The 6 SECRETS To Negotiating In Business & In Life! | Lewis Howes

Instead of learning by trial and error, which can take decades you may never learn, Jim Rohn taught me success leaves clues, man. Find someone who's got what you want, study what they do, every aspect of it, and then add yourself to it.

And that's the pathway to speed of transformation. Was there ever a moment where you didn't unconditionally love yourself? And if so, and if so, when did that shift where you stopped that and you started saying, okay, I appreciate myself because of my contribution and my service and who I am?

What was that shift?

I don't think it was ever I.

Just didn't love myself. There were times obviously be angry with yourself or frustrated with yourself or thinking, you know, I'm not doing enough. I mean, I can remember my birthdays, to be honest with you, probably up to my 40th birthday, including my 40th birthday, you know, you have a birthday with a zero on it once you're over past 30, you know, 35, sometimes five years on it as well. People look at their life differently culturally. And I used to think it was bull, but sure enough I would do it. I remember turning 40. I was really, really unhappy. I was like, Jesus, I've not done enough, I've not helped enough people. I know tens of millions of people at that point already done all over the earth in 100 plus countries at that point, but it was still kind of stuck in my head. So I would earn the love by over-delivering, change somebody's life. I don't get it because somebody says, oh, I love you, Tony. I mean, I appreciate that, or oh, you're the greatest. It's got to be my standard. My standard's higher than their standard for me. Right, so when I get up and someone's going to kill themselves and they're suicidal and boom, turn around and they're no longer not going to kill themselves but they're transformed, their life is there, you know, that's when I go, okay, you know, now we've hit the center of what I'm made for. Now, you know, I deserve to feel this euphoric feeling within myself and appreciation. And even then I still know it's God coming through me. I don't have the delusion, it's just me. But I think sometime after 40, I finally saw the stupidity of it. I accumulated enough that I looked at life with fresh eyes. And I can say by the time I turned 60 a year ago, I noticed it was interesting because my birthday, I didn't have an ounce of it. I was just like, you know, how could I at this stage of my life when I've had the privilege of serving so many humans in so many contexts, you know, from turning around, you know, guys are going to kill themselves with PTSD to helping kids turn around to getting kids off cocaine or adults to, you know, helping people build multi-billion dollar businesses from nothing. When I've lived this long, I can't go by without hearing half a dozen stories a day or a dozen stories a day from people telling me how something I did changed their life. So it's not that I'm so smart now, it's just I've stacked it. By the way though, stacking is the way you can do things. Most of us stack the negative. If you are really angry, it's not usually because of just the moment, it's that it happened again. You know, it's like if you've ever lost it or overreacted to your kid or to a friend or a business or even within yourself, It's because it happened again. We hit this one, two, three, many point and then our nervous system overreacts. But what I've learned is you can stack the good. But for example, if you're, if you go into a state of really strong anger for more than five minutes, your immune system is suppressed between an hour and a half to two hours. That's a physiological fact. But no one had done any study. I started stacking good, like, okay, let me stack a dozen great memories, feel them, see them, experience them. and I felt this biochemical change that didn't just last a half hour, an hour, or 10 minutes. It went on for a day or two. And so I think I've learned to stack the good. So just having the experience is not enough. You got to stack the good to be able to appreciate it. But I think the more you find unconditional love for others, the easier it is to find in yourself. And I think the focus is serving and loving, and that's what will get you to the point where you start doing it. But if you want to speed it up, Stack all the good you've done.

You'Ll feel great about yourself. I already know all the comments that have come through, thousands of comments telling me, but what about my family that's toxic? What about my partner who's toxic? And how do I love someone unconditionally when they don't respect me? I can't trust them. What about situations like that?

All those reactions are natural human reactions from ego. Because it's all about you, me, me, me, what I'm not getting, what I'm not doing, and that's why you're in pain. I've done it too in the past, but it's an old pattern I don't really do anymore. And it used to affect me. Now, not a dominant one, I wouldn't have become who I become. Early in my life, I developed this belief that life is calling not to give me something, life is calling for me to deliver things, for me to bring something to life. And I felt the joy that came from not getting but giving, and I got hooked on that core pattern. And then the pattern of learning so I'd have something to give, which I know one of the things I respect about you, Louis, is that you have that same pattern in you. You're always trying to learn more because underneath it all, you also want to give it. You want it for you, but you want to share it, right? And so those patterns help me not be in what they're not giving me. And all this language, language today, people don't understand the power of their language. Like toxic. You've been reading too much social media and thinking about yourself or somebody raised you to constantly judge everybody else. We live in a culture now where people, you know, you're evil or you're like me. That's basically how it is, right? The whole world, everybody else is immoral unless they do what you do, think what you think, experience what you think. I mean, being a liberal, I was a liberal, right? Being a liberal growing up, man, I would fight for your ability to say and believe whatever you want different than me. Today, now everybody wants everybody to think the same thing, otherwise they're evil or otherwise they could hurt me. Whatever happened to sticks and stones will break your bones and words will never hurt me? We have this whole thing that words are evil, words are action, what it does is make you incredibly weak as a human being. And you're more than that. We all are more than that. But you know what? Like a kid that's never broken their bones, deathly afraid of breaking the bone. But if you're a kid and you're rough and tumble, you broke multiple bones and they heal, you don't have any fear of it. There's so many kids that have been raised to be safe and secure every moment. Anything that's insecure or unsafe, they don't want to be a part of, including language.

And what it does is make you.

Incredibly weak and fearful. And that's why there's so many people that are abundant that are angry all the time. Because they're angry because they're not growing. So don't get me wrong. I know some people are not a good influence. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying you're more than somebody's influence unless you obsess about it every moment and make them wrong so you can make yourself feel superior morally, psychologically or spiritually. Stop the pattern. We've all done it. Catch yourself. Because if you want joy, happiness and freedom in an extraordinary life, you will not come from blame.

Never.

There's no pride that comes from blame. Pride is something you earn. People tell me, oh, I have no self-esteem because my parents used to say this or they'd say that. Self-esteem does not come from what people say about you. Self-esteem comes from what you experience about yourself. See, someone can tell you your whole life you're a piece of crap and a part of you go, you,'re full of it. I'm gonna show you. Lots of people have done that. They never bought it. Or someone tell you, you're beautiful your whole life. You go, I'm not really beautiful. So what people tell you doesn't matter at all. It's what you stack. It's what you assemble. It's what you create. It's the habit of what you put in your head. And today I don't blame you because we got a whole culture that's always blaming somebody else for something in their life. But blame is not a strategy for pride. That's why you listen to these blaming people. They're all angry all the time. Listen, if I wanted to blame, I grew up in an environment, I didn't even share it to my mom past it. Even then I didn't share. I grew up in a pretty rough environment. My mom was a beautiful soul, but when she drank alcohol and she mixed it with prescription drugs, it was a different creature. And it was a violent creature. And I have a younger brother five years younger and a younger sister seven years younger. And my mom would get nuts and I didn't want them to get hurt. So I was 5'1 in high school. She'd grab me by the hair and smash me against the wall till I bled. Now, I never shared this and I'm not denigrating her in any way. I only shared it like four or five years after she died, because I was talking to a group of kids in New York City, all without fathers, 80% African-American, about 20% Hispanic out of the group roughly, no white kids, and I'm talking about your biography is not your destiny. And it doesn't matter what you've been through, what you decide now is what's going to control your life, what you decide each day going forward is going to decide your life. And I look at them seeing me, I can read their minds. This big, tall, white, rich guy is gonna tell me, biography doesn't matter. So I said, you, let me tell you my story. And I told them the whole story way more than I'm telling you. And every one of them was crying their eyes out when they were done. I said, look where I am right now. Because I wouldn't assemble the story that my past equals my future. The past only equals your future if you live there. If you're using a rear view mirror to guide yourself, you're gonna crash. So what you've been through is horrific. What you've been through is unjust. I'm on your side. But if you hang on to it, you have no future and you have no one to blame but yourself. And these kids, to their credit, man, they just responded to the challenge because they first cried their eyes out hearing all the stories. My mom would think I was lying and I wasn't lying. She poured liquid soap down my throat until I threw up. And I wasn't lying. So it's not the physical abuse. It's the fact that this is the.

Person you love most that's trying to.

Hurt you, that messes with your head. So I could have been messed up for life, but I didn't. Because something inside me says, I'm responsible for this life. And part of that is because I started reading when I was 13, 14, biographies of people, the greatest people in history, and reading their lives and finding out, guess what? Their lives were far from perfect. Some of them had worse lives than I had. But when you have no reference and all you do is go online, you talk to other people, making everybody else toxic and I'm like this, and they didn't do that, right? Don't be one of those. Free yourself from the chains of your past. I'm not saying your past doesn't matter, but listen, my mother, I tell people this all the time, and it's the truth. If my mother had been the mother I wanted to be, the mother she should have been, I would not be the man I'm proud to be today. Because I had to become a practical psychologist way before any schooling, figure out when's she gonna go in the mood, how do I change her state, how do I protect her from the kids? I mean, it was felt life and death, and it was to some extent. So I developed skills at such a young age that when I learned things, I just added to my skills. But I had a core sense of certainty that I could turn anybody around because it started with my mother and thank God for her. And she encouraged me in so many ways. She did so many great things and she loved me, even though it didn't look like it at times. So, but if your parents, if the people around you said all the things you thought they should have, if they had just not been toxic, if they'd encouraged you, You wouldn't have any muscle. And right now you don't have any muscle because you're using that as an excuse if you're thinking that. And I'm not attacking you brothers and sisters, I'm calling to you because I know you're more. Otherwise I'd just keep my mouth shut. We're just, you've been hypnotized by a culture of weakness. Now having said that, I'll say one last thing. I know you've got other questions, but it's so important what you've asked. Yes, there are people that you don't want to hang out with that will not serve you. But then move on. Don't sit there and talk about it constantly. Don't waste your time. And you say, but what if it's family, Tony? Mine was family too. That's God coming to you saying, grow. You need some spiritual growth. There's got to be some change in your perception, your belief, your emotions, your spiritual look of life. So that can't happen anymore. And when it happens, like at 61, I've been through so many of those things. And I like to do things in mass. I took on big challenges so I'd have to grow more. But then life throws them at you too. When they come, you just go, okay, it's going to have me until I grow. What needs a shift in me so that no longer has an impact? But you know, Jim Rohn used to say, my original teacher, he used to say, Tony, what happens if I've got a cup of coffee here? And he'd say, what if your worst enemy drops sugar in your coffee? What's going to happen? And I go, well, you have sweet coffee. And he goes, what if your best friend, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your loved one drops one drop of strychnine? I said, you'd be dead. He goes, that's right. Life is both sugar and strychnine, so watch your coffee. His whole thing was stand guard at the door of your brain. But some people take it and go, oh my God, you can kill me. It was a metaphor. These people are not so toxic. They're toxic because you give them energy. So if your mom's crazy and constantly criticizing you and it drives you nuts, just go, that's my mom. That's her way of showing love. And I find a new perspective and no matter what she does, just stay in a beautiful state and love on her and think, boy, think of all that she cares and feels for, all that she's frustrated in life, all that she's that's going through that's made her this way. Thank God I don't have to go through this.

I can love her.

It's like your growth is the only limit to your happiness. If you're not happy, you're not growing in some area. And usually it's a place where you're blaming, you're pointing the finger. I don't care if it's government, don't get me wrong, people can be unfair, unjust, that's for sure happens. But you can't control that. You can't make it not happen. What you have to do is become stronger than any of it so you're free. Freedom comes from growth. Freedom does not come from control. Because control is an illusion. You can't control everybody. No matter how hard you try, you can't control what they think or feel. And not everybody's going to be fair and just. And you, my dear friends, and I have not always been fair and just. Whether we admit it or not, it's just the nature of being a being, a human being. But we can make the largest pattern fair and just and loving and powerful and serving and growing. until it becomes the dominant thing inside you. And then you experience life as being great, not your great. Life's great because you're living a great path.

