The 9 SHOCKING HABITS Of All Successful People | Lewis Howes
In this extensive interview, Lewis Howes and his guests unpack the hidden habits and mindsets that separate high‑performers from the rest. The conversation moves from blunt critiques of excuses to a concrete "thank‑you economy" strategy for authentic social‑media engagement, then dives into the psychology of habit formation (cue, craving, response, reward) and how to engineer environments and social tribes that make good habits effortless. They discuss daily non‑negotiable routines—exercise, reading, writing, walking, sleep—and the importance of systems over goals. Personal stories illustrate insecurity, fear of rejection, and the power of perseverance, while coaching anecdotes reveal how to motivate elite athletes and manage teams. The latter half shifts to practical business wisdom: handling rejection, building a startup from a $1.50‑hour job, financial discipline (paying off a mortgage, emergency funds), investment cautions, and fair negotiation tactics. Throughout, the speakers stress authenticity, removing friction, focusing on micro‑level actions that scale to macro results, and maintaining a growth‑oriented mindset despite setbacks.
Chapters
The one common denominator amongst the most successful people.
What would you say are three secrets that millionaires who have it all have? What have they- that's a good question.
Everybody's not gonna like you. And you can't change that. You can't control that. So it's my job to be happy.
With- you- success is determined by the habits you have in your life. And in this video, we share some of the shocking habits of the most successful people to help you improve your life. If you enjoy this, make sure to click the thumbs up button, subscribe, and leave a comment below. As a comedian growing up, you had to do so many horrible shows where three people were in attendance, one person, whatever, 10 people, and it didn't go well. People aren't standing up laughing, they're not giving you standing ovations, they're booing, whatever it is. how do you get to the point where you show up day in, day out, every night to these places if you're not being liked or likable and no one's giving you reassurance that you're actually any good in the beginning?
You know, I think that for me.
The.
The best thing is this is like, look, I understand that everybody's not gonna like you. That's, that's. It's a fact. Everybody's not going to like you. And there was one moment where I felt like everybody was supposed to. I felt like, really? Everybody is supposed to like me, man. I'm a nice guy. I'm a lovable, nice guy. Why wouldn't you like me? What I found, I was like, look, everybody's not gonna like you. And you can't change that. You can't control that. So it's my job to be happy with my attempt and what it is that I'm trying to do. That's my job. So, you know, as you're going to perform at said shithole or said small environment, I realized that each one of those opportunities was a way for me to work on me, my craft. And I'm supposed to take something out of that moment that's good, whether it's two laughs, whether it's 20, whether it's a hundred, I have to take something away from this experience and basically hold on to it. and improve off of that.
Yeah.
If.
If I go do these things and everything about these things are always bad, well, that means that I'm. I'm doing something wrong. It can't always be bad. There has to be something good that's coming out of it. I'm just not. I'm not searching for it. So I found a way to search for the good. I found a way to search for, you know, the. The positive side of. My experiences, whether they're good or bad, there's a way to search for the good shit. And as I continue to do that, I developed a high level of shoulder shrug.
Yeah, you know, but that's not easy to do when you're, I mean, a foot shorter than all the comedians out there. There's no one that's, you know, people are just doubting you. You were talking about in your book how you can't even get an audition in the early days to the movie side of things. how do you increase confidence in yourself when there's just no, no, no, no?
Well, because everybody's story is different. Everybody's story is different. And what I find is that it takes time for everyone.
For everyone.
Nobody, nobody. Even the easiest road is still met with some degrees of difficulty. And somewhere, some point. you're gonna go into some degree of difficulty. For example, I'm watching, you know, the Jordan documentary.
Oh, man. Last dance. It's amazing. Did you finish it?
Right.
I'm gonna tell you what I realized from the Jordan documentary.
Wow.
It's so dope. So amazing. You wanna know who I've been actually in awe of since watching this? Steve Kerr.
Oh, man. The last two episodes with him, he's unbelievable.
Steve Kerr. People don't even realize this. Steve Kerr is sitting on eight championships.
Eight championships.
Listen, four with the Bulls, one with the Spurs, and he has three with the Warriors. But in between all of that, what seems like an easy road with a great road, you find out Steve got punched in the face by Michael Jordan. You find out that there was these bumps on the way that you would have never known. From the outside, you would have never known that Mike challenged Steve and the pressure that Steve felt when he was on his franchise to do certain thing and I didn't have the athleticism. If I got passable, I had to hit the shot.
You only got five shots a game, all that yeah.
But if I missed any of those shots, the ball wasn't coming my way anymore. So I had to make sure you wouldn't have never known. You would have never known. I say that to stay and use it as an example. For there are no easy roads. So when I was coming up and I'm not getting the auditions, I'm not getting the opportunities, I had to say to myself, it's going to come. If I put the work in, it has no choice but to come. Now, as I'm saying that and doing that, I'm looking around, there's certain comedians that were doing the same stuff over and over again for years and years and years. Certain comedians that felt comfortable with just making whatever the money was, it wasn't about the money, it was about the craft. So I knew that if I got better at the craft, that I would eventually get to the money. And that's what my focus was. Granted, I'm a part of a very small percentage and you have to attach some luck to it. And the hard work with the luck is an amazing collaboration. So it ended up paying off, but I knew what I had to do. so there were no other options. I didn't have other baskets with eggs in it.
This was it. There's no backup. No backup plans. So you weren't thinking of, like, I'm gonna go to a job here. This is the only thing I've got.
No.
Now, when you were getting, you know, bud out, and it wasn't going your way for years, was it your mom that you come back to and say, well, I still believe in you. You're funny.
You.
You've got this. Did you have a group of friends that would actually encourage you? Or were they kind of saying, what are you doing this for? Go get a real job.
