Steven Cohen, Kevin Surace, Michael Hellickson, Hitendra Wadhwa | Office Hours #541

Welcome to office hours. I'm David Meltzer and I'm here with my incredible partner in content, the wonderful Blaine Bartlett. Blaine bartlett.com. hey, Blaine, how are you?

Hey. I'm doing really well, buddy. I'm doing really well. It's good, Good to have you back on this side of the planet. And you're at home tonight.

I'm changing my dress. People always ask, you know, what's your home address, Dave? So I can send you a thank you, this or that. I. I now reside on seat 3B. So if you. If you'd like to send me some flowers or candy. Seat 3B is where my residence is. I don't know how the tax implications are going, but I'm going to ask Dr. Stephen Cohn for some advice on what Columbia professor in Taxation or an LLM. I can advise if anyone's ever stated their Residency is seat 3B. But more importantly, this is my Columbia week. I was blessed to speak at Doug Shears class there this week at Columbia. Now we have the former EPA analyst, himself an incredible author about an issue, Blaine, that you and I discuss often, our environment and sustainable practices. And he's written a book that I encourage anyone that wants to understand how we're going to survive, the environmentally sustainable growth book, A pragmatic approach. And Dr. Stephen Cohen, first of all, welcome to office hours.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

I want to share with you to start my perspective of environment, environmentally sustainable growth, and why it's so important. I haven't figured out a pragmatic way to save the earth through environmental practices, sustainability practices, but what I am relying on is that if we implement these practices of sustainable environmental choices, that it will give the entrepreneur enough time to save the Earth, to convert plastic into energy and fill up the hole in our atmosphere. And all the things that I think were far beyond the stopping point I was hoping we'd start there. Is that part of your pragmatic approach?

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that we don't give ourselves enough credit for is, is the amount of human ingenuity that's already being devoted to this problem and the amount of entrepreneurship. One of my graduates from one of my programs is a co CEO of a company called Revel. And if you're in New York, you see those blue Teslas and the little scooters. That's his company. He started it right after he graduated. So there is, I think what people don't really understand is that we've had economic growth and we've used technology to reduce pollution pretty much since EPA started. So the air in America is cleaner today than it was in 1970 when the Clean Air act was passed because of two things, stack scrubbers and catalytic converters. And we had to create some regulation to make that happen. But. But if you went to LA in 1970 and tried to see the mountains, you wouldn't see them. And today you do. And so I think that we need to apply that same model to all the other issues that we're facing. And we can do it, and we are doing it. That's the other point in the book. We're actually begun this transition to a renewable resource based economy.

You know, it strikes me and we. David and I actually touched on this as I was mentioning to you before the show started, Stephen. You know, it's not that we lack the wherewithal to come up with ideas about how to address this issue. There are, interestingly, I think, some institutional roadblocks that actually begin. And I mean institutional not in terms of edifice, but cultural. We've got, you know, just a number of different legacy mindset issues that prevent us from implementing some of these things, not the least of which is some political resistance. A pragmatic perspective. Yeah. How do you see addressing some of those so that what we're doing from an entrepreneurial side can actually take root and begin to sprout?

Well, I think there's a whole range of things we need to be thinking about, and part of it is also to be a little bit honest with ourselves about what works and what doesn't work. So, for example, recycling, which I'm in favor of, largely hasn't worked. And so what we need to do is, and this is already starting, is apply artificial intelligence and robotics to the waste stream and get to the point where we're mining our garbage instead of the planet for the natural resources that we need. And we started to do this already, and we're going to see more of this in the next 10 or 20 years because the cost of dumping garbage in landfills is going up and up. That means that there's a revenue stream to pay for the advanced technology we need to mine our garbage. And there are efforts to do this right now. And if you look at most of the problems that we're dealing with, climate change is probably the best example. So the fastest adopter of solar power in America right now is Walmart. And the reason they're so fast is they have these things called flat roofs and, and they've got tons of them and they use A lot of energy, and they've got plenty of money to put up solar arrays. They pay back the cost five, six years, and then from then on they can run these stores with very little energy off the grid. So the, the other point, it's funny, I made this in class last night, that if you think about the. The concepts of total quality management, which is basically to drive waste out of the production process. So if you see pollution as a form of waste, why can't a chemical company figure out a way to build a closed system chemical plant so that they're not poisoning their neighbors? Well, they can. And the companies that figure out how to do that will be able to sell their plastic and the rest of the things they're making for cheaper because they're not emitting all this stuff into the environment that they could be using. So these basic concepts are out there and it's just a question of really smart people starting to put them to work. And I guess one of the points I make in this book is that this is already underway. It's well underway.

One of the aspects that a lot of people ignore, and I think it falls more in the realm of what I consider to be more aligned with my skills, knowledge and desire, is that people beyond the technology and beyond the efforts that are being made today, there's a difficult challenge of advocacy and communication.

Right.

We have silos of followers and of communities. Now today, instead of a general amplification system that existed back when we had smog in la, how is it best that we advocate and communicate a lot of the messages that people are willing to hear and even act upon?

