through it, he let me play. And we've had such a good time, and it was so meaningful. It brings out the kinds of things you're thinking about but need to put on the table. And it's on the table right here.

Yeah.

Well.

And what's really cool is there's probably going to be different variations of this, and so far, only 10 of the cards have been shown to the world, and there's going to be 50 in total. So if someone wants to play the multiplier game or get more information about this, what do they need to do?

Dan?

Well, we go to our website, which is wwstrategiccoach, www.strategiccoach.com, and that's basically it. The information about the multiplier game will be on the website, and that's. That's the best way to do it.

Or join the Strategic Coach program, if you're an entrepreneur and you can get that information by calling 1-800-387-3206.

I like it.

Yeah, you know, hey, look, I am a marketer.

Piranha Marketing.

What do you expect?

So, and Kathy Colby. If they want to do a Colby, they go to colby.com.

Yeah, I forget the www, but it's k o l b e dot com.

K o, l B. And what, what would be the first place for people to start with Colby? Just the.

I'd start with the Colby.

A.

Find out about yourself, and then you take the B and find out what's causing you stress. What are you trying to do? That works against your grain, but use it with your co workers, your collaborators, your team, your family, because it's the interactions that really tell us whether we're going to get it done, because we need the differences around this table. If we were all to work together for very long, we'd have so much fun playing, but we wouldn't get much done. So we would all have and we do our teams that we work with, and I think that's incredibly important. Every human being is equally capable of creativity, but we do it differently. This conative stuff is as important as your thinking and your feeling. It's what you do. So these guys are our number one client at Colby. The strategic coach is our number one. We've been working together for over 20 years. You had, what, four people when you started? When we first met you, it was about four of them. And we, we said to them, hey, you two are great, but you better bring in some others to fill in the gaps. We have had a 20 year collaboration of friendship. And it's built on what everybody should have. Clients who are friends, they trust. We work together, we build ideas, we share. We want Dan to come and speak at our professional growth seminar because everyone we work with and train needs to know what he does. We're going to play this game. It's this kind of energy.

So I want to talk to you today about the single biggest mistake most entrepreneurs make. And I kind of call that the accomplishment trap. You know, and sometimes we have these old stories or beliefs and I'm not saying truth or not truth, if we believe them, they're true. I mean, we're all entrepreneurs. We create our own reality. And the biggest mistake we make in so many ways is really not creating the life that we want. That we really want.

Right?