It seems like what I'm seeing and hearing from a lot of people that this past year everything has fallen apart for them. Their health, their relationships, their finances, their mission or purpose, and these, you know, their spiritual awareness, like every area of life has been in breakdown mode for some people. Not everyone. Some people have had incredible lives and have stepped up to the occasion and broken through on all these things. but I'm seeing a pattern of a lot of people breaking down in many areas. Hypothetical scenario, let's say you could only focus on one thing to get you started. You only have the time and energy to focus on one of these areas. Your health, your relationships are all breaking down, your finances are failing everywhere. Where should people lean into first to kind of create that foundation so that everything else can start to rise as well?

I think before you answer what to do, you're going to answer why you're there. It is not because of the pandemic. I remember when 9/11 happened and people tell, oh my God, my life was destroyed because of 9/11. And there were people in the same building who turned their life around, grew spiritually, closer to their family, made their businesses larger, and the same building burned down. I know in my case, 9/11 comes, if you can imagine, I'm fortunate to have now more than 80 companies in all these different industries. Obviously, you know, I've done pretty darn well by most people's standards of business and life. But my core mission is what I do for a living. It's why I'm here talking to you right now. It's getting people to be free and alive and have the level of fulfillment that they deserve to have. I know they desire, but I also believe they deserve to have, but to deserve to have it, you gotta do certain things, right? Blame is not a strategy for a meaningful life. Blame is not a strategy for greatness. So you gotta resolve that number one. And then your question was, What's the one thing to focus on if you only focus on one? I think it's smart to focus on one thing primarily. Focus on too many can be overwhelming. Other people, it's good to focus on multiple things. It depends on your personality. So I wouldn't presuppose. But then the answer would be whichever thing you're most desirous of changing. Whatever thing is giving you the most pain. So if it's your relationship, I go full force on that. Now in the world we're in today, you don't usually have the privilege of going, okay, I wanna work on just being happy. well, I can train you to be happy while hell's breaking loose. You can sit in this chair and be totally euphoric. But if you do that in a Western culture, people come and take your furniture, right? So you probably have to work on both your business or financial side and some personal side. I would be working on both. And to me, the way to attack that, if you're not sure which areas to start with the body. And I know you can relate to this, Louis, because you and I both share this in common. It's like I always teach physiology first, as you well know. If you change the body, you'll change the emotions. If you change the emotions, you'll change your decisions, you'll change the quality of your life. 'cause the quality of life is your emotions. It's not what you get. You have a billion dollars and commit suicide. People have done it, right? You can have beautiful relationships and commit suicide. You can have people loving you and be sad all the time. Our pattern of emotion is our home. And you have to upgrade your home. You have to train it. And one way to train it is the emotion comes from the way you move, the way you breathe, the way you speak. So if I said to your listeners, there's a depressed person behind the curtain over here and I'll give $100,000 to their favorite charity if they had to describe their body, their posture, and they're depressed, you tell me. I'll just use you as the example.

What does that person look like? They're slouched down. They're looking down at their feet. They're not looking upward.

Their shoulders are over. Are they breathing full or shallow, do you think? They're shallow.

Are they talking fast or slow? They're talking, if they're depressed, they're probably talking fast because they're not calm.

Well, no, that's usually stressed. Depressed is different than stressed.

They're probably talking low volume, slower than.

And all those physical characteristics change your biochemistry towards this feeling of being depressed. And in a depressed state, you won't do anything. When I used to be depressed, I don't get it anymore. I just took it out of my life. I even took the language of it out of my life. because the words you create create a biochemical response. I got out of it by using anger originally. I'm much like sometimes if somebody's really sad or depressed, I'll make them angry and be like, what's he doing? He's making me angry. Because angry is much more resourceful than depressed. From anger, I can get you to laughter, I can get you to taking action. And then gradually I got where I didn't need anger. It was about growth, it was about contribution, it was about meaning. So there's like stages to go through. But to answer your question, they should work on both their business side of their life and personal, one of each. and in order for either one of those to work, you need to be in a strong emotional state. And if you start with your body, like, you know, I start every morning in my cold water, start every morning with my workout, I start every morning feeding my mind, right? So there's certain things you got to do physically so you're strong enough to remember the truth. Because remember, fear is physical. You feel in your throat or your gut. So it's courage. Courage doesn't mean you're not afraid. It just means you're strong enough you push through in spite of the fear, right? And courage feels different in the body. So when you go lift or you go for a sprint or a strong run or you jump in that freezing water, when you push your mind to go beyond what's comfortable, you feel a strength inside you and that strength will help you to change your body, your emotions, your relationships, whatever. But then the other thing I want to say is model someone who's successful. Find somebody who has what you want, ideally maybe more than one person, two or three, and see what are they doing different than you in their relationship? What do they believe different than you about relationship? If it's their body, what are they doing different? They're not lucky. They're doing things differently. You might be slightly biochemically different, but there's patterns there that you can see. And so instead of learning by trial and error, which can take decades you may never learn, Jim Rohn taught me success leaves clues, man. Find someone who's got what you want, study what they do, every aspect of it, and then add yourself to it. And that's the pathway to speed of transformation. So now, like, you know, I've done it. I'm not the only person. There's so many companies that went from Worse off than they'd ever been in their history to the best off because they found a way to pivot.

Life is a series of mentors. I went on from there and, you know, I had one great teacher and that's all you need is one really great teacher in school that makes you feel really special. And then I had a mentor who owned a corner store in my neighborhood and he would teach me and explain to me, you know, his business tactics. And then my mother ended up having a boyfriend who I call my stepfather who who was actually of the Jewish faith and, you know, he taught me that love doesn't come in a color or a gender and that, you know, for me to be very proud of my culture but don't be anti anything else and respect everybody. So I think that gave me a broader look at life and I never walked in a room with a chip on my shoulder. I also never thought anybody else was better than me but I never thought anybody had it better than me too because people of all colors have challenges in life, dreams and aspirations. those things all led me to be the man that I am and I'm very happy of those experiences.

Yeah. And what got you into or being interested into the fashion world and the clothing world?

Well, it was this new music that was coming out of the Bronx right around 1982-83. It was called rap music and it made its way into Queens where I lived and his music was amazing. It was fascinating. And before that I would listen to music great, great people like of course, you know, Rest in Peace David Bowie and Rolling Stones and Donna Summer, Stevie Wonder, Barry White. But all these people had this beautiful way of singing. They had this orchestra and everything else. And they touched on some of the political issues in the world. But this music that was coming out of the Bronx named rap, it was kind of like our version of Twitter today, I always say. It was like a disruptive technology because I started to hear about other kids their hopes and their dreams, their aspirations, the plights of the neighborhood, things that I wouldn't be able to see on the news. And they were putting it in a rhythmic form and it was starting to educate us and it came with a way not only to listen to music but a way to walk, talk and even dress. And you felt like you were part of this society if you wore your Adidas with fat laces on or you knew how to break dance and that's where I sort of find my identity as a young man. So that that's really where fashion started with me. I wouldn't know till, you know, I was about 12 years old. I wouldn't know till probably about another 10 years, 15 years that maybe we should all do something that we love. I tried everything else. Yeah, but I never thought about fashion. It's kind of like, you know, you bust your butt to go and work and make a living and then you go out and on the weekends you kind of snowboard and do all stuff like that, but you never thought about busting your butt building snowboard or snowboarding and making money. Like Rob Dyrdek, your buddy Rob Dyrdek. Exactly, Rob's in the book as well, of course.

Yeah, that's interesting. So how old were you when you sold your first article of clothing?

How old was I? How was I? It was, I know the date, I know exactly the date. It was 1989, Good Friday, 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 37 degrees outside, I stood outside the Colosseum Mall. in 1989, so I was 20 years old. Okay.

Yeah.

Cool.

20 years old.

20 years old.

When did you have. How old were you when you said you had the passion for.

I had the passion in 10, 11, 12. I had a passion for fashion earlier on in my life prior to that as well. But it was really my mother was dressing me because we didn't, you know, not really want us four or five or six because we didn't have money enough money to go buy clothes. So she would sell them. Interesting. Sometimes the pocket would be hanging up.

In the back somewhere, but it was okay. so what gave you. What did. When did you decide that you had the permission to go create your own things or sew them in the basement and then go sell them? What gave you that, you know, belief in yourself that you could create this?

I I. You know what? It again, like. Like most of us start, there was no belief that I could do it. But I remember walking into a store and I started to see cross colors everywhere, and I walked in the store and I saw this picture of this guy who, like, looked like a young Mike Tyson hanging off a pair of jeans, and it was Carl Caney. and then it just hit me. I thought prior to that we always thought that you had to be from Italy and France to design. You had to be older and like a, you know, you know the guys with the tape around their neck, you know, the tailors, right? And so, or whatever the fashion designers had looked like in those days. And I thought I just, I'm just supposed to buy from them. When I saw that, I was like, wow, that's amazing. Okay, no problem. Then I'm watching a De La Soul video. I remember and seeing them wearing these hats. It almost looked like a ski cap, but it has like a tie on the top and I couldn't find that hat anywhere in Queens. I finally find one uptown Manhattan. I pay for the hat, I come home, I show my mother, I said, Look, Ma, I paid, you know, I always say a joke, I paid $6,000 in gas, $900 in tolls and $20 for the hat. Check this out. And she goes, that's a piece of crap. But I could, Damon, I could show you how to sew hats like that so you can sew as many as you want so you can wear them. You don't have to do that. So go get $40 worth of fabric, I go to the store, $40 worth of fabric. I come home, I give my mother the stuff to sew the hats and she says, I'm not sewing this, you're sewing this. So, crap, now I gotta work at this. I sew the hats and then all of a sudden, I have all these hats and only one head. Because it's not like I was too stupid or wasn't thinking, thank God, I didn't buy $40 worth of different fabric.

I bought $40 worth of the same fabric.

Probably one maybe every three years.

Yeah.

So, anyway, so that's when it happened. That's when I went out and sewed those hats and the Outside on that Good Friday and I sold $800 worth of hats in one hour and that's when it just snapped. I just said to myself, wait a minute, I made this with my own hands. I went and sold this to individuals and nobody was in my way. I didn't have to get a check from a boss, nobody told me when to come to work or go to work. I can't get fired from this because of my color creed or whatever the case is. I'm responsible for what's happening here and I will either fail because every decision I make or I'll succeed because every decision I make.

Was that the first time that you made money on your own as an entrepreneur or were you?

No, no, no, no. I've made money on my own and lost money on my own as an entrepreneur. You know, I started my first business. It took me a long time to really decide what I want to do and what was my first business. It took me forever to decide my first business. My first business, I finally decided what I wanted to do when I was six years old.

Took me forever.

Right.

I was selling pencils in, in school.

Wow.

And then I would then I would go ahead and, and, and sell candy. And then when I, when, when, when it snowed, I would shovel snow in the winter, rake leaves in the, in the fall. And, and then I remember when I used to shovel snow, I used to go and kids would want to help me because I started getting, you know, everybody in the blocks that I wanted to, I would travel about three miles and, and take care of it. Kids want to help me. So I would tell them, okay, no problem. Here's what you're going to do. If you're going to help me, I'm going to let you work. I'm going to give you a couple Let's split the money with you, but you got to do a spring cleanup for free so we can go back into spring and then I would go to the to the owners of the house and say, well, everybody else on the block if you shove if they shove your snow they're showing you three dollars if I shovel your snow three times during the winter, I'm gonna give you a free spring cleanup so I was leveraging all those little guys in the neighborhood.

I love it.

Ah, man, that was a great business.

Now, when did you realize that you kind of, you know, the $800 first day, it might have been a great first day, but when you realize like, okay, I have something actually that is consistently getting results, I mean, was it just easy for you after that? For the next year, you were just making 800 bucks every day and then it just kept growing or was there like, oh, there's some dry spells here or I need to change where I'm promoting it?

