DO THIS With Your Money To Build Wealth & NEVER GO BROKE | Gino Wickman & Lewis Howes

Six essential traits, visionary, passionate, problem solver, driven, risk taker, and responsible. And if you have those things, you were born with them, they're ingrained in you, then I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really?

Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes. I'm curious, it seems like everyone wants to be an entrepreneur over the last five to seven years, kind of with digital media portraying this luxurious lifestyle, the entrepreneurial lifestyle of how simple it is to launch a product and build a you know, nine figure business overnight. And then a lot of people do it and realize how demanding it is on their time, how challenging it is, how stressful it can be and overwhelming, how to manage people, how to promote a product, how to build social media, how to build an email list, how to navigate software, how to deal with people coming on and then leaving after you've trained them for years. All these different challenges that come about. Legal fees, accounting, bookkeeping, all the stuff they don't teach you in normal school. What do you think is the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs make? Is it launching too soon? Is it launching without a game plan? Is it hiring the wrong people? What would you say is one of the main mistakes that most entrepreneurs make when they get started?

I'm going to try and give the shortest answer I can, but it's hard to do, and I'll do my best. So for 30 years, I have obsessed about entrepreneurs, what makes them successful, help them become successful, And after all of that experience, I wrote a book called Entrepreneurial Leap to address exactly your question. Okay. And what Entrepreneurial Leap does is everything in my power to talk most people on the planet out of becoming an entrepreneur.

Why is that?

Because most are not cut out to be an entrepreneur. My math says about 4% of the population has what it takes to be a true entrepreneur.

What's a true entrepreneur?

Six essential traits, visionary, passionate, problem solver driven, Risk taker and responsible. And if you have those things, you were born with them, they're ingrained in you, then you're an entrepreneur and this is right for you. And then the quick math would say that 96% of you probably should not do this. Doesn't mean you can't be a lifestyle entrepreneur. Doesn't mean you can't be a one-person show. So that's, you can't be a sole proprietor. Doesn't mean you can't have a side hustle. Those are all fine.

But to build a business with people.

Oh, you got to have those six essential traits. And so I wrote that book to save lives. I'm trying to sell it. Don't do this. I'm trying to help anyone out there that thinks they want to do this that does not have the six essential traits. I'm trying to save them 10 years of hell because that's what's going to happen. And then one last little point is with that passion and with that book, there's three parts. So what I do first is confirm that they have those six essential traits and there's an assessment to do that. Then I show them a glimpse of the life. Then I show them a path for how to become successful. I think I can help eliminate half the mistakes they're going to make. They'll still make the other half, but that's the really long answer to your question because it's not this one thing they didn't have a business plan. It's not this one thing. There's more going on there, but it It all starts with if you don't have the six essential traits. My humble opinion, one person's opinion with.

A lot of experience in this.

And you've worked with- Tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. Exactly, and I hope somebody proves me wrong. Okay, I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong that you are born with these. In other words, maybe you can develop these traits. You can't develop a trait, but maybe you can. So prove me wrong out there, but I'm just trying to help because I see it and I see the ones.

That fail and I see the ones that succeed.

And it's scientific.

I think, so what I'm hearing you say is if you want to build a side hustle, if you want to start an Etsy shop, if you want to do consulting on the side, if you want to make a product and put it up on Amazon and be a one-man show, you can do all that. That's what I'm hearing you say. But in order to, what's the difference between doing that where you're making side income or maybe good money as a solopreneur, what's the difference between that and an entrepreneur then? Is it you've crossed a threshold of building a team? Is it you've heard a certain revenue?

What does that mean? Yeah, so there's another way I like to describe that. So I'm going to answer it with this context first and then we'll go into a little more depth in what you're asking. So I describe it as a range, the entrepreneurial range. And on this side are the self-employed people that are one-person shows. And on this side are the true entrepreneurs. And so I always describe it as, you know, if you have handy skills, okay? You can become a handyman or a handywoman, charge 60 bucks an hour, make a hundred a year and be busy for the rest of your life, that ain't such a bad gig. That's total freedom. You're self-employed. But if you have these six essential traits, you're not gonna be able to stop yourself from thinking, wow, if I go hire somebody for 25 bucks an hour, I can go do that job or find another job and all of a sudden you will find yourself with a construction company. The point is, yes, when you start to cross the second half of the range and go into this true entrepreneur range where you're gonna have people and business and grow and all these other things, it's There's so much coming at you. You have to have a certain wiring to handle all of that and it's not for everybody. You described it better than I could. All those things you rattled off that an entrepreneur deals with, it's all of those things and it's not for everybody. And the E-Myth, for those that haven't read it out there, is the perfect book to read because the point he's making is most entrepreneurs have this entrepreneurial seizure and they think they're entrepreneurs and so they're great technicians and they think they can go start a business as that technician. And it just takes so much more than just, Hey, I could go build a 100 person company. So that's the best answer I have for you. But dig a little deeper if I'm not being too...

It's interesting because I think, I don't think I was meant to be an entrepreneur early on. I think it scared me. I was like, this is, you know, I would look at leaders. I would look at entrepreneurs who are running companies who started the company. I was like, I don't know how they did this. This seems like they have some superpower, some skills. that I could never get to. I remember as an athlete, I look at my life in sports terms, as an athlete, I never wanted to be the quarterback or the main guy. I was like, just throw me the ball, let me make a play.

Yeah.

Let put me in a position to use my skills and my roles to make the best play, to help the vision of our team win. That was always my thing. So I never wanted to take on all the responsibility and the weight of being an entrepreneur. For years, I was like, I want to keep it small in terms of just have a couple people on the team, contractors, because the idea of having 20, 50, 100 people on a team seemed like just managing so much energy and weight that I was like, I don't know how to do that. I think then after years and years of doing it that way and realizing I won't be able to scale past a certain limit, I was like, okay, I just need to figure out the tools and find the right people who can take on those other things, the things that I don't want to do. And so your book and your work has been really helpful in helping me transform the mindset to break through that wall. But I don't think it would have been for me if a few things didn't happen in my life. My dad had an accident when I was like 21 and he was always the one who was like, hey, just come work with me and you have your backup plan after your sports dream is done. And I didn't have the financial backing or the spiritual, the mental backing or that's coaching and support. and a few other things happened in my life where it kind of forced me into it. But I would think I would have been super happy just working with a great team that had resources to me to use my talents to make a bigger impact.

Yeah, you know, I'd love to say this to that. It prompts three thoughts. Okay, number one is you were right to be scared. It's scary because here's the other reality. Even if you have the six essential traits, you still have a 50-50 chance you're gonna fail. So even if you have them, it's not like you get to, it's a guaranteed success. So you had every right to be scared. Number two, everybody that has these six essential traits, you don't become an entrepreneur at 18. For some people, it's 18, 25, 35, 45, 55. And so it's when you're ready. And then the last point is, yes, most people become an entrepreneur out of some crisis, you know, so they got fired and all of a sudden they're forced to go make an income.

So you, the six job Also, I.

Couldn'T get a job.

You were forced. It's 2008. I remember that time.

And I was like, many entrepreneurs were spawned in 2008 and 2009 just as they're being spawned right now. Yeah, exactly. So it was the perfect storm for you. The timing was perfect.

And so that's, you know, that's my response. I think I would have been super happy with, like, if there was a great leader that I was inspired by on a mission to, like, make an impact. And he was like, we can use your talents and skills. and plug you into our system. You get to work with the team, you get to use your talents and help us reach our goals. I don't know, this is awesome. But there was nothing like that for me available at the time. So I created the thing I wish that I could be a part of. And that's what it came from.

Yeah, and for what it's worth for me, I didn't know I was an entrepreneur until 29, which is still pretty young. But I, so my life from 18 to 29 was this mess that in there you couldn't possibly find what I was or what my abilities were. Graduated high school with a solid 2.3 GPA. Academics are not for me. Did not go to college. I was not going to go to college. All my friends went off to college. Went to work in a machine shop. Saved up a bunch of money. I was going to become a business owner. I was going to start a corporate travel agency. Went and worked for one. Hated everything about it. Started buying and selling real estate. Got into real estate. Took over a family business. Then found some mentors, coaches, classes. All of a sudden, after all of that, when I look back, it's like I can see all the little lessons and learnings that got me to where I was, but oh my God, it was the most terrifying, scary, insecure period of my life. But out of that, you know, spawned an entrepreneur.

Yeah, but that was 10 years of learning and growing.

-And being lost and just trying to, you know, feel your weight.

-What do you think was the greatest lesson you learned in those 10 years that supported you in becoming an entrepreneur that could thrive.

Yeah. You know, the thing that just comes right to the surface is hard work. I mean, it's just, I just learned to work. I love to work. And it's, and even an Entrepreneur's Leap, as we're talking about that book still, it's, I say it over and over and over and over. You gotta work hard. It requires, nothing is ever gonna replace hard work. Now, as we get into some of this other content, I assume we'll get there. You know, like when we talk about the EOS life, you ultimately get to decide your 100%, the amount of time you're gonna devote to your craft and your work. But in that time, you've got to bust your ass. Okay? Nothing's ever gonna replace hard work.

What happens if you don't work hard?

You're just not going to get the results. Or you're not gonna get them as fast or you're not gonna learn as fast. So there's so much that goes into working hard. What if there's an entrepreneur listening or.

Someone that wants to be an entrepreneur that says, Gosh, I just don't want to work that hard. I want to have a nice little, you know, business that just makes me 100 grand a year, a few hundred grand a year, million dollars a year. But I don't want to work like.

Two, three hours a day. Yeah, I say to you, oh, I wish I knew how that felt. And I am so envious of you because that is contentment. And I wish I knew what contentment felt like. I hear it's nice. So if you're out there and you say, that's all I want to make is 100 grand. I don't want to build an empire. Then go be that sole proprietor, one-person show. There are so many ways to make 100 grand. Like I said, handyman, handywoman, you know, to pick an example that's non-tech. If you have handy skills, you can literally make 100 grand a year, be completely independent. So I say to you, hallelujah for that.

Exactly. I just moved into a new place this last weekend and I had a task rabbit come mount the TV. This guy comes, he's probably 25, 20, 24, 25, maybe 26. And I'm asking him, I'm like, I'm just curious. I'm like, hey, you know, what made you get into this? He goes, I was working at Starbucks making, I don't know, 16, 17 bucks an hour here in LA, whatever the minimum wage is now. And he said, I did this because I heard a friend was making six figures hanging TVs. And I go, what's the most you've made in a day? He goes, I make about 500 bucks a day. And I, you know, but You're running around town, you're mountain stuff, you're going into places. It's not like maybe the most glamorous thing.

But this is my exact point. That opportunity exists. And then real quick story, I have a friend. So my daughter had a friend, we became relative friends with their parents. As they grew up through high school, he worked at Ford. But he always had a dream to be a handyman. He just wanted to do that kind of stuff. And so here he is today making his 60 bucks an hour. This guy glows. He's so happy. Making more money than he made at Ford. And he's just in heaven doing his thing as a one-person show.