Right. I think part of the problem is that we've monetized differences politically. And so all these advocacy groups make their money by fighting with each other. And it's true. When we wrote the Clean Air act and the Water act, it was Democrats and Republicans sitting down together to write the bills because guess what? Everybody likes to breathe. It's one of those things to get used to. And so it wasn't hard to figure out ways of building their consensus. Now what we have to do is look for the arguments that may not make us feel good, but in fact help to build a broader coalition. So I'll give you two examples of that. One is the largest environmental group in America is the National Wildlife Federation, and most of the members are hunters and anglers. And that's the origin of the environmental movement. Now, of course, here in New York, we've got a lot of radical environmentalists who are vegans. Who are horrified by fur and meat. You know, on the other hand, just like those hunters and anglers, they want to protect the forest and they want to make sure the water is clean and maybe for different reasons. So they have to figure out a way to work together, and they have to start stop villainizing each other, which is really the heart of the problem. I think that that can happen. We actually saw some of that with the passage of the, of the Inflation Reduction Act. Because if you want to sell, for example, renewable energy, don't sell it as the solution to climate change. Sell it as a way of having cheaper, more reliable energy. Those technologies tend to. You can sell technology and infrastructure investment when it makes things better and cheaper. And that's the. That's the approach. And the other issue is, you know, people think that somehow, you know, the free market makes everything. Well, the way I always put is Henry Ford invented the Model T, but he didn't build any roads, you know, that took the government to do so. We need a partnership between the public sector and the private sector, and we need environmentalists to kind of relax a little bit. The planet is going to be around, but they've got to look forward for ways of working with people who don't necessarily share all of their goals.

It sure seems that the Earth always survives. It's the people and the inhabitants of the Earth that are questionable. And if we start looking and participating in that perception, we'll all be better off. Dr. Stephen Code, we love having you on. We want to come visit you in Columbia. You have such extraordinary students. I've been blessed recently to help hopefully show them what not to do, which is usually the best thing I can contribute to such an intelligent community, one that's led by you for so many years. Thank you for your efforts. Thank you for giving entrepreneurs not only encouragement, but the entire. The time in order to effectuate those dreams of saving our Earth and saving the people on it. We'll be in touch. We'd love to have you back. I know Blaine would love to have you on his show as well.

Thanks for having me and enjoy talking with you guys.

Thank you.

Thank you. Oh, my goodness. We are so blessed. I think I know 10 Stephen Cones, five Dr. Stephen Cones, and I think three of them are at Columbia. So I. There's certain names right there. My mom would be proud. I had two Stephen Cones today. I had one that's in Las Vegas and one that's here in New York. So, you know, it's. It's one of those names. It's like, makes me feel at home. Kevin is waiting patiently in the great room there. He is CEO of Advanced AI. We're just talking about innovation and entrepreneurship and he is an edutainer that's a combination of some of this teaching and as well as entertaining, which is the best way to learn. The people who can tell the stories to teach. The lessons, in my opinion, are what we need best to articulate and communicate, which we were talking about. But welcome first of all, Kevin, to office hours. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks.

Thanks for having me. David. It was so nice to, to to watch Stephen Cohen here. I spent more than a decade really focused on environment and specifically the built environment, and how we could reduce CO2 from the built environment, which is, believe it or not, about 52% of the world's CO2 is generated by creating our buildings or heating or in lighting our buildings. Heating, cooling and lighting our buildings. People don't think of it that way. I know we're diverging. People don't think of it that way because they go, well, the power plants, where do you think the power goes from the power plants and where do you think the natural gas goes from those plants? Goes to buildings. Heat, cool, light our buildings. So add that all up, they are the biggest contributor and we got a lot of work to do. Anyway, great to see Stephen. He's great.

Well, it's great to have you on and looking at, you know, our future. Obviously, AI is a great part in generative 8i but to understand it without the fear and the attachment of fear and the resistance of fear. I give a lot of speeches about because I've been involved in technology and you know, I am. I tell this story. It reminds me of AI. I was in front of Justice Scalia in 1992 with Westlaw, which was legal, legal research online. And Justice Scalia told me, David, he goes, this is really interesting. I will tell you that. Nobody will ever do research on a computer. You need books. And I told him, sir, I said respectfully, you cannot make technology your master. It's your servant. And you're just literally ignoring one of the greatest servants I've ever given you for legal research. And I feel the same way about AI. We have been blessed with the greatest servant, the most cost effective, efficient, brilliant servant ever. And so many people are treating it like a master again.

You know, here's the thing. If you go back to the 80s, in the 80s and early 90s, we invented, you know, the society invented something called Excel. And that's something we take for granted today. But Excel solved math. The last time you did long division was, I don't know, in elementary school or something, right?

What?

Why? Because it solved math. Now when Excel came out, the accountants thought that was the end of their jobs. But actually we employ more accountants today in finance than we did when Excel came out and Excel became a tool. We became the master of Excel. It didn't master us, but it could do any math. And by the way, it democratized doing math, even complex math. I could have Excel do it, right? So we solved math 40 years ago. Now we're starting to solve language. It was a harder problem to solve. You needed a lot more compute horsepower to do it. You needed $10 billion from Microsoft Azure Network to be able to create a trillion token model. But we've done it now and it is becoming the best tool anyone could ever have. And I know people were probably scared of the calculator in Excel and PCs on the desktop and smartphones and all of that. Get over it. This is just another tool. Don't hook the thing to our nuclear arsenal. Right? I wouldn't hook Excel to our nuclear arsenal. Right, you don't, don't do that. Someone writes a macro and blows up the world. So don't hook it to things you shouldn't hook it to. But aside from that, it's probably not going to take your job. But I tell you what, someone next to you who really leverages chat GPT to say, write their marketing blogs, write their advertisements, you know, now you can do all kinds of image work actually within the beta version of Adobe Photoshop, people who use Those tools are 10, 20, 30, maybe 50 times more productive than those who don't. So your job is in jeopardy because there's someone next to you using the latest tools and you're a Luddite and you don't want to do it.