And we have these stories. So I'm going to talk to you about a couple things. One, that, two, how do we change the scoreboard to measure what's really important to us? And the third piece is if we know what's important at the end, why don't we start there? And so what I'm going to ask you to do at the end of this is really to take your husband or your wife or that special someone and to get away, to get away from your normal life, all the pressures that are coming towards you and to go ask yourself two questions. And so the reason that this is really important is, is so we can die peacefully in our sleep like my grandfather, not screaming like the. Screaming violently like the poor passengers in his car. And, And so in this story, I want, you know, we are all together, right? This is a group of our peers. And isn't it great, like oxygen, when we find a group of our peers, right? And so I've been a hard charging entrepreneur. You know, I was a paper boy when I was 8. I bought lawnmowers when I was 9. I employed my friends. I started my first bead shop when I was 16 and I had six stores by the time I graduated high school. And then I was screwed for a straight job. So entrepreneurship was the only thing that really fit. And you know, we've all gone through this life and it's been extraordinary. We've been able to create our realities and that's why we're in this room. And you know, I remember Joe said to me when we were on Necker island, he said, you best thinking got you here. And you can say that whether you land in jail or whether you land in this room. So all of us, our best Thinking got us here. I mean, this is where we are. And I want you to think for a second about that special place. Some people love the beach, some people love the mountains, some people love the river. I'm a mountain guy. And my kind of alchemist story was I started businesses and I ran them. I moved to San Francisco. I did venture backed startups because I thought that's what the big kahunas would do. I did that for four rounds of financing or four companies, seven rounds of financing. Nine years before I realized that it wasn't a fit for me and my flat spot. You know, I've always been in big peer learning groups, whether it's 25k or what used to be Yeo or Eo and Ypo and Tiger 21, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And my flat spot was always love. You know, I was always looking for that special someone. And I was doing consulting and this woman who was a director of marketing, who was an absolute angel, walked through my front door. It was unbelievable. She told me she read Atlas Shrugged in eight days and modeled her life after Dagny. And my head kind of spun off its rocker and we went in and we went into the doctor. We were getting married in the Cook Islands, which, if you don't know where that is, I didn't. It was in the middle of the South Pacific. It's like the Hawaii of New Zealand. It was just stunning. And we were two weeks before my wedding and I went to the doctor and then they made a mistake when they sent in my blood. So I went to the doctor again and then they called me in for a third time. Then I went to an oncologist, then I went to a radiologist, then I went to a hematologist. And two weeks before my wedding to the woman of my dreams, I was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. So my doctor said, you can't go to your wedding. I've sold out the whole island. I mean, I have mentees that have spent their entire life savings to come be with us in the Cook Islands. You know, we've got the whole resort rented and they're like, you can't go to the wedding. And the doctor tells me, well, it's doctor's orders. And I said, no, it's doctor's suggestions. And so I started to explain to him freedom and sovereignty. But I don't think he ever understood what I was talking about. And I explained that I had plans and so I went non compliant to our wedding. And I got my diagnosis in between the wedding pictures of the guy's the worst timing ever. And I get my diagnosis, literally between my groomsmen pictures and my wedding, which, by the way, was this form of leukemia. And by the way, when they gave me this list, right, there's seven things on the list. HIV 1, HIV 2, Hodgkin's lymphoma, non Hodgkin's lymphoma. I'm like, where's the common cold? I mean, this is, like, serious stuff. And so I get the diagnosis, and we went on a wedding, and we went to our honeymoon in New Zealand, and we fly fished and took helicopters around and had an amazing time. And I went to my body came out, and I came back, and I went through 22 rounds of chemotherapy. And so that's why I've been a little bit off the radar. And I was hoping my 10 years of green smoothies would pay greater dividends than they did at the age of 38. And I needed to really reassess my life at that point. And I had time. I actually had a lot of time. I couldn't walk from my bedroom to my kitchen. And I learned some lessons in there. Would sharing those lessons be helpful for you? All right, so the first one was the trap of the working wealthy. Money does not equal freedom. I had these goals, and I set them early, and I was on my way, and I was more successful than I. I imagined it, but I was more successful than I needed to be. And money does not equal freedom. And I got caught in this big trap of the working wealthy. And that was the first piece, and I realized that was a big mistake. The second one is life, in many ways is like a constrained resource problem. You know, you have unlimited wants and needs and limited resources. And generally, there's two types of resources. There's money and there's time. And the problem is, when we set our goals, we're usually in our 20s and 30s, and the value of those resources are dynamic. They're not static. Money goes down in value as you get older. Time goes up in value as you get older. We solved for it when it's correct. But we have dynamic, shifting resources. I mean, what would Warren Buffett pay for a year of healthy life? All of it. The third piece is we have all these different kind of connections, you know, in our life. We have our connections to nature or to business. You know, next June will be my 25th year being in business for myself. And, you know, I've got this great connection to the business world. But growing Up. I was a fly fishing guide. You know, I spent a lot of time outdoors, had this connection to nature. And at the end of our lives, what do you think is more important? Our connection to the business world or our connection to nature? I haven't been living congruently with that. And the final thing, and this is a really big one, this is how you change your scorecard. Because I used to measure my life really in three things, goals, objectives, and achievements. That was my scorecard. And I don't think that served me well anymore. So I've changed that. And I really measure my life in people, energy and synchronicity. And what I mean by that are people that I love, energy that I share, and synchronicity are those kind of special moments to let you know that you're on the right path for you. Does that make sense?

Right.

And so I wasn't measuring what really mattered to me. And so I knew I needed to change my scorecard because my old scorecard, although I was successful, I wasn't happy. And so my questions for you, I mean, I had this absolute. It was unbelievable. I went through these 22 rounds of chemo, we lost a baby, a whole bunch of things that were just crazy. And the two questions are really. And I'll get into those, but are you creating a life that you want? I mean, that you really want? So in the story before, what happened to that mountain guy? Well, I'm in remission or I wouldn't be here speaking to you today. And so again, my takeaway for you, find that special someone. Get out of the usual place. Go find a place, hotel, wherever. Break your pattern and really ask yourself two questions. Because you don't need to get cancer. You're in the prime of your lives. I mean, nobody could feel this could happen to them, including me. You're in the absolute prime of your life. And the two questions are, one, how would your life change if you had a life altering event and really focus on that with your partner? And the second question, I mean, again, you don't need to go through this to be able to answer that first one. And the second question is, why aren't you doing that now? And then you can make your life as an entrepreneur really count.

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're saying reminded me of, 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 like 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 hat. 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 thumbs. Shit, man, I'd almost do it if I wasn't so mortal.

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 in your, in your, on your body and 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 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 that'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 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.

And I would even say generosity is gratitude in action. When we're generous, it's actually the activity of abundance.

Throw them back.

So I was saying generosity is gratitude in action. So that's what's so great when we're face to face to poverty. 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, 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 own, 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.

Yeah.

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? Yeah, it is.

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 can eat in our car and probably talk on our phone too.