I think the key of the EOS life, which I think is really great to talk about these distinctions, is to do what you love. People can do something and make six figures, but maybe it's not what they love. It's like you can do what you, you can make six figures, but are you doing what you love? Are you doing it with people you love? Are you making a difference and an impact using your skills and tools on the people around you, which is something I talk about all the time. Are you getting compensated accordingly? Maybe you are, so you're doing one of the five distinctions. and you still have time for other passions, maybe you have that second one as well. But if you're not able to create all five of these in your lifestyle, doing what you love as an entrepreneur or a member of a team with people you enjoy being around, making an impact. It's funny because, you know, I talk about that on our team all the time. We're here to serve people. We're here to change lives. We're here to create meaningful information to help people improve the quality of their life. we're here to make a difference. And every week we talk about the testimonials and the impact we're making as a team. And I'm like, if you're on board to make an impact, then you're in the right place. If you're on board just to make money and you don't care what you're on who you're helping, then this isn't the right place for you. Got it. Our goal is that you're able to do all five of these. You know, I think that's really cool. You got a lot of people aren't.

Able to do that. Yeah. And if I may, because I really So, I'm a teacher at heart, okay? I teach. And we started with this conversation about, you know, should you become an entrepreneur? How do you become an entrepreneur? And as we work our way through the content, we're jumping to this EOS life thing, which I think is so great because we're bookending this, for lack of a better term. But I want to, as a teacher, anchor this, okay? So, I want to say in a nutshell, it's five points because I fear your audience is so damn smart, they're going to miss the point. Okay, okay. So, it's five points. Living your ideal life, this EOS life as we call it at EOS Worldwide, you said it but I want to say it again. It's doing what you love with people you love, making a huge difference, getting compensated appropriately with time for other passions. I just want to say this to that, okay? Everybody out there, it is That simple, okay? And so, everybody's... There's like, they're reading a thousand different books, they're trying a thousand different things, they're working on all their baggage and all that stuff. But what I want to say is, for some people, they're not quite grasping it or they're not quite doing it because of one simple mechanism I need to flip in their brains. -What's that? -Yes. And that is they don't feel they deserve it. -Ooh, the deservedness. -So, I don't know if your guests are allowed to look in a camera. -Yes. -But I say to all of you watching and all of you listening, You deserve it. So this thing that happened to you, it usually happened at seven, that you feel unworthy. So you deserve it. And so the second you realize, I do deserve to live my ideal life, I beg you, it's five things. And the way we describe it is these five things, I already said them.

This is whether you're an entrepreneur or non-entrepreneur.

It doesn't matter. And the tools are so simple because it's one tool for each of those points. But the point is, I get you to measure it. And so I get you to literally say, where are you on a scale of one to ten with this one, with this one, with this one? And it's about moving the needle. And so if you're sitting there at a five out of ten and doing what you love, all you need to do is move the needle. If you can get to a six a year from now, that is a quantum leap toward living your ideal life. And for some people, they'll get there in a year. For some people, it'll take them 20 years. But as long as you're moving in that direction, It's heaven. Impossible. You just don't feel you deserve it and you do. So anyway, for what that's worth.

So how do people get to a place of knowing they deserve to have all five?

Well, it's, you know, so again, it's when I'm doing delivering this talk to an audience and I say that, that you deserve it, there are literally tears. Okay, so I can't tell you what that thing is for you. so I am trying to control my profanity. It flows out of me freely, but I'm going to try and control it. But we're all a little screwed up. So I don't know the parts of you that are screwed up, but you're screwed up. I'm screwed up. We're all a little screwed up. And so it's different for everyone why they don't feel they deserve this or worthy of this. So you've got to figure that out. You know, for me, I just try and take you to this belief because I think I can create a breakthrough for 25% of the audience with just what we've said so far. But I don't know, it's different for everybody. You know, for some it was that prick father and for some it was that thing that happened to them that was horrible. It's different for all of us, but you deserve it. It's time to put it in the past and move forward. It's simple, not easy, but it is that simple.

It sounds like for 10 years from, I guess, you know, 19 to 29, you were figuring all this stuff out, right? You were at different levels of each.

Oh, I was so screwed up back then. Insecure, scared, jealous, fear of failure, fear of success. I mean, I had, you know, so it's interesting because we're talking about, for me, what was 30-something years ago. And so if we look back to that and where I am today, I'm always a work in progress, you know, so. you know, always a work in progress under construction over here. But it's a quantum leap. And so this is the point about moving the needle. I try and do at least one deep experience every year that clears something else out, man. And when you hit one of those things, who does the floodgates open? But, but, but. So I just keep working on myself and clear that stuff out, whatever it is, and you just get a little bit closer, a little bit closer to listening to your soul and hearing what your soul wants. Yes. Anyway, so I don't know if that's answering the question, but.

What would you think is the one of the original or one of the first biggest internal breakthroughs you had? How old were you when you realized, I deserve more than where I'm at?

Yeah.

What was that for you? What year? And what was that breakthrough?

Yeah, so it was 32, age 32, because I always felt like I was going to be successful. There was not a question in my mind. And I've always been good at making money. And then I've always been good at losing it. So, I've been broke three times. It finally stopped around 32 but these two things are not together. But it was about vulnerability. So, at 32, I realized I saw the three-foot concrete wall that I surrounded myself within. I saw it and I said, Holy crap, I am so afraid to be myself in this world.

-Wow.

-I am so afraid. And man, when I saw that, it started to come down. It didn't come down quick. But at least I had the awareness. And I sit here today, I don't give up what you think about me.

-Right.

-But that took work. That didn't happen instantly at 32. And I would suggest you at 54 and just naturally as you get older, you start to feel more that way. But you know, just in the last five years, I've really gotten to that place. But it started at 32. when I saw it, man, and it was this thick, and then maybe a year later.

It was this thick. Yeah, yeah.

And then this thick. So the walls kept coming down. But, man, that was a chip away.

For a while, though.

That was a, that was a game changer.

That's interesting. Because that was, what, 20 something years ago, right? Or when.

So that would be 22 years ago.

So that was really evolved thinking 22 years ago, because vulnerability in the world didn't really become a more of a An open subject, at least in America, until about five, eight years ago with Brené Brown doing a lot of that work and kind of making it more mainstream and people on social media talking about their mental health and things like that and celebrities coming out about these things and athletes. When I was growing up in the 80s, I wasn't allowed to be a vulnerable young boy, you know, around peers. We grew up, you know, four hours from each other. in the Midwest if you were from. Oh, yeah.

Michigan. Yeah.

Michigan boy. And so I wasn't taught to be vulnerable, and I took that with me in sports, and then I took that with me in business. Right. I was like, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna compete. If anyone screws me over, I'm gonna.

Get back at them.

Don't mess with my money. Oh, yeah. Especially don't mess with my money. Because when you're broke and you got no money and someone steals your money, you're like, we're about to fight. You know what I mean? So I took that mentality in the first. four or five years of business and it supported me in getting to a certain level, but it hurt me internally and hurt my relationships and all these different things because I wasn't vulnerable. When I learned the power of vulnerability and just allowed myself to accept and love myself and be vulnerable with others, it changed the game for me entrepreneurially and in my life and in my peace and you know, everything here.

I get that all too well, my brother.

That's fascinating that that was a big breakthrough for you. How important is it do you think for all entrepreneurs, success in order to be vulnerable. How valuable is that? And if you're not vulnerable in today's world of business, what is on the other side of that?

Yeah, so again, here comes the teacher in me. So I want to create a little bit of context, okay? So I can't help but say this so that your audience is kind of connecting with each piece of content we talk about. Because there's five pieces of content that I have put out to the world, okay? And so the first is entrepreneurial leap, which we just talked about. The second is rocket FUEL, which is the whole visionary integrator concept. The next is traction and EOS, which is the book traction. Each one of these are a book. The fourth is the EOS life, which we've touched on. And then the fifth is 10 disciplines for managing and maximizing your energy. And the reason I want to say that is because now we're going to bring up attraction and an EOS topic. Because when I learned this vulnerability thing, I started to apply it to business. So when you talk about how advanced that was, literally, 19 years ago, I was teaching vulnerability to leadership teams. And so I had the aha. And so what I do and what I've done all these years and what we now do at EOS Worldwide is we work with leadership teams, okay? And so picture you and whatever team reports to you that heads up the major functions. These are the three to seven people at the helm of a 10 to 250 person company. And so in working with them, we describe our target market as somebody who is a team that is open-minded, respectful, growth-oriented, and willing to be vulnerable. So I've been saying that for 20 years and long answer but hopefully this makes sense. So in that work and in that aha, thank you Patrick Lencioni if you know that name because one of the things we do is I made every client read Lencioni's book the Five Dysfunctions of a Team because Lencioni brought vulnerability to the corporate world and got people to trust their fellow team members and be vulnerable with their fellow team members. So, I started teaching that, learned Lancione stuff and I'm like, oh my god, he nailed it. And as I'm recalling this, my dad is really what helped me. He was so powerful and able to be vulnerable. So, the point I'm making though is we get these leadership teams to be vulnerable, lower their guards and it's the same thing. You can watch that Teflon shell reducing and coming down and as it does, there are tears in our session rooms. It is group therapy. Again, it's business focused. We're not sitting around crying all day in these sessions. Hard charging leaders and entrepreneurs building great companies. But what we're doing is getting to realize you're all a little screwed up. None of us are perfect. Let's admit all of our strengths and weaknesses and let's go forward as a team and build something amazing here. And so we actually do this exercise every year with them in the annual where they give each other feedback. And what I need you to start or stop doing. And that's where they really kind of hit them in the soul, hit them in the heart with something they're doing that is doing more damage than good. And so that's just an example of vulnerability. But ultimately we get to a point where that three to seven person leadership team, every week in a level 10 meeting for 90 minutes, they're solving issues and it starts by them looking the other person in the eye and just saying the issue. That's scary at first, but we get to a point where they just let it fly. And it's just all just being real, open and honest, authentic, vulnerable. And so anyways, hopefully that all made sense. But that's the EOS stuff. and what we do for companies in the world.

What's available on the other side with vulnerability and what happens if the team or the leaders of the organization is invulnerable?

So the practical business guy on me can't help but say first and foremost, it's getting to where you want to go about 10 times faster. So, Being vulnerable is that. Exactly. Because think of all this baggage everybody's holding and all of these resentments and whatever all of that is, you're trying to win a race dragging 10 anvils behind you. You cut those anvils loose and you're going to fly. That's the practical side. The emotional side is that team is walking around 10, 000 pounds lighter because this, the Teflon, the concrete wall that's, I mean, you're walking around, you're carrying this thing with you everywhere you go. It's heavy, man. It's heavy. And so to let that go and be free and fully be you, your energy is bigger. You're, you're.

Anyway, I could stop. Yeah, of course. I think everyone's a work in progress, obviously. I mean, they've got to want to be a work in progress. For sure. One of the things that I, I use this platform as my personal reveal all the wrong things about me. Here's everything wrong about me. Here's all my mistakes and flaws and insecurity. And here's how I'm working to improve all these things. And I feel blessed to have people like yourself who are so smart and talented to be able to bring wisdom to where I want to grow into in all the different areas of my life. And I remember specifically, the show has been around for nine years and after six months, I know it was after a year of the show, I opened up and started being more vulnerable. And I remember right when that happened, it was a year in, people started messaging me and saying, Louis, I don't know what you're doing, but the show is just so much better.

Cool.

You know, like you're, you just seem more real and like open. I don't know what you did in your life.

Yeah.