Great.

And one of those things that gets addressed is quality assurance testing.

Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. So that is true. I'm involved in a number of companies. One of them is appfance. And appfance we started about 12 years ago with a vision to have software technology find your bugs for you. Now I'm not talking about your typical website and yes, there's e commerce websites and all. It's really gets to the software that runs our company. So a little known fact, you look at JP Morgan, JP Morgan has 6, 8, 10 applications that face their customers. Great. They have 14,500 that run the company. All right, so the amount of updates and testing they have to do that. Software is unbelievable, right. Just to keep the company running. And so we've got to get to a point where AI technology, machine learning, et cetera, finds the bugs for your development team. So you fix them things, you've got an update, you do the build five minutes later, here's your list of bugs. No humans, no manual testers, no writing scripts. So that's the vision there. And we've been delivering on that actually for several years. But it's getting to the point where you may not need any software QA or software testers to find bugs in the next few years. It's getting that good.

You know, the idea of elegance, and I use this in a, in a coding perspective here, minimal unintended consequences, which a bug is an unintended consequence. There's a point where you know, when you're, when you're striving for elegance to that degree. And this is a thought that I've got here. I just want to check out here in terms of emerging consciousness. And David, you kind of opened that Pandora's box a little bit here when you talked about, you know, you, artificial intelligence and people's fear about it. A neural net with, you know, trillions of nodes part. You know, some people think that all there's an emerging consciousness that can begin to be addressed or recognized as a consequence of the density of the neural net. Now that's that. That is very open to debate.

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

Conversation around that. Well, where does, where's your experience land on that? Where do you point?

Let's start with the first thing. When we talk about neural nets, deep neural nets, everything that goes into a chat GPT or a bard or whatever, right? That's a big, huge neural net with all these hidden layers. And it happens to the transform models based on phrases, not words. But it doesn't matter. Learn phrases instead of words. Learn trillions of them. We know that. So is it conscious? Well, first of all, let's start with this. It's just math. It's not actually language. You know, a neural net is based on what do I do next? Based on a set of probabilities. And this one has the highest probability. So the easiest way to say that is today is my birthday. What should you say to me? Chat GPT. It goes, let's see, looks at entire tire learning. It goes happy. And what should come after the word happy birthday? Maybe Kevin comes after that, right? It's pretty clear what words are going to flow because we would say that naturally it has Read that a million times. It puts that together, but it doesn't put the words together. What it really does is out of, out of a million possibilities after happy it says birthday is the highest probability to be the right word based on the query. That's all. And that's math. It's math all the way through. That's what's fascinating now. There is no sentience in that. It actually, it doesn't know anything about what it's doing. It's simply math where the complexity would come in. And it's more interesting about discussion is, you know, our brains are also neural nets of, you know, they're formed by these neurons and these neurons for all we know are also making probabilistic guesses as to what words should come after the last word. Right. We don't know exactly because we can't measure that, but something like that. And so in fact our brains work from the all the language we have learned, everything we've read, fiction, non fiction etc and we do put pieces together and we form sentences and eventually we say we can form enough sentences that, that we have enough understanding of who we are and why we exist. And that apparently means sentience. So one could get far enough along that says our brain is nothing but a bunch of math probabilities and therefore that's as sentient as we are. But it's not sentient in the fact that it's alive. It has a heartbeat. I mean we really know we're alive. You can still walk up to that thing and unplug it. It actually doesn't know it's been unplugged, doesn't know it died. You can plug it back in. Probably has no sense of, actually doesn't have any sense of time per se. It was, those models were trained up to a certain point. So I, I, I, I don't think we're going to see that kind of sentience. But you're right. With a trillion nodes, sounds awful sentient.

It's not, it's not. I, I didn't mean to go down that rabbit hole but I was really curious.

Yeah, I, everybody asks that that and is it going to kill us?

Because it, I'm not worried about, I.

Mean you got Elon coming out and saying well okay, Elon is saying these things so he can set up a comp competitor Open AI which he's done and, and go do a different thing. You know, X AI I think it's going to be right. God bless, you know, brilliant person, but so brilliant he has thought through the process of I need to push off these other people and make them sound dangerous so that I can do this other thing and still have a business, which is actually brilliant. Just two steps beyond what people are thinking. They're thinking, oh, he said those things are dangerous. They must be dangerous. No, no, no, no. It's just competition, you know, so. Smart guy.

Yeah, he is a smart guy. He's playing chess and a lot of us are just playing checkers.

Yeah, that's right.

But you also are playing chess, helping create Siri as well. And one thing that I think is interesting is how has your experience as an accomplished music director, conductor, Broadway and streaming producer, percussionist. Obviously a understanding frequency and vibration has absolutely had an impact on your perspective. And you obviously share a very unique perspective with your background and experience and what you've been able to do in technology. But I was curious because I see a lot of higher functioning musicians taking a different participation in perception when it comes to technology. Is that math or is there something else that others like myself that are tone deaf haven't and aren't able or capable of being aware of?