There were no other options, right? And there was nobody to really lean on because nobody saw the gold in comedy. When you're trying to tell your friends or your family members that, you're doing stand-up comedy.
It's not like everybody's got no money. Yeah.
You're about to be a millionaire. You're gonna make. Oh, nobody says that. They're like, what? You tell them, good luck with that, buddy. Nobody sees the light at the end of that tunnel. So that's. That's a vision that you had.
Wow.
And that you have to hone in on because nobody else has that.
How did you see that? That this is something you could make potentially a lot of money with or. Enough to live.
I loved it. I loved it. And there were people who did. So they obviously, there's obviously a world of revenue that funnels through comedy. Why do all these comedy clubs all over exist? Why do these colleges book comedians every year and the colleges have to spend a certain amount of money on entertainment? Why are comedians the ones that are best suitable for hosting jobs? Personality driven. driven jobs, Etc. Radio personalities. There's so many doors that get open, talk shows.
Yeah, yeah.
From the world of Comedy. So when you look at that and you realize that it's just about figuring out how to get there. Yeah, that's the hardest part. How do you get there? How do you go down that road? What are the, what are the goals? What are the accomplishments that are baby accomplishments, but that become bigger? The first one is getting to the comedy clubs. I can get it to the comedy club. That's major. Now I'm working comedian and I'm. I'm working. Am I a regular host and my. The comedy clubs feature. All right, that's here. So now how do I work on being a headliner? Let me get some material. So that way, when I do get the opportunity, I'm ready.
Yeah.
Oh, wait. But how do people come see me? I gotta figure that out. Oh, I'm gonna start doing what? I gotta get my likeliness up at the time. These are all little hills that you have to climb, but after climbing them, they pay off.
Do you think it was harder for you to learn how to be a great comedian or learn about the business of building your personal brand, your audience, selling tickets, marketing, sales, packaging, positioning? Which one was harder?
Becoming a good comedian is definitely the hardest. Comedy doesn't come easy.
Yeah.
You know, the most talented, you still gotta learn how to be a comedian. You still have to learn how to tell a joke. You still gotta know beginning, middle, and end, a punchline, a segue, a set. You still have to do all those things. So, you know, we're in one of the most critiqued professions in the world. you know, if you're not funny, boo, you. It's the easiest in the world.
Boo.
It's the easiest to do in the world. It takes a lot of skill and, and craftsmanship to, to be a good comedian, you know? So honing in on that craft and, and. Perfecting that craft for doing your best attempt to. That's a job within itself. Making people laugh is easy. If you're funny, naturally funny, but being comedian is a different ball game.
I've got kind of a personal question for you I want to ask you about. I don't have kids. I've got a girlfriend, just moved in a few months ago. I'm curious. and I asked this to a lot of successful men out there in the world. I'm curious, do you think that you'd be able to build the empire you have as a single man with essentially, quote unquote, more time to go out and do the things you want to do, master your craft, build your business, or do you believe that having a great family, a great wife, is the key to part of your success and growth as well?
It's, I think that you, you definitely need that. You know, you have to understand the amazing benefit that goes within a strong, a strong woman in your corner. And here's what I mean by that, okay? You know, can you be single? and have success. Of course, there's several people out there that do. Can you also not be focused? Absolutely. You know, the world of fun is never ending if you wanted to be. Every night can be a fantastic night, but every morning can be a rough, groggy one. you know, and that's what the single life, that's the attraction. It's just freedom. And there's an amazing reward that comes within that. But for me, I don't want that. I wouldn't be good with that. And I don't think that the level of success that I have reached I would have been able to reach with-- Really? With a crazy amount of freedom. Now granted, fucking human, there's nobody that's gonna get thrown a curveball of success, fame, money, popularity, and not fall victim to any of the consequences. He eventually will. you will. It's just, it's no way, it's no way around it. Especially if you're younger, you will. And after you fall victim to whatever consequences, and there's so many different variations of them, you know, consequences can be spending money and, you know, not realizing the things that came with making money. and blowing that load. It could be drugs, it could be being mean and ignorant to people. It could be infidelity. It could be, you know, there's so many different things, you know, kids all over. You can, there's so many fucking different things that can act as a consequence to the, I guess you could say, the freedom and opportunities that come because of your freedom with success. I personally, I needed the Gotta Get Home, Gotta Be Home, Can't Do. Did that stop me from being a dickhead in a couple of places?
No.
You know, did I learn from my mistakes?
Of course.
Are there mistakes that I would take back? If I could, no, I wouldn't, because I wouldn't be able to understand the level that I do now, you know what I mean? So without those fucking mistakes and hard punches in the stomach of reality of life, then you don't have any space to grow. You don't have a fucking lesson to learn. So I can't say that I would have been able to achieve. Because you also need that, you need the security of an environment that's a good environment and not an environment created off of what you have.
Mm-.
Right. And if you're engulfed in that world.
You know, Implantation left and right.
And how much of it is for you as an individual and as a good person?
Mm-.
And how much of it is influenced by the world that you're in and what you have?
Yeah, I love what you said here. And earlier you talked about the expectation that people have as human beings is so great right now. It's so high. that the world is judging everyone who has any influence to be perfect on every level of every word they say, action they take. And yet, what I'm hearing you say is you need to fail, you need to make mistakes, you need to be an idiot sometimes so you have perspective. And it sounds like for the next decade, two, maybe more, you're going to make a lot more mistakes.
You don't know what you're going to do. That's the fucking amazing thing. about life. Like that's the, that's literally the amazing thing about life. You have no idea. It's your job to try to do your best to grow and to set up whatever you can for those around you. And if you don't have people around you, then you're living for yourself. But it's your job. to do the best that you can in doing that.