So, 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 raised 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 not to get all touchy feely or 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 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, 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, you know, the experiences that it can give you. So I'm all for capitalism, you know, I'm a capitalist and you know, Hayek says the biggest problem with capitalism is it was named by its enemies. And so capitalism, 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 bad aspects of everything. But most entrepreneurs that I know are really hard working people adding value in the world, just doing good stuff. Most entrepreneurs I know are not evil, exploitive people. They're just good people working their asses off trying to to do stuff. And so anyway, thank you everybody.

I started with this slide because I wanted to share something with you that I'm one of you. We are the crazy ones. We've seen that video. We're all the same. I'm going to walk us through some of our strengths, some of what our weaknesses are. But I'm going to walk us through this emotional rollercoaster of the highs and lows of CEOs. Before I do, I have one ask of the audience. I am on a mission to get people to realize that we need to stop medicating our children and stop fucking themselves up in the school system by saying there's something wrong with them. I'd love for you to share my TED Talk. We are the influencers. We're the connectors. I don't make any money off this. It's actually not even what I talk about publicly. I've never done any paid speaking events other than that TED Talk once. All my other ones are on my business stuff, so it's not even related. But I just want to stop fucking up these children. So if you could share the TED Talk with for me. I'll send you the link. Please share it with your communities. It'll mean the world to them as well as to me. I want to start off this talk by doing a little quiz. I'm going to read to you traits of entrepreneurs. I'm going to read a list of 11 traits and as soon as you hear five traits that describe you, I'd like you to put your hand up or stand up. One guy gets to put his hand up, the rest of us have to stand up. As soon as you hear five traits that describe you. Are you often filled with energy? Are you often flooded with ideas? Are you driven? Are you restless? Are you unable to keep still? That's five. Are you often working on little sleep? Do you get euphoric? Do you get easily irritated by minor obstacles? Do you burn out periodically? Stand up if you've got it. Only one guy is allowed to put his hand up. That's John. Do you act out sexually, which is flirting? Yeah, we got him at number five. Sexual.

Two hands are up.

And do you feel persecuted by those who do not accept your vision? So take a look around the room really quickly because you actually did stand up to a list of traits that describe entrepreneurs, but those are actually the clinical diagnosed traits for bipolar disorder. So you sit down. So those are actually the 11 diagnosed traits for clinical diagnosis of bipolar or manic depression. So if you stand up to five of the 11, you're there. If you're at nine, 10 or 11 traits, you literally are clinically diagnosed and would probably be medicated for bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is nicknamed by the medical community as the CEO disease. So what I want to do is talk to you about why it's not actually a disease, it's just who we are. You've all got a copy of my book, Double Double. I don't want you to read it. Actually. It's not a novel. You don't read it like 50 Shades of Grey from front to back or four times like I did. You read only five. Just read the five core chapters for us, which is chapters 1, 2, 4, 6 and 12. Those are the chapters I want you to read. The rest you can read if they apply to you, but you have to read chapters 1, 2, 4, 6 and 12. Now let me dive into the content. What does this look like to us? Please don't say a sine curve. What does it look like?

My bank account.

A bank account. How about a roller coaster? Right, the roller coaster. So this is what a typical roller coaster might be looking like if you asked a child to draw a roller coaster. Well, the roller coaster of entrepreneurship or bipolar disorder is something that Almost all famous CEOs have or have experienced. Steve Jobs was clinically diagnosed as hypomanic. It had been said that he was unable to see the box because he was always so far outside of the box. Do you know that two of the three founders of Netscape, Jim Clark and Jim Barksdale, were both bipolar? Do you know that Richard Branson has ADHD and. And dyslexia? Most entrepreneurs are clinically diagnosed to be on the spectrum of Tourette's which is thinking out loud. So we're not messed up, we're just different. What I'm going to talk about today, though, is the bipolar disorder and how we can actually ride this roller coaster that we're on, because unlike the theme park, we can't get off this roller coaster. We're on this roller coaster, and our spouses, our friends, our kids, our employees are actually strapped to our backs, and they're riding it with us, and they didn't sign up for the ride. So what I want to do is give you the tools. I have these tools in videos and in my book for you to share with your peers. But I want to give you the tools so that everyone understands and we understand how to ride the roller coaster and how if they're strapped to our backs, we understand how to ride this as well. There's different stages of the roller coaster, and I want to give us all a little bit of dialogue that we can have with each other or some clear phrases to that we can use to describe how we're feeling or where we are on the roller coaster. This first stage is one that we call uninformed optimism. So at this stage of a physical roller coaster, what are you feeling if you're on a real roller coaster? Anticipation. What else? Excitement.

Right.