Well, look, let me, let me give you an example. I'm on the board of Rochester Institute of Technology. I'm in Rochester, New York right now, and I'm on the board of RIT. We've got about 20,000 students. And a few years ago, we started a performing Arts Scholars program. Okay. So most of our students are in the STEM area, but we said, look, we're not going to give. Give you a degree in music, but you will. Or musical theater or any of those. But if you have those skills, we're going to give you some money and some advance and some other things to come to RIT so that you do your engineering classes and get your engineering degrees, but you get to be in one of these, you know, 80 performing groups. Right. It turns out now after five years, we can look at this, that the students who come in with performing arts in addition to engineering outperform the students that were just engineering alone. Don't know why that is. It's left brain, right brain. But somehow these students are able to use both sides of their brain. It's not a requirement.

Right.

It's only 500 students a year. We're bringing in another Performing Arts Scholars program, but it's just an interesting data point because it's something we could actually measure and they're. And they perform better. So really fascinating. And so I've tried to use left brain, right brain. In fact, I many 20 years ago, I invented soundproof drywall partly because I'm a drummer, but partly because studios needed it, home theaters needed it. And then it turns out every new hotel, motel, condominium, townhome also needed it. And everybody. And now it's a billion dollar product line that puts soundproof drywall in every situation that it's going to be. That's that you want to keep sound within the room and don't want it to get to the next room. Right. Absolutely fascinating. Needed to be, I guess, needed to be developed.

Not every Hilton has purchased it. Let me just tell you that Hilton hasn't purchased it.

I was just that one.

That is true. But. But when I was inventing it, it was funny. The thing that was going through my mind was this. I don't want to hear the people next door at 3am I could tell you on this program, I don't know what they're doing, but I probably can guess what they're doing at 3am, right?

I don't want to hear it.

I'm trying to.

I want to hear it. Well, we certainly want to hear more from you and we have other shows in other places. We'd love to raise the awareness of your awareness to others because it's an extraordinary experience, journey and perspective that you've been able to share with us. I love anyone that can reconcile technology into our own value system, which I really think you've illustrated here with us. I know Blaine also would love to share his shows as well. We need more of you and your perspective in a world that's definitely going to be impacted with technology again at an accelerated rate. Kellen Serus. Thank you so much. CEO of Appvance AI but he's much, much more than the CEO of Appvance, as you can tell. Please come back and join us. Thanks for joining us.

Absolutely. Thank you.

Great.

Great. Thank you. That was awesome.

Whoa. I love that.

I know. I. I just have to compliment Raluca and Gigi and the rest of my team. They lead the way. But there, you know, I, I see a lot of content and you don't get guests like this on a lot of shows that are coordinated in the way that they are as well. It's not just like we, we. We do get 2500 requests a lot every month. And so it's. We do get our choice, but to be able to scale schedule them together and, and that's why the takeaways of the day to me, to leverage your genius, your expression of God really adds even more to what we're doing. I know we got a couple minutes here. I'm not sure we. Next up is Michael Hillockson and he's the founder and CEO of Club wealth, but he's putting on a Club wealth business strategy mastermind conference in Houston, which I'm blessed to be keynote.

Yeah.

So they. Obviously you must not have been available. That's all I gotta say. But it's nice to be. You were in. You were in Africa, so I got one. Thank you, by the way. Let's see. Let's bring Luke on for one second. She loves coming on the show. Hello.

There she is.

I have two questions for you. Number one so far, what's the number.

One thing that you've learned so far in the episode?

Or.

She just got back from Dr. Joe Dispenza, so she probably has a lot to say about that. But on this episode, because we had two of our own. Dr. Joe's here today.

Well, I love the second guest with the AI perspective. And as you always say, the AI you know, having an open mind.

The AI is not our master, is our servant.

So trying to be more open minded about that. Yeah.

Well, good. Well, you've been the perfect break because you've answered. Yeah, I know. Michael's here. So Michael's here. So thank you for being a guest here. And Michael owes you a favor for saving his butt. Anyway, anyway, I was thanking Blaine earlier. You weren't here yet. I said, oh, Blaine, I'm so glad you were in Africa because Michael's having me keynote his extraordinary event in a Club wealth business strategy mastermind. And Blaine's one of the world's greatest business consultants. He's on as a world business consultant. So I've been taking my notes. He's been mentoring me since he wasn't available. So first I'd like to thank you for trusting me. A keynote in the conference on the 24th. I'm super excited about that. I have just a blessed fervor for real estate and I'll tell you why you missed the other two guests. But it's all about the math. Like, you know, our country was built on laws that protect the landowner. And if you can find a pragmatic industry, career and job that's relative to math and be protected by our government, both not only for taxes, but for income, which are two different things. It's amazing how many options, opportunities and touches of favor that we have to build wealth and utilize math as a business strategy and help a ton of people while we're doing it. And you're an extraordinary real estate, you know, entrepreneur who has been able not only to generate wealth for yourself, but I love the fact that you carry it forward. And you have probably made more millionaires than anyone I know with the club Wealth Guarantee and what you do with the coaching and consulting with your club. So thank you for joining me. Thank you for hiring me. And I can't wait to share our ideas together in that realm. You know, what is it that excites you about creating this club to build wealth?