Yeah.
Along the way, you gotta, you're gonna fucking, you're gonna make mistakes. Here's the shit that is so simplistic that people just don't get. Who do you think plans to go to fucking jail?
Who?
No one.
What bank robber do you think ever put the plan together to rob a bank? to get caught after.
Not many.
Who?
You don't think they all think that they're going to be the ones to get away?
Right.
Yeah, you don't think that in their mind, this is, this is going to be a life changing moment. You don't think that people that overdose on drugs think that there's no shot that it can happen to them. You don't think that there's, there's actual mistakes that happen within bad decision making.
There is.
You don't think that the person that bungee jumped thought that this would come back up? You think that person knew it was snap? These are all just really just fucking examples that I'm pulling out my ass. But these are all fucking examples. You know, my little girl, my daughter, she went to go pet a dog and a dog start growling and barking real crazy. My daughter ain't went to go pet a dog since. She thinks that she thought in her mind, this dog is nice because all dogs are supposed to be nice. It's not until you see that they're not, that you know they're not. So I say all that to say, you have to experience some down to know why you're getting up. You know, like this whole, the whole thing of, a canceled culture and the consequences being so severe for so many. It's ridiculous. Do I think that there should be consequences for people's actions? Absolutely. Absolutely. But are you telling me that you should never be able to recover from a mistake? Then why the do people go to jail?
Right?
Aren't you supposed to go to jail to learn? To learn from your mistakes so you can get out? and then do better. That's what this whole reform thing is. It's like you send me to jail to go do better and get better, and then I come out and because I was in jail, nobody wants to allow me to get better. It's a backwards thing. So are we teaching lessons or not? Are we, do we want people to improve or do we not?
Right.
What do we, what are we saying?
How do you personally handle the emotional side or the weight or the pressure of media or whatever, just the online internet world or potential sponsors or brands or shows that are saying like, oh, you're in the middle of some adversity right now or some controversy. How do you personally deal with the emotional weight to not let it affect you? Because it seems like you just continue to thrive no matter what mistake you make here or there?
Well, it's, it's a, there is no pressure. And here's what I mean when I say there's no pressure. Okay. If you make a bed, lay in your bed. Bottom line, you made it laying.
Okay.
So in laying in that bed, whatever comes with it is what you're willing to take because you made it right now. Yes, I have to maneuver differently. Yes, I have to make sure I carry myself in a certain way. I'm a CEO, I'm a brand, I'm a business, and there's a lot of layers that go underneath the machine that runs the world of Kevin Hart now. There's a lot of people that are involved in that world.
So.
I don't have the fuck it, fuck it attitude. But I do have an attitude of, I've done my share of shit and in doing it, I've addressed it. And in addressing it, I made my share of mistakes within addressing it. Learn from that too. I've done all of that. None of this stuff has affected the character. that I have. None of it has affected me to start to doubt me.
Really?
I am.
Never doubt yourself after all this.
I know who I am. I know what I am. And in knowing what I am and who I am, you can go look in the mirror and go, oh, that was a dumb move. Oh, you're. You're a jackass. I'm not a bad person.
Mm-.
So within my relationships and partnerships, I think that I've done a good job of letting, you know, them all know who I am and they see who I am and we have a really good relationship. So in the future moving forward, I have a job to do to protect those relationships because I care about them. I value them.
Right.
So, so I can't just, I can't just move willy-nilly because that means that I'm not staying true to my relationships. And that's what the older you get and the more you experience things, you learn. Not just about you, it's about others that can be affected by what you do. So now I see that. I understand that. The younger version of me didn't see that or understand that. And there was a high level of it, man. Look, I'm not gonna deal with this because this ain't got to do with. With this or not. And that's not the right attitude. But if I didn't have the wrong attitude when I had it then, and if I didn't understand what I know now, I wouldn't be prepared for this next wave of. of shit that may be coming my way or may not.
Right.
But if it does, I'm prepared for it now. I'm at least prepared. I'm at least I'm in a different space of understanding. I'm in a different space of knowledge.
It's almost like going back to the last dance. You know, Jordan was talking about the you know, when he had to go through all of it publicly, how much that took a toll on him at first, but then he gave him the experience for the future and for his friends when they went through scandals and stuff to be able to be a leader in that situation and have more knowledge. And it sounds like you're in that situation right now. I'm curious about your wife. I asked this, the Rock did a live about a month ago on his Instagram and I asked a question on there and he answered it. And it was really powerful response. And I'm curious what yours is to this question. The question is, what is the thing you admire the most about your wife that most people don't know about?
Strongest person in the world. Strongest person in the world.
And her.
Her understanding for reality versus false reality is so crystal clear. You know, it's a tough seat to.
Sit in.
You know, being my wife. It's a tough seat to sit in. You know, we're-- it's crazy to say this, but there's this-- there's this movie that people love to watch. and it's called the Rising Fall. And the tickets to the rise are sold out, but the tickets to see what a fall looks like, I mean, you're talking about a sellout or a type of a sellout. I mean, it's the most watched thing ever. So naturally, when you get to a certain space or a certain level, you know, I don't know why, but there's a root against. And she experienced a lot of that, you know? A lot of that turmoil that we went through, you know, is girl, don't be with no man that's gonna disrespect you or don't do this or don't do that.
It's almost like a lot of people are against her for, yeah.
Insane. It's insane. And, you know, the one thing we had to talk in the one, the one thing that I told my wife.
I said.
Whatever you do, I'm here. I'm gonna be supportive of, you know, whatever you do. If you decide that you want to go and leave the honey by all means, no matter what she's taken care of, no matter what, you're the mother of my child. You know, my ex-wife now, we're not together, but she's taken care of mother and my kids. I'm not a bad person.