Nervousness. Excitement. Energy. Enthusiasm. Right. That general rush, that uninformed optimism of, oh, this is going to be exciting. You've got all these emotions that are kind of going through you. Most of them are exciting. Well, in the business world, you know, you're at uninformed optimism when you don't need coffee, you don't need any energy drinks, because your enthusiasm and energy is what's propelling you every single day. You're completely and absolutely passionate about every aspect of your business. You actually are seeing things and doing things that are fun, but other people might think is a little bit crazy. You. You'll see danger in front of you, and you actually won't see it as dangerous. You'll see it as an opportunity. Like, as an entrepreneur, we'd see this and want to sell tickets, whereas a teacher might think it's dangerous. Stay away. You know, you're at uninformed optimism when you're doing things that the general population see is crazy, but you've thought through enough to go, this is actually pretty sound. But then something changes, something clicks because you have to continue to ride the roller coaster. So all of a sudden, you go over the top of the roller coaster, and you're at this stage called informed pessimism. Now, if you're at informed pessimism on a real roller coaster, what are you thinking at that point? What's the two word phrase that we all say? Oh, shit. In 28 countries, everyone has the same. Even in Saudi Arabia, they all go, oh shit. This oh shit moment is when you know that you're kind of running out of time. You, you feel something is changing. You're starting to pull your hair out. You actually are getting really stressed. You look around the room and you go, why the fuck is everybody so happy with that feeling, like, why are people so happy? You start worrying you might even start to cry for no real reason. The tears just come and you have these feelings that are kind of coming out. You might think you made a mistake and you're starting to second guess yourself. You absolutely need coffee in the morning because the natural energy isn't running through you. That informed pessimism has kicked in. And you continue down that curve and you get to this next stage called crisis of meaning. Crisis of meaning is that Tuesday when you call into the office and you say, I just tell the team I'm off with the lawyers or I'm out at a sales call. And the reality is you're in bed at home and you have the duvet pulled up over your head. Who's done that? Put your hand up. If you've actually called in and lied at work, right? Yeah. Almost all of us, almost all of us at some point have called into the office and lied because we just can't face it. We're just too stressed or too overwhelmed or too scared or just frazzled. My moment of crisis and meaning. And we have them on days or weeks or months or longer periods. My biggest one was in October of 2, 2000. I was running a big company. We had 900 employees. We were phenomenally successful by a lot of measures. We just sold the company for 64 million. I was tapped on the shoulder by one of my VPs and he said, are you okay? And I turned around to say yes and I collapsed on the floor of the elevator and started to cry. I started to literally shake and sob like a little 12 year old shaking. And about a week later, I went into the doctor's office and the doctor said, what's up? I'm like, nothing much, little stressed. I've got this metallic taste at the back of my neck. Anybody ever tasted like the metallic taste the back of your neck? It tastes like you're chewing on aluminum foil. Let's see a show of hands. If you've had that taste about half the room. So he said, well, what's going on? I said, nothing. This weird metallic taste. I'm just here for my normal routine physical though. He goes, well, tell me about your life. I go, well, got married about four months ago. My wife conceived six weeks later. The company that we sold for 64 million is actually worth 3.2 as of the day of transaction because the stock market crashed. This was October 2000, remember the $64 million wait was worth 33.2 when we actually got it out. So we lost virtually everything. I quit my job, I'm moving back to Canada. Sold our house in Seattle and I just bought one in Vancouver. And my mom's clinically stage four with cancer. She's turned terminal. But everything's pretty good. Like I'm just a little. This weird metallic taste, but everything's pretty good. There were a couple other things. He gave me this test. I don't remember what it's called. It's two names you write down. You have like this list of things happening in your life. And if you get. What's it called?

Holmes Ray.

That one. Holmes Ray. So you do this test. If you end up with 150 points, you have a 50% chance of a heart attack. If you get 250 points, you have a 90% chance of a heart attack. I had 435 points. I was clinically redlining. I was literally clinically redlining. I did this interview with Alex about a month ago, and after, or actually during our interview, I actually did the test again because I was down at like 40 points. I was clinically redlining. And that metallic taste at the back of my neck was a chemical secretion being caused by stress. So if you've had that taste in the back of your neck, it's your body saying, slow down. See, as entrepreneurs, we try to push through it, but when you're at crisis of meaning, you start screaming at staff for no reason at all. You start pointing fingers at people and blaming the name game. I actually had a CEO one time who was so stressed running his 200 seat restaurant in about November of 2008, and he was blaming the global financial crisis. Are you freaking kidding? You have a 200 seat restaurant. This isn't the world we're running here. Get off your butt, get out of your office and tell people about your great food. But you're so stressed that you can't do much. You look around, excuse me, and all you can see is danger everywhere. When you're at crisis and meaning you actually think you want to sell the company, not because you want to as an opportunity, but because you see no other path. So I can tell you for sure that you're not thinking clearly when you're on this roller coaster and when you're at crisis of meaning. When I go into the doctor's office and I have a chemical secretion telling me to slow down and I'm saying everything's going well, everything's not going well. I'm going to show you a video of a guy riding a roller coaster. The roller coaster that this kid is on. He's actually given the answer to 10 questions. And then during the roller coaster, he's asked the 10 questions and he has to try to answer them. Well, watch how successful he is at answering the questions that he already knows the answers to.

