Episode #552 - Infinity Levels And Raising Expectations with Dennis Yu

Welcome to this edition of the million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

You know, it's hard, frustrating and confusing, draining to start a business, you know, to make money and build something profitable that actually works. And so what I try to sprinkle out there to people on the way up is that success will be more, it'll be so much more worth it. The price you pay will be so much more worth it to you once you get fight your way over the top of the hill and get into what you think right now would be a dream life. But it will probably be mind blowingly better than you can possibly imagine right now while you're going through the grind and grunt your way to glory stage. And so would you mind sharing just a couple of the kind of cool experiences that you've had been able to enjoy and meet experience, event, travel, location, whatever that for. You were special because we all, we know the resorts we go to and all that, but they're really extra cool. Some things that even surprised even you.

Yeah, I have a lot of doctors and lawyers as friends who have a lot of money and are very successful. And one of the patients of my friend Dr. Lyons who invented this oxygen water 20 years ago, she was the queen of Malaysia, which is a Muslim country and she had a stroke, she wasn't able to walk or talk. The tabloids basically thought that was it. But she made a miraculous recovery. So she was able to walk without a cane and she was able to talk again, which was surprising because the doctors really couldn't understand it. But it was because of the treatment that she went through for my friend who was the doctor. So she threw this party that was a week long. We flew into Kuala Lumpur and I met kings and queens of other dictator countries from Africa and Southeast Asia. So, you know, like these other countries, maybe they're democracies, claim to be democracies, but there's basically a few people who have all this money and power and then these other people are poor. So I got to spend, I haven't spent a lot of time with leaders of other countries. Yeah, but it's so neat when you're able to meet leaders. Like I have like some of these countries I forgot were actually countries. I had to like google them and see who these people were. You know, there was a ton of security, you can imagine. But it was so cool just spending a week with royalty and just seeing how they behave. Because I've spent a lot of time with billionaires in Silicon Valley because that's kind of where, you know, I got my start. But there's a level above the Silicon Valley billionaires, because the Silicon Valley billionaires are like always moving and meetings and busy and like that. But the level above that, Larry, I call that infinity money.

And also T shirts and jeans too. They don't have royal thrones and gold everything, but keep going.

We're walking through the royal palace and the servants say, anything that you see that's yellow is solid gold. Like, wow, that's impressive. And the first meal that we had there, I remember it started at 7pm and they brought out the most amazing food. The servants were just bringing out dish after dish and it was so good. I was like, wow, this is like these lobsters and shrimps and like you can imagine, like they have infinity money so they can eat whatever they want. I mean, this is just wild. And I was eating all this food, it was so good. And I just looked around and other people were hardly eating at all and thinking, you guys are idiots. This food is so good. What do you. You guys are so dumb. But then after about 40 minutes in, I realized I was full. And then the food kept going for hours, like another two or three hours. So I had to. So when I stopped eating because I realized I was full, the queen sat kind of diagonally to me and she glared at me. And I thought, oh, no, this is offensive because if you stop eating, then it's said to go to the bathroom, you know, kind of take care of business so I could continue to eat again. And. But then I learned my lesson because then the next day we went to lunch at the previous queen's place. And then I'm like, okay, I know how this goes. This is going to be like a three hour thing where they just have to like, they just. The servants just keep like bringing out all the food. I think that that's like what you do because you have to show like, you're right, you have to show like, you. So like we just went from meal to me, and every one of these meals is like three hours long. And then after the meal, you know what we do? We pull up YouTube on the big screen and we start singing karaoke, like 80s karaoke or the Beatles. And here they are. This is a Muslim country where they sort of speak English. I mean, they speak English. All the royalty and business people speak English, but the other people, like barely Speak English. And I'm singing Let It Be with other people in the royal family and just having a great old time and just they're just pulling up stuff on YouTube. And we, that first night we went until 2am so this is what I spent the whole week. I didn't know what to expect. But the whole week with royalty. We just ate food, sang karaoke and then hung out. There was no business meet. Now every once in a while someone would come in and they like whisper, you know, some sort of business transaction for like two minutes. And then that person would scurry off and that was it. And then we're back to eating and karaoke. But the whole week I felt like we were just partying the whole time. And we went to bed late every night, like 2am or whatever. And we wouldn't meet again until noon because then it was time to eat lunch again. I'm like, how do these people live? But then I realized they have infinity money. They can do whatever they want. Why would they want to work? They own everything. That I was staying at the nicest hotel. There's a bunch of five star hotels. It's like New York, right? This is not some like third world place. It's like a modern downtown sky. They have the, you know, the KL Tower and the Petronas Tower that at the time, a few years ago it was the tall. The two tallest buildings in the world, right? Or like the Burj and these other ones came up and I was staying in this fancy five. It wasn't the Ritz, but it was something like that. It was, it was this huge suite that I had because why not? And it was all being paid for by them. Anyway, so the sister, the queen came up to me, Nora Abdullah, she said, oh, so how do you like the hotel? I'm like, that's pretty nice. I have a huge suite on the top floor. And she said, oh, I own that building. Oh, cool. And then we were looking out, she said, I own that one and that one and that one. I also own that one. And basically like she owns half of downtown. I'm like, that's pretty cool. And then she said, oh, and I'm looking at opening another one. Do you think I should open it in my next one in London or do you think I should open in Paris? Like, I am like, that is like multiple levels above me for this sort of recommendation thing. But like, I like London. So then we hung out in London. We were at, we were at Harrods, you know, Harrods and knights.