You know, it's interesting. We started years and years ago. I was just, I was a real estate agent, you know, back in 1991, I started selling real estate. Yeah, it's been a minute, right?

Blaine's like, wow, that was my 50th birthday. That's amazing.

Not too far off.

Oh, my gosh, that's hilarious. Well, you know, and it started, really, what it started with was, you know, I just, I just thought, you know, what's, what's the best way to make a living that doesn't require a college degree? Because college wasn't for me. And, and I'm thinking, well, what am I going to do? So I thought, well, real estate sales, right, because it has to be sales. And then I thought, well, where do most people make their millions or keep their millions? And that's real estate. So real estate sales just kind of made sense. And so I went into that and worked really, really hard for a really long time and, you know, was an overnight success, 20 years in the making, and, you know how that goes. And, you know, became the number one real estate agent on planet Earth for, for quite a while, actually. And what happened was a lot of my colleagues, a lot of people I knew around the country that were selling real estate at a high level started saying, hey, we want you to teach us what you're doing. Like, you know, we want you to start coaching our business, consulting our business and teaching us how to do that. And so kind of club wealth got born out of that. Well, then I started also investing in real estate at high level. And so now you start combining the two. It's great because real estate's, you know, sales is the active income that gives you this vehicle to now go buy real estate, which is really cool because now you can offset especially what's really neat about now. David, this is for those that are not a real estate agent or a full time real estate professional. They're gonna hate it when I say this.

Michael, you need to get a little bit more animated here.

Oh, my God. I get excited about this because, like, there is no better way to be. I'm looking, I'm up, and I've got. I've got this vacation home up in the mountains that Tara and I are. I mean, look at this view. I. I get to do this because of real estate. Like, it's just. It's crazy what it does for us. And so here, so check this out. So if you're a full time real estate professional, you know, which means you got to put, you know, 750 hours per year into real estate, you get something called accelerated depreciation. Now, most people don't know what this means, but basically what it means is instead of having to wait 27 and a half years to fully depreciate a property, you. You can do most of that in the first 0 to 15 years. What this really means, kind of the bottom line as to what this really means is savvy people that are investing in real estate and that are also full time salespeople in real estate or that are full time investors in real estate, they're not paying taxes at all. I mean, at all. Like, this is craziness and people don't understand what opportunity is. So anyway, you asked what excites me about real estate? It's that. It's that there is literally no better vehicle on this planet to build wealth, period. And by the way, David, I am super excited to have you speak at our event. Can I. I mean, seriously. The Real life Jerry Maguire. Are you freaking kidding me, man? I mean, come on. I just want to know, are you bringing Flipper with you like that? I really hope flippers coming.

I'm actually bringing better than Flipper. I'm bringing Chicharito with me. I don't know if you've heard. Yeah, I was gonna surprise. I was gonna surprise you, but he told me this weekend before I left for the Silicon Slope Summit, he said, dave, because we're speaking with Tom Brady and I. Which was funny because I was on TMZ making fun of Tom Brady for the Delta deal, saying what a great way to hide an endorsement deal by calling him a strategic advisor. I said, that's ironic because he hasn't flown Delta in 20 years. You know, like, let's be honest. And you're gonna make him an advisor. It's a great endorsement deal, but they were joking. You know who opens for you? You know, do you open for Tom Brady or does Tom Brady open for you? I said, look, humbly, I will open any stage for Tom Brady any ask anytime he wants. But we're actually both opening for Chicharito, because in Mexico City, nobody cares about Jerry Maguire or Tom Brady. All they want to see is Chicharito. So hopefully in Houston, they'll recognize that I'm bringing one of the world's greatest soccer players ever to play. The greatest soccer player ever to play in Mexico alone. And he is such a gentleman. So hopefully we'll get him a little bit of a spot on the stage and highlight him while we're there.

Oh, a hundred percent. Are you kidding me? That's. I mean, seriously, that's like bringing Pele to the event. You get it.

Thank you.

Not every American gets it, but you do.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, that's because I'm not sure they can handle all three of our energy. Everybody might be like, hold on. I'm just gonna go to the bathroom while these three take care of each other and excitement. When they calm down, we'll come back into the room. But more importantly, Blaine, you got. Got a question?

Yeah, I don't know where to fit this one in.

This is.

Well, as a question, I mean, and I do want to just kind of drop this in, Michael, because I think.

It is really, really, really cool.

I mean, your. Your. Your promise. I mean, this guarantee. I. When I. When I read this, I went, what? Wait a minute, hold on here. Double your income or your money back now? And that's. This is basically structured off of the way that you've structured Club Wealth. Can you give us eight bars real quick on just kind of how this came to, you know, because it's a beautiful offer, number one, but it also is profoundly enticing.

Yes.

You know, we're both ready to sign up for get speaking.

What's that?

I'm ready to sign up for get speaking.

Yeah.

You know, I can't remember who I heard this from first. It was either. It was either John Asraf or it might have been Robert Allen. I can't remember who it was. Honestly, I'm trying to give credit or credit soon. I just can't remember who I learned it from.

But give it to John. We both love John.

Yeah, give it to John. Yeah.