Okay, can you hear me?

Yeah.

Here's the story again.

Okay?

According to ESPN baseball team, the Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Dodgers played the San Francisco.

Giants in their 2009 home opening game.

Okay.

In the game, Dodgers second baseman Orlando.

Hudson hit for the cycle.

That means Hudson hit a home run.

A triple, a double and a single all in one game, right? The final score of the game was Dodgers 11, the Giants one. Okay.

You'Re a crisis of meaning. And as entrepreneurs, we always try to push through it. We try to battle through it. And the reality is you can't battle through it because you can't think clearly. You can't perform when you're a crisis of meaning. See, why do we as entrepreneurs feel bad about relaxing and feel bad about taking a vacation and feel bad about playing golf for four hours without taking our damn iPhone. We can plug our phone in at night. We don't feel bad about recharging our phone. But why do we feel bad about recharging ourselves? What's wrong with actually unplugging? We need to get way better at that. So if you're at crash and burn, I'm not going to talk about this stage because who cares if we fall off the bottom of this roller coaster ride? The key to not crash and burn, to not blow up your marriage or your business or yourself, is to actually get through this bottom and getting support. Two years after my crisis of meeting and hitting that doctor, I was then written up in the Grand Globe and Mail, a full page article in Canada's biggest newspaper. Having overcome this stress and having been one of four supernovas two years before, I was written up in the Wall Street Journal as having crashed with stress. Two years later, I was Written up as having recovered from stress. The way I recovered was this. I got people to listen. I just talked and shared and got vulnerable and started to open up with everything and realized that there was a whole bunch of people out there that were just as crazy or just as stressed or just. Just as overwhelmed as I was. I wasn't as alone. I got ideas from people. I got ideas from books and from groups and from no longer trying to be the smart person in the room, trying to show up and be the dumb person in a room of really smart people. I got coaching. I actually turned to experts and mentors who'd been there before so that I could actually learn from them and trying to battle through it on my own. And I realized the school system had messed me up so much that I actually didn't have to be the smart guy. I could be the dumb guy in terms of. To everybody else for the way to actually move forward. I look to get a kick in the ass. And when you're at this crisis and meaning stage, sometimes we need a kick in the ass. Sometimes we also need a mirror to look into. And we need someone to hold up the mirror and make us see that maybe we're the problem and it isn't everyone else around us that we keep blaming. But you need to get through this crisis of meaning stage. If you don't get through crisis and meaning, you will fall off the curve. When you do get through it, you get over to this stage called informed optimism. Informed optimism is a good spot to be, but again, it doesn't last because you keep going up the curve. And lo and behold, you're back to informed, uninformed optimism again. The key when you're at this stage of informed optimism here is to not celebrate too early. You don't want to actually feel like you're okay all of a sudden. Good analogy is, let's say a husband and wife decide to go in for therapy. Going to a counselor, marriage counselor. Marriage counselor says to both of you as you're sitting together, so what's wrong with her? Well, she's a bitch. They ask female what's wrong with him? Well, he's a jerk. He's an asshole. Okay, so at least you two are on the same page. And you do like your hour and a half with your therapy. You walk out of the counselor, you know, you know, we're okay now. No, no. You've had one session with the marriage counselor. You're not okay yet. You have to keep going to the marriage counselor until you both hate the marriage counselor more than than you ever hated each other, and then you're okay. Well, same thing as a crisis of meaning if you're at that stage where you're completely paralyzed and stressed and pulling the covers up over your head. I used to have an area underneath my desk where I would lie down so that no one could see me, and my assistant would actually lie to people and say that I was out of the office. I was literally sleeping under my desk when we had 248 people at the head office. You need to know that you're okay. It's not okay to say, I think I can, I think I can, or I think I'm going to be okay. You have to get to the stage where you know that you're okay. And unlike the normal roller coaster, we can't get off of it. And there's all these little mini curves along the way as well. So you can be at a very high point. Something low is going to bring you back down. What I want everyone to remember with this is that we're on a roller coaster and our stress is magnified. So you'll have people around you all the time. Time will say, oh, yeah, my life is stressful. I have ups and downs, too. I'm not talking about everyone. I'm not talking about the average person. I'm talking about entrepreneurs. And we either work with them or we are one. And our stress is magnified because of a bunch of key points. We have everything on the line. We don't have a job. We don't have a guaranteed income. Often we go through long stretches where we don't take money out so that we can pay everybody else. We're worried that everyone who we got to quit their great jobs and come and follow our dreams aren't necessarily going to have a job a week later. So we're scared with that. We're worried that everything we've said to the media is going to be found out that maybe we don't really know. We're worried about making payroll. We're worried about our customers and our expectations. We've got our brand attached to our backs. That's huge amounts of extra stress that magnify the whiplash that we're in. So what we need as entrepreneurs is to understand where we are and to be able to communicate where we are. Now, who thinks that first stage, that uninformed optimism, who thinks that is a good stage to be at in the business? Put your hand up if you think it's a good stage. Put your Hand up if you think uninformed optimism is a bad stage, put your hand up if you think it's just a stage or you're not thinking. How about crisis of meaning? Who thinks that's a bad stage to be at? Who thinks it's a good stage to be at? Okay, here's the point. It's just a stage, a physical roller coaster. There's not a good part or a bad part. It's the same roller coaster. It's just part of the roller coaster. The key is to know, what do I do at this stage and what do I not do at this stage. So if you're at uninformed optimism, it can be good and bad. So if you're at this crazy, fun energy stage where you're optimistic and passionate, what parts of your business do you work on at that point? What could you do to leverage that stage? Convince other people. Convince other people, Right. So outward facing marketing, sales, a pep rally. Talk to the media, talk to the press. Idea generation.