Like anything in business, it was always a dry spell here, dry spell there, but In all reality, you know, my friends and I, we love selling the hats. Why? Because there was a reason to talk to girls on the street.

There you go.

Right.

And that's why we do a lot of that.

Of course we do everything, right? If we didn't have women in the world, we'd all be walking around barefoot and just, you know, no teeth, right? Exactly. Then I would start going to the black expos where there was like a basically market on the road. And I would try to sell shirts there.

Why?

Because girls were there. Right, right. But also, we started, we were really passionate about what we were doing and, and we started getting that high when we sold stuff at a black expo, you know, and then we go to another one and we see somebody wearing it.

I go, wow, that's pretty cool.

And that's when they came back and started saying, man, you know, I tell everybody about this shirt. And they asked me for, so I need to buy three now because I gotta buy for everybody. And we started saying, wow, right? And it just became so.

Exciting.

I would have normally paid to go to the Black Expo to go around and buy stuff or see stuff. And then, you know, we happen to live in Hollis Queens. There's a lot of music artists in Hollis Queens, you know, obviously, Salt and Pepper, Run DMC, LL Cool J, Tribal Quest. A lot of them come from there. We didn't really know them, but we knew all their friends. But then all of a sudden we heard, we were saying, well, can we get something in a video? And they'll go, yeah, come on down. We go down to the video and there's craft services. It's free to eat. As much food as you want. You get to see somebody like LL Cool J performing a song. There's video vixens running around. Vixens everywhere. I would have paid to go there. Meanwhile, I'm going to go ahead, put on a shirt. They put on a shirt, then I'd say, Man, I don't have any money to-- I have a small company, so.

I really can't afford to lose that shirt. Can I have it back?

Really? Sounds like, you know, what you did-- when was this? What year was this? This was-- well, honestly, I opened Food 189, I closed it three times because I ran out of capital from '89 to '92. So the story really goes from 89 to around 96.

Okay, cool. So 20 years ago, you were essentially the true branding expert who was leveraging the Instagram influencers of today. You were leveraging the music stars, the MTV stars.

Yes.

And getting that social media out there on MTV.

Sure.

As opposed to on Instagram, which is what brands are doing today. They're trying to find the top influencers and get their clothing on them.

Yeah, we always called FUBU the first hashtag of clothing, you know?

Yeah, I like it.

I like it.

What was, what would you say was the biggest challenge once you started to really take off and grow? Obviously as a small business owner, when a trend hits and everyone wants your product, how did you handle that and what was the biggest challenge?

Scalability was very hard because it was how do I go and finance and underwrite these things? Where will I get the capital? What's the turnaround time? And I didn't have any financial intelligence at the time. time.

Right.

So, you know, my journey sell and you could hustle. I could sell like a hustle. But, you know, my journey, I, I almost failed or in lost everything several times throughout that journey because I just didn't know how to use the tool of money.

Yeah.

And, and, and it's so hard to try to acquire all that knowledge within the same time. How do I acquire the knowledge of branding, marketing, distribution, manufacturing, warehousing, shipping, financial intelligence, customer support, you know, return on goods, you know, consumption, you Know what I mean? It's so hard. So of course I had to start leveraging as well and creating a bunch of strategic relationships because I knew I needed that. I knew I needed that because, you know, listen, you know, when you tell somebody to stop smoking, you know, a couple of times and after the 10th time, they know they already have a problem with smoking. They don't want to listen to you. Listen, forget it. I'm not even going to address it. I'm only going to smoke. When you have a business, you have to answer the call. or you're closed.

Right.

Right. So you have to plug the dam. And I knew I had to plug the dam. So I started just creating a lot of strategic relationship, and that's actually the power broke, because it is the fact that, you know, if I would have had money when I went to those video sets, I would have paid the director, I'd have paid the producer, I'd have paid the, the rapper, everybody else. Right. How do, if you gave me $20,000 at that time and I heard that LL Cool J will wear my stuff for $5,000 and the director wants $5,000 to wear it. They're getting the money, of course. Right? And they're gonna wear it. But I got into 30-40 videos with $0, right? Because I had no way to do it. I had nothing to lose. You couldn't take anything from me. I didn't have anything. Yeah, right.

Exactly. So you couldn't even give me your shirt.

Right.

You took it back.

I took it back. You know, when you have-- when you're working with the Power of Broke, it does a couple of things. Number one, It makes sure that you learn the process yourself. You can't afford to hire anybody else. So all those people out there who pay $40,000 for a website when it really costs five.

Or you can leverage it by bartering or something.

Whatever the case is, right? So you have to learn the process. And what happens during that period of time of learning the process is that when and if and hopefully you get to the point that you are successful, Nobody can tell you lies. You can't have somebody say, well, I'm not going to tell you about shipping because you're firing me and I've got to go work it out yourself. You get and you learn the process, number one. Number two is, because you don't have a lot of capital, you focus on the only thing that you can do. You don't drown an opportunity. You don't take a bunch of money and go, We should try a bunch of stuff. Here you go. Here's 10,000, 10,000, 10,000, 10,000 here.

Go.

Yeah, you go. All right, what are we gonna do with this hat? Yeah, right now, you know? So that's the process. And that process is very, very important. Also, you learn and it brings out the character of who you have around you when you operate the power of Broke.

What do you mean by that?

Well, if you, if you, if you're busy, let's open a business today. Let's go take a ten thousand. Let's go take a hundred thousand dollar loan. Well, what happens when the money goes away? Because when I didn't have anything, people worked with me for free. And I saw who rose to the challenge. I saw who jumped ship, right? I saw who were problem solvers and problem creators. And that's the process of activating the power of broke. Because to tell you the truth, the people who activate the power broke more than anybody else are the people who are successful. because that's how they stay successful.

Can you share how it all started? So we have an understanding of what it is and how you got into it.

Absolutely. It actually started with my own butt because I couldn't figure out what to wear under white pants. And I'm sure you've had this problem.

When you're getting dressed.

All the time. So what ended up happening was there was, you know, our undergarment options were no good. There was underwear that left a panty line, and then there was the girdle that was way too thick and heavy. And so then they came out with the thong. which just put underwear exactly where we've been trying to get it out of. Where my clothes, I wanted a smooth canvas. I didn't want to see lines or any kind of things going on underneath. So by taking the hosiery material, which was meant to be seen on the leg and tell Spanx sort of what I create the undergarment out of. And it was wild trying to convince the hosiery manufacturers to help me make this product with that in mind, because for so many years they'd been using the material to be seen on the leg.

Right.

I said, no, it's just, it's the perfect material to create the perfect canvas for women under our clothes. And it opened up my wardrobe. It opened up so many other women's wardrobe. We could start wearing colors we didn't feel comfortable wearing.

And the models get airbrushed. We get Spanx.

There you go.

There you go.

I love it. And when was this? What year was this? This was in. Well, I cut the feet out of my pantyhose in 1998.

Wow.

Yes, I was 20- Is it 18 years ago? Am I doing my math right? Yes, I was 27. And then I spent the next two years getting it made. I worked at night and on the weekends on the idea while I was selling fax machines door-to-door. And then the company was launched in 2000 when I was 29. Wow. Yeah.

Selling fax machines door-to-door. Where were you living?

In Clearwater, Florida. Okay. Where I grew up.

Fax machines.

On Clearwater Beach. Are there fax machines anymore around? No. I mean, thank God I'm not still doing that.

I don't know what would have happened.

There are no more fax machines.

Just like no one watches the movie Airplane anymore.

I cannot believe I need to know. Is he the only one on the planet who's not seen the movie Airplane? I was quoting Airplane and they put the headset on him like, Stryker, you're too low. You're too low. And you just stared at me like.

What is she talking about? That's it guys.

So how long were you selling the fax machines? I sold the fax machine store to door for seven years. Seven years? Yes, I know. And before that, I wanted to be a lawyer, but I failed the LSAT not once, but twice.

And you wanted to be a lawyer.

That was your choice. I wanted to be a lawyer.

I was like, I'm gonna be a lawyer.

But so you wanted to be a lawyer, but it didn't work. I wanted to be a lawyer. I failed the LSAT not once, twice. So then instead of going to law.

School, I drove to Disney World and.

Tried out to be goofy. But you have to be 5'8 and I'm 5'6 and I'm 5'6 so you didn't wear heels? No, I didn't wear heels. I didn't wear heels. And so I was the height of a chipmunk.

So you got the chipmunk?

I got the chipmunk part, but I didn't end up doing it. I put people on rides in a brown polyester spacesuit at the World of Motion and Horizons at Epcot. Epcot Center. And I would see people that I hadn't seen in a while and... Come through. Yeah, I'm walking on the moving sidewalk, putting people on rides and they'd go, Hey, Blakely, is that you? Didn't you graduate from college? And my big Mickey Mouse here said Sarah Blakely and I'd be like, yes, get on the ride.

Oh my gosh. But that's what I did and then I sold fax machines door-to-door for seven years.

Seven years.

Did you wake up every morning and say, this is my dream to sell fax machines door-to-door? Were you thinking, no.

What am I doing in my life? Exactly. So what happened was a lot of people think that Spanx started when I cut the feet out of my pantyhose. But actually it started long before that. It started when I was selling fax machines door-to-door and getting my business card ripped up in my face being escorted out of buildings all day, every day that I woke up one day and just thought, I'm in the wrong movie. Like how did this happen? This is not my life. Cut scene, director, like call the producer. And I got out a piece of paper and I wrote down, what am I good at? And the only thing in the good column was sales. And I thought, okay, what am I gonna do with that? And I ended up writing in my journal, I'm going to invent a product and sell it to millions of people that will make them feel good. And then I asked the universe for an idea and I was very specific. and it took two years. And I only cut the feet out of my pantyhose one time, and I was not going to squander any idea the universe gave me because I had really asked for it. And then the minute I cut the feet out, I started trying to make it. I started looking up manufacturers on the internet.

This is before Alibaba, wasn't it?

Yes.

Because I had shown this. I did this about eight years ago, and I used Alibaba for something. It was easy to find, like a manufacturer in China and.

Yeah.

Test different things. But how did you find a manufacturer at that time?

A website called ThomasRegistry.com and it lists all the manufacturers in the country based on category. And that's when I found out that a lot of hosiery and undergarments were being made in North Carolina.

Oh really?

Yeah.

So you got a local?

Yes.

So, yes. So I called and called and no one would take my call and they'd either hang up on me or say they weren't interested. So I took a week off of work and drove around. in person and just showed up and.

Said, I just showed up. Hey, I want to create a sample.

Yeah.

Because if they weren't gonna get a big order for something, they're probably like.

What'S, I'm not gonna do a little sample for you. Right, right. Yeah. I showed up with my lucky red backpack from college. It's always with me.

You still have it?

Yeah, of course. And you didn't bring it here? Come on. It's with me. It's with me in LA. Yeah. Oh, wow.

Yeah.

So anyway, I went into the host, the manufacturing plants, and they asked me the same three questions. and you are, let's say, Sarah Blakely and you're with myself and you're financially backed by. And I was like, Sarah Blakely. So you can imagine how those went. It was like, well, have a nice day, honey, and good luck.

And.

About, you know, a few weeks after I made all those rounds, I got a call from a guy in North Carolina who had took pity on me. and said, Sarah, I have decided to make your crazy idea.

Wow.

And when I asked him why he had the change of heart, he said.

I have three daughters.

Wow.

Yeah.

So he ran the idea by them and they're like, Dad, that sounds interesting. You gotta give that girl a chance.

Amazing. So he called you back. You didn't follow up with these people.

Oh, yeah, I was following up, but to no avail.

Gotcha. But he followed up and said, yeah, we'll give it a shot. Yes. We'll make this. So what was the next step? Was he just making a sample for.

You or testing different models or sizes or Yeah, so it just set up to make the garment. While I was making it with his manufacturing plant, I was also wanting to patent the idea, and I was also trying to come up with the name for the invention. So I was doing those three things simultaneously, driving up on the weekends and working with Ted in the back of the manufacturing plant that I'd become very close with. And... Driving to North Carolina from Florida.