He said with all the tools you've learned and that wealth of information over 39 years, almost four decades, the strategies to break people through to help them overcome their challenges, if you can only have, if you had to strip them all away, you can always use one strategy or one thing to use, what would that be?
I wouldn't. Part of why I'm effective is because I don't buy By that, I'm always looking for more strategy because one strategy will work with one person, not with another. But philosophically, I would say that the capacity to strengthen and increase your hunger is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people. You know, Richard Branson's a good friend of mine, and Peter Guber, Steve Wynn, all these guys, they've never lost their hunger. Most people are hungry to achieve a certain amount, make a certain amount of money, and then they get comfortable and relax or to get a certain level of fitness and then they relax. But, you know, Richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting. I mean, he's like on fire and he's 65 years old. Warren Buffett is 85 years old. He's as driven today as when, you know, he began the journey.
Right.
And so people that have that hunger, I believe intelligence, I love people that are wickedly smart. And I work to be wickedly smart by educating and training myself. myself and so forth and training my brain. But there's a lot of intelligent people can't fight their way out of a paper bag. Hunger is the ultimate driver. Because if you're hungry, you can get the strategy, you can get the answer. If you can't model it, you can find it. So hunger modeling would be maybe the next best skill, knowing that success leaves clues. Like, why reinvent the wheel? If someone took this plane, was Mickey's plane who owns the Miami Heat and owns Carnival, right? I mean, you can learn so much from the man like Mickey is blow your mind what this man has been able to do in his life. And so why would I go learn by trial and error and maybe take 10 or 20 years when I could learn from somebody in a few weeks or a few months or a few hours something that could save me a decade? That's what it is. That's why I read 700 books in the first seven years because there's like, if somebody takes 10 years of your life they pour into a book, and I can read that in an hour, two or three or four, why wouldn't I?
So how does someone continue to stay hungry or reef, you know, rediscover what they're hungry about?
The best way is get around where it's better and things will hit you.
Say it again.
Get around where it's better and things will hit you. Who you spend time with is who you become. So, you know, when I started coaching all these billionaires, you know, there's a part of me that said, I, you I'm as smart in certain areas as they are. I got to step my game up. It's not about the money. It's about how can I take the invisible and make it visible? How can I find a way to add more value to other people to such an extent where economics are not a question whatsoever? And then I can take those economics and do even more where I'm not there. I look at money as portable power. I can leverage my money to do things for people even when I sleep. I love doing these for people and I work 18-20 hour days still, but it's really nice to have the leverage.
Of that as well. Sure, sure. In a few sentences, what would you say is your current vision for life? What's the vision you have and what's the legacy that you want to leave behind?
I saw, have you seen Hamilton the play in New York? I heard it's incredible.
Everyone's raving about it.
You've seen it, right, Nick? Yeah, it's amazing. Isn't it extraordinary? It's amazing. Yeah, I loved it. I thought it was a lot, might be a lot of hype, but it was as good as the promise.
Really?
There's a line in Hamilton that I thought was really interesting. It says, Legacy is planting seeds in a garden that you'll never see. I thought it was really interesting. But so for me, I know, what's.
The garden you want to create you'll never see?
Yeah, for me, it's human lives. For me, it's, I love, my life is about being a blessing in the lives of the people I meet. I hope that whoever decides to watch your video, I hope something here will strike them they can say, you know, I got to get in proximity or I got to raise my standard or I'm gonna go master my damn money. I'm not gonna dabble. I hope that it stimulates someone in a way where it becomes a blessing in their life. And my legacy is the lives that I've touched and my legacy is the institutions that I'm building right now that when I'm gone will continue to touch people. My foundation, the work that I'm doing with mentoring with kids, I mean, the ability to touch another generation. But my heartfelt prayer every day is be a And you know, it's interesting. Sometimes you're a blessing just by giving somebody a few moments just by loving on them, just being with them. Sometimes you're being a blessing because you coach them or you intervene with them. You can be a blessing in so many ways, but that's my daily focus. And it's not what am I going.
To build for the long term? It's really what am I going to do right now? Why is that?
And why do you want to create that legacy? Again, it's less about legacy than it is about doing what I'm made for. while I'm here and maximizing it. I want the end to have me, I want to be climbing the mountain when I die, not sliding. So to me, it's about growth and it's about giving. Those are the only things that fulfill human beings. I always tell people, if you want to be happy, it's one word, progress. If you can make progress and if your progress is not only within yourself, but it's actually doing something of value for more than yourself, you're going to.
Be a damn fulfilled person. How do you stay grounded in your personal and intimate relationships when everyone wants a piece of you. You sell out events, 10, 20, 30,000 people come to your conferences, pay tens of thousands of dollars. Everyone wants to interview you. You're coaching presidents, billionaires, world-class athletes. They call you, they want you to help them break through the next level. How do you stay grounded in your marriage or with your kids or with friends?