Rally the troops.

Rally the troops. Right? Anytime you've got that crazy energy, shift that energy, transfer that energy. Now, what don't you want to do when you're at uninformed optimism? You don't want to make buying decisions. You don't want to hire people. You don't want to make big advertising buys. That's why it's very dangerous to be at events like this. As we get all so excited that we go out and we're going to take over the world. We buy everything, but then we wake up two days later, we go, oh, my God. Buyer's remorse. Buyer's remorse is a real thing. So when you're at uninformed optimism, you transfer your energy in a good way, but you don't make any decisions. When you're at informed pessimism, then you can do your planning, but you don't want to talk to the media. If you're a crisis of meaning, you need to unplug and be okay with unplugging so that you can get back to that stage where your energy is high again. My energy is high right now. I'm wired right now. I feel like I've been doing rails for an hour and a half. But the good thing is I can transfer that energy in a good way. But I'll tell you, in two hours, I don't want to talk to any of you because I'm depressed or stressed.

There's so much of that, too. That's, you know, one of the questions I'm going to Ask you, what are some of the mistakes that people make in business? One of the things is.

I think.

One mistake is not preparing yourself for success. Most people don't become successful as entrepreneurs. The vast majority don't. But when you do, you literally will find that you have people that are incredibly supportive of you, and then people that you thought were supportive of you aren't supportive if you're surpassing what they pursue, perceive their thing is, because, I don't know, there's probably many causes to this, but I think it makes them look at their own lack of success or, oh, you're doing something. And it's bizarre how much people shift. And so one of the things I think about a lot is that being successful as an entrepreneur is not just being strategic and making smart decisions and the ability to create value, get paid for it, be a great marketer, communicate what it is you're doing. I think one of the attributes of successful entrepreneurs is a tolerance to all the crap that exists because you got to have thick skin. I mean, there will be a point in time where people that you thought were your allies are really your enemies. They don't want to see you be successful, and they will give you their opinions about what you should or should not do. And so part of it is being able to know what to pay attention to and what to expect, what's relevant and what is irrelevant. So how do you think about, like, how did you go through that transition? Because there's a lot to be learned.

I think the number one thing for me is, and maybe I think a little bit differently than others, but when you marry your lifetime partner, they've got to be on board 100% of what your dreams are, or vice versa, whatever it is. But the support that I get, I can be me Joe every day of the week. I normally swear when I say that, but I can be any Anthony Amos every day of the week.

I don't have.

I would be cussing right now if your kids were not in the.

Yeah, I cuss in front of my kids. I'm sorry to say that. But, yeah, we're from Australia, but it's just one of those things where, yeah, I'm a little bit crazy and I love getting out and having a few drinks with guys because it brings out the best in people. If you sort of say a little bit reserved, it's not like off the menu, but it's just really getting other people relaxed and talking more. What they would normally do if they didn't just have. Have a couple of Beers. But you know, that's sort of, I mean the things that we do aren't normal. I mean we do embarrassing things and we've all got a similar sense of humour and it's a lot of fun. But you can't have that stability if you don't have that support at home. Because when you walk in those doors and it's open arms, you know, this is great. I know it's a tough day to day. You've got to have that. If you don't have that, then I don't think I could have done it. I really don't.