But I went through a big transformation, you know, one of many that I'm still going through. But it was, and I realized like everything started to grow in my business when I started to bring the walls down. Here, here. And not try to be as like competitive or whatever. And shifting from competition to collaboration, I think is really powerful. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's a great way to say it because picture that five-person leadership team going from competition to collaboration, you know, going from killing each other to loving each other, you know, I mean, you can do the math on the productivity from that alone. And so that's the point I'm making is they literally get there 10 times faster. Right. Because they're not running with anvil's anymore.

Right. So you've got that one book that teaches you, okay, if you think you're an entrepreneur, go through this process.

Entrepreneur leap.

Yeah. For those that are running their businesses, because we've got a big percentage of people who are right now. And they just feel like, man, I'm just struggling. I'm stuck trying to get to the next level. I feel like I'm just not-- what I learned at one point is like, I didn't feel like I was in my zone of genius all the time. Because I was taking on so much and I wasn't trusting everyone to do the job right or I didn't bring on the right people or whatever it is. And we were talking about before that there's in the book, is attraction in the book? Yeah, attraction.

Attraction is what teaches you how to implement EOS into your business. Yes.

There's five different elements or six?

Well, that's different. Yeah, so sorry, but there's six key components. I feel so bad for your audience listening to this.

Five of these, six of those, 12 of them. Oh boy. So there's six components of traction.

Can we break those down? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And again, teacher and me just wants to anchor this. So, you know, when I talk about those five pieces of content, if you play that out, it is literally the lifeline of an entrepreneur. But it's for anyone when we get into EOS life. But again, entrepreneurial leap, if you're thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, let's pretend you did. Rocket Fuel is for you to understand if you're a visionary, how to go find your perfect integrator match, which is a really important distinction.

Let's go with that first. That's the process.

It really is because no matter where you are, because EOS is for a 10 to 250 person company, if you're a visionary with two people, Rocket Fuel is where you need to start because you need to understand this incredible being that you are, this genetic makeup that you have, this energy ball that you are, and when you can learn how to manage and harness that and go find your perfect integrator match. So a visionary is that wild and crazy entrepreneur that typically founds the company.

It's got an idea. I've got this vision. I think there's a problem in the world. I want to go solve this problem.

And goes out and starts to sell that thing, create that thing, generate some revenue and build a company with people there comes a point when that visionary needs to find their integrator match and counterbalance themselves so the visionary can free themselves up to another level and that integrator can run the day to day. And what happens, most visionaries never do that and they find themselves managing all these people which a visionary is terrible at and so you just get stuck. And so Rocket Fuel, that book, helps you break through as a visionary to grow to the next level.

Yeah, I remember before you go to the next point, I remember as I started doing this, I don't know, eight, nine years ago. I remember bringing on, I don't know, three or four people, and for the first three or four hours, I care so much. I was just like, Tell me, how's your day going? And then it would be like two-hour therapy sessions every morning. And it'd be noon, and I was.

Just like, yeah, yeah.

Wait, I haven't done anything today. Wait, I didn't do anything.

They didn't do anything. Now have 20 people and do that.

What's gonna happen to your business? And then I remember feeling resentful and frustrated. 'cause I was like, I'm spending half my day just making sure my team feels good.

Yeah.

And helping them with their personal life and their problems. And I'm not out creating revenue. To pay for all that empathy gets.

You in trouble, bro.

Yeah, exactly. And that's when I brought on Matt and I was like, Matt, I think you'd be the perfect person to lead people.

Yeah.

And make sure that you give like tough love when you need to. Make sure that you're empathetic, but then, you know, driving them and they're there.

And that's the beauty of finding your perfect integrator. And again, we show you exactly how to do that, but you don't even have to tell tell them that because this is what they do. This is their gift. This is their energy which is so different than the visionary's energy. So you put those two energy balls together, look out baby. So they just know how to run stuff. They're gifted at just running businesses, managing people, orchestrating all that human energy so that you're freed up to just go do your magic and grow the business.

So what's a perfect integrator then? What do they have?

Well, so they are great great at organizing. Yes. They're very organized. They're great at managing people, meaning holding them accountable. They're great kind of task masters, if you will, in terms of holding people accountable to get the job done. They're great at managing the P&L to make sure that there is a profit at the end of the day.

Yes.

And then I always call it orchestrating or harmoniously integrating the major functions of the business. And so in a business, you typically have marketing, sales, operations, finance. They have this wonderful way of orchestrating those functions and get everybody rowing in the same direction. So bottom line is they're great at running the day-to-day of a business and freeing you up as the visionary. So hopefully that answers it. So that's part of the reason. On that side, there's a very specific job description in rocket fuel. There's eight very specific bullet points. That is the job description. For an integrator. If you have a copy of rocket fuel around here somewhere, we can look it up. But I can't rattle them off right now. eight points. That is the job description of the integrator.

Okay, and so what else do we need to know about Rocket Fuel? Once we get the integrator, then how.

Do we really start? I would suggest that's it. So every visionary out there, just please read that darn book. It will be your salvation. Okay, so just read it. That's the how-to manual. It will enlighten you. It will help you decide if you're ready, because many visionaries aren't ready. And then it will show you exactly how to find them. Gotcha. From there, you go to traction. Then we go to traction and EOS. And traction and EOS, that's like the epicenter of everything, okay? That is my creation from 20 years ago. This is the system that we have 130,000 companies running on all over the world. It's growing like mad. We have 450 EOS implementers helping companies do that. So you asked, you know, what are the six key components? And so I'm going to lead into this again, I always trying to answer as fast as I can and not lose your audience with boredom. But what I realized at 29 is that I have a gift for helping entrepreneurs. That is why I am on this earth. That is my purpose. That's what I do. And as I started working with entrepreneurs and then their leadership teams, I have this ability to see patterns and trends. Okay? And so what happened a couple years in is I had this aha that every business has six key components, okay? Every single business. And to the degree those six key components are strong, everything falls into place and that business is going to be great. So it's only six. I'll debate it to my death that's been proven so many times. So, but the other point that's really important is it's about taking a holistic approach to making a company healthy. Okay, and so what we're doing at the end of the day is we're helping that leadership team of that 10 to 250 person company do three things. Vision, traction, healthy. Vision from a standpoint of helping that leadership team get 100% on the same page with their vision and their plan, where they're going, how they're going to get there. 100% on the same page. Traction from a standpoint of helping them then execute, bring discipline, accountability and make the vision a reality. And then healthy, this is that vulnerability piece, helping them become a healthy functional cohesive leadership team because most of them are dysfunctional. And then from there, as goes that leadership team, so goes the rest of the company. We get to a point where then everyone in the organization is crystal clear on the vision, gaining much better traction and much more healthy functional cohesive. So that's the end game in the fast version. The deeper picture is, so here are the six key components. In the form of a model, it's circular. Each one kind of looks like a a pie if you will. But component number one is vision. And so that just means we got to have a vision. It's got to be strong and everybody's got to share it. The next component is people, which means we got to have all the right people. Our people need to be great top to bottom. We call it right people, right seat. But the tool that we use is called the people analyzer. Very, very powerful. It shows you the most simple, powerful way to make sure all of your people have the core values and get it. Want to have the capacity to do the job. The third key component is the data component and that is boiling all the moving parts of the business down to data, KPIs, metrics. We call it a scorecard in the EOS process, you call it dashboard, million terms for it but nonetheless it's boiling it down to data where that leadership team is running the business from five to 15 numbers every single week. Fourth key component is the issues component and that is about building a muscle top to bottom in the organization where that company solves their issues quickly. And so we show them an amazing issue solving track that I created three steps: identify, discuss, solve. And that's where that vulnerability is built and created. And so you should see it takes about a year to really master it. But man, once they do, they have their issues list of 15 things. They rip through that issues list because it's just free flowing, open and honest. Nobody's got guards up and you're just solving stuff. So, when that component is strong, And then the fifth key component is the process component and that is understanding that your business is comprised of a handful of core processes. You're looking at your lens now through looking at your business through a whole different lens now realizing they're just a handful of core processes that make this business go around. Our marketing process, our sales process, our people process, our ops process, our customer service process, our finance process, only a handful. And when you see that, then you look at it, you say how strong are each one? do we have them documented? So everybody's doing it the same way. That's how you create consistency, scalability for the organization. And then the fifth and final key component is the traction component. And that's where you bring it all down to the ground and execute and make that vision a reality. And so that's where we teach you some very powerful, simple tools to help you execute better, bring accountability. We're getting you to prioritize quarterly through what we call rock We're getting you to meet in a level 10 meeting that I created. 90-minute weekly level 10 meeting that is absolutely powerful. And so those are the six key components. And to the degree every company out there strengthens them. Look out, baby. And every time a company comes to us, almost always they're at about 50% strong in those. We get them to 80-90% strong. Oh, and it is like...

It's like rocket fuel.

It's like rocket fuel. I mean, it's all the things. amazing growth. It's everything they want. It's literally printing money because it's very profitable. They're having a blast. Everybody's high fiving. And then ultimately, and I'm not trying to take us there now, but ultimately then those people in that company are then living the EOS life, which is these five things that bubble to the surface. I'm not trying to take us there, but I'm trying to take it to the end result. But those are the six key components. And again, the point I made a minute ago is it's taking a holistic approach to treating the company because what's happening is there are, I always jokingly say, but I want to say it's scientifically true, there are only like 23 issues in the history of business. Okay? It's like the same ones over and over again. And I always also like to say there's 136 things going on and so you have this, all this stuff and it's very messy and so everybody's trying to solve all these symptomatic issues and so they're trying to fix all these things when we get them to refocus on just six key components. and you strengthen those and the 136 things just fall into place.

It's a miracle.

And it's been happening for 20 years with 13,000 companies. So at this point, it's kind of hard to argue with it. And I say that I hope with the most possible humility because I'm not trying to be braggadocious, I'm not trying to toot any horns. It works, it's real, it's proven, there's not one ounce of theory. And so that's a long answer to what traction is.

What are some of the results that you see from people once they after a year, they kind of clean up their stuff. Maybe they're 50% of the way there, but then they get to a seven, eight or a nine on all six of these distinctions. What do you see the results? Are they doubling their growth financially? Are they tripling? What does it look like?

Yeah, so now all of a sudden this is going to be a segue into EOS life because here's what the results are. Okay, and so let's pretend we get them to 80% strong. They're now 80-90% strong in each one of those key components. so it is things like faster growth, assuming that's what they want and most do, not everyone does. Substantial increase to profitability. Okay, so my clients grow on average 18% per year. Profitability is substantially higher. That's right. Happier people, less tension in the organization, so I could keep going but where I'm taking you to is so here I am, I created this, I'm five years in, I engaged a marketing company to find exactly that out because I wanted to put in a nutshell this amazing result that is EOS and I fully expected to hear what I just said. I'm making more money than ever, I'm more profitable than ever, we're growing faster than ever. So seven out of seven clients, so this marketing firm reached out, met with seven of my clients.

Surveyed them and asked them.

Exactly. And seven out of seven come back. So here I am looking for this tangible money growth related thing. Seven out of seven come back and they said, I'm enjoying a better quality of life.

Yeah. So, you're not stressed all day trying to put out five.