My mom's Craziness gave me a great gift. I wanted to be a professional athlete and I wanted to be a professional baseball player. And when I got cut from the junior high school team, I figured out I'm in trouble. So I decided to become a sportscaster and a sports writer. And so I took typing when I was in junior high school. I was the only boy in an all-girl shorthand class, so I could capture everything because I wanted to be the best reporter, best sportscaster. I interviewed Howard Cosell and Woody Hayes and Dodgers and I got a job working for a daily newspaper when I was 13. And then I got this huge break, which was I got these interviews no one had, like Joe Namath when he was so famous. I got these interviews and here in LA, KTTV Channel 11, it's now a Fox Channel, they were trying to get viewership and so they kept trying different kinds of sportscasters. They even tried Fanny Fox the stripper. And somebody watched some interviews I did and went, holy shit, this 14-year-old I was about to be 15. He's brilliant. He's getting interviews nobody else is getting, you know? So they called me up and they offered me the job to be the nightly sportscaster as I was turning 15. And I was out of my mind, like the dream I was gonna have when I was like 25 or 30 was happening, you know, I'm gonna be 15. And my mom said to me, your ego's too big. And if I let you do this, you're gonna even get bigger. And she Natalie would not let me take the job. She made me quit my job working for the Progress Bulletin, which was a daily newspaper in Pomona, California, doing sports. And I hated her and I was devastated, but it created a sensitivity inside of me that that along with, I think, watching athletes who would not sign a card for a kid because they were making money selling cards would make me so angry that I said, I'm never going to be one of those people. so I'm not, you know, I certainly have plenty of pride in what I've been able to accomplish and people I've been to help, but I always know I'm just a guy. And while I've worked my ass off, I've also had grace in my life, you know, and it, I think when you achieve things, it comes from incredible obsessive focus, massive action and figuring out the how to execute and do things effectively and it's grace. And I never forget that that's a part of the formula for where my life is today.
Do you think people need a little bit of ego to have that kind of drive and insanity or obsession? Or is it more just belief and a bigger vision?
I think ego can produce drive, but that kind of ego will make you not be fulfilled. And we all have it until we get a few hammers. Because in the beginning, when you're young, especially a young man, I think even more so than a woman, you're trying to find yourself. You're trying to prove yourself. to the world and really you're trying to prove it to yourself. Like in the very beginning for me, I used to attack psychiatrists and psychologists because I care about people so much. And I, because I learned how to handle them in an hour and they're working with someone for seven years and I would just go crazy. But I was also attacking them because I was also defensive because I didn't have a degree. And so I figured I'm going to be on the offense. I'm going to show them. But as I grew up, I realized, holy shit, these people care just as much as I do. Now I've trained 100,000 therapists around the world with my partner, Chloe Madanes. We make films of people's lives, like suicidal people, people who've been through hell, and you get to watch how I do it, as I do it, and then you get to see them two years later to know it really worked.
Right, right.
Do you ever question choices of decisions you make today? And does everything you touch turn into what you want it to be?
No, of course not. No, failure is part of life. I mean, the difference for me though is I look at failure as a stepping stone to success. It's a speed bump. I know I'm gonna fail, but it's not failure if you learn something. And so, gosh, I've made so many mistakes. I've screwed so many things up, but every time I do, it just becomes a way for me to explain to someone else what it takes. It's like, here's what I've done. I think I have the ability to influence people because I talk about my failures. talk about all the things that mess me up, but I show people that I didn't let them stop me and you don't need to stop you.
And I think that's really the secret in that area. And if everything you touch was successful.
I want to be able to relate to people as much as possible. No, you'll be relate and also it's be total bullshit and everyone know it's bullshit. And also you'd be bored silly. I mean think about it, if you just said, I want this to happen, I want this to happen, you know, people don't value what they don't fight for. You know, it's like you see kids sometimes in a, you know, your parents will say, you,'re not gonna value this if you don't work for it. And your kid will be going, oh, value it, just give it to me. But it's true, you know, about things we've worked the hardest for, we value the most. So I think, you know, the purpose of a goal is not getting it anyway. The purpose of a goal, you know, is who you become, who you become is gonna make you happier, it's gonna make you sad. So I'm not looking for an effortless approach.
Sure, sure. There's no such thing. Now I'm curious about relationships. Relationships and building wealth. Is it important to, or how important is it to have the right partner in a marriage or an intimate relationship in relating to building wealth? Does it matter who you choose, their mindset? Does any of that play the effect on how much you're gonna make or...
It won't affect how much you make, but it'll affect your relationship a lot, right? You know, getting on the same page is really, really important. But when my wife and I met, my wife, we both grew up very poor. but I decided that I was going to find a way to add so much value that money would never be a question for my family. And, you know, it would never stop me from giving or doing or sharing anything. And I made that decision early on. So I became an earner, ways of earning. She became a negotiator, a cost manager. Her mom's number one thing is somebody comes in, she goes, sharpen your pencil. That's not a good enough deal. And so when we first met, I remember we were, we were in New York City. and this dates me how old I am. But I remember when they first came out with digital cameras, the very first digital cameras from Sony. And it was, like, such a cool thing. You could take 12 pictures or whatever it was in those days. But we were down in New York City. We're in Times Square, and we went into one of those camera shops, and it was Christmas time, and I saw the camera, and I was, like, so excited about this camera. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna get one for my brother, my sister, my mom. And, you know, I came up with.
I don't know, it was, like, 12.
Cameras, and they super expensive then. I mean, they're like 1200 or 2, 000 each.
They were really crazy.
Now they're like 200 for the same.
Yeah, I know.
Not even.
It's a million times better. But I went to the counter and the guy goes, oh, my God, Tony Robbins, can I take a picture with you? I'll put it on the walls.
I said, sure.