Very intelligent guy. I met him for the first time at Bob's house. But. But the. The. The thought of risk reversal is.

Is.

It's really an important component to successful business. And so what we looked at was. We looked at, okay, all these real estate agents out there. You know, they're struggling right there. There's. Especially right now, you know, You've got. And we've been offering this guarantee since 2014. But you know, you look at, you know, at times in their business where, where markets are shifting, sometimes they're struggling and they're, they're resistant or hesitant to get into paying for consulting as a service. And so I thought, well, what if I knew. What if I just absolutely knew that, hey, look, if I bring you into my world and you just learn what we have to teach and if you just implement what we teach you, what if I could just literally guarantee that you'd make a minimum of an extra $100,000 your first year or double your income, whichever is less, like guaranteed, no matter what. 100. If I could guarantee that, who would say no? Because that's way more than the cost of the coaching. And so. And so why not just do that? Because the reality is if they do it, we tell them do. If we're that confident, it, it'll work. And so we did that, we offered that and dude, it just took off. And then what we did too is we took the same principle and we applied it to our events and we said, okay, how about we do this? You come to our event and if for any reason, by the end of day one, it's a two day event, right? If by the end of day one, you don't agree that you've come out of there with enough to make an extra 100 to $250,000 in the next 12 months, if all you do is implement what you learned in day one, I'll give you not all of your money back. I'll give you 200 of your money back and I'll buy you a first class ticket back home.

That's how many people on day two.

I should have spoke on day two. Blaine, this is getting scary.

But the thing is, nobody takes us up on it because it freaking works, right?

It works.

But it only works if you do. That's why I. Yeah.

Yeah.

That is beautiful, Michael. That. I love that and very. I guarantee everything I do for that reason quantitatively. And like, why do it if you don't believe full heartedly? And why would you want to take someone's money if you don't believe full heartedly that you can increase your profit center? Right? Like the coaching, the consulting, the speaking, everything's a profit center and doing the exact same thing. I cannot wait to get down to Houston. I will bring Blaine's portfolio, media kit resume for the next one you do. Because if he's my mentor, so hopefully you'll be amazed with the guarantee I gave him my performance. But you'll be amazed by Blaine Bartlett as well.

So tell me this. I want. I want to hear this from you because I know there's a lot. I just want you to. I want you to just the first thing that comes to your mind, the very first thing. If you could just name one thing that Blaine has taught you that has changed your life, what would the one thing be?

Time. Like the. The understanding how man made constructive, time is reconciled with perception and to utilize that in my favor, to be productive, accessible and gracious. Like the conversations we've had about infinite time from the very start of our friendship. Sometimes a couple tequilas in, sometimes completely sober. I'm not sure which time I learn more about time, but I will tell you, it changes everything in my life. My relationships, my, you know, literally every business activity I get paid for. So understanding. I. I have learned to, because of Blaine's lessons, utilize time at the utmost professional level. I am the Tom Brady of time. It is also my love language, which they forgot it in the book.

The.

The four languages. You know, the four love languages. They forgot time. It's. It's. And so when you were late, buddy, I. I fell out of love with you. But you made it.

And by the way, first of all, thank you for patience on it. I actually thought you were coming on my show at 3:30. I didn't realize I was supposed to be on your show earlier.

Oh my goodness. Hey, I owe you. I'm coming on your show, I guess.

Yeah.

So you're disappointed in me?

No, I'm not disappointed you at all. I just feel terrible, man. I feel like, oh my gosh, we dropped the ball.

Yeah.

That's so good. Well, we all have to thank our next guest because she's waiting there patiently and her time's way more valuable than all three of ours combined. So we might have to double her income and send her a free first class ticket to resolve her patience. But she understands energy and impact and has mastered the inner calmness. I could tell as she's waiting there. Michael, let's do this again. I'll come on your show. Obviously, we'll all do more together, keep helping people, making more money, help more people and have more fun. We'll see you soon.

Sounds great, brother. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I'm bringing Chicharito. That's a promise.

I can't wait to meet him. I'm serious. That's exciting. Seriously.

Super cool.

Right on. Thank you.

See you guys.

All right, we have another doctor in the house. It's amazing. This one, you know, is our biggest cleanup hitter, because by anything, I think this is most in our wheelhouse plane. And I don't know why we keep on getting all the Columbia people, but I'll. I'll take them. I should have been a student there with all the great professors that they have, but her. His new book is Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. And if that doesn't say it all for you and I, but how about this? How your five core energies hold the key to success. I am so blessed to have Dr. Hitendra Wadha here with us. Wadwa here with us, founder of the Mentor Leadership Institute, and, doctor, thank you so much for joining us.

David, great pleasure to be here. I was enjoying the last few minutes of the previous episode, and, you know, it was. You're not the first one who's confused my gender. You know, we. We have a name that ends with a draw, which I think people just assume that Alexandra and Sandra and Nichendra must be coming to the same. Same place.

I know you're in my green room, and I was like, I can't see anyone here. And then to bring you on, I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is great. But more importantly, you would have fit in with the first two guests, because I wish you were here at that time. You talk about these four core energies, and I talk about a genetic and energetic. Oh, five. Sorry, five fingers. Yeah, yeah, five. I'm.

I'm.