No, from Atlanta.

I was living in Atlanta at the time.

What's that, about eight hour drive, six hour drive?

About four and a half. Oh, it's not bad. Yeah, it's not bad. And so anyway, Ted became my buddy and I went to get it patented, but all the patent lawyers wanted between $3,000 and $5,000 and I had $5,000 set aside to do this.

That's it, yeah.

So I wrote my own patent. I went to Barnes and Noble.

No way.

And I bought a book called Patents and Trademarks and I wrote the patent and then I called one of the patent lawyers that was the nicest to me and said, Please, please, please, will you write the claims over the weekend for a discounted price? I've done all the other rest of the patent.

The leg work you'd done.

Yeah. You just kind of needed to button it up and. Yeah, he needed to sign it off. The legal part. And so he did. He actually admitted to me that when I came to visit him, he thought I'd been sent by Candid Camera, which, let me put it in your.

I know.

Candid camera.

I know.

He thought he was being punked.

Of course. Of course.

Wow.

Yeah.

He thought he was being punked.

Okay. And he thought.

Where's Ashton? Yeah, exactly. He thought that his friends. We're playing a joke on him. No way.

Yeah, he goes, who's this girl?

He goes, Sarah, I mean, like, you're not the typical person who walks in the door saying, I've got a product and I want a patent. So anyway, he did that. Then at the same time, I'm trying to think of the name. I had horrible names written on scrap pieces of paper all over the place in my apartment, in my car, in rental cars on the back of, like, Avis agreements. And you want to hear how bad.

The runner-up name to Spanks was?

Yeah.

Open toed Delilahs.

No way. Yes. I cannot believe that was even an option.

It was, it was the runner-up. Like how mad is that? Open toed Delilahs. I so wouldn't be sitting here with.

You right now if I named it that.

That is the horrible, yeah, so bad. Wow. Yeah. So anyway, okay, what's the bet stand for? Well, it's all about the butt. Makes your mind wander a little bit. Nobody ever forgets it. I had no money to advertise. It was risky. It was fun. At the time, listen, now it's become a household name, but when I first.

Invented it, I would call people and.

Say, hi, I'm Sarah from Spanx and they would hang up.

Right. Because I thought it was probably like a porn site.

Yeah, they thought I was pranking them. I'm called, I'm like, no, really, I'm Sarah and my company really is called Spanx. And I had department stores across the country that wouldn't sell it. They thought it was too risque of a name.

Yeah.

And my mom sent her whole luncheon to the wrong website when I first started. I was like, Mom, it's with an X. Oh my God. It's super important. It's with an X. So yeah, anyway, I ended up buying the word Spanx. from a man who said he was holding out from the porn industry. Funny enough that you say that.

I bet.

Yeah.

I paid French with an X. I.

Paid some money for that. But anyway, yes. So amazing. Named it Spanks. It came to me because I narrowed down my thinking. I knew that Kodak and Coca-Cola were the two most recognized names in the world at the time. And I thought, what do they have in common? I like to think about words and phrases a lot. They both have a strong K sound in and the man that created Kodak liked the K sound so much he took a K and put it in the beginning and the end of the word and played with letters in the alphabet. So, and I also had a bunch of friends who did stand-up comedy and it's this weird trade secret among comedians that the K sound will make your audience laugh. So I put all that together and I'm like, okay, I want my product name to have the K sound in it for good luck. And literally Spanks came across my dashboard in my car in my mind and I pulled off the side of the road. I wrote it down. I went home that night, I typed it in my computer for $150 with my credit card and at the last second I backspaced the K and the S and put in an X and hit send.

So it was an accident? Kind of with the X.

No, I know.

You backspaced, gotcha.

I backspaced because I stared at it for a while and I had done research that made up words do better for product than real words and they're easier to trademark. So then I had the name and I had the Patent in the works. I got my prototype and my patent lawyer said, Sarah, I need to know what's in this garment in order to write the patent. I said, okay, no problem. We'll call Ted. So I get Ted on the phone. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to the manufacturer? Yeah, in the back. Yeah. I'm like, Ted, can you talk to my patent lawyer? He's like, yeah. So we're all talking and he goes, I go, can you tell him what's in it? He's like, yeah. Well, 70% nylon and 30% lacquer. And I'm like, All right. And so I'm taking notes. My patent lawyer's taking notes. And that night I could not sleep. I'm up all night. And the next morning I wake up, I'm like, How is there lacquer in this product? What is lacquer just so I'm aware of it?

I think it's like paint thinner or something.

Okay. So I called- 30% paint thinner. So I called Ted, I go, Ted, can you spell lacquer? He's like, yeah, L-Y-C-R-A. Oh my god, Lycra.

Oh yeah, I was like, got it.

All change on Lycra immediately. My patent lawyer was laughing. You know how fast you would have gotten a patent if you tried to make this out of paint thinner? He's like, they would be like, sure.

So was it challenging to get it? Did you get it the first try?

The patent? I did.

Wow, usually it takes a few turns, doesn't it?

I got the patent the first try and I got the trademark name Spanks.

Amazing.

Yeah.

So it didn't seem like there was that many challenges once you submitted it or whatever. You kind of got the things you needed in place. You got the orders in. Was there a lot of challenges after that? Once you got the patent, the trademark?

That was a really hard part. It's just I heard the word no for two years.

Yeah.

All the manufacturers, nobody thought it was a good idea. And also when you're just yourself, trying to break into an industry like you mentioned, the manufacturers, it's not really in their best interest to slow down machines or try to give a girl with a couple grand a chance.

Unless you're gonna give them a bunch.

Of money for a big order of something. It's like what's the point? Right. So that was the hard part. And then once I had it, I cold called Neiman Marcus and that was the first account I called on. Did you get it?

Yes. Well, you were great at sales.

Well, listen, you could sell it. I was so excited. It was my moment. I flew to Dallas. I called them and said, if you give me 10 minutes of your time, I'll come and meet with you. And she said, all right.

This is a buyer.

Yep. The buyer. I first called the Atlanta store. They're like, girl, we can't help you. We have a buying office. I'm like, well, where is that? Give me their number. And I went in, and halfway through my pitch, I could tell I was losing her. So I said, you know what? Will you please come to the bathroom with me? And she was, like, so buttoned up. I mean, Neiman Marcus, like, her pen matched her belt that matched her shoes. And she was like, what? Like, what am I gonna do in the bathroom? I was like, just follow me to the bathroom and show you my own panty line. And I went in. stall with Spanx in my pants and without it in my pants. And she was like, oh, I totally get it. It's awesome. And I'm gonna put it in seven stores. Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Just like that. Just like that. It was so unbelievable. I was so nervous. And then, of course, I had to call Sam. I'm like, in the rental car on the way back to.

To.

To the airport, I called the owner of the manufacturing. I'm like, Sam, Sam, it's Sarah.

I need more.

I just landed Neiman Marcus. And he's like, What? He was in shock. He goes, Sarah, I thought you were going to give these away as birthday presents for like years. And I said, no, Neiman Marcus just bought it and I need more. And he patched me through to Ted. He goes, okay, you need to talk to Ted. Okay. So Ted comes back in. He's on the phone. And I go, Ted, I need more. And he goes, I just landed Neiman Marcus. He goes, well, that's great, but what you can do about the crotches. The crotches? Yeah, exactly. That's what I said. I go, what? Don't they come with crotches?

We've been making them with crotches.

He goes, well, yeah, but we only got one crotch machine. It's being used by somebody else. No way.

Yeah. So what do you do then?

So I just landed Eeyan Marcus and.

I have no crotches.

Oh my god.

Is it a hole in your crotches? I don't know where to go for a crotch. I mean, I don't know.

Where do you go?

I actually looked in the yellow pages.

Crotch making machine? Yeah, I just looked up crotch machine.

I looked up crotch. Let me know how you spell crotch.

Okay, listen.

This is what I learned. teach you something. Okay, so I didn't know that. What's yellow pages again?

Yeah.

Oh, my God. It's a big book. It's yellow. That's what we used to look. Hilarious. What's Instagram?

Oh, yeah.

Okay. I just joined it seven days ago. All right, so where was. Oh, crotch.

Yeah.

Crotch machine.

So.

Yeah.

So anyway, in the yellow pages, it's not under crotch. So I learned there's a fancy word.

For crotch named gusset. Gussit. Yes.

What?

Gussit.

Never heard that word.

So I started calling gussit companies. They were like, FedExing me crotches from all over. My roommate would come home and be like, you got another crotch in the mail. And then I ended up finding a man by the name of Gene Bobo that worked for a crotch company just 20 minutes north of where I lived in Atlanta. And he saved the day. And they made the crotches, and then.

I could deliver Neiman Marcus. So you had the leggings, they made.

The crotches, and then you sewed them together.

Is that's how it works?

Yes.

Apparently, yes.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So then you had another.

How many did you print the first time?

Three thousand. Three thousand. Three thousand pair of the first spank. One.

One skew, right? Or.

Yes.

Twenty dollars. One skew.

Three sizes or like four.

Four sizes. Yeah. And three thousand of them. Yes. And that's what Neiman's ordered. And then I sent them to this. They sent them to the seven stores. I had no packing and shipping department, so the semi trucks were pulling up to my apartment in Atlanta and I was. Oh, my God. myself to Neiman's.

This is amazing.

And then I called every friend I had in those seven cities. Like people I hadn't talked to in 20 years.

Hey, go buy a few of these. Take your girlfriends there.

Hi, Christina, remember me? I used to sit next to you all the time in grade school. Will you please go buy this product called Spanx? I literally called them and I said, and I'll mail you a check. So I paid all my friends and friends of friends to go buy the product. That is brilliant actually. I said, go in. I gave him a whole script. I'm like, go in and say, I've been looking for this all my life. I can't believe it's here and create all this excitement. This is amazing. And then of course a week later, I talked to the Neiman's buyer and she's like, Sarah, we are blowing out. I'm like, you don't say. No way. Meanwhile, I was buying them all. Yeah. It's brilliant. You have to.

Wow.

Incredible moment. You have to ensure your own success. Absolutely. So then once I started running out.

Of money, Oprah called and put it on as her favorite product of the year. How long was that for? Until the time was in Nima Marcus to Oprah calling like a month It.

Just happened that quick month or a.

Month and a half.

How did she even hear about it in a month?

I sent it to her in a.

Gift basket and her Andre who dresses her put it in her dressing room and she put them on and has basically worn them every day since. Shut up. I'm not kidding. It was so unbelievable. I had no money to advertise. I'm in the back of my apartment. I was selling fax machines like a month before that But I have to say I was working every night and on the weekends for two years quietly.

Trying to get this man building this this thing.

Yeah.

Building it. I had no option in my mind. I was like, I am scripting a new life for myself. And was this movie about you that.

Came out a year ago? Joy?

Yeah.

Is that about you?

My dad called me. He goes, Sarah, I just saw a movie. It's basically your life except for the dysfunctional family part. Yeah.

Right.

I was like, yeah, right, Dad.

Okay, sure.

Yeah. But I could really relate to her. I'm sure it was like the hustle and. Yeah, that's crazy. But when I got Neim and Marcus, I think a lot of people think that's when you've arrived. That's when I double timed. I mean, I I got on a plane and was gone for two years straight and I went to every department store in the country that sold Spanx, every Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Bloomingdales and I would go before the store opened and do an all store rally and tell them what my product was, explain it to them, do a demo, give out free product and then stand there in the department for, you know, eight hours a day and tell customers what it was because I didn't have any money to advertise. I was selling it for them. But what I didn't realize I was doing was I was building a sales force not on my payroll because all these people started to become so...

Ambassadors.

Ambassadors and they were rooting for me and they loved the product. And so that was a really important part of the formula. And then I learned what my next products were going to be because I was standing right there with customers and...

Let's say what they need, what their challenge is. I can't do this, but what's the...

They told me what they wanted.

Amazing.

Yeah.