And she goes, hey, she goes, show up in your pencil. What kind of deal are you gonna get my boyfriend here? And I wanted to grab her by the throat and just go, what are you doing here? It's like, what are you doing? And she's like, no, no. What's the deal here? And he goes, oh, well, I give it 10% off. She goes, Sharpen your pencil, 10%. You're not taking a picture of my boyfriend, and I'm wanting to murder her, right? And I was so mad. I mean, I was so mad. And so she got like 15% off and free camera cases and all that stuff. And I'm shaking my head. We left, I was like, I'm so, we have this big fight. Today, I just call her Squeaky. She's my Squeaky girl. She wants to go to Walmart, as if we'd ever need to go to Walmart. And what I do is I'm delighted by the difference and I go, you know what? What a beautiful gift. I've been in relationships before where I gave everything and people were totally unconscious with money. So to answer your question, it's nice to be on the same page, but you know, one day I told my wife I was coaching someone and the person gave me a quarter of a million dollar bonus. I don't care who you are, it's mind-boggling. He didn't have to, it wasn't part of the deal. He pays me a million dollars a year plus a piece of the upside. and he just said, Tony, you did so much for me, I just want to give you this additional quarter million dollar bonus. And it wasn't the money, it was the generosity that just knocked me off my truck seat. And so I called my wife and I said, Honey, Paul just gave me a quarter million dollar bonus. I mean, he's like, He's so generous. And she goes, oh, that's nice, honey. Hey, do you know what I'm making for lunch? And I'm like, Wow. So I used to get upset about it, now I'm like, that's my squeaky little girls. I'm thrilled she doesn't have to think about it. I'm in charge. And so I don't think your partner has to. One of you has to master it, and you have to have some alignment.
Okay. But you don't want them to be against you, essentially.
Well, sometimes they're gonna be. We were against each other in some ways. We're having fights. But what you eventually decide is, do I want to be right or do I want to be in love? I'd rather be in love personally. And then also I just said to her, I said, listen, honey, I understand your intent. I had to go to her intent instead of being frustrated with her saying, this is really actually a cool quality and she's my opposite in that area. And we're a good balance together.
What would you say are three secrets that millionaires who have it all have? What have they figured out?
That's a good question.
What have they figured out to become a millionaire, to have the love, to have the family, to have it all. Yeah. And, and the impact, everything, doing the things they love. What are the secrets? You know, you've got all these habits, but what is the real secret that's different than the actionable habits? Maybe it's a belief, maybe it's a way of thinking, maybe it's a good.
Question, the self-education side of things. What is that? So I would say, well, because I would bet to say there's not one person listening that would take a salary of five million a a year, but it was impossible to have love or take a salary for five million a year, but you couldn't see your husband or see your wife, right? Or be unhappy. Money without fulfillment is useless. It's probably the biggest lie the world is told, right? And I know you read Millionaire Success Habits. Yeah, it's great. It's Millionaire Success Habits, but it's really life success habits. Sure, sure. It's like when people start going like, oh, I could make more money this way, but this is really I can fix my life.
I'll feel better.
I'll feel better, right? So I think one, a really great question I wasn't prepared for, but I know for a fact some of them, one of them is people that, I mean, whatever you focus on, whatever gets your attention gets results. If you're listening right now and you're in great shape, it means your body is getting attention, you're eating the right food, you're working out. If your company's doing amazing, you have.
Focus.
Attention and hunger. I mean that's a great one too, is you have hunger for that business. You have hunger to be in great shape. If you have a romantic, passionate love and relationship for 15 years, it gets your focus, it gets your attention, you don't ignore it. So the one thing that I've seen is if you think of all the habits someone can have is someone who's successful in every way or in a lot of ways, not just wealthy but overweight and unhealthy, you know, overweight and unhealthy, is they really know what's important and they say no to all the things that complicate that. So, I don't want to go down this too far, but I make myself a not to-do list all the time, Louis, and I obsess on knowing what I really want. Most times, people that are living with suffering or stress or worry, most of their life is focused on what they don't want. I don't want this employee to be annoying anymore. I don't want this to happen. I don't want this president anymore. I don't, I don't, I don't. And they don't have enough of knowing in crystal clear clarity where it is they want to go. So you ask me one thing in common. The most successful people I know, if you got them in an elevator and say, Hey man, what's the next year of your life look like? Bam, bam, you know this from all your interviews. Oh, we're doing this, we're starting this new company, we're doing this. You ask somebody who's struggling, or not happy, they'll tell you what they don't want. Even if you ask them, and anybody listening, you could do this. Ask somebody who's not doing well what they want out of life, and they'll tell you what they don't want. They'll go, you know what? I don't want this damn job anymore.
Even though you asked them what they want.
So I think- that's someone who's not doing well.
Not doing well.
So I really believe that- I don't want to be broke. I don't want to be in this relationship. I don't want to be in this shit-ass relationship who she doesn't give me hope or he doesn't listen to me. I don't want to be in this job where everybody takes him. It's like, but what do you really want? Man, I just don't want to worry about money anymore. It's like, wow. But as somebody who's successful in a lot of areas of your life, like, oh man, I want to get my new company off the ground. I want to get in better shape.
Like they know where it is they want to go. So I would say, then they can.
Figure out, okay, what are the steps to getting there? How do I do that? So I guess the longer answer to a short question, because you asked for three, is if you really know where you want, you point your ship in that direction and successful people start saying no to all the things that don't serve them. going in that direction. If it doesn't serve God, it doesn't serve a better, a bigger, better version of you. It doesn't serve more income, a better relationship, it doesn't serve your health. Successful people know how to say, I'm not doing it.
Or someone talks in their life, you're gone.
They're not eating sugar, they're not drinking, they're not doing those things. And literally, when you do that in all areas of life, where do I want to go with my health? Okay, anything that doesn't serve that, I'm not doing it. Where do I want to go with my income? Okay, I'm going to focus on that. I'm going to point my ship in that direction. If it doesn't match, I'm throwing it away. What do I want with my intimacy and my passion? Like, figure out, read the books, gain the capabilities. So that's one. Number two. Number two is, this is going to be the simplest one. But I really, it's gonna be so simple. You're gonna, listeners are gonna go, oh, this guy's a freaking genius.
Secrets, yeah.