I'm on top of it. For our last guest here, five core energies. I want to know, because obviously there's a lot of inner mastery philosophies, theories even within spirituality and religion, being able to do the inner work. But a lot of people ignore. They talk about genetic inheritance. They don't talk about the energetic inheritance. And I assume that you believe within the context of the five core energies, that we actually inherit energy somehow.

Well, it's a very thought provoking question. So I believe that, first of all, there is energy in the universe and that the human body is a receptacle, a vehicle through which we can source that energy, let it flow through us, and then into the actions and engagements that we have in the world. So to that end, you know, when you call. When you talk about the inheritance of energy, it's not merely something that perhaps, you know, we've been bounded by based on conditions of nature and nurture. Right. What we have inherited physiologically, you know, from our parents and. Or the conditions in which we were born and Raised, of course. Absolutely. Those do end up taking us down certain paths of habitual ways of thinking, habitual ways of feeling and reacting and engaging and behaving and valuing and intending and all of that. At the same time, you know, just the notion of thinking about yourself through the lens of energy gives you certain agency, gives you certain fluidity, certain capacity to recognize that you and I, we're in a state of flow. We are always works in progress. There are things we can evolve and do today that may not be true. Yesterday, as one exemplar of that, the leader of a certain organization that I have a lot of fondness for and respect for, he was greeting people, the members of that community, at the beginning of a one week event. And then at the end of that sort of inspiring welcoming address from him, he says, and I'm going to see you at the end of the week. And then he pauses and he corrects himself. He says, well, no, I'm going to see the new and improved version of you at the end of the week. Because, you know, every day I wake up and I have the capacity in me to draw in a certain kind of an energy and keep evolving and moving myself. I don't know. Does that make sense?

Yeah, makes perfect sense. Yeah, it's. What's. What strikes me is. Okay, I'm not sure what's recording here.

You can record me anytime.

Oh, there we go. That's interesting. Recording stopped. Okay. Oh, that was a zoom thing. That's coming up. Never mind. Okay. What I'm struck with here is the. The notion of how do. Who do I need to be in order to step into that future state. Yeah, yeah. So it's a practice in actually being not doing.

Ah, very beautiful.

Fair assessment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. That's very beautiful. See, Blaine, I mean, I. I'm blessed to have grown up in a culture like India, which is extremely, you know, profound and rich and beautiful on the inside and can be a little bit messy on the outside.

Yeah.

And then I migrate to the United States and we have created a culture here which is extremely rich and perfectionist oriented and beautiful on the outside and can be a little bit messy on the inside. And I have felt incomplete in both cultures until I see them, you know, unified, until I feel like the inner shoulder be enriched and then should inform the outer. So our human behavior on the outside, you know, if left unto itself without a connection with our being on the inside, our energies on the inside, our emotions and our spirit on the inside. It's A little bit vacuous and a little bit performative and a little bit inauthentic, you know, but on the other hand, I also have huge respect for the kinds of practices that those of us who've been very behaviorally engaged, sensorily engaged in the outer affairs of life. Right. You know, I was talking, you know, I was listening to you talk so fondly about. About sports. You know, I mean, there is an outer discipline to sports. Right. Which, you know well. But if you don't connect it to the inner, then then it's kind of like only half the story. Right. As you know from sports psychology and things. Right. And so, yeah. So to your. To your point about the human being side, I celebrate that, appreciate that, exhort that, you know, to executives and students that you got to die within, you got to connect with your spirit, and yet at the same time, then seek to harmonize your life on the outside with it. It's not just about you going on a certain meditation retreat and then kind of like leading your life the way you've always led, thinking that that's going to just magically give you energy and insight and prosperity. No. You got to find a way to, in the moment, in every moment, be sort of that samurai warrior.

Mm.

And doctor. I created a character called the Ferocious Buddha because it was interesting how both of those cultures are the inverse of each other. And the ferocious Buddha seems to be one of the most difficult things in either culture. And I've been blessed to spend time in India and study theta meditation, quantum healing. I ran a house in Kolkata, which is not your normal place, and work with Eros Entertainment and Sanjay Honduja.

Yeah.

What I realized was, even there, which I thought was a higher frequency of a community in a culture that there's a difficult time reconciling the two. And this reconciliation is why I'm so attracted to time, because I see the idea of being ferocious every day and allowing the outcomes to happen and also having faith that the outcomes that happen, we just aren't capable of understanding. So they must be in protection and promotion of myself, a better outcome, even though, you know, you're looking at someone that, for example, went bankrupt and lost over $100 million, not the outcome that I thought from going to law school and business school and being a good person and working hard and doing everything my mom told me to do, that that would be the outcome financially that I would have experienced. And it took time for me to realize that. I just don't know what I don't know what are some of the tips that you give? Because you're reconciling inner masters mat mastery with outer success. And there has to be a time component for us to realize and define success from the inner mastery that we're incapable of truly acknowledging instantaneously.

Yeah, yeah. Well, look, your path is very remarkable, unique and uninspiring. And to that end, I, you know, I recognize that, that in having this conversation, I mean, I could, I could just as well benefit from just keeping quiet and listening to you and questioning you. But, you know, I owe you the responsibility of being able to offer a few, few things for your, for our listeners here. And so I'm happy to weigh in, but, but I, Yeah, I mean, I know I'd be so enriched just by learning even more, David, about that moment in your, in your life and beyond. So the. There's a practice here that in some ways has been, you know, really honored in so many of the world's great traditions. Right. Which is this notion of non attachment. And if I look at sports, I mean, it's, it's something that I find, for example, people like John Wooden really like, you know, exemplify.