Better quality of life. No, they are loving their work. It's the EOS life. But before we go there, it's they're loving their work. They're making more money than ever. They've they've got a more balanced life. And so here was my reaction though. So the marketing company, I'm sitting in their office, he says a better quality of life and I'm like, I try not to say profanity but this was profanity. But I was like, oh, how am I going to market that to the world? You know, an entrepreneur who's in pain and frustrated, the last thing they want to hear about right now is quality of life. They want to solve their problem. They want to make more money. They want to get their company growing again. So anyway, long story short, that's what was said. And I literally shrugged it off because I was so obsessed about business results for these people. And so I just went to the business results, and that's what I marketed and promoted.

And.

And so then when I found my partner, Don Tenney, it's. He was my integrator. I was the Visionary. Those were those two balls of energy coming together, and we grew the company like Matt over 15 years. about, I wish I could, it might have been like seven years in, Don noticed it again. I shrugged it off. I kept shrugging it off over and over. But Don noticed it and it's Don that gave it the name of those five points. He called it the EOS life. He called it doing what you love with people you love, making a difference, getting paid well, having time for other passions. And I still shrugged it off. And then he taught it to all of our implementers and they loved it and he saw it so so I fought this.

Because we're like, it's just about making more money and growth and numbers.

Exactly, because I'm so business focused. But all that said, I lived that EOS life and have for 20 years. It's a pretty good life I've created for myself. Again, it's exactly what's in this book, it's just doing that. I just learned to do it 20 years ago. So long story short, what happened is we do an annual EOS conference every year, and it was the first one ever, and they wanted me to keynote it, and I had no idea what my message was going to be, Something hit me sitting here in LA of all things at a Peter Diamandis Abundance 360 event at 4 in the morning laying in that hotel bed at the Beverly, whatever it was.

Beverly Hotel.

No, the other one. But anyway, that doesn't matter. I can't think. 4 a.m. It came to me like a lightning bolt. I've got to teach the EOS life. And so that's the day I stopped fighting it. I taught it at our conference and then I taught it the next three years and I kept honing the message. And that's when I finally caved and said, this is what the world needs. This is the end game. And so while we're talking all business, you're right. Anybody out there listening, if you're not an entrepreneur, you will still benefit by this. You can still live your ideal life. You can still live this EOS life. And so that's when I caved and I sold the business a couple years later. I was never going to write I thought I was done writing EOS related books, and then a pandemic hit and a whole bunch of capacity, and I wasn't on a plane every three weeks, and I wasn't. So it just hit me that I said, I gotta write the EOS Life.

Book, and I wrote it, and here we are. Yeah, because this is whether you're the entrepreneur or you're not an entrepreneur, you wanna do things you love, do what.

You love with people you enjoy.

You know, if you're part of a team, you wanna be using your skill sets and your talents on a team around people you enjoy working with. whether you're the entrepreneur or not, you want to make a difference in the work you're putting into. You want to get compensated well. And you want to have time to do stuff on the side that you love. Friends, family, hobbies, activities, travel, adventure.

You want to live your life. Yeah, and going to the part where I fight it. So again, my obsession is entrepreneurs. I make no bones about that. And I always like to say I'm ill-equipped to teach anyone anything else on the planet. But man, when it comes to entrepreneurship, and so again, this is part of that fighting where my goal was to always give the entrepreneur this EOS life and this ideal life. But what started happening is their leadership team members all started living the EOS life. And then the companies that were savvy enough were helping their employees live the EOS life. And so now with 130,000 companies running on this system, we're starting to see company after company after company focusing on their employees, trying to give them the ideal life. So it's like like, oh, and so now it's like I would have never anticipated the reach. And so here we are, we're touching a whole heck of a lot more people than just that entrepreneur. And so that's the goal.

If you're missing out on one of these.

Yeah.

Let's go back to actually traction first. Yeah. If you're missing out on one of these six, vision, people, right, people, right, seat, data, the numbers, issues, handling issues, processes, and then the attraction and the accountability stuff. If you're missing one of those, what.

Happens to a business?

Well, it's so if you look at.

It as a journey, the typical relationship and engagement with a client lasts about two years between the implementer and the client. And what we're doing is we're helping that client implement EOS into their business and then we're getting the heck out of their way. They graduate, they move on. That's why I take great pride in we're not trying to find our way deeper into a business. Anyway, I won't go on a soapbox about that. Sure. But we tend to be able to get them within two years to that 80% strong or better. So if you picture where they start at average of 50% strong in each one, the short answer is where they're weak in one, they're just not as effective. And that's the squeaky wheel that we've got to strengthen. So somewhere between day one and the end of the second year when they're at 80% strong, they're just not as effective till they get 80%. to 80%. And then the reality is let's pretend they get to 80% strong in all six, you can easily go back to 70-60% if you take your eye off that ball. And so you constantly have to manage keeping those strong. And so you're just the short answer is you're just not as effective. So if the vision isn't as clear, then your people are going to be just that much more unclear. It's going to be that much more confusing. So I always like to say when a When, let's pretend a 50 person company, everyone in that organization clearly knows the vision. So what we do is we have that leadership team answer eight questions about their business. When they do and they're all on the same page, they then have a clear vision to take to the company. And so when all 50 people see where we're going, how we're gonna get there, our core values, the soul of the company, when everyone sees that, you just literally eliminated 80% of their problems.

Wow.

Miscommunication. confusion. So just if they're at 50%, then you got that bumpiness. If they're up to 90% and they get close to 100 on the vision component, just think of the difference in how much faster they're moving now because it's rooting out the confusion in the organization.

Okay.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Yeah, of course. And then so if one of these things are missing in the EOS life in a business or with an individual, what happens? You just feel off, you're not as effective. Yeah, well, something's missing in your life. You're like, Ah, is this the right place for me? Exactly.

Exactly. So let's now, so if we're going to go to EOS life, so now again, let's go back to doing what you love with people you love, making a huge difference, getting compensated well, and having time for other passions. It's the same thing, but what's so important here is, first of all, you deserve it. Know that first. You start by deciding and setting where you are at this moment. And literally, everyone watching, everyone listening right now, grab something to write on and with, and it's just simply saying, doing what you love, rate yourself right now on a scale of 1 to 10 when you think about everyone you interact with from a work standpoint, okay?

You mean like you're at work or at home?

Right now I want to keep it work related because then the magic happens when you realize how to apply it to your life. But in terms of what you're doing all day, every day as a being, doing what you love, a 10 is that everything you're doing, everyone you're interacting with, is the stuff that you love to do and you're great at. Okay? And so that's a 10 and so I would urge you rate yourself right now. You're somewhere between a 1 and a 10. Okay? And let's pretend you're a 5 starting point. With people you love, same thing. Think about everyone you interact with in business. Okay? And this is employees, this is co-workers, this is vendors, this is customers, this is clients. Scale of 1 to 10. How much do you love interacting with all of them? and maybe you're a five there. Same story, making a huge difference. How much of a difference? So within your work, the 100% that you work, of the 100% you're working, how much of that is making a difference and an impact? Rate yourself. Then we go to compensation. Scale of 1 to 10. 100% is you're making exactly what you want. So where are you? If you're only making 80% of what you want, you're at an 8. If it's only 50, you're at a 5. and then time for other passions says, now you've protected your work time, you only work this much, now you've allowed time to have balance, take time off, pursue passions. So, scale of 1 to 10 of the time that you're taking off, 100%, a 10 is that you're taking as much time off as that you want and you're doing the passions that you want. Rate yourself. So let's pretend you did that in your 5-5-5-5 on all three. boom, there you are today, just start moving the needle. And we can go as deep as you want, but there's a very simple tool for each one of those and when you have that clarity, it's just moving the needle. And if you move each one of those up one number every year, you are five years away from living your ideal life and being in sheer heaven. For some people it's going to take 20 years, for some people they'll do it in a year, but that's the starting point. And so when you ask what happens if someone's weak in one, well, you know, so I'll use me as an example. Let's pretend hypothetically you score yourself 10-10-10-10 on the first four. But time for other passions, you score very low.

-Because you're an obsessive workaholic.

-And that was me at all of these, remember the age like 28-29 years old. And so, my wake-up call because in my 20s, as hard as I worked, I was also obsessive about learning. And so, all of the great thought leaders and I was armed with incredible mentors. I was this machine and man could I work and man was I productive and so I had the first four down really well but I didn't have the fifth one down and so what happened to me is I'm leaving for work one morning, I get in the car, my daughter comes out to the car, I open the door and I look down to her, she was four at the time and I said, Hey, sweetie. And she looks up at me and she says, Hey, daddy, are you going home? And I was like, oh. So, here I am. I'm leaving my home to go to work.

And she... -She thought that was home for you.

-She... I was never around. I was never... She thought I lived somewhere else because I was never around. And so, that was like, oh my God. I could feel the chills. Now, that was my wake-up call. So, to your point, when one of them's weak, you're not complete, you're not a complete person. And so now we can do that math on each one of them, but when I had that wake-up call, everything changed from there. So then I got the fifth one up to a 10. That's great. But we can go through each one when you say, if one's weak, what does that look like? And you can play that answer out.

You take a self-assessment. Exactly. Assess yourself, see where you're at.

Exactly.

I love the simplified assessments. I do this with myself as well. on a lot of areas of my life. Yeah. 1 to 5, 1 to 10, whatever you want to call it. Where are you at? And what's the next step to get you a little bit closer? You don't have to be at a 10 overnight. Exactly. You know, and we're not all going to be there overnight, but it's like, okay, what are the things we can.

Do every day to help you get a little bit farther? And here's the other beauty. Just do that and rate yourself. The awareness alone, your subconscious will not leave you alone. Once you see, I want this life, I believe I deserve this life, and I'm at A five and I need to go to a 10.

You'll have a tension towards it now.

You will not shake that thought ever and you will naturally start moving in that direction. And that's why I'm also saying it is this simple everybody. And so I know you're out there reading a hundred books and you're trying a hundred different things to live your ideal life. It's these five things. Yes.

And assess it and where you're at and where you want to be. Start moving towards it. You mentioned earlier about your fears. I think it was in the first few minutes of the interview, you kind of, you briefly mentioned this. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of everything. You had a big wall because you were insecure, jealous or whatever. I call that the fear of judgment, fear of what other people think about me. Of those three fears, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of judgment, what was the biggest fear for you to overcome?

This is really interesting you're asking this because Two months ago, I would have told you fear of failure. So it was fear of failure up to 35. It was fear of success from 35 to 40. Oh, I'm so terrified. Of succeeding. The thought of doing this podcast and putting myself out there was petrifying.

Why?

I don't know. I literally felt like somebody's gonna kill me. me. I literally, it was, it was, it's going to come to judgment because we're getting to this third one. -I was terrified.

I don't know what it was. But you were succeeding.

-I agree. -So, you're afraid of success? -Yeah.

So, once I turned that corner and I was succeeding, it was, I was terrified of success.

-Why are people, why do you think you were terrified of it and why are people afraid of succeeding? -Well, right now, so let's go to the third one. So then, so what I learned, this came to me so clearly in the last two to six months, judgment. I became hyper aware of how judged I felt by everyone.

Everyone and everything.

It was like the most disgusting gross feeling. But fear of success, fear of failure, it's all judgment. It's all judgment. So here I am, oh, this being for 40, 54 years of of feeling judged. And I just, you know, I meditate a lot and that really helps you process and connect with whatever it is that you connect with. And man, it is, it was, it's been a light bulb moment.

Really? When did this give? But it took you 50 years.