You know the classic think and grow rich from Napoleon Hill. He had his 31 causes of failure and one of them was wrong selection of a mate. And I think when it comes to entrepreneurship, yeah, there's a lot to be said of it's a tough life for someone that is not an entrepreneur, that doesn't get the drive and the ambition. And I think entrepreneurs are misunderstood. A lot of people think all they care about is money and frankly most of the entrepreneurs that, that I hang out with, and I know money is important because you need money in order to run a business, but it's not the cause of what it is they're doing. I mean, many entrepreneurs I know that are very successful honestly don't care all that much about money as long as they have it. Now, if they don't have it, nothing else functions. So it holds a very important context. But these are people that are dreamers and they're trying to make stuff up and make it real and dream it into being. I mean, when I sit and think about your dog grooming business, I mean, at what point did it occur to you that this is a good idea? I mean, you probably weren't as a little kid saying, you know, when I grow up, I want to wash hundreds of thousands of dogs. It seems like hard work to me.

I don't know if I'd want to.

Wash a single dog.

Well, it's funny because I literally washed dogs day in, day out for six or seven years that funded the company. So I learned the business from the ground level all the way through to the high end level, like selling our master program within 18 months. We sold off every single state and territory within 18 months. That is just unheard of. But I think when you learn and grow the business and not raising any capital, but raising the money through your hard work and pouring it back into the company and living on baked beans, but still growing the company, that does something to you. Inside it gives you a real strength of knowing that as you get into the next venture, I know what it's like to be like that. So when I relate to my franchisees, when we start selling franchises, I've done what you're about to do. I know every angle that you're going to go through in your business and I'm going to be able to help you with those particular decisions. And when we're talking about the partners, the hardest thing when selling a franchise to some of the men back in Australia, the wives are like, I don't want my husband to be a dog washer. He's not a dog washer. He's an entrepreneur. He's getting out there out of the rat race and wanting to be a successful person. I don't. And that, that's what I was talking about. But the other husbands that came in the door, how was your day, honey?

How many dogs did you do today?

Yeah, you broke the record that difference between, oh, I don't want my husband to be a dog washer. How am I going to tell my friends my husband's a dog washer? That's when you've got to align yourself with the right partner to know that when you do come in the door, they're happy that you did one more dog that you did than the day before. That's the type of thing where I'm coming from with that.

That's so true. Speaking in my own life of, of many relationships that I've gone through and thankfully I'm dear friends with most of the relationships I've had in the past. I'm talking intimately. I mean, I know I have all kinds of relationships personally and professionally. It is alignment. I mean, you have, if you do not have alignment in any sort of relationship, it's going to be very short lived. There's going to be a lot of tension. And there still is. I mean, because I'll tell you what I tell people. Successful entrepreneurship is really about developing a tolerance to stuff because the stuff that would have killed me in the very beginning of my business happens on a daily basis today. And I'm like, whatever. I've built up just a tolerance to nonsense. Just like crap that happens. But that's part of the game.

Well, it's funny that you use that word because in the book I talk about congruency. So the first thing with me is I've got to a point where I instantly know whether I'm congruent with somebody, I feel it, or you just had a little Bit of a conversation is that feeling that you really like that person. It's congruent. Whatever this value system is, we don't even know what it is, but it feels good. And then when you know it feels good, I like to add as much value as I can first. So if I get in there first and go not expecting anything other than we could be friends from that point of view or making an effort for our friendship. This is my favorite part. I call it, like, the triad of how it works for me. But if I've become friends or business partners with that person, like Kevin, I get out of the bed in the morning. We're about to go and have coffee at lunch.

Like, I can't wait to go and see this guy.

I'm so excited. And I get all ramped up and, you know, excited, because when you know that I actually felt like coming here today, I felt, like, so excited. The kids can tell you, like, and this lovely lady, of course, how excited we were to get here. And to be broken down the day before, not getting here. And then we thought, well, Wednesday's actually a better day. It just worked out perfect. But it's that feeling that you get so goddamn excited just to turn up and be in the presence of that person. That's when you know you've nailed it. That's when you know you've done it.

You know, Because I used to get all giddy about, like, going to a rock concert when I was a kid, you know, going to, well, not just rock, but any sort of concert, although just the sheer excitement. And that's what really great business deals, I think, do for entrepreneurs.

Oh, my God.

Just like sports, you know, which I never really got into sports. I had a Little League coach that ruined my liking of sports because he would force me to hold a baseball bat in a certain way that I couldn't hit the ball. So it ruined my liking of sports. So it's interesting how influences affect you growing up, but I see a lot of entrepreneurs, they're corporate athletes, which is a term my buddy Tony Schwartz says, and they want to win. And winning comes in different things and different levels of excitement. But. But part of success as an entrepreneur, aside from, obviously, strategy and a sound business model and the ability to keep your act together is just massive enthusiasm for what it is you bring to the table.