Right?

Yeah. And we were having tea and she's like, yeah, I think, I think we'll open another one in London. I am not in a position to advise you. I stay in a lot of hotels, but who am I to, like, determine where you should open your next one, you know?

Yeah, well, she's got infinity money. I. I kind of expect you to say, why not both.

Oh, yeah, I wasn't thinking. I mean, it caught me so off guard because when was the last time someone said, where do you think we should place our next hotel?

Next five star hotel?

Yeah, I mean, this big like 60 story thing that's, you know, a fantastic five star hotel right in the middle of downtown, you know?

Yeah. And so, yeah, I don't think I can top that. But the. I. I was wondering what the entertainment was going to be with all those kings and queens for a week.

So they did fly in other celebrity musicians and folks like that, which was fun.

Yeah.

But the main thing was just karaoke. They just want to be among themselves. Right. They didn't bring in a lot of these other outsiders. These are people that have known each other for a long time. And I noticed these families are really, really tight. So it was a special honor for me to be invited because I'm not a family member, but because I'm good friends with Dr. Lyons, I get to meet. And so after that first night, the next night we were with Richard Ling, who's the coconut water billionaire. So this guy, he has the factories that process like, you know, all the coconut stuff gets processed in the same and then it's like marketed or whatever. He had stage four lung cancer and the doctor gave him just a few months left to live. And he. Of course, when you have infinity money, you can do like whatever you want. You can buy whatever treatment that you want. But at that point, it's like all the money in the world. It's like Steve Jobs dying. It doesn't matter when you have all the money in the world. But he also went to this cocoon therapy, had a fantastic recovery, and he held a party too. So he rented out the KL Tower, which is kind of like the Space Needle, basically, but a super tall building. And we celebrated. And then he invited his other friends. And so I got to meet all these other people that I have no business meeting. But why not? We're all hanging out. It's fun. It's not like this conference room. Like, I was thinking, like in the American Airlines days or Yahoo days where like there's Cubicles and there's conference rooms and there's like, meetings and protocol and bosses and status and. But here we're just all hanging out. It's great. It's awesome. And so I. I prefer hanging out with people like that versus, like, being in a conference room wearing a suit and going to the meeting agenda and having a zoom call. I don't want to do anything like that. Yeah.

And what. But your takeaway, what did you notice or did you notice anything about yourself that influenced you, you know, afterwards from that experience, that exposure, you know, that, you know, radiating, you know, those levels beyond that most people are never exposed to, but just being carried up there and exposed to it for a long period of time, it wasn't just like, you know, you saw a movie or something, but.

Yeah. Well, Larry, it's like flying first class for the first time. Right?

Right.

Because it's, you know, when you fly. When you fly coach from New York to London, that kind of sucks, you know, because it's usually a red eye and you wake up all tired. That's why they call it the red eye. And then you experience first class for the first time, and they make a bed for you and you get to sleep and they make this nice meal for you, and they ask you what you want on your Sunday, or they bring out the caviar card. Like, this is kind of nice, right?

Yeah.

And so being around people like that causes you to raise your expectations.

Yeah.

Makes you want to fly first class every time, because why not, Right?

Right.

It makes you realize, like, you know what? Fine. I might feel that I'm successful because I've made money doing certain things, but these other people are several levels beyond me. And every time. Every time you level up and you think you've made it, then you see it's just a false hill. Then you see that there's another summit that you didn't see that's even further up ahead. So every time I've leveled up, I see that there is even further levels that I didn't see. So I'm always in the middle. Like other people think I'm successful or they'll, you know, blow smoke up my ass. But there's so many levels above me, it's insane.