Exactly. And by the way, definitely progress over 54 years. It's not like it was, a complete light bulb moment. I saw little bits of it, but it came really clear in the last few months.

So, do you feel like the fear of failure and success was based on the judgment? Fear of judgment?

If I look at it for sure, because think about it. I feared failure because people would laugh at me really. If I failed, oh, how embarrassing. I wasn't worried about me failing. I was worried about people's perception of me failing. succeeding. That wasn't worrying about me succeeding. It was worried about what other people are going to say and do. It was all about them, them, them, them. It's all judgment. It was all judgment. This is my journey. I'm not trying to teach anybody anything right now. I'm just telling you my personal story. And again, how'd you flip the switch then? I wish I could tell you. But I stayed with it and I sat in it. So what I've learned as well is whenever you have pain. And I saw your book, Letting Go on the shelf there. That book teaches you how to do this. And untethered soul, we briefly talked about that. But when you have pain and so again, some of us are sitting with that seven-year-old pain. When you hit that, you have to sit in it. And sometimes you sit in it for a minute and you cry your eyes out and it hurts like hell and you want to keep stuffing it down but at some point, you gotta stop. And sometimes you have to sit with it for months. And this one I sat with for months. So I just was just very aware.

And I just... What was the pain for you?

I wouldn't describe it as pain. I was disgusted with myself. I was disgusted with myself. I was so... How could I let... How could I worry so much about people's judgment? So that's all pain. The root of all that is pain. So I can't describe it as pain to you. But it's just sitting in that disgust and feeling like, ugh.

Is this like every day you would think about? Like, what does this person think about me? What is this? I'm putting this book out. What are people's reviews gonna be?

So, I would say, no, it wasn't that specific. It was just being really hyper aware. Because then somebody shared something with me that was really cool and they said, so all day, every day, think about every decision you make and everything you do and are you doing it out of of fear or are you doing out of love? And every decision was out of fear? Really? Fearing some ramification. Not everyone. I'm not being a little too extreme. For most of them. But a lot of, I mean, a lot of them. Yeah. So that's, it's all in there. It's, it's interesting. So it's really, really powerful. And again, I'm not saying, I'm a work in progress, man, and I'm gonna be working on this when I'm 100 as well. But that, that was a good. Aha. And that was, you talk about being 10, 000. I shed a lot with that awareness. All I'm floating a little more today with that awareness.

You gained, yeah, you're 10 years younger now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 'Cause I think this is something I've been thinking about for a while that the fear, you know, you mentioned it already, you gave the answer. The fear of failure, the fear of success, the fear of judgment, the core of that that I've realized and learned from all the people I've interviewed in my personal experience is that at the core of that is I don't feel I'm enough.

Yeah.

Everyone doesn't feel that they're enough.

So when we go back to knowing.

That you deserve it, Baby, which is what you've been saying. You deserve it. Then people, and this is something that I believe also, people are going to judge you if you're on the couch making no money, and people are going to judge you if you're at the top of the mountain. They're going to judge you every stage of the way.

But also, here's what else is worth. Most of them aren't even thinking about you. You know, you're sitting there worried about their half of them aren't even thinking.

About you, but yes, the rest are judging you. You can't, I mean, anyway, I cut you off. No, you're good. I mean, I think people are going to judge you no matter what you do. So, you might as well do what you love with the people you love. Make a difference doing the things that you're good at. Get compensated in the process.

Yeah.

And have time to enjoy your life on the side. If everyone knew, this is part of the mission that I'm on is giving people the tools to learn how to...

We got here just in time, you guys. We got here just in time.

It's to learn how to heal. Whatever that thing is inside, learn how to heal. I think that's the most important work that we can as humans learn to do. Learn how to heal whatever frustration from career, business, relationships, parents, family, whatever it is. Something in the news we saw that triggered us, like figure out where does that trigger come from? Learn how to heal that thing because it'll shed that weight. It'll give us confidence and courage to go after what we want, to ask the hard questions.

Yeah, and this is going to piss a bunch of people off, but I want to say it because you're so right on. So you're in my humble opinion, I happen to agree with you 100% and it is simple to heal that. Now I just pissed off like all the psychologists. Half your audience is mad at me now. But it is simple is what I'm learning. But here's how I'll try and make it simple because it's definitely hard work. But it's starting by saying, I've got pain, I'm screwed up and I don't want that pain anymore and I don't want and so I want to I want to acknowledge, identify, discover all of my pain, where it came from, and I want it gone. And there's a thousand different ways to do that. So, I don't think there's just this one way to do it.

-Love modalities.

-But just start by saying, I'm screwed up. I've got pain. I want it gone. The second you decide that, the answers come because that's what started to happen for me 20 years ago. And these people would come into my life. that would take me deep, help me with things. So you gotta start by just saying, I want it gone.

And be willing to try stuff.

Okay. You gotta be willing. And you gotta be willing to cry. There's not any, each time you get rid of one, oh, they're gonna be tears, man. So get comfortable crying.

I think I cried a lot from like zero to seven or eight years old. Yeah. And I would cry, you know, I remember screaming for my mom at the top of my lungs probably once every two weeks. like 1:00 a.m. because I was just terrified. And she would come and sleep next to me probably till I was seven, eight years old, right? Like once every couple weeks at least. Then, you know, as you get older and you show a little emotion in grade school and kids start making fun of you, you learn to toughen up, right? Or this was my experience. I don't know if this was like you. Oh, I'm relating to you. You learned to relate to the Midwest. I didn't grow up in like, you know, a hippie commune where everyone loved each other. You learn to toughen up and live up to the standards of society and how it was portrayed. And then I held on to this wall for, I don't know, 22 years probably, right? And it built me into a athletic machine, a business machine, competitive machine. But it left me feeling so unfulfilled, hurt, lonely, sad, jealous, insecure, afraid for 20 years. And I think I was making decisions based on fear for a lot of that time. And it wasn't until so many things were breaking down in my life. And I was just like, I'm making money and this looks good on the outside, but why is everything seems like it's suffering? And that's when I started the healing journey, which is a journey because it's not like it happens overnight. It's been a eight, nine year journey now.

And if there's a million people listening, Half a million just agreed with you and know that. And so just to play along with you, my crying years were 11 to 15. I was such a sad kid. It was so painful in those years. And then I became a workaholic at all my toys. So, that's how I hit channel that. -Yes, exactly right. So, it's identical. But now a million people maybe can relate. It's just it's the process.

-Yeah. -And I've cried more in the last 8, 9 years. I feel like I've gone back to like my childhood of like early call. I'm just allowing myself when it's feel it, like let it go. And it's incredible, the lightness, you know, the lightness of it. And I think you have to get to, or I had to get to a place of like, it doesn't matter what people think of me when I'm vulnerable. Judgment. Because I was so afraid of people making fun of me if I cried, or if I just expressed a vulnerability. You don't have to cry to do that. And once I did it once, I feel like it took 20 years of courage to build up to do it that one time. And then it became easier every time to just speak what I need to speak, to express myself vulnerably. And it feels incredible. Yeah. Doesn't mean there's no problems or challenges, right? It feels incredible to be on the other side of that journey. But it all goes back to knowing you deserve it, knowing you're enough. Whether you're in business and a relationship and health, it doesn't matter.

That's why I started there, because if you can't get past that hurdle, don't everything we're talking about is meaningless and you're just the subconscious is not going to allow you to have it. Yes. So you gotta get past it and you gotta believe you deserve it and even you know we're talking about letting go so it's David Hawkins right? Is the author? Everybody thinks David Hawkins. So he has this great quote. I'll mess it up but he says you know your subconscious will only allow you to have what you feel you deserve and so this is what we're talking about here. If you don't feel you deserve deserve it, you can read a thousand books. You're not going to start to move the needle.

And here's what I realized. This was the secret for me. There are, I remember, here's an example. There was a kid in my high school. I was a freshman or I was in eighth grade and he was like a senior at the school. He was the most talented freak of nature athlete I've ever seen ever in my life. Like, I think he was more talented than the guys in the NFL right now. He was a freak, like a sculpted muscular genetic freak. He had like a 44-inch vertical. He ran like a 4340-yard dash. He was unbelievable.

What did you say, eighth grade? Did I hear you say that?

He was a senior.

He was a senior.

Okay. In high school. I was in eighth grade. So he was like four or five years older than me. And I would just watch this and I was playing basketball with him and like all the upperclassmen because I was taller and they used me for that. I was like, this guy is a freak of nature. And everyone was like, you,'re the man, everyone. But he didn't believe it. Everyone believed in him. Everyone would give him the ball, but then he would buckle under the pressure.

My heart aches.

He didn't even go into college to do anything. And I was like, Give me some of that talent. I'll use it. And it doesn't matter if the world believes in you, if you don't believe in yourself and don't believe that you're deserving and don't believe you're a enough. It doesn't matter all the skills and talents. You're going to fumble the ball at some point. The other flip side of that, it doesn't matter if the world doesn't believe in you. If you believe you're enough. Exactly right. If you believe you're deserving, you can take on any challenge you want in a beautiful way. And that's, that's the lesson that I had to learn. And I saw that many times with great athletes who never made it. Yeah. Because they didn't believe they were deserving. Exactly. It's crazy.

Crazy.

I'm curious about The entrepreneur who has a big vision, a big dream, they want to go serve the world in a massive way with whatever their skill or their tool is, how important is it to have an amazing partner, you know, husband, wife on your side, whether the female entrepreneur or same-sex marriage, whatever it is, how important is it to have a marriage component, a healthy marriage partner, with you as the visionary. And what have you seen from the thousands of entrepreneurs you've worked with on what they've shared on divorces they've gone through, partners that were amazing for them, partners that sucked the energy out of them. You've been married for almost 40 years.

Or... We've been married for 30. We've been together for 37 years.

So, almost four decades. What have you learned from your relationship journey? You don't have to share everything but what have you learned from what it's like having a partner by your side, what that's the importance, what you need from them if you're the crazy visionary, and what to look out for in a relationship. Because I truly believe the quality of your life will be highly dictated by the partner that you're choosing to be with.

No question, no question.

You've got a lot more wisdom and experience on this than I do, and you've done pretty well in your business. So I'm assuming things have had to go well for you to be married for this long. to a certain degree. Can you shed any light on this?

Sure, for sure. You know, and I don't hold myself out to be some marriage expert and the last thing I'll ever do is say my marriage is perfect because that's the kiss of death. So it's always a work in progress. But you, when you ask that question, you know, I'm calling on a thousand experiences. So I'm gonna say a few different things if you'll just let me riff for it.

Go for it.

So first, you know, the answer to your question is it is vital. You have to have support at home. So if you are a visionary, crazy entrepreneur, you've got to have support. So, if you have someone at home, a significant other that does not support you, is constantly upset because you're working too hard, is constantly upset because you're not home, whatever it is, you got to have that support. But that support is also an agreement you have to have. So again, my intensity and the way that I work I work 55 hours a week, 40 weeks a year. I still take time off. I take the month of August off every year I have for 20 years. So, you know, I am relatively balanced but there's no question the 40 weeks that I'm working, a lot of times I'm not entirely there because there's so many things I'm thinking about and my creativity is through the roof. And so, Kathy, my wife, has been incredibly supportive. I'm so blessed how she supports me. and she had an entrepreneurial father so that helps. So the short answer is it's incredibly helpful and then when I talk about these thousand things, a really funny story is one of the EOS implementers tells a story about how they were in a session and these sessions that we do with clients, they're really intense, you know, because we're helping them build great companies and we got to clear all the crap and so it's a husband and wife and they literally decided to get divorced in the session. -In the session? -In the session in front of everybody and then and then she leaves and then it was funny because it was, I think she was the integrator, she left, visionary so there, and then the visionary looks at the implementer and says, Hey, can you give me a ride home? Because we drove here together.