Oh, my God, you speak my language right now. Because if you strategically put together, I want to be friends with that person to get that it never happened. I've never been that way anyway. But I just know my brother was very much that way inclined, and that's how we speak, sort of butt our heads a lot, is that he'd worked out strategically how to get to that person to get that end result. And I was always uncomfortable with those sorts of deals because you're really looking out for yourself first. But if you genuinely believe that that person has got some sort of value system similar to you, then show them that you're good and you can do something to get them excited. Let's be friends. Let's see how this could work out. I love doing it. I got chills thinking about it. I love doing that stuff.

That's awesome. Well, okay, so here's your book, how.

To Catch a Shark.

And you did this with Kevin Harrington. How much did he actually contribute? Because Kevin really doesn't do much work.

Well, we actually. He did a story on Donald Trump when he was in Donald Trump's office and put a deal together. And we did a lot of work with recordings, so we recorded it and then sort of typed it. And my beautiful wife over here and a great, dear friend of ours, Bonnie Crandall, edited the book and pieced it all together. And we've got our publisher, Tara, Sarah, Richard, of course. But we had so much fun putting this together because Kevin and I have developed a really awesome relationship. And I think he vicariously lives through me a little bit now with him being sort of on the straight and narrow. And I'll often read him.

You have one for me, buddy?

All right, you get out.

I'll get at that. But we've got. I think he's got such a. Not a lot of people know this, but he's got, like a kid like, sense of humor.

Oh, totally.

He's just funny as hell. So in even the most serious situations, and we're at a meeting, I've got probably a little bit like you sort of. My attention span isn't that good.

Yeah.

So I'll just sort of sit there and send Kevin a text. Kevin will always read his phone no matter what meeting he's in. So I'll send him a text. Something hilarious of, you know who we're talking right now. You see him go. But I think that's the type of thing you've got to do with relationships like that when you're in a. You're there because you've said you would be, but you don't really want to be there. And you've got to make light of the situation sometimes to really sort of get through it.

Well, totally. I mean one thing about I can usually gauge the value of relationships, man and woman or friends or whatever, just based on how much they laugh together. If you see people that cannot laugh together, then there's a good chance that they're probably not.

Wow, that's really interesting. I instantly got what you've just said, but I've never looked at it like that before.

Yeah, well, if you're at a restaurant and you see, see a couple that's just sitting there and they're just not really even talking to each other, well, there could be times they're just arguing, but for the most part you can pretty much gauge that do they have fun together or not? Because I have this thing I came up with years ago to try to describe the marketing systems that I created that are robotic. Using the 24 hour free recorded message that sift sorts and screens people that want to get information about, about how to choose a carpet cleaner or how to use a sports supplement or pick a category is a far easier, more robotic way to get people information than doing face to face selling. So I started calling anything that would use replicatable canon, clonable sort of marketing systems as ELF marketing. And I started saying you could have an elf business which is easy, lucrative and fun, or you can have a half business which is hard, annoying, lame and frustrating. And so if you're going to go out and define develop a business, you want to make it as ELF as humanly possible. Now in my life I actually look at human beings that way. Is this person easy, lucrative and fun or is this person hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? Or in some cases hard, annoying, lucrative and frustrating because not all money is created equal. There's some money that is just painful and there are some people to work with that they're just not fun to work with. And so kind of what you were saying to earlier, I've never approached relationships is let me figure out what I'm going to get from this person. I mean, I don't ask anyone to do anything for me if I can't create value for them first. And I really come from a try to be generous, try to be useful. And I don't even say try. I actually believe I am. You just show up and you just are useful and if you cannot be, then don't show up. I mean, what reason do you have to do anything if, if you can't bring that to the table? And so I think part of you, because the moment I first met you, you're just a very likable very friendly guy and that's.

Did you hear that?

Yeah. Now again, they may experience something completely different than me. But the thing is that's very hard to fake doing that consistently. I mean some people can, they'll have their spill, they'll do that sort of stuff. But for the most part being a generous, caring, useful value creating individual is not a shtick. That's who you are, that's what you do. And if you adopt that as a way of life, that's how you develop things. Because in the beginning when you have not created any results, when you just have a dream and idea, the thing you have to go on is just your caring, your enthusiasm, your wanting to be a contributor in. And that's going to get you much further. You can read every negotiation book on the planet or read how to manipulate people, but that's going to be very short lived. I mean it really genuinely comes down to how caring and how useful are you. And that's a far better attribute and way of being, to be and to develop than anything else I've ever figured out.

I really appreciate it. It's a very nice thing to say. I feel very good about myself right now.

Good, good. Well, let's try to take that down a little bit. Okay. I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead, you're over here.

Do it now.

Come on. Thank you.

Watch them.