Right.

And so. Yeah, there you go. The Wooden pyramid. Yeah, exactly. So, so, as I'm sure you know, also seen and perhaps even spoken with your listeners about, he, he would tell his players that I don't, I don't care if you win or lose, you know, but I do care about whether when you leave, you know, the court at the end of the game, you felt that you played your best game. Yeah, and I've analyzed every, like, chunk, you know, of that teaching from him because I'm like, why did he say that, that, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you felt that you played your best game. Why did he not say I. What I care about is not when you lose, but whether I, as your coach, you know, felt that you played your best game. And I felt, you know, he's actually right. Like, essentially, let's say if I'm a player and I'm injured on a certain day, how much is that injury painting me? How much damage is it doing to my ankle? I mean, how would John Wooden know sitting there right at the end of the day, you know, the only court of justice, so to say that we have to train ourselves to be answerable to, is the one from within, you know, is the one from within. We have to be honest with our own selves and we have to be our best coach and our best guide and the Accountability partner, you know, and the inspirational source, you know, for our own self, because we know ourselves much better than anybody from the outside could ever, ever. And so to that end, I love this idea that, hey, listen, hold yourself up to that standard, which is like, did you play your best game? And then you leave the results, you know, to some higher power. Right? And then he said, like, you know, my sense is that if you keep doing that, that My sense that we'll actually end up in a pretty good place. Right? And of course, you know, and I know he ended up in a pretty good place.

Very good. And one of my mentors as well. And idols, we. We will have you back. We have many shows for you. Dr. Hindred Hintendra Wadwa. He's the founder of Mentor Leadership Institute. Everyone go get his new book, inner Mastery with the outer impact there. I will tell you that from John Wooden. I have several statements, either I tell my mom or my own children, but one of them, when I coach kids that I live by, is, do your best. Not my best or my expectation of best. Do your best, Learn lessons and have fun. Everything that you do, activities that you're playing and paying and. And sleeping. Even if you do your best, learn lessons and have fun, you will end up in a better place, a better situation than even you can imagine and hope for. It'll just take time. Doctor, we really enjoyed. You're a great cleanup hitter. Since you held to our sports analogies, we definitely want to have you back. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, too. It's a real honor and pleasure to be here with you and your listeners, and I'm grateful for all the good work you've done. Thank you.

Blessings.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you, Blaine.

Awesome.

All right, real quick. I know we went way over, but the guests were so extraordinary, and I even see Gigi. Love this conversation. Definitely needed to hear this today.

For me, we could have kept this one going a lot longer. Boy. So one of my takeaways is exactly that. When there is interest, I lose track of time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, you talk about, you know, be interested or interesting. When I'm interested, time does kind of stand still because I'm in the presence of something that I value, and that's time and reality are very much joined at the hip. Yeah. If what I'm dealing with is so far in the future or so far in the fast past, time will just stretch unagonizingly long. When I'm in the present with what it is that I'm enjoying and Appreciating time stands still. There's more than enough at that point. So that's. That's my takeaway today.

Well, time was flying today, that's for sure. With not only the four extraordinary guests, but with Blaine Bartlett. Blaine bartlett.com and I will tell you that my takeaway was that comment by Gigi because I love the conversation. I know, because it resonated with me that that's what I needed. When it resonates with me, I know it's a heightened level of intuitive awareness that maybe not right now, but sometime in the future. The lessons that I've taken away from you and the great guests that we've had are going to show their purpose to make my life better, to promote me and protect me, to allow that blessing and purpose to come through me for others. Everybody join. Blaine Bartlett. Blaine bartlett.com. he is my mentor, coach and teacher. It's hard to find all three in one beautiful human being, but I've found it between the bees. Blaine Bartlett. Thanks for joining me. I will see you soon. And I don't see you. Make sure you represent. I'm still waiting for them to start naming kids David in Africa. They're all the. We got all Blaines and all Cynthia's. Someday there'll be one David in Africa.

I. I really don't want to get in the middle of that process.

Fair enough.

Okay.

I love it, my friend. Take care. Incredible Blaine Bartlett. Blaine bartlett.com we are so blessed. We'll be in Orlando in New York next week. Come and visit me there. We'll do a meetup in Orlando and in New Jersey in hoboken. We're keynoting propellify and having a VIP dinner and meetup there in New Jersey. You just got to join my text community, get all the alerts because we're going to be in 23 cities in the next 30 days. 23 cities with people like chicharito and Tom Brady and Drew Brees and incredible people like Mike Tanenbaum and Claude Silver, Eric Coleman. That's just to name a few. I can't remember them all. That's why I joined my own text community so they can alert me on where I'm supposed to be. Look, I got people expecting me on their shows and they're expecting me on mine. I needed a text to tell me and so did he, where we're going to be. Come see us in Houston, Orlando, Mexico City, many others, San Diego, New Jersey. The list goes on and on. But most importantly, what you learned today, be more interested than interesting. Be kind to your future self and do good deeds. We'll see you tomorrow. Thank you, everyone.