Oh my gosh.

So the point is, it is vital and you just, it pains me to say this, but you have to really look at your support system because when we talk about the EOS life and doing with people you love, what I push you to do out there is not only think about once you get the business part down and you're surrounded by people you love in your business, and your customers and clients and your vendors, I urge you to expand your circle to your friends and family and make sure that everyone... That when you are with everyone in your life, your energy fills up as opposed to drains. And if you have someone at home that is draining your energy, listen, we are not all meant to be together forever, okay? I don't subscribe to that belief. Now, I just pissed off 20% of your audience. But if you don't have the support system, you just have to make a decision. And so this is why some people don't take the entrepreneurial leap. is because they don't have the support. And sometimes their significant other is correct so they've probably saved your life. But you have to look at that and you have to make a decision and you have to have an agreement. In my humble opinion, I am just blessed because I don't know what would have happened if Kathy wasn't supportive because I don't know how to not be this passionate. I don't know how to not put this dent in the universe. I don't know how to not do this work and so it might have ended badly for us but who knows? You know, it's like I was going to go in the military out of high school because I was such a derelict and lost and scared. And she talked me out of going the day before swearing in.

Come on.

But I knew she was the one and I knew she was the one. And to this day, I know I made the right decision there. And so the point is, you know, I got lucky.

What are three questions or conversations they should have knowing they're about to go on a 10-20-30 year run? Yeah, yeah. Visionary insanity.

I feel nothing but heaviness, aches and pains right now. And here's why. I am ill-equipped to talk about relationships. But the people that you've worked with, I know.

If they just asked these three things and got clear on it before.

Yeah, but let me talk this out because I am not great with relationships. It takes work. It's constant work. I'm so intense. I'm so many, I'm a control. I'm so many things these poor people in my life But somehow they love me and somehow they support me and I love them so much. That's relationships are not my expertise. But knock on wood, my kids love me.

Yeah.

My wife loves me. Most of my family loves me. Most of my friends love me.

Yeah.

But I can't answer that. I mean literally my body is like, I feel heavy. So when my gut tells me don't answer that, I'm trusting my gut because I just, I ain't that good man. But man, I hear you. You need help running your business?

You're the guy. I like that.

But help with your marriage, I can't do it. It's not my thing.

Would there be a conversation you'd have before that in the marriage though?

Knowing everything we talked about, so if I'm in the audience listening right now hearing this guy ramble, if I'm in their shoes and I just met somebody who I think I love, I'd have this conversation. tonight that, Hey, I just had an aha. I'm a crazy fricking visionary entrepreneur and I'm going to be obsessed for the next 40 years and I can't turn it off. And so, before we go further, I just need you to know what you are about to join forces with because I don't want to let you down and I don't... So, that's what I would do if I'm hearing this sitting in the audience. I didn't have the luxury of having that conversation with Kathy. We're having those conversations Now, but I got lucky. You know, I got lucky.

That's beautiful, man.

And somehow she puts up with me, man. God, I don't know how she does it. But she does. I love her to death.

That's great, man. What else do people... Okay, so there's also three things I think you mentioned in attraction, the accountability charts, and then the people in the right seat, the right great people, right? Is that what it is?

So now let me get back to being comfortable now because I'm shedding this relationship thing.

You said when you're... Well, there's five.

Foundational tools in EOS and I just thinking about your audience, five, six, three, four, poor people out there. So... In EOS, there are 20 tools we ultimately teach you that you embed in your organization to build a great company. Yes. But there are five of them that we call the foundational tools. And if you just Implement these five, it's 80 of the battle.

Okay.

Okay. So the first one is the vision traction organizer. The second one is the accountability chart. Third is rocks. Fourth is the level 10 meeting. And fifth is scorecard. And so very quickly, number one, the vision traction organizer, that's that tool that we get you and your leadership team to answer eight. about your business, when you all answer it 100%, you've got a vision and plan. Accountability chart is the tool we get you to take a big step back now that you know where you're going. What is the right and best structure to get you there? And so we literally help you create the structure for your organization. If you want to go from 10 to 50 million, we help you create the right structure so that you can then get to work on getting all the right people in the right seats. You get these great people you want to be surrounded by. Yes. Number three is rocks. That's quarterly prioritizing. And so I had a discovery when I took over and turned around the family business, And it was that human beings have a 90-day attention span. I call it the Fray. And so, I would meet with my leadership team. We'd have these great meetings and then I'd find out 90 days later, I realize we don't even know each other anymore. We're so off the same page. And so, we started meeting every 90 days and I realized there's this 90-day pulse that's just so powerful. And so, what we get every client to do is come together every 90 days and set new priorities for the next 90 days. Three to seven, we call them rocks. That's cool. That's the Stephen Covey analogy with the time management, rocks, sand, pebble water. I learned it from Vern Harnish. He learned it from Stephen Covey. And Stephen Covey, if you work it all the way back, it comes from biblical times, but it's a very powerful time management teaching. Level 10 meeting is a 90-minute weekly meeting that I created that is a very powerful meeting. It's getting that leadership team to come together every week and solve all their problems, get on the same page, know where and then number five is the scorecard. That's that 5 to 15 activity-based numbers the leadership team is looking at every week to make sure everything's on track. And so if you just implement those in the organization top to bottom, it's 80% of the battle. Very, very powerful stuff. That's very, very simple stuff. Simple, powerful stuff. It's all simple, man. That's the thing. That's the number one piece of feedback we get. Man, this is so simple. Once you get it in place and that's everything I do. Simple, practical.

It does not have to be complex.

Everybody.

If someone's watching or listening and they're like, Man, do you just... Is this all in the book or do you have like charts so that people can.

Print off and they can use it? -It's all in traction and everything is downloadable and free from the website. So, we want you to self-implement this. You don't need to pay us a bunch of money for this. Go to EOSWorldwide.com, read the book, download the tools. It's all there. We have a hundred and thirty thousand companies self-implementing it all over the world.

World.

Now, like I said, 13,000 have engaged us as EOS implementers to take them through the process. So you decide if you need the help.

You do it yourself or you can have the accountability for some of my teams. So eosworldwide.com, they have all the downloads for free.

You got it.

That's pretty amazing. So people can print them out, they can save them, they can start implementing them and move forward.

Abundance mindset, we give it away.

Smart.

If you need help, call us. And fortunately, some which helps. But no, you can go buy a $20 book and download everything for free and you're running on it. -Then you just run it.

-That'S amazing, man. Where do people find the most challenge on these five tools? What's the hardest thing?

-Well, so the way I describe it is when we start the process with a client, the very first session, which is a full day session, the first three hours of that session, we are creating your accountability chart. So literally within 30 minutes of knowing you, we are creating your accountability chart because I always describe it as the accountability chart is the root of all evil for every company. Okay?

Yeah.

Most of the problems lie in the wrong structure and the wrong people in the wrong seats. And so what we do is first get you to all agree as a leadership team, this is the right structure to get us to the next level. And in that three hour conversation, We aren't even talking about people yet. We're just trying to get you to get your structure right.

Meaning what? Like, okay, we don't have a sales per...

Meaning who's the visionary? Who's the integrator? Not who, I shouldn't say who yet. Visionary integrator function. Do we have a marketing function? Do we have a sales function? Do we... So it starts with a basic belief that there are three major functions in every business: sales and marketing, operations, finance. From there, your organization is going to have three to seven major functions because sometimes you have IT, and HR, customer service, account management, marketing. Nonetheless, it's agreeing on those major functions, and then what is the structure below those functions? When that is clear, then we go to work on putting all the people in the right seats. And sadly, if you're a 50-person organization, we do that work, not all 50 are going to have a home after that exercise. So you made some mistakes growing and building your business, and we're going to clean all that up. And so as important the 50 in the organization, that leadership team is going get cleaned up. So 80% of the time there's going to be a change on that leadership team. It's one of the reasons the company's stuck. They're keeping people around that are just not getting them to the next level. And that we address in that three hours. And so everybody gets a real-time performance review, get it want it capacity, very, very powerful. And you pretty much know who's going and who's staying at the end of that.

What happens when an entrepreneur keeps on 5, 10, 20 people that aren't in the right role or aren't the right people, don't have the right tools and they're not in the right role. What happens if they just continue to keep them on, like hoping they figure it out, you know, trying to push them in certain directions and giving them opportunities.

But, yeah, it's a couple different things because again, they're just not gonna get to where they want to go or at least they're not gonna get there as fast as they want to go. They're not gonna live their fully live their EOS life because they're not working with a bunch of people they love. they're not doing what they love because they're dealing with this poisonous energy in the organization. And again, let's assume these five people don't belong in this organization. They are deteriorating your culture. They're chipping away at what you're trying to create. They're holding your back against those anvils that you're dragging. And so you got to make those people changes. But if you won't, then you are forever going to be experiencing some level of frustration and some level of resistance to you getting to where you want to be. you want to go. -Wow. -Yeah.

-Why do so many people, including myself, not make those decisions faster? -Because you're wimps.

-So, it's most of it is just fear. I mean, they're people. These are human beings. You love them. I mean, come on. We have compassion, we have empathy. But you have to make a choice. And so, we always say for the greater good of the company, what's the right decision? You know, again, love or fear. And it's always fear in that case. -Interesting. -So, we're human beings and it's not easy to fire somebody, but you have to make a fundamental decision. If you're a $10 million company, you want to go to 50. Yeah, I mean you got to make tough decisions. This is why you got to decide, do you really want that thing? And most don't. So nothing wrong with staying a $10 million company. Right. But if you want to go to 50... What is the difference?

What's the difference between $10 million and $100 million company?

Well, here's what I always say. Whenever I have a client that says they want to build a $100 million company, I always say, do you really want to build a $100 million company? So the example I give is it's a heck of a lot easier to have a $10 million company that throws off a 20% profit than a $100 million company that throws off a 2% profit. Same profit, same bottom line, same money going in your pocket. 10 times the people, 10 times the complexity, 10 times the everything. so it's just not all it's cracked up to be. But it's okay if that's what you want. I've got lots of clients that go to 100 million. You just have to know that that's what you want and you want that complexity. And I hope you're generating a 20% profit at 100 million, but keep it in this proper perspective because what is the motive? Why are you really wanting to go to 100 million? And when we dig into why and we facilitate that leadership team having that conversation in almost every case they say.

Whoa, whoa, we don't want 100 million.

We're good with 30.

Why do most people want to make a hundred? The people that say I want to--.

Because everybody's saying a hundred. Now it's a billion, by the way. Everybody wants to be a billion dollar tech unicorn, okay? Because that's what the media is telling us. It's come on, not everybody's cut out for that. Most aren't. Because that's what they're hearing. That's what the organization they've, every time a hundred million, so they just, they hear it and they think, wow, 100 million, that's got a nice ring to it. They just have no comprehension of the hell they're about to put themselves through. through if they don't really want it. Did someone-- But for the ones that want it, they make those really tough decisions and it's masterful and it's beautiful and it's impressive.