Unbelievable. Thanks so much for your. Your time, Dennis. I could say for some reason I was gonna. Is there any questions that you wanna ask or that I haven't asked that you wanna address?

I think it's great spending time with you. I'm curious to see, you know, based on what I'm sharing because you've interviewed so many other people that have been successful in different ways. How does my experience compare with what you've heard from other people?

Yours, let's see, yours is a little bit more. It's interesting in that your experience, first of all, you've accomplished a lot, and so why. It's. I'm very picky about who I interview.

Well, thank you.

I'm honored.

I'm super honored.

It's my weakness. I'm not a good enough interviewer to get good stuff out of somebody who's never learned anything, you know, and they've never accomplished anything. And so somehow I feel like I'm trying to squeeze blood out of a stone, you know, but if I get around someone like you, I. My, It's. First of all, it's so much easier for me because I ask a question and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It rolls, rolls off. And what I would tell you that. And by the way, in my real life, you know, I coach million dollar earners, so I'm used to this type thing. But what I. I like about you is that you cover technical things in a personable, understandable way. You know, there's a lot of terms that go out there that might have had some people stretch, but, you know, they need to be stretched. You know, if you're running a company, you need to know these terms. You need to get to where you hear them enough that you're familiar with.

Them, especially when a measure business. Probably important to know, right?

Absolutely. If you want to get big. The thing is, if you want to get big, this opens people's eyes up to how you can get big and how you can do the decisions that allow you to get big and stay on track. And so I thought it was. I was amazed as I was listening how entertaining you were and interesting. Even when we got into some of the technical questions that I asked, by the way, you know, I asked and I wanted the information. But how you kept. And I was thinking as you were answering is like, that's how he got his standing ovation at Toastmasters. Because you have a way of seeing the issues in a way where you can communicate the humanity of it and the necessity of it, the simplicity of it, the logic of it in a very entertaining way. And it's unique. That is a unique type thing. Yeah. I think you did absolutely incredibly well. And I judge that only by my enjoyment of your talk.

Well, I had fun. I appreciate you, Larry.

Yeah. So I'm looking forward to us Talking more in the future. If people want to follow up with you and really get. I mean, do you work with people, companies?

I do in certain circumstances. I like to see companies that already have something that's working well and they want to scale it because our whole thing is analytics. So if they want an audit on their analytics or if their advertising or tracking isn't quite right, that's something that our team can come in and look at. I coach a number of executives, just. I don't even want to do this. It's not even like a thing I offer. You can't. You won't see it advertised anywhere. But enough people to approach me. It's probably the same thing for you. Enough people approach me that I'll coach them. But it's also relatively expensive for most entrepreneurs to have.

Well, the thing is, if you probably do it like I do, like if you got involved in something, just be for the fun of it, you know, and the new experiences and a chance to spend time with somebody that, like you said, you know, the people that you're involved in these other projects, you know, you're doing that for the fun of it, you know, create a million jobs and all of the. Know that it's like, what can I. You know, it's like when we had a. An aborted, by the way, due to financial regulations, we. We never pulled it off. But we went to. Our company was going to start a marketing, financial services marketing organization over in UK in 2003. But people said, well, why are you doing that? You know, And I said, new experiences, new new friends, new information and basically new. And so the older you get, the easier it is to turn into a negative sob. It is because you see things go wrong and you know how things work. You know, I've seen it all before. And the hardest thing for all of us at all levels is to keep ourselves excited about what we're doing. And my compliments to you for doing such a good job of doing that for yourself, keeping yourself excited and energized, because I think you're going to do even bigger things in the future.

I'm just getting started there.

I want to stay in touch with you and get a chance to hear about it down the road. Thanks much.

Thanks, Larry. Maybe we'll see you in Palm beach next.

Yeah, if you get a chance, we will. Make sure you have my number and we'll go to Mar a Lago. We'll go wherever you want to go.

I've never been to Mar a Lago.

I just had breakfast over there with my son this morning, so I'm a lifetime member. So let's do it. Yeah. All right, man. If you. In fact, if you get an extra day while you're there, we'll do it this week.

Oh, shoot. I got to see about that. But I'm back here all the time. Every month I'm back here, so we'll make it work. And Palm beach is easy to get to for me.

Yeah, let's definitely do it. Okay. We'll make sure you have my number.

All right. Yeah.

Take care. Thank you, Dennis. Bye.

Thanks, Larry. Talk soon.

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