What's the formula or process to get people to do things just because they feel like it.

Well, you know, it's really, it's gonna sound stupid.

Smiley.

Smiley.

Smiley. Smiling. Neuroscience behind a smile. If you smile at somebody, you actually hit their mirror neurons. You start a smile in their brain. Smile is an involuntary response. Mirror neurons in their brain. It's the same as if the doctor hits your knee with a little hammer and your leg kicks forward. You didn't choose to have your leg kicked forward. It's an involuntary response. So if somebody sees you and you smile, you've instantly hit their mirror neurons. You started a chemical change. Now they might fight it and sometimes you get them three smiles.

Right.

But by a third smile, you get them smiling too. So you've already started the processing. And then your inner voice betrays your outer voice. When you say, how are you to somebody at Starbucks? Your inner voice is saying, I'm trying to make your day better. I want you to be a happier person. They're going to feel it. If your inner voice is saying, like, how are you today? I need my Starbucks coffee and I need to get out of here and I hate this line and I hate how long you guys, if that's in your voice, they're going to feel that. They're going to be pouring decaf in instead of instead of the other kind. So your entire approach, the neuroscience shows us the person is picking it up and responding. And so your body language, your tone of voice, the greatest negotiators in the world really maximize that because it's an invisible skill.

Yeah. But it's a skill you can teach it sounds like.

And learn.

And learn.

You can teach it, you can learn it, you can practice it. All you got to do is get your Get your repetitions in. John Foley's a Blue Angel pilot. I heard him speak about four years ago. He talked about how long does it take to build a habit? How much training do you need? He called it grooving a putting a groove in your brain. The Blue Angels, you know, they got to build their habits before they get up in the sky. Otherwise, the jets crash.

I was in a Blue Angel two years ago. It was crazy, man.

That had to have been an adrenaline rush.

I threw up twice. I was sick the whole time and sick for three days afterwards. got a weak stomach, but it was unbelievable at the same time.

They needed to know what they were doing.

Oh, for sure.

They can't learn up there, right?

Amazing to watch them so close, just like feet away from each other.

At Mach 1 or however fast they were going.

Four or five, whatever.

Yeah, it's crazy.

Yeah. All right.

So Foley said, how do they get that good? They practice, he said, 63 to 64 repetitions to put it in your brain. And another guy wrote the talent code, Daniel Coyle. He talked about perfect practice. You could go excruciatingly slow as long as you do it right. And the first time you try any skill, you probably go slow. You come to one of the training sessions that my company puts on, I'm going to say, say this word for word. Take your time. And then react in the moment. We have a one of the negotiation tools is what we call a label. When I say something to you, I want you to label it. I don't care if you have to stare at me for 10 minutes.

Label it.

Label it. It seems like it sounds like it looks like. A label is a verbal observation, okay? But I need you to use those exact words. And if I say, I love Teaching negotiations. Now, label my emotion.

Your emotion?

The emotion that I displayed when I said, I love teaching negotiations. Label that.

What do you say the three things?

It seems like, it sounds like, or it looks like. Label that.

Is that all three of them?

Pick one of those three. Say, all right, I'm going to say it again. I want you to say word for word, it sounds like, and then fill in the blank.

Okay.

I love teaching negotiations.

It sounds like you love teaching negotiation.

Yeah. Now that's enough. Now to start with, what just happened is you demonstrated it perfectly.

Okay.

Because the important part is you have to say the first three words. That actually fires the brain. And you did exactly what I thought you would do, which is you said, It sounds like you fired the brain. and then you opened yourself up to whatever your brain put in. That's why I wanted you to actually say the words, the actual specific words, because your brain will kick into gear and say something. Now, your first label, every time you fire the synapse, you get a little bit better. There's a substance called myelin. Your brain wraps a substance. It's an electrical synaptic connection in your brain. And anybody, you know, if you know anything about electricity, every time you insulated.

Fire is a little bit better.

Fire at 63 to 64 times, according to the Blue Angel pilot, and you get a nice circuit built and it'll fire quickly, and then you'll start to hear it. So we'll fire it again.

Okay.

And I want you to label it again. I love teaching negotiation.

Sounds like you love teaching negotiation.

All right, now dig a little bit deeper.

Explain it more?

No, no, no, just another label, but use another adjective. It sounds like teaching, sounds like X. I love teaching negotiation.

It sounds like you're passionate about it.

There you go, see?

Perfect.

Now you came up with another word. Now it stumped you for a second.

Yeah.

And you kicked in, you know, you, you let that supercomputer come up with another word. They're like, yeah, I am passionate about it. Now, interestingly enough, this is a way in a business negotiation, because a great business deal is an alignment of core values. Just like a great personal relationship is an alignment of core values. I'm sitting on a plane flying in here. This morning I found out more about the guy sitting on a plane next to me. than he's told anybody in 20 years with this same kind of an exercise. What do you do for a living? What do you love about it? And when he tells me, I now know the guy sat next to on a plane, he's got an adopted daughter, she was adopted when she was six months old from China. His mother struggled with bipolar manic depressive. She committed suicide at age 17. He was raised by his grandparents. his grandfather survived the depression. His grandfather, at one point in time, going into depression, owned 11 banks that all went bankrupt. He had to start completely over again. His grandfather used to tell him, I lost 11 fortunes. His grandfather loved to live off the land. They love to. They love to make things by hand. This guy's a very successful contractor here in Los Angeles, and he's constantly. Constantly, constantly working on improving himself. Married to his first wife. They're business partners. They work together. They work in different aspects of the business. I mean, I've lost track of the number of things I found out about this guy. I know about this guy from when he was three years old to now. Now, in the space of what sounded like a normal social conversation, I know this guy's incredibly loyal. He's very practical. He's very hard working. He, I just flew in from Vegas. He was in Vegas because he was in a competitive poker tournament. He likes reading people. He's a very hard worker. From what I know from this guy, from what this perceived social conversation, I know that we could do business together. And if we run into trouble, I have a pretty good idea of what to expect from him and how to deal with those problems if we run into trouble with the very sort of thing that you and I did just now. You know, you start-- so when he.

Asks stuff out-- so you ask him a question and he says something, you would use one of those responses. It seems like-- I like it. It sounds like-- what was it that one?

Yeah, it feels like.

It feels like-- Looks like it could.

Be looks like-- looks like-- I might be reading your body language.

It looks like-- It's like you're not that interested into it, even though you said you were. your body language tells me something different.

Exactly. And then see if you see that in somebody's body language, your point before about Starbucks, about actually seeing a person, the same thing is going on. And they might not even know it. Every now and then I get people go like, yeah, I've been struggling with this for a while. I'm really conflicted about it. And they find themselves opening up because most of the time, you see conflict in somebody, most people say, Ah, it'll be fine. Just keep working hard.

It'll be fine.

It's all part of the journey.

Instead of actually being a great sounding board for somebody and helping them sound it out, consequently learning a lot about that person at the same time.

It sounds like you're going through a lot right now. It sounds like you're having a hard time with this. It sounds like.

Exactly. Or, and that's exactly right. And you start to become a tremendous sounding board for people.

So what happens to that person when you respond in one of those three or four ways of it sounds like, feels like, looks like, what does that person feel on the other side when you're showing that type of compassion or empathy?

They feel connected with. They feel very connected with. They feel seen. You know, they feel like they're a person on the planet. They feel like suddenly they're not just another part of the thundering herd that nobody's paying attention to.

Yeah.

They feel at least that last week we're doing a training with some, some, some pretty tough business people. And one of the guys in this exercise is saying, like, I found myself talking about stuff that happened when I was seven years old. He said, I gotta tell you something. I feel transformed right now. And so we stopped the group at that point in time and we said, all right, so now, based on Larry talking about that sort of a change, what kind of a guy is he to deal with? He's a pretty decent guy. You now have caught a glimpse into him as more as a total human being, which means if he does something that you perceive to be a negative move, he did it accidentally or you misinterpreted it. which means it's okay to go back to him instead of, you know, letting the rage build up in you because you misinterpreted something or did it by accident. He's a decent guy. If he slighted you, he did it by accident. You can go back to him and bring it up and say, hey, I gotta tell you, I got a problem with this. He's probably gonna open up because just based on this real, this three-minute exercise.

You found out about-- he opened up then, so you probably, yeah.

He's a decent human being. And every human being is going to hurt you principally, inadvertently. So you can go back to them and find out what's behind it and make them aware because they're going to want to know.

Yeah, every human being is going to hurt you.

Everybody, one way or another, is going to do something accidentally or on purpose that's going to hurt your feeling. We're going to interpret it as negative the vast majority of the time.

Yeah.

When in fact it was probably a complete accident. There's a really good chance they got no idea they hurt your feelings.

Right.

You need to know which one it was. Did they do it on purpose? Did they know they did it? The numbers are that they did it by accident and other numbers are, there's a really good chance they didn't know they did it.

Right.

You know, I went to, you know, Landmark Forum a couple of years ago, yeah. Talk about making amends with people and talking to people have hurt you. And so one of the young ladies.

Did you go through the whole program?

Yeah. One of the young ladies in it was like, you know, when I was seven, this, a girl who's my cousin, you know, they bullied me. You know, they said something or hurt me. I, you know, it's 30 years. I haven't, like, go, wow. So we talked about it.

They talked about it.

And she said she went, she decided to go to the person and just because to forgive. To forgive is a, like, you know, not forgiving is like taking pause and hoping the other person dies, right?

You've heard that.

So she goes to this girl and she says, I want you to know I forgot. The girl didn't even remember. She got no memory. She was just being a stupid kid at the time.

She had, you know, they were stupid at seven, right?

Yeah, they're joking around and they're, and 30 years, the other person doesn't even know it. So by nature, we're joking around with somebody. and we accidentally say something that wounded them. If they don't feel they can talk to us, they're gonna carry it for 30 years. If I heard somebody, I want to know. You know, I'm gonna be like, I'm an idiot. I had no idea I did that to you. I had no idea.

Was there anything from the emotional intelligence training at Landmark that added to your curriculum of negotiations? that you didn't already know or use before?

Well, not because it's all interwoven. The biggest thing that jumped out at me is it occurred to me that somebody heard somebody else without even knowing they did it. Like in a masterclass thing, you know, they did a great job. The masterclass people are phenomenal. So we're wandering to the very tail end of it, and they got me talking about this guy that bullied me when I was a kid.

You.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and I hadn't, I hadn't, I had literally never told anybody about this.

Wow.

So, you know, it's, and it happened when I was a little kid.

Yeah.

I literally had never told anybody about it.

Not even through Landmark or anything else.

Nothing.

And they get it out of me in master class. They catch me off guard over it, you know, and it's to, to this day, this is one of the reasons why I hate boats. you know, I want to become an FBI agent because, you know, we, we want to go after the bad guys because the bad guys are bullies. And there's nothing I like better than getting a bully that's victimizing somebody else. And I think it was instilled in me in what happened when I was, when I was a kid. But then I started comparing that to this, this interaction I heard a landmark where somebody bullied somebody else. They didn't even know they did it. and then I began thinking about, like, how many people have I hurt that I didn't even know. Right. Like, if they would come up to me today and said, you're hurt. I've carried this for 40 years. And I have to have done that to somebody. Right. Have to.

I know I have somebody. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's, you know, this, this forgiveness thing is a two-way street and all, and also being, being, you know, who do I need to go back to that I could think of then I, and, and say, look, look. since I know that inadvertently, I'm a jerk, that I, what did I do? I'm sure I did something. I had to have done something. It's an interesting dilemma, all sort of part of, you know, being a better person anyway, which I know is what, what you're dedicated to.

It's almost, it seems like it's really hard, especially if you're a public figure that has an audience, that you're gonna say something or do something that's going to offend or hurt someone.

Right.

At all the times. It's like you're always going to be offending someone if you have a voice. If you're sharing something, your point of view. Your point of view is going to reach a certain audience's point of view, but not the rest of the world's point of view. So it's like you're always hurting people, aren't you?