Focus on the things that work in your life and be the observer of the things that work. You come home in your relationship and you say something and your wife or your husband lights up. Like acknowledge that and do more of it. Like this is gonna be the simplest answer you've ever heard. And then on the opposite side, acknowledge what doesn't work in your life and do less of it or change it. And as simple as that sounds, I learned that through marketing. I love to market. because I know if I can get my book in people's hands, if I get my courses in people's hands, they come to my workshops, they come to my master classes, they come to my masterminds, I can change their life. I can't change their life if I don't get them in. So marketing isn't one of those things I have to do. It's a must because I get to change your life the moment you give me a credit card. Give me a credit card to buy my book, you read it, your life is altered. So with that feeling, like, I went in so many different directions. I lost my train of thought there.
Go back.
Focus on what you want and observe. Yeah, so observe what you don't want.
Right. So, I learned that. That's what, that's what thank you for reminding me that is I was going to go down a marketing job. But what I got so good at marketing, there's so many different like what's the color website? Do you use an arrow? What's the opt-in? What's the clothes? How did you anchor? What's the hook? What's like all I know with marketing is I love being transparent and enthusiastic. But the last thing is I've obsessed on what works in my marketing and I get feedback. I've read probably a hundred thousand comments because tens of thousands of comments because I read and I hear what people's fears are. I hear what they like about my stuff. I hear what they don't and when I see a bunch of people telling me what they like, here's the brilliant Dean Graziosi. I do more of it.
Yeah.
And when they tell me this didn't work, it was complicated. I was a little confused. the brilliance comes out again. I do less of it and I realize successful people do that in all areas of your life. If having three drinks at night makes me not get up in the morning to go to the gym and the gym makes me feel good, I'll have FOMO of not going to the gym. I'm gonna do less of that three hour drinking rather than quitting the gym so I can get there because that makes it so I'm doing less of what hurts me, more of what works. That's the same process of thinking living life the hard way is easy. and living life the easy way is hard.
Oh, interesting.
So, I mean, when you're hungry, just grab McDonald's. It tastes good. It's easy.
It's quick.
Quick.
Right?
That's easy. Cheap.
Yeah.
But you could end up with diabetes, dying young, not looking good, not being.
Healthy, not getting the love you want.
Because you look like. Just let's be honest. Yeah. Going and eating the right food, eating organic, going to the gym at five o'clock in the morning is hard. But I look at my dad. My dad's been eating healthy. and working out his entire life. My dad's 84. My dad's 84. I'm not kidding you. My dad looks like he's 55 years old.
Wow.
No, I'm not saying, like, like, no hunch. No, like the man. He runs on the trip. I mean, the guy is an anomaly, but my dad lived the hard way. He said no to all the greasy food. He got up every single day and went. Has gone to the gym for the last 30 years. Like, so just think about that. It's like, focus on what works and do more of it. I know if I treat my fiance a certain way, she looks at me. love at the highest level. I acknowledge what is her love language and I see if I do something for her, if I'm there for her, if I'm always looking at her and my eyes are on her, even if I'm across the room, she lights up.
So man, I want more of that.
You do more of it. So I do more of it. I see if a girl walks by and I look at her, it doesn't go so well. So I do less of that. Yeah, sure.
Right?
So as simple as that sounds, think about in your life, are you compounding what works and eliminating what doesn't.
Look, I love it. Yeah. That was point number two.
And the third one, third one's real easy. It's self-education. I never stopped learning. When I was in my 20s, I cut Tony Robbins a check. He gave me wisdom, capabilities, confidence, and my life went to another level. At every level. Yeah, I got, I get involved in masterminds. After Tony introduced me to all these people through his power talks, every month a new power talk came in the mail on CD, man, I'd learn about Wayne Dyer, obsess on Wayne Dyer, get his courses, get his trainings, anything I could do. And I realized that every single, including you, every single successful person I know is a part of groups, a part of masterminds, a part of self-education, learning from other people. I mean, look at this weekend, look at how we all solved our problems this weekend. In moments, you bring up a how should I do this? Like this, somebody's been there. and it's the collective wisdom of a room or it's someone who's already been there. And I would say in today's world, just be careful because and not knocking anybody but influencers got a weird name now. Influencer could be somebody who's run a $400 million a year company and now wants to share. An influencer could also be someone who shows a lot of fancy cars and got 2 million followers and both consider an influencer. Just model people who are already who are doing what you want to do at the highest level possible. If your Aunt Edna watched tennis her whole life, but you wanted to be a tennis pro, you're not gonna go to Aunt Edna just 'cause she watched. You wanna go to an ex-pro. A pro. Right? So, I think, you know, self-education, it's one of the things I'm doing with my buddy Tony Robbins. It's our passion right now to make self-education the new norm. Because literally the other day we're having a conversation and I said, you know, without self-education, we're both laughing our asses off that we'd both be just totally screwed if we didn't find this path, right? And it's funny talking to him 'cause he's the one that got me started on the path, right? And I said, we probably would have met if I didn't find self-education, but it would have been if you were in upstate New York and you went through a McDonald's drive-thru and I would have asked you if you wanted to supersize this fries, right? And we just laughed hard, but we've been really passionate. We're working on a project together to help people extract the knowledge in their head. Let's just be honest, and I'm kind of going off on a tangent here, but the current education system is broken. And I'm not saying they won't fix it, but it's broken. It's antiquated. Technology is moving too fast. Colleges have gone up eight times while jobs and salaries have stayed flat.
Well, they're also teaching us the things that aren't serving our lives forever.
Yeah.
You know, they're teaching us subjects. They're not teaching us how to a belief system.
Right.
A belief system, habits, successful traits.
Right.