For the ones who say, I want 100 million, here's exactly why. And you heard them say like an amazing answer, not just because, well, the media is saying everyone's selling for 100 million or whatever. What is that answer?

Well, the visionary is rambling about why they want $100 million and the rest of the team is going, it's making no sense to nobody, including the visionary. Once they keep talking about it, they're going, maybe I don't want this. But one last point that came to me. So let's pretend they say they want to go to 100 million. And you have a $10 million marketing person. You got to fire the marketing person like tomorrow and go find a $100 million marketing person. You don't have the luxury of training that person up to be 100. In most cases, you know.

That's interesting.

So you got to build a $100 million leadership team. Half your team's going stop. And the leadership team you started with is never the one you end up with. and so that's the bitter pill. You gotta be tough enough to understand that. And your team needs understand that. But your team needs understand if you're all 100 million dollar people, you're going to be here forever. But the day you can't keep up. Listen, we'll move you down to another seat. We'll move you to another company. But you got to go because we need 100 million dollar people here. -Right. -Are you tough enough to do that stuff?

And most aren't.

-That'S interesting.

It's really simple. -But it's really hard. -It's interesting. I've never really focused on the money. I've more focused on the impact. And I've, as I go along with it, as I go along with it, I'm like, listen, I want to make money. It's not that I don't want to make money. I'm not a charity here. I'm a business and I want to grow and I want to continue to impact more lives. And I know that our mission is to serve 100 million people weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. And I know that in order to do that, we need more people. In order to do that, we need more revenue. It's like all those things come together. But I'm clear on the mission. If it reaches $100 million in revenue a year, awesome. If that's what it's going to take for us to reach the mission. But I'm focused on the impact first.

I don't know if that's the right philosophy. Well, watch this though. So let's, so now, and this will give you a flavor for a session with an EOS implementer because if, so if I'm sitting there with a visionary and the visionary says, I'm not concerned about the revenue, I'm concerned about the impact, and let's pretend they're a $10 million company and he's saying or she's saying they want to go to $100 million, I'm going to say, okay, if that's true, I can show you where you can impact a hundred times more people and only be a $20 million company. So are you bullshitting me and you or is it real? Because let's look at EOS worldwide. 130,000 companies running on EOS by downloading free tools buying a $20 book. That ain't a lot of money. I make two bucks a book.

Right, right.

So, that's impact. So that I would challenge that entrepreneur and say, if that's really true, then let's talk about how you make more impact and that doesn't necessarily have to mean a hundred million. So what is really true for you? Now, I'm a capitalist, okay? Making money is good. We all need to make lots of money because we do great things with it. So I'm digging into, you know, how much do you want to make? What's important to you? What is really important? What's the real motivation? Did that make sense?

It makes sense.

Because you can make a lot of impact and it doesn't have to go to 100 million to do that.

And it could also go to 100 million.

Exactly. But also, I would also suggest, because every entity I have generates a 50% profit margin. I'm obsessed about that.

You'd rather have a higher profit margin.

So what I would show is... Let me show you a $20 million company that makes 10 times the impact. Not 100, but generates more profit than what you're thinking at 100 million. I just challenge you to think a little bit better.

Operate it better. I have friends that are like, I want to build a billion dollar business. I don't have the desire, like if--.

But ask them why. There's only one reason why.

Usually ego, right?

Or that's because that person, that's what the media says, that's the magazine I read. We all want to be an Elon Musk.

You know, it's so you-- I don't have the desire. That's not my drive. If based on my decades of impact in the world, somehow that comes to me, I'm not gonna say no, I don't want it. I'll take it. And I'll do with it hopefully a lot of great things.

And by the way, there are people that should build billion dollar companies. Don't get me wrong. It's just not all of them. It's not the only path for an entrepreneur to build a billion dollar company. That is nothing but a burden to me. But some will and some should and some Some can and most shouldn't.

Here's something interesting to talk about. Why are most people not ready to make a lot of money?

Well, we can go back to the youe Deserve It thing. They don't feel they deserve it. I don't think I can answer this one well because making a lot of money for some reason became taboo in the last 10 years. And so I am a subscriber to Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill. He's my original thought leader that opened my eyes.

-Love that book.

-And so in the early 1900s, everybody wanted to be a millionaire and it was respected to be a millionaire and it was respected to be successful and make money. And it's culturally, it's like you can see people filtering themselves. They kind of say they want to make... They want to make a lot of money but they can't overtly say it for some reason and they always back it up with, well, but I'm going to... In other words, they candy coat it for some reason. It's okay to make a lot of money. It's okay. So, it's just hard to make a lot of money. So, in your question, it's either you're saying, you know, why can't they? First of all, it's a question of do they really want to and will they overtly embrace the fact that they do. Please read Think and Grow Rich out there. or number two, some just can't. We have people that make $25 an hour for a reason and that's a good thing and that's what makes the economy work and that's so some people just aren't money makers and that's okay. It's okay, you can't make 7.5 billion people on the planet six figure plus earners. You can't, you just can't. My humble opinion.

So some people are not maybe based on the season of your life and maybe over time, you could get there if you wanted enough or if that's the role you want to play and not everyone wants to be working. They want to be in support roles and things like that.

Right, but here's the thing. So that's just my strong opinion. That pissed off 15% of your audience. But the people listening to this podcast, these are all driven people that want to earn six figures. So we're talking to all the right people. So everything we're saying is landing because they want this, but we have to be really careful to think we can get 7.5 billion people. we can teach them how to make six figures because not everyone is equipped to do that. It's not everyone needs to make a bunch of money. You know, it's we all have different roles.

-Why is it hard for a lot of people to make more money, do you think? Why is it a challenge? Just because they weren't built for it? Is it because they're not ready for it? They don't have the mindset, they don't have the skills, the resources, the people in their life, the network, and so.

I just want to say yes to all that because I think it's so many things. I, this is where we're getting into, I'm not equipped to answer that question and I fear I'll throw some biases in there but I'd have to give that one some thought.

-Here'S a different question for you. For those entrepreneurs that you guys work with that all of a sudden start to make more, they implement this system, they start bringing in more revenue than they've probably ever made in their life, right? And then paying themselves more than they probably ever paid in their lives. What do they need to prepare for if they start doubling their income, tripling their income, giving them a big bonus check at the end of the year? How can they prepare themselves for the abundance of wealth coming in?

That's a good one.

Where they don't self-sabotage, mess it up, then deal with all the people in their life saying, gimme, gimme, gimme, and hurting all their relationships. which I've heard that happens a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So this one I feel a little bit equipped to answer. You're prompting two or three points here. So the first is, you know, I have been broke three times in my life. Okay? So 21, 25, and 31. I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. I achieved that goal by 31, so I missed it by a year. But what I left out of the goal, I want to be a millionaire by 30, I forgot to say and keep the money, I lost everything by 32. So I went from being a millionaire to $200,000 in debt. So I know this pain all too well. And so that's point one. Point two is, you know, for our EOS implementers, we have over 450 as I talked about, these people earn a lot of money. It's a good gig that we do. We are transforming companies making a lot of money. And so what I do for them is the ones that reach a certain level and beyond as I do a special full day session for them called a Freedom Forum. And my sole purpose is to get them to not piss it all away, okay?

Freedom Forum.

It's called the Freedom Forum. But this is strictly for EOS implementers. This is for our inner sanctum, our love in that is EOS worldwide. And the reason I do it is because I have the givers, the teachers, the helpers of the world most die broke because we don't know, we're all trying to fill a hole and so we just keep giving and giving and giving and giving and giving and giving.

Keep it. Right, right.

So I've watched so many of the thought leaders die broke. And so I just. Oh, I can't disclose a lot of them.

Yeah.

So in that, I'm teaching them how to keep the money. Okay. And so it's. It's. It's all about. I jokingly like to say it's not. Not time to buy boats and cars and planes. And so. So it's. It's this. It's this mental shift. And for me, it starts with the end game that just says. Do you want to retire someday? And most people are going to say yes, which means you can live off your money and not have to work. So, most people are going to say yes to that. Okay? And so, what kind of a lifestyle do you want to have? And let's hypothetically you say $100,000 your lifestyle.

Okay?

Simple math. So, then that means you need $2 million sitting in account on that retirement day paying you 5% and you can live off that. And then you need to factor in, sit with a financial advisor, they'll teach you this. Don't take my word for all the math, but the point is most people don't get that and they think that for some reason the money machine continues forever and it just doesn't. And so it's a day of reprogramming their brains and teaching them. And so once they understand the math, then they realize this extra 100, 200, 300, $400,000 they have in their account, the urge to go buy a bigger house, buy a boat, buy a car, buy a this, they realize, Whoa, I can put that toward the 2 million. And so it's just a mental shift because most people are conditioned to spend that money for whatever reason and think that the money is going to keep coming in and it just doesn't always. Things change. So does that answer the question? I hope it does.

-Don'T spend it all when you're making- oh my God.

Yes. Sock it away. Sock it away. Sock it away.

Yeah. Yeah.

And read the Millionaire Next Door. That's the best book I've ever read on the psychology behind it. The people that you don't think are millionaires are millionaires and the people that you think are millionaires are not millionaires.

That's true. Yeah. Who wrote that book?

Is that two gentlemen and I cannot remember their names, but Millionaire Next Door, a masterpiece.

It's kind of like the millionaire next door that has like a 20 year.

Old car and you know... Changed my.

Life in my late 20s for sure. My dad never bought a new car. He always bought used and had like this, you know, old oldsmobile that he would drive. Yeah, he was just always kind of reinvesting his money, so in properties or whatever it might be. So I love this. What else do we, what else do entrepreneurs need to know?

Yeah, well, so let's, so we're going on these five pieces of content we've been talking about, right? So entrepreneur leap, rocket fuel traction slash EOS, EOS life. Now the fifth is like the aha, wala moment, the icing on the cake. And it's called 10 Disciplines for Managing and Maximizing youg Energy. And this is actually in the EOS Life Book. So, I decided to do something very weird and that's add a free mini book to the back of a book. It's the last 30 pages. -Yes. -And the way I describe it is there's nothing else you need to do with what we talked about. Again, as an entrepreneur or any being all the way up to living your ideal life. But then I call this one living your optimal life because if now you want to take it to a whole another level, I believe we are all balls of energy, okay? And we are pure energy. That's just my belief and I believe that we are all connected. And so life will be pretty damn good if you just do everything we talked about. But to add this last little piece, what happened with this is going back to the EOS conference that fourth year, I didn't want to teach EOS life anymore and I got very vulnerable. And so this only goes back two or three years ago. This is not very, maybe two years ago. And I decided I am going to teach the 10 disciplines I have lived by in my life for two to three decades that magnify my energy, 10x. And so in addition to living this great life, then there's this way to boom, explode your energy to a whole other level. And so that's what it is. It's teaching 10 very specific disciplines to live by every single day that will take your energy to a whole another level.