Yeah.

And at some level, you're like offending, hurting, or frustrating.

And their hurt's gonna be defensive in reaction. Or they misinterpret or you hit a button with them. that you didn't even, maybe you didn't hit the button, but you came close to a button that's been hurt before. And, you know, and interestingly enough, we see this a lot with the procurement people that come to our training. I'm really careful to say, look, look, I know you guys fear procurement, and, and this is about dealing successfully with procurement. and we had one person in the training go, I work in procurement and you criticized, you said procurement people were bad. I said, as a matter of fact, that's not what I said. But I came so close to your hot button that it hit it anyway. And I spent some time with this woman and she was afraid that that was what I meant, but didn't know how to approach me. And when it came up subsequently, I said, no, as a matter of fact, procurement has one of the most difficult jobs on the planet. You guys are both, you spend your days either hurting cats or getting chased by villagers with pitchforks.

Right.

You know, it's one or the other.

Yeah.

And she was like, yeah, yeah, it's really tough. I was just afraid that that's what you meant. It was that amygdala that we were talking about before, the 75% negative. Yeah. We're all equipped with that. And when someone even comes close to a criticism, then we're afraid that that's what they mean and they're hurt.

How do you take criticism?

Not well.

I've never really been good at it until I wouldn't say I've mastered it. I think I've gotten better. Over the last six years, I started to really like say, okay, let me not react to this criticism. Like they probably have some good intention they're trying to tell me and maybe there's some truth there. So let me start to listen to the feedback or the criticism. and say, okay, how can I be better? Is there any truth in there that really resonates or they coming from a place of anger of their own thing?

Criticism is mostly fear driven.

By the person criticizing. Right. Yeah.

And you criticize that in point of fact, you've been hurt, you've been disappointed, you've been frustrated. There's a lot of saying, you know, never take advice from anybody you wouldn't trade places with. Criticism is form of advice, but you're afraid to tell people how to do stuff. So you just criticize what they do. Some people, and then it becomes an addiction for some people. Criticism is not a great behavior. I know you've heard the phrase, nobody's doing better than you will ever criticize you. They'll mentor you. So first of all, how do I take criticism? I got to take a step back and understand if somebody's coming at me with just a criticism, even if they ask permission to criticize, they got some, they got struggles that are worse than mine.

Right.

And if they ask you to give.

You criticism, I'm, I'd be, you know, they are an open wound at that point. So I'm not gonna, I'm gonna say, yeah, sure, go ahead. Right. I'm gonna, they've already told me they're probably coming from a difficult place. So what I'm gonna try to do is just kind of take it easy on them and understand where they're coming from. A blog I'm a big fan of, Eric Barker writes this great blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

That's right.

Eric told me one time, for every hater, there's gonna be 10 people that are on your side. So when, a critic comes up to me, I see that as there are 10 people, you're indicating to me that I'm successful with nine other people and I'm not going to get down on this person because it's very easy to get down on them because unfortunately they're coming from a negative place.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

That's good to know. What's a role-playing exercise that anyone could do with a friend that would make them a better negotiator?

Try to get whoever you're talking to to say the magic two words, that's right. Which means you gotta summarize where they're coming from. If you, in any given interaction, if you got a point you wanna make, before you make it, your trigger, you're not allowed to make your point.

So give me an example. and you want the other person you're role playing with to say, that's right.

Okay, so you were telling me about critics.

Yeah.

You're a high profile guy. You're about helping other people, which means you get criticized a lot.

That's right.

And when you get criticized, I mean, I wouldn't say you're empathic, although you are. I would say you're probably more compassionate. Those are two different things. Empathy is, you have to have empathy to be compassionate. But empathy is not compassion. Compassion is the next step. Empathy is a compassionate thing to do, genuinely understanding somebody. But there's a real fine line there, they're distinct things. And I think you have a tremendous amount of compassion for people. So you know that when someone criticizes you, they're attacking you. But you also know that they've been hurt and they're struggling. So you want to know how to respond to them and have them better as a result of the interaction instead of coming back and making them feel worse. And you struggle with that because you're under attack. And you try not to fire back at him.

Right.

Yeah, that's right.

There you go.

So you wanna have a conversation with.

Someone, if you could summarize their point of view first. Summarize the other person's, when you summarize the other, what the other person's struggling with.

In any type of deal making.

In any type of deal.

Business deal, relationship, buying coffee, upgrading, whatever it is.

Right.

With all the tools and all the distractions and all the social media and all the apps and all the responsibilities that we have in our life, is there a way to multiply time and to become more productive?

Yeah, yeah, there is. So, I mean, this is what you just described was my life. I mean, this was pretty much like all the things we study. I was not trying so much to solve the problem for the world. I was trying to solve a problem in my own life. Just busy, buried, behind, overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, No matter how fast you work, you just never feel caught up.

No matter how many hours you didn't sleep, you felt tired and you were working sluggish and trying to get it all done, everything.

Yeah, you just can't, there's this frustration of like, am I ever gonna have peace? Like, am I ever gonna have margin? Am I ever gonna have space? Just feeling like things are under control. And so we started looking at this and we started profiling people that at the time we called ultra performers, which were the top one percenters in different industries.

And is this top 1% earners, top 100% accomplishments?

Yeah, I mean, just what it's kind of used that term loosely, but like, you know, if it's church leaders, it's large, you know, large church leaders. If it's athletes, it's professional athletes. If it's financial advisors, they're probably top earners.

Sure, sure.

So it's just from different walks of life. And what we found is there is a new type of thinker that has emerged that is, we call them a multiplier. Mm-. Because most people, are trying to manage time, right? Like you even hear this, you go, I need to be better at managing my time.

Time management.

But you know what's funny about that is there is no such thing as time management. There is only self-management. You cannot manage time. Time ticks on second by second. I can't fast forward time. I can't stop it. I can't pause it. And so what we're, what this conversation really about is managing ourselves, managing our decisions, managing our use of time. But even that is, is kind of a, is a first shift that needs to happen is it's not like I'm this helpless victim that is subject to the world around me who is unfairly blasting me with all this stuff. No, you're in charge. Like you Everything that exists in your life, you either said yes to it in some way. So it is your responsibility and you created the problem, but that also means that you are in charge of fixing it, that you have the power to change it. But what we started to realize is that most of what people have learned and think about time management, I went so far and as the opening line in my TED Talk, as I said, Everything you know about time management is wrong. It's wrong because we have been taught to think about time in a very linear way. And the world today is much more like multi-dimensional.

When you mean linear way, do you mean focusing on our priorities?

Yeah, so a little bit about that. So if we talk, we love to take people on a quick history of time management theory. so era one time management thinking was very one-dimensional. We refer to era one thinking as efficiency. So that was the strategy was I got 10 things on my to-do list. How do I crank them out faster? And time management and productivity as a body of work really develops like it comes on in the scene in like 1950s, 60s. So, you know, it's the manufacturing era where it's conveyor belts and engineering and doing things faster. That also reflected in our mindset was how can I be more efficient? Now, efficiency is good. All things being equal, doing things faster is great. The problem is that there is a point of diminishing returns to using efficiency as your only strategy for productivity.

Right.

Which is that no matter how fast we move, the amount of busy work always expands to fill the amount of time available.

Right.

So it's more like quicksand. This is kind of like the faster you go or the more that shows up. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be fast. It's just not gonna get you what you're looking for. Then in the late 80s, Dr. Stephen Covey wrote a book that changed the world, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I'm sure you're familiar with it and sold tens of millions of copies. And Dr. Covey pretty much single-handedly introduced a new era of time management thought that we were, you know, the world refers to as prioritizing. But we would classify prioritizing as era two thinking, which is still to this day the predominant strategy that most people use in terms of how they think about time. And so here's what prioritizing is. It's to focus first on what matters most. Super powerful, super relevant. Dr. Covey had this thing called the Time Management Matrix that he explained of urgency and importance. And basically he taught us to score our activities so that we could reorder them and say, it's not just about getting these done faster, it's saying, hey, item number seven needs to be pushed to item number one, which is valuable. And so that's super valuable. Prioritizing is as important today as ever before. But what I noticed in my own life, because I was a student of Dr. Covey and several books on time, I mean, there's no shortage of books on time management. There's no shortage of apps. There's all these tips and tricks and tools and technology that exist to help us with this problem of feeling so busy. And yet, the majority of us are still overwhelmed.

Right.

It's like there's something missing. And what we started to notice in these ultra performers that we now refer to as the multipliers is that they are doing a different type of thinking. It's like evolution. Their thinking has evolved. For almost all of them, it was subconscious.

They weren't even aware of it.

Not even aware of it. It wasn't something that someone taught them to do. They did it instinctively, you know, like instinctually. They figured out and most of them couldn't explain it. They couldn't explain it to me and they couldn't explain it to most people if they said, why are you, how are you so productive? Right? Like how does, you know, how do you become a billionaire in 10 years when like most people work for 40 years and, you know, they can barely retire?

Right.

It's a different type of thinking. and one of the things, this is true in many areas of our life, the next level of results always requires the next level of thinking. So here's what it is. So Era 3 time management is multiplying. It's not efficiency, it's not prioritizing, it's multiplying. And it's all based on what we call the significance calculation. So it's really, it's not, it's adding on like Dr. Covey's work is an example. So he, you know, presents this two-dimensional figure, Square, where the y-axis is importance and the x-axis is urgency. But what multipliers are doing is they're making a third calculation, which we call significance. So it's kind of like if you were doing algebra, it would be the z-axis. It would turn the square into a cube.

Three dimensional.

Three dimensional thinking, era three thinking or three dimensional thinking. And so here's the difference. urgency is how soon does this matter? Most of us live in a world of urgency. It's all about what needs to be done right now. Importance is different. Importance is how much does this matter? But significance is even different still. Significance is how long is this going to matter? So how is, what is the impact of this activity in the future.

10 years out, 20 years out.

Even 10 days out, yeah. It is breaking free of the paradigm of one day and instead thinking about tomorrow and the next day and the significance calculation changes everything because this is how it's possible to multiply time. So I'll just tell you in one sentence. Okay, so if you say, Rory, How is it possible to multiply time? This is the answer. So you want to write this part down. You don't want to miss this. The way you multiply time is by giving yourself the emotional permission to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. There's certain things you do right now that create more time in the future. That's the significance calculation. So when I say multiply time, people often think I'm exaggerating or that it's like a marketing hyperbole, right? That is, I'm like, I'm sensationalizing a concept. When we say this, we're not exaggerating. We mean this literally. Now, it kind of fries your brain because you go, you,'ve been told your whole life, you can't, time is the one thing you can never get back. It's the one thing you can never get more of. And it is true that there's nothing that we can do, there's nothing I can do to give you more time inside of one day. So one day is finite and we're all limited by the same 24 hours, which by the way is 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. So I can't teach you to create more, I don't have control over time.

Right?

There's no such thing as time management. There's only self-management. But that's exactly the problem is most of us think about our activities in the paradigm of one day. We wake up and we say, what's the most important thing I can do today? And it's not that that's a bad question. It's just not the question that multipliers ask. Multipliers don't say, what is the most important thing I can do today? Multipliers ask, what are the things I can do today that create more time tomorrow? What are the things I can do now that make the future better? You're literally breaking free of the urgency paradigm of just what matters right here, right now, and you're introducing the significance paradigm of what is going to have impact over the long haul.

Right.

How do you know which actions to focus on urgently that will have impact over the long haul?

Yes.

When you've got everything's significant.

Yes. Well, there's a tool called the Focus Funnel that we developed here to help people apply this. So there's only one big idea in this whole conversation, which is spend time on things today that give you more time tomorrow. That's how you multiply time. And then you go, How do I do that?

And.

There'S five core methods, strategies, We call them permissions because there's an emotional side. What we've also learned is that most people treat time management logically, but it's actually an emotional conversation. For most of us, it's not just our calendar and our inbox and our to-do list. It is our underlying feelings of guilt and fear and anxiety and worry, as well as ambition and our drive to be successful and feel valued and important and to make impact in the world. These underlying emotional drivers dictate as much as dictate how we spend our time and the choices that we make as much as anything on our to-do list.

What do we feel most guilty about? We feel most guilty about not doing something that we want to do, about delaying something, about wasting our time.

I would say that guilt. So guilt corresponds with the first of the five permissions, which is eliminate. So if you were to picture a funnel, okay, so if I was going to draw this out, right, like you think of all of the stuff there is to do comes into the top. And then the focus funnel is our attempt to create a visual illustration that codifies the thought process that multipliers go through intuitively in their own brain so that the rest of us can kind of like see it and follow it. So the very first question is can this be eliminated?

So give me an example of your life or someone's business or career or whatever it might be.

There's tons of things. I mean in your personal life, I mean I used, I like the example of TV because it's hilarious how people will in the same dinner conversation talk about how there's so so busy and married and overwhelmed and then talk about the three series on Netflix that they have binged in like the last month. Which took 20 hours of their life.

Yeah, and so it's like, okay, and.

I'm not saying you shouldn't watch TV. By the way, I'm not telling you anything you shouldn't or shouldn't do. I'm just introducing the framework for you.

To decide how to spend your time. But if you're saying you're too busy.

And overwhelmed, check to where you're spending.

Your time the most. That's right. And then Nielsen says-- If it's six hours on Instagram a day and you're not being you know, creating something of significance and you're just browsing or if you're 20 hours a week on TV and you're, I'm overwhelmed and tired and.

Exhausted, then just look at where you're spending your time. Yeah, and Nielsen ratings, you know, this is from a few years ago, but they said the average American watches 27 hours a week of television. A week.

A week.

It's a part-time job. So-- 27 hours a week.

How much is that a day? I mean, so seven times, it's like.

Four hours a day. Four hours a day of TV.

Four hours a day. That's a ton.

That's a lot of time.

I mean, you could build a big side hustle in a couple hours every day.

Even if you just cut half of that down and you watch two hours a day of TV and you spend two hours on your side hustle or something else, your health, your relationships, imagine the, the benefits you would have down the line.

So, yeah, there's anything eliminate is the first opportunity to multiply because anything I say no to today creates time in the future.

How?

It's preventing me from doing something that I would have otherwise been doing had I not given myself the permission to eliminate. Like had I not said no. So basically this is saying no and people really struggle with saying no. In businesses, this happens all the time. People have all these... So, you know, at Brand Builders Group, we do personal brand strategy, right? So we're coaching all these like people on building and monetizing their personal brand. Well, they have like a hundred business models. It's like, I want to have a video course and a membership site and a live event and consulting. I want to do keynote speaking and I want to get a book deal and, you know, and sponsorships and brand deals. And it's like when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. So you have to, by saying no to some things, you power your ability to focus on the few significant things. that will multiply time. So you have to say no. But this is something that people struggle with. I struggle with it.

Especially when you get to a certain level of success where there's a lot of opportunities and cool things and exciting things and new shiny objects. We want to do lots of things. High achievers, people that have gotten out of the weeds of their life and they have different problems which are opportunity problems. again, first world problems. It's how do you focus your time and energy and making the decisions that you want to focus on now for your future. And that is a challenge in just making decisions. Decision fatigue is a thing for people and learning how to place importance on the things that you want to spend your time on is going to be key for you.

Totally. And a lot of people, the decision fatigue, what happens is they, it It does wear on you and so a lot of people don't make conscious decisions. So what happens is...

They make what? Emotional decisions, reactions.

Yes, they're unconscious emotional impulses, right? And if you're not consciously saying no to the things that don't matter, you end up unconsciously saying no to the things that do matter.

What if everything matters to you?

So, you know, that's what I said actually. So I, in, So we were, you know, this became the Procrastinate on Purpose book. So this was my second book. When we were profiling all these people, I was doing interviews and I told one of the multipliers, I said, I don't like this one. I got to where I am by being a yes man, by like doing a lot of things and doing them well and like saying yes to meetings and meeting people all the time. And they said, Rory, that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. and I was like, oh, okay. And here's what they said. They said, you,'re trying to go through life without saying no, which is admirable because you're a nice guy. But what you failed to realize is that you are always saying no to something. Anytime you say yes to one thing, you simultaneously are saying no to an infinite number of other things. So even when you think you're saying, yes, everything is important to me. No, nothing is important to you.

Wow.

Nothing is important enough for you to focus on and you don't have a method for focus and focus is power. So that most of us are losing because we're wandering, we're meandering through a bunch of insignificant, trivial tasks, feeling productive when really we're just diluted.

Right.

So if you that's the first one, eliminate. Now, if you can't eliminate the task, then it drops down to the center of the focus funnel, which is automate. The permission to invest. And this is so powerful because anything you create a process for today saves you time in the future.

Yes.

Now, we if I set up a process for it or a system or if I write code, you know, there's a lot of automation, like actual technologies and things that you can deploy. If I take the time to set it up today, then tomorrow the system or the process is doing the thing instead of me. So it's multiplying time. Now here's the challenge is that most of us are aware that those tools exist. But if you ask someone, Louis, I mean, like if you ask the average business owner, or whatever, achiever, or somebody pursuing greatness, are you aware of tools and systems and processes and technologies that you could implement or deploy or improve inside of your goals that would automate things? They would all say yes, but if you said, why haven't you done it yet? What do you think they'd say?

It takes too much time.

It takes too much time.

It's easier to do it myself right now, day as opposed to building the system, figuring out the software, learning it, going through the training, hiring someone, teaching them all the time and energy. I might as well just do it myself right now.

Bingo, yeah. So it's like, it's so ironic because the two excuses we would use for why we haven't automated things is we would say either I don't have the time or I don't have the... Patience.

Money.

The money.

Patience, we'll talk about in a second.

I don't have the time or the money.

I don't have the time or the money. And it's wild because those two excuses we would use for not automating something are exactly the opposite of how it is when you make the significance calculation.

Because if you did automate, you would save time or you would multiply time and you'd earn more money from your time doing something else.

Yeah, so an easy example is bill pay. That's a quick example.

Right?

So, if you had two hours open in your day today and I said, Louis, you know, what's the most important thing you could do today? You'd have a list of things that you would do. And if I said, Hey, I think you should consider setting up online bill pay. For most of us, we would be like, no, like that is not important. That's not significant. That is seems totally trivial. But if you look at this the way a multiplier would, you go, okay, if you spend two hours today setting up online bill pay, and it saves you 30 minutes every month from paying your bills in the future, then after four months time, you will have broken even, 30-30-30-30. You will have broken even on those initial two hours, and then every month thereafter, you'll get something that we call ROTI, return on time, invested. Because now the system is doing the thing that you would have otherwise been doing. Another way that we say this, I know this is one of your favorite Roryisms, is that automation is to your time exactly what compounding interest is to your money. Automation is to your time what compounding interest is to your money. Just like compounding interest takes money, and it turns it into more money. Automation takes time and it turns it into more time. Just like nobody has extra money to invest. I mean, not nobody. Some people are so rich, it's like that's all they do. But the average person doesn't have an extra 10 grand just laying around to be like, yeah, I'm gonna invest it. Usually you have to sacrifice something in the short term. You don't go on a trip, you don't buy the car, you don't buy the TV, and that is where you create the margin to reinvest into, you know, whatever the stock market, mutual funds, like real estate. Real estate, whatever you do. That is also how time is. Nobody has extra time to set up a system. You know, marketing automation is one of the big things we teach our clients. I know you guys do a lot of it here. We're experts in marketing automation. One of the reasons we became experts in it is we realized, oh my gosh, if I can build a funnel, you know, which is just a sequence, a series of emails and, you know, automating trust basically, giving value to people, then that system basically becomes like an employee for me that works 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's always out there.

Poor people have a negative association with money. Yeah, I'll give you a perfect example. Some from just last week, this has happened to me literally like in real life. I was driving me, my wife driving the Bentley to downtown and passed through a not so good neighborhood. It's called Hastings in Vancouver. Kind of like the hood. Okay? Because we're going to Chinatown. We stopped at the red light. There's one guy that came to my car, spit on my car.

No, I don't know.

On the window. Yeah, on the window.

Right?

And then gave me the finger and then walk away.

So you didn't say anything. You didn't do anything. You didn't.

It was just that. It's just a car. Just a car.

Right.

So you would see a lot of people, they think, oh, they say, I want more money. Hey, Louis, I want to have more success. I want to offer them more wealth. But deep down, actually, they have a negative association with money because I always do this exercise with my students. So imagine this. Imagine you're walking down the street. You hear this loud engines. Right? And then you see it like a black Lamborghini just zooms by, right? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Now, most people would say, oh, he's an a**, like, what a pr*ck. Or if it's a woman, oh, she's a gold digger. Or if it's this young person, oh, this probably from, you know, the daddy's money, like all this stuff. Like, they can go through this very, very quickly, all the negative stuff, right? And then, A small percentage would be, oh, that might be an entrepreneur, right? That may be actually a father of three, right? That he's a hard-working entrepreneur, he's been working hard and this is a little treat that he gives for himself and he only drives it, you know, maybe on the weekends. That never comes to mind. It's all the negative that comes to mind, right? So I would say that negative association with money, consciously or subconsciously, they don't even know it.

Yeah, when you resent someone with money or you resent money, why would money come to to you?

Or people with money.

Right.

Why would you be surrounded by people who have money? Or why would you attract more wealth into your life if you're resenting it, right?

Yeah, no. So they too, so it's like even the, so that's the first thing is poor people have negative, they have association with money. The second one is they don't talk about money.

Gosh, I say this all the time, man. Tell me more.

Yeah, they avoid conversations. It's like a taboo subject. Oh, why you talk about money all the time? like, oh, we don't talk about, it's like we don't talk about that at dinner table. You don't have conversation with your kids about money, you don't have conversation with the spouse about money. It somehow is a bad thing, right? It's like this. And think of money, the best way to describe this is think of money as a person in your life. Treat money as a person. So imagine if you think about, we.

Don'T talk about that person.

We don't talk about you. And in fact, I I think you're the root of all evil. I think you are greedy. I think you're not that important to me. Do you think this person will stay around? I don't think so. They would be like, I don't want to be around. But money is not that important. Money doesn't grow on trees. Or there are other more important things than money. Like all this stuff, right? Then money is not going to stick around. So if you think of it that way. But on the other hand, if you talk about money. You cherish money, not to be a slave of money. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, hey, you know, I value you. I value money.

Right?

I save you. I I I invest you, like, you know, intelligently.

Right?

Like, you will think of it that way. Then money's like, okay, you treat me good. I'm gonna stay around.

Yeah, right.

You think of like that as almost like a lover, you know? I love you, right? Oh, yeah, that's good. I'm gonna love you back. Oh, I don't like you. you know, I'm not gonna like your back. So that would be the second one.

Okay. And the third.

The third one is it has to do with value. So poor people want money without delivering more value versus you and I, we understand the marketplace cares about one thing. It cares about value. It doesn't care about our solving stories. It doesn't care about our victim mentality. It doesn't care about how hard we work. It doesn't even care how much, how many, how much experience we have. how many years we in business. They don't, the marketplace doesn't care. The marketplace has no emotion. The marketplace only cares about value and what determines our value is our skill sets. So think about this, where if someone is very motivated, they think positively, they've got no skill sets to offer to the marketplace, they're not gonna make money. On the other hand, you've got someone with like, let's say someone comes to you, Louis, it's like okay attitude, but he's saying that, Hey, Louis, I can help you with a Facebook ad. I can, you can spend a dollar, I can give you $5 back. If T has a skill set like that, you'll be like, okay, I'm gonna give you some money to help me with my ads.

Right.

So it's the skill set I think a lot of people are missing. They don't understand that it's the mindset, which is what you teach, combined with your skill set, then you've got something that works. So I would say those are the main key, key things.