I love it. You've got a lot of great disciplines here. Knowing yourself 100%, learning to say no often, all these different things. Prepare every night. I think a lot of people talk about the morning routine, but the evening routine is something that I focus on a lot, which is what am I going into? Well, first I reflect on the day and I share three things I'm grateful for with my girlfriend and she shares as well. So we really focus on gratitude and appreciation. And I think when we focus on appreciation, we appreciate into something greater. We focus on all the good, even if it was a stressful day, it's like, man, but there's three powerful things that happened. And that brings us into a peaceful night of sleep. And then I start to really prepare of like, what's the main thing I want to take on the next day? I look at who am I interviewing, what's happening, and I get myself ready to be focused for those 24 hours, for those 18 hours or whatever. And I think that is something a lot of people miss out on. They just go to bed. They don't reflect on the day. They don't think about tomorrow. And I'm not sure your specific preparation.

Strategy, but you nailed it.

Yeah.

So if we could just go a little bit deep into it for about two minutes. And as I go into these, the way I look at it is, for your audience, they're driven people. These are successful people. And so this makes an assumption that you've got the basics down. In other words, you're eating right, you're exercising, you're sleeping well, and you have work ethic. Then we're going to take and magnify all that. So you're a racehorse, as I like to describe it. I'm going to help you run faster and longer. so this discipline that you're on which is discipline number 8 is prepare every night. And so, my business mentor taught me this at 25 years old. I've been doing it every night for now almost 30 years. And you're exactly right. It is before your head hits the pillow, somewhere between 5 o'clock and your head hitting it whenever your day ends, you have to sit down for 15 to 30 minutes and prepare for the next day and just lay out in a sequential and a linear fashion your day. Time blocking your meetings, your appointments, your calls, your projects. And so you're just laying out the whole day so that when your head hits the pillow, you took the words out of your mouth. Those words are in the book right there. You will sleep better. Yes. So what does that do for your energy? You will literally wake up with ideas and solutions to projects you're working on the next day because your subconscious is going to work on them because you prepared so well. and your energy will go through and your creativity will go through the roof because what happens is you wake up the next day and you hit the ground running. And there are people that say, oh no, I'd like to wake up and let the day come at me. So if you wake up and you start checking emails or you walk into the office, you have lost all control of your day and so this is you taking control of your day and managing your energy and you will be, I want to say twice as productive. But who knows the math but you will be much more productive.

This is an interesting one right here. You know, in your, I won't go through all these, but number one, you say tenure thinking, it's really getting clear on the next 10 years and kind of where you want to be in 10 years and reverse engineering in a process that you talk about in here, which I think is really cool.

But let me say one thing to that, okay? Because it's a little more robust than that. And I learned this at 35, so I've only been practicing this one for 19 years, but oh my God, was it transformative. And so the whole idea is to shift your thinking from now, now, now, this year, got to have it now, got to get it done now, this most driven people, most people listening, we're so impatient. We want everything now. If you can shift your thinking to 10 year thinking, not as much 10 year goals, but I urge when I'm doing this talk, you to write down a 10 year goal to get your brain to shift to that. But it's thinking about everything in your life in 10 year time frames. frames. There's thinking out there that says 25 year thinking. There's thinking that says 100 year thinking. I just want you to start with 10 right now and if you will do that, all I can tell you is what happened for me. And what happened for me is this peace and calm came over me. I felt less urgent. I started making better decisions and ironically I got there faster. When you're in that now, now, now mentality, you're making bad decisions. And so when every decision in your life is This is now a 10-year decision. It's just so, so much better. I can't even explain it to you. And so obviously I go into more detail in the book.

Yeah, I love that. And so you have your first thing is 10-year thinking. The last thing is be humble. In my book, the School of Greatness, the principles I wrote about the first one was have a clear vision. The last one was be of service. I'm curious.

-It'S so similar.

Yeah, I'm curious. What is the difference between, why is it important to be humble? What degree of humbleness should an entrepreneur have as they are achieving and accomplishing and getting acknowledged and awards and earning more and all these different things? Covers of magazines and press, all this stuff. Is it important to be 100% humble? Should you have some confidence and charisma that might look arrogant or how do you balance that where it doesn't come across cross as super arrogant.

I love it. So one of the core values at EOS Worldwide is humbly confident. Okay? And so that's what we all subscribe to. Over 400 people in that company, all humbly confident. So it's okay to know your stuff. It's okay to be confident. But there's a big difference between humble confidence and arrogant confidence. And so I describe it as a spectrum. Okay? And so if you picture on this end arrogant, on this and humble. You need to ask yourself, where are you on the spectrum? Because ironically, the definition of both, if you literally look up the definition, it's almost verbatim in terms of arrogant. The definition of arrogance is your view, how you view yourself in comparison to others. The definition of humble is almost identical how you view yourself. So, arrogant people somehow think they're better than others and humble people don't feel they're any better than and so the point here is you can be on every magazine and still be humble. You know, like the leader that comes to mind, and this is big corporate world stuff, so most of your audience may not know, but Alan Mulally that took over Ford Motor Company, to me is probably, if not the greatest leader, one of the greatest leaders in the last 20 years. That man is so humble, so powerful, and anyway, did an amazing turnaround of Ford Motor Company. So the point is, you can get all of those accolades and it's something that we all battle on a daily basis trying to stay humble with all these people coming at us and all these thank you notes and all of these accolades. But it is possible and you don't need to be arrogant. And then the point in all of this is you attract more of what you are. And so what I do is I have then the audience do an exercise where first of all they can't do it in the room but go to the five closest people to you that will be honest and ask them to put a dash on the line as to where you are. And then I urge you as an individual put a dash on the line to where you are. Then I urge you to think about the 10 people that you spend the most time with in your life and put a dash on the line for each of the 10 and you'll get really good insight to what you're attracting and what you are. I just have a strong belief that a humble life is a better life because you attract better people, you have more people that will fight for you energetically. Imagine a life being surrounded by arrogant people and a life being surrounded by people who are arrogant. You just can feel that energy. And then the last little point is in my 20s, I was going down a very arrogant path. And it was my father-in-law, Neil Pardon, God rest his soul, that through his example, a relatively wealthy man, but so humble. And by watching him, it's not like he took me under his wing and said, Hey, be humble. I watched him and he was so humble, so likable. And so that's when I learned it's possible to possess wealth and be humble. So thank God he was in my life because that's where I was going the wrong way and that was my wake-up call. So that's... And oh, and by the way, gratitude is a huge part. if you will, it's impossible to be arrogant and practice gratitude. And so if you just, so what I teach there is every night when your head hits the pillow, as I do, I just say thank you for all of the things to whoever you like to say thank you to. And it's kind of hard not to be humble when you're so appreciative for everything in your life.

Absolutely. Well, Gino, I really acknowledge you for your decades of work on this and making the complicated simple. simplifying these things, giving us the tools, the practices to appreciate that, to really do what you've been doing this whole time without really knowing it, which is helping people do what they love with the people they enjoy that they love, making a difference, getting paid well for the difference you're making and having fun for your other passions in your life. That's a pretty amazing life. The EOS life, the way you call it, how to live your ideal entrepreneurial life, which is also could be for anyone, whether entrepreneur or not. Some amazing work. Traction has been very foundational for my team and what we're implementing and I know we still have more to go on it so I got to dive in there more myself and make sure we're doing those things and keep pushing it forward. But I just want to acknowledge you for how you show up for so many people.

It means a lot.

Because I think entrepreneurs are the ones that are supporting the world. Really, without entrepreneurs creating products and programs and services. They're the ones generating revenue to fund lives of people, to help people live this lifestyle. So, I'm grateful for you and your team's work on making this mission, on bringing it to so many. How many entrepreneurs now are you impacting or using?

Well, 130,000 companies and there's a lot of people on that. Traction sold its millionth copy back in August. Amazing. They have no idea how many many.

A lot of people are helping. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for that. I've got, I want people to get the book, the EOS Life. This is my kind of book because it's short. I like short and simple books that I can implement right away. Lots of good stuff in here. Go get the book. Get a few copies for your friends as well. The EOS Life, how to live your ideal entrepreneurial life. You can go to your website, you know Wickman.com, you can get it on Amazon, all the other places as well. You're like nowhere on social media. You just have LinkedIn and your website, right?

I am free, baby. No, no, you can't find-- I don't spend one second on social media. It's the antithesis of what you're supposed to do. But I'm a very unique being. Yeah, it works. So the website, you can go to EOSlife.com, EOS Worldwide is kind of the epicenter of all things EOS and Traction and Rocket Fuel. Gino Wickman.com if you want to kind of have a recap of everything we you talked about. But in terms of social media, I don't even know if I have a good answer for you. Did they give you something?

You just have LinkedIn, but I don't even know if you're on there.

I think, I wish I could say what it is, but my team will give you what the EOS Life social channels should be. But my apologies for not having that. No worries. It's just not something I stay away from.

That's good, man. That's great. Well, you're free. There's two final questions I want to ask you. This is called the three truths questions. So hypothetical, imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away, you live as long as you want to live, and you live the lifestyle. You do all five of these things to the highest level. You keep creating how you want to create or whatever you do, you do it. But you've got to take all your work with you, all your books, all your content, all your message that you've ever put out into the world. No one has access to it anymore. All these entrepreneurs are now suffering. They don't have your work. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you've learned in your life that you would share with the world. This is all we have to remember of your work. I called three truths. What would it be your three truths?

Damn. I pretty much have been asked every question. That's the first time I've heard this one. It's so good. Well, the first one came to mind really, really fast and I think the next two will come as I'm talking talking, but the first one is very clearly, Let yout Freak Flag Fly. And so it's everything we're talking about in a nutshell, and it's in that discipline, one of the 10 disciplines, is know thyself so you can be yourself. And so my wish for everyone on the planet is to know yourself so you can be yourself. And then I lovingly call it letting your freak flag fly, which is that judgment piece. Forget all of it and just fully be you and all of your glory and look out baby. So that would be number one. Number two, man. And then it's, I don't know that there's a close second but there is like this economic thing that does come to my mind and we touched on this because I ache for seeing the number of people die broke that I've seen die broke and it it's these drivers and entrepreneurs and givers and helpers and thought leaders. And so it would be this point about financial independence and what that really means. Making a half a million bucks a year, making two million bucks a year, that is not financial independence. It's having enough money at the end, whatever that end date is, that's paying you enough money to support your lifestyle. And I'm shocked at how many people don't get that basic and don't have anything in savings sitting there at 40 years old, that's shocking. So that would be number two if that one made sense. And then number three, so let me just think here if there were only three, oh my God, that's so tough. It's just know that you are a part of something bigger than yourself. Yeah, those would be the three. Man, that's a good question. When I leave, I'm like, oh, I wish I don't know that I'm going to replace any of those three, but.

That'S the best of it. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

Wow, that's good. So, you know, I talk about all these incredible thought leaders that I studied and obsessed about in my 20s. And so Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins was in there for a while. Les Brown, Zig Ziglar. Zig Ziglar was my dad's mentor, so there's a connection there. But it's Earl Nightingale. He had a recording in the 50s or 60s called the Strangest Secret. And he described success as the, how did he word it, the progression of a worthy goal or idea. and the point is you are successful when you are working towards something. So it's like the point is the journey never ends. And so somebody who is great to me is somebody who is always growing. Okay? And then I just, it's like a throwaway or an assumption to me that we're all here to serve. And so I'm assuming that as you are working toward a worthy goal or ideal. In other words, always working, always growing, you're never complete. That is success to me. That is greatness to me. And inherently, you have a servant mentality. You are serving, helping, you're being the example. That's my best definition of greatness.

Thank you so much, man. Appreciate this.

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