Those are powerful. I'm curious about, I wanna follow up on this. skill set. There's a lot of people who have all the degrees and credibility in the world but don't have the self-belief.

Yes.

So what is more important skill set? Actually being skilled at something, the, the ability to believe in yourself with the skill set and coupling the two, or the ability to package your skills to transfer for money in exchange, because a lot of people can't position or package and then sell. They might have the skill set, they might have the belief and confidence, but they don't know how to package it to transfer money. Which one of those threes is more important?

I would say I used to believe it's the mindset, but now I would say I'm leaning more towards the skill set, and I'll explain why. Because let's say your digital marketer, I'm going to use an example, your digital marketer, you don't really believe in yourself, but let's say you know how to close, you know how to communicate your value, and you're good at what you do. well, and someone comes to you and say, Hey, Louis, you're so good at digital marketing. Let me give you 5,000 a month retainer to do my social. Well, that changes your belief system very quickly, right? So I almost like to use that as an environment. It's like I teach all my students. If you have not made a dollar closing or you're not a made a dollar copywriting, whatever that you do, you make the first dollar. You make the first dollar.

That's the best feeling, that first dollar, man.

That first dollar, man, it's like, it's like podcast. Oh, you've never made a dollar. any money from pocket. Just make your first dollar. That's the difference. What's the difference between professional and amateur? Professional gets paid. Make your first dollar. Now it changes. Okay, maybe I could do this. Maybe I'm pretty good. Maybe I could get better. Maybe I can do this whole time. Maybe I can make a career out of this. It's easier to use the environment to shift our beliefs than try to change it just within ourselves. That's what I believe. Like our environment is infinitely more powerful than our willpower. Way more powerful.

Our environment in what way?

If you don't want to be, if you want to get fit, hang around with people who are fit. You eat better, you will want to exercise. If you don't smoke, you hang around with all your friends and smokers, guarantee you will smoke. You don't do drugs, you hang around with people who do drugs, you do drugs. We can't help but influence by the environment. so I say why not put ourselves in an environment that is supportive of our goals. I'm very, very careful with that, very careful. And I say the same thing.

This idea of entrepreneurship has been a sexy word and idea, especially the last five years with social media and everyone kind of flashing this lifestyle, Gary Vee, talking about it a lot and everything. But as you know, it's hard for a lot of entrepreneurs to make a lot of money and sustain it. It's hard to get there, but then it's hard to sustain it for a while. When a pandemic hits or something else, people aren't prepared for that. Do you think it's possible for people who have great skills, who are part of a great team, of a great company that never want to start their own thing and be an entrepreneur, but are are valued or part of a team or growing with a company, making an impact in this company and the mission that they have, do you think it's possible for people that aren't entrepreneurs to become wealthy? And if so, what are the strategies they need to be applying right now in order to start having their money work for them as opposed to only working for money?

I love that question. I've never been asked that question and I have a very good answer. One thing I learned from my mentor, he said, then you don't get rich on income, you get rich on equity. You don't get rich on income. So if for someone with the skill sets, think about a ship, right? There's only one captain. We're going from here to there. So you look at Jack Ma who started Alibaba. Yeah, Jack Ma is very successful. Well, but the initial founders, they didn't do too bad either, right? So you have the people who maybe you are the founding members the founding team with a startup that is going places with the right visionary, with the right founder and CEO, which by the way, that's also, I think, only certain people fits that profile. That's what I believe in. Okay, that's what I believe in. And I learned that from through Culture Index, which is like a survey that people take to see what personality that fits. So only certain people are fit for their CEO profiles. but everybody else, they can still contribute and if they have equity, they participate, they can still do very well financially. In fact, it's like if naturally they know they're not the CEO personalities and materials, if they just try to be that, it doesn't work anyway. It just doesn't work. But it doesn't mean they are not valued.

Yeah.

I mean, to me, I play a role in my company because I have certain skill set, right? But I cannot do what I do better than what, like my team, they have certain skills that are way better than me. Like just this morning we had a technical challenge. It's like, my team could fix it. I don't know how to handle that. I just, like, you were trying to.

Set up Zoom before this, yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, I have no idea. I have no, no joke as I actually don't know how to turn on the camera.

There you go.

I literally do not know how to turn, I don't know where the button is.

You gotta do the iPhone though, so that's it. That's easy.

That's easy. I can handle that. But like this, the XD stuff, I cannot handle. So what I'm saying is you look at that, that if they participate in a vehicle, in a good market that's growing, trending, and if they could be part of their founding members, they can get equity early on, they could do very well.

And what if they can't get equity or they're not early on, and they join a startup after 100 employees, and.

It'S- and not as good. So it's the timing of it, right? the timing of it is you want it to be too early, higher risk, too late, then you don't get as much upside. And also depends on your skill set, right? What's the skill set you bring to the table? But they could do very well. It's called intrapreneurship, right?

Intrapreneurship, yeah. And what are some things that people could do if they say, oh, that's not me, but I'm making a good salary and I'm going to be making more money. What could I be doing with my money so that it earns me more? What would you suggest?

Every one of us needs to be an investor. Doesn't matter how we make the money. I teach a concept called the wealth triangle, right? Which is kind of got three parts. The first part is what I call high income skills. And high incomes, I define high income skills as skills that could make you more than $10,000 a month. Okay? $10,000 a month. Because I noticed something about human beings. Whenever we get past that six figure mark annually, something shifts that I rarely see someone go past six figure and go back to 50,000 a year. It becomes a new comfort.

It's a very- so you know once you know how to get there, you could stay there.

It becomes a very- it's a fascinating thing to see. So I think that 10,000 a month, $120,000 a year high income skills. And then the second part is what I call a scalable business. A scalable business, not just any business, but a business that is scalable. such as a software business, an influencer business, or e-com business, a scalable business. And then you have what I call high return investments. And I define high return investments as investments that would give you a 10% return year in and year out, 10% return or more. So you look at this wealth triangle. Now, here's the thing. If you have high income skills, you're already earning income. your scalable business gives you profits and your high return investment builds your net worth, right? Wealthy people talk about net worth. They don't talk about income, right? They talk about net worth. So you look at this. Now, let me ask you this question, Louis. If someone who is like, I'm making $30,000 a year, I want to get into some real estate stuff. You're like, you don't have high income skills.

No.

Do you have a scalable business?

No.

I want to buy some properties with no money down. Kind of risky. Kind of risky, right? Because if you follow this, the first thing you got to focus on is increase your income, meaning develop skill sets that the marketplace would value. Do that first. Now, with a scalable business, you can start one or you can also invest in one. It doesn't always mean you have to start one. so you can invest in one that throws off profits, and then you've got your, your high return Investments. See, when we come to high return Investments, it's about the preservation of the capital. It's not about getting the maximum return. We, it's almost, we don't, we don't need it to, to get 50. I just want 10. Because I'm making money with these two things, right? This, I just, you just don't want.

That sitting in a bank and not making anything.

That's right. that's right. So now the return off capital, off investment, not just on investment. Now you're making more income, you're becoming more valuable. Hopefully income increases every year. Your profit goes up, you take extra cash, you put in higher return Investments, gives you more peace of mind. Then you, this is this. This is same, same world triangle goes a million, 10 million, 100 million is actually the same. Yeah, it's exactly the same.

If you're a if you're looking at a 21 year old, 25 year old who's about to get started in whatever a job, an entrepreneurship endeavor, and you're looking at them and you have a 20 minute conversation with them, what would you say is the number one sign that they would be successful? What would they have to embody, talk about, not talk about, you know, in order for you to be like, you know what? This person is in the next two, three years, I want to watch them because it's going to be a trajectory or at least they're going to be growing in some way. What would be that sign that someone would be successful?

Someone who has the obsession to learn. Because I remember many years ago, I was attending a two-day workshop on digital marketing. At the time, it's funny, don't laugh at me, but it was a workshop and the instructor was teaching how to do pop-up on a website.

Website.

We're talking many, many years ago when it was a big thing, adding a pop-up right? And I remember day one he taught us, okay, if you want to get more opt-in subscribers, add a pop-up to your website and this is how you do it. Okay, great. So it's a few hundred of us in the hotel room. So then I went back to the hotel room and I talked to my coding guys, okay, let's add this piece of code. We'll capture more opt-in on the website. Great, right? And then we were getting more opt-ins. that evening. So day two, the instructor comes back and say, hey, so we, I taught you how to add opt-in and stuff. How many PWA have you have done it? No one. I put on my hand, I thought everybody did it, but no one did. And I was like, this is kind of fascinating, right? And then I share, I said, yeah, actually works. We added on, added the PWA yesterday, we get more subscribers, it's awesome. And that's when I learned something about myself that I'm very eager to learn, I'm very eager to execute, very eager to execute. And if I want to look at someone who's 21 years old, wherever they want to be, if they have that obsession to learn and execute, the action takers, action takers are money makers, right? That I would say you can see it in his or her eyes. that they are action takers, not like, I'm making excuses, I don't know, I'm not ready, timing is not right, I'm not good enough. And no, they just execute.

Yeah.

I think.

It'S not about being afraid, it's about just being willing to take action even when you don't know what you're doing. I think a lot of people, they don't know what they're doing and it cripples them. And they say, oh, I've got to figure out what to do first, and then when I feel comfortable, then I can go do it. but I feel like when you're talking about it, it's like, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just like, I just need to make some money. Let me go figure this out and embarrass myself and make mistakes and make a couple bucks.

I say that you want to act as if all your dreams have come true and then you challenge your reality to catch up. It's much more powerful when you act as you're already there. Think about this. I'm going to ask you this. Think when you had the idea for the podcast. that not, not this, not the Lewis house today I'm talking about in the beginning, right? Not, not the followers that like in the beginning. At the time there's no credibility, there's no, you were just getting started, there's no name, right? It's like you try to get people on the show, well, I don't know if I want to be, right, all that stuff, but now people are honored to be like they would be, like they'll knock on your doors, hey Lewis, can I be on your show, right? But think about all these years, in the very beginning, at least from my observation, and correct me if this is wrong, I saw that you were already acting as, Hey, you know what? I'm a brand. I'm gonna, my show is gonna have tens of millions, hundreds of millions of downloads.

Absolutely. So yeah, I started investing in my design and my brand.

Yes.

What is the example that I would wanna look at? I would book this person if I would go on their show, if Oprah would call me, if Ellen would call me, what would I need to look like? And Ellen did call you.

Exactly, yeah.

It's like, there you go. What would I need to look like to be a New York Time bestseller before I wrote a New York Time bestseller? Like, what would the branding need to be? What would the messaging need to be? What would the results need to be.

In order to get there?

And I just started acting with that vision in mind. There you go.

And it kind of goes into this.

Segways into the law of attraction, which I'm curious your thoughts on the law of attraction when it comes to manifesting money, when it comes to manifesting your dreams, manifesting goals, the dream partner, whatever it might be for someone, in your opinion, how does the law of attraction work? And in what way does it work best for money, business, health, relationships? What do you what do you feel?

I'm a very strong believer in law of attraction. I made a video on YouTube about this as well. But law of attraction, it's basically thoughts of things, right? Everything is energy and you become what you think about. Essentially, that's what it means. But that's just one of the laws. You have law of gravity. You have. You have laws of cause and effect. I think what, whatever we do, we need to learn and understand these other laws exist. Law of action. so it's not just law of attraction. It's like you're trying to do a math equation. You only know a plus, but there's minus, there's equal sign, there's, there's a lot of things that bracket. There are a lot of things you could use to make an equation work, but that, oh, I only know a plus sign. So when you've got, it's like, when you've got a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? And people just utilize that and they don't look at everything else. so I believe in it. I believe in having the vision board, but also believe in having other things, like where you think about even the law of realism, right? Even the law of cause and effect, the, all these things.

So a lot of people have a.

Relationship with money based on either what they've been told or what they've experienced in their outer environment.

Right.

So, so then we gain information from.

Our environment and the stronger the emotion we feel from experiences in our lives.

The more altered we feel inside of us.