It's just the world has changed so much and it needs, it needs to be updated. But until then, self-education should be the norm. I mean, you think about this. My My staff, the majority of my staff right now are young as heck but I'm not hiring people, half of my staff don't, haven't gone to college. I have a 19 year old kid running my social media ad spend. He spends a couple hundred thousand a week every week, he's 19. I have a 22 year old doing everything on YouTube. We're killing it on YouTube. I have all these young kids and how I hired them because I'm in this phase of my life is I didn't care where they went to school. school or if they went to school, and I didn't care if they ever worked before. All I wanted to know is, was self-education a part of their life? Did they read the same books, do the same courses as I did? Were they A-players and were they teachable? And if that was, I'd hire them, I just hire a consultant to come in, train them for a day, two days, a week, and then let them go. I think I had the best staff on the planet, and most of those kids would have been misfits in corporate America. so Tony and I want to share, like, the answer to that is in everybody's list. Like, right now, if you're listening, the answer to fix this problem is in your head because the world has got so Niche that, you know, there's people having workshops on how to cut a fade, you know, how to cut a fade in a hair and a barber instead of just making money cutting hair. He's making a fortune every month teaching other people how to do it. Right. Everybody has an expertise. And what Tony and I want to do is help the world. lock it, learn how to share it and get paid for it. Here's a crazy stat that an industry that didn't even exist not that long ago. The self education business is a $355 million a day industry. And I just read an article where it's expected to double in the next two years. The world is realizing that I can go to school and then learn from somebody or I went to school 20 years ago and it's not serving me. I'm not even in that field. You go to school, learn from somebody, get 30 years of experience and hopefully get a promotion. or you can leapfrog and learn from somebody who already has the experience if they can just extract it and share it. Like I look at our, what we've learned, like a skill and expertise, a hobby, whatever it is. If it's like a hard drive that builds up value, if you wouldn't throw that hard drive away after 20 years or 10 years or five years of accumulating knowledge, you can throw away a multi-million dollar hard drive. I think people should feel that way about their thoughts, their skills, Like if you have a knowledge, if it took you a year or two or three to figure something out, you should be obligated to extract it. But here's the cool part. There's a process to extract it. Share it with people and get paid. It's a $355 million industry. When Tony and I started, I mean, Tony started way before me, but I'm over 20 years in this. It wasn't that cool, but it is now. That's why people listen to your podcast. They want new capabilities. Most people's best thinking got them where they are. I don't know if that was confusing.
No, that's great. I mean, it's the reason why I started the School of Greatness because I felt like when I got started in business, when I was on my sister's couch, I didn't know the answers, but I knew that school didn't teach me the answers and I needed to go seek them out. So I started seeking out mentors who had the answers. And I was kind of masterminding on my own one-on-one with people when I was 23, 24 years old on my sister's couch. Then I remember They helped me get into business, like these ideas from these mentors, they coached me and I had the coachability and the desire. So I was hungry for it. They coached me to getting into business and launching it. I remember everything shifted when I joined my first mastermind. It was 2009 and 10 years ago. And I remember my business did about a half a million in sales for 12 months, 12 months before this. Then I went to the first mastermind. The next month, I made a quarter of a million dollars from the mastermind, from connecting with a few people, from the insights, from the knowledge I gained. I was like, wow, I can save so much time and money if you tell by doing this one thing. And I've been a part of masterminds for the last 10 years. And we just came back from one that is going to help our businesses and, and everything for the next three, four or five years to come from what we learned in two days. And so what are you, what are you and Tony Robbins doing then with this project. How are you helping? How can we get involved?
Yeah, yeah.
So, here's the thing. If you're an expert, you have a skill, you have knowledge, you're in this business. Like as you're hearing this, like imagine learning from Tony. I don't think there's two people more capable. He's in 42 years, I'm in 21. We got 63 years of knowledge in this business. But if you're listening and you're already in this business, you're like, Hey, I want to learn from these guys. And what we're teaching people to do in a blueprint is How to extract your knowledge and teach it in a way that's congruent, whether you want to teach it online or in person through a workshop or an online Zoom call or a mastermind, or if you want to build a community. I mean, in today's world, building a community and bringing like-minded people together creates massive revenue. That's where this $355 million a day is. So if you're already in this space, you're going to want to, and we created a link if you guys want. It's greatnesslink.com Tony and I are doing, and Tony hasn't done something like this in over 15 years. We're doing a special online training and you're, everybody listen right now, you can register, go to greatnesslink.com and register, get the time, show up 15 minutes early.
Because there's gonna be a live chat.
So you and Tony are gonna be teaching something. Yes, me and Tony. What are you teaching? We're gonna teach people how to extract their knowledge. But this is why I want everybody to listen right now, how to extract their knowledge and share it, make an impact on the world. Everybody wants to make an impact, including you and I and everybody listening. Imagine making an impact and get paid. But who I really want to listen right now, this is real. I mean, people are in the business already know, but this is for anybody right now if you're listening and want to make additional revenue. If you'd love to make an impact on the world, you need to come hang out with Tony and I because what most people don't realize is that this is an industry. If you're an expert, you should extract your knowledge, learn how to share it and learn how to profit. But here's the thing, it's for everyone who wants to make more money and make an impact because if you look at, we're going to teach you how to be the reporter of knowledge. Think about this. Tony wrote one of the most successful finance books in the history of the world. Money Master the Game, big monster read book went crazy.
Tony's not a finance guy.
He was a porter. He curated the information. He curated the information. He was the reporter of the information and he was able to share it and make a massive profit. I was on stage at my event and I said, Hey, if I never did a real estate deal in my life, who in this room would pay me to come to a virtual workshop and showing you how to do real estate? You know, thousands of people, not one person raised their hand. I said, okay, but what if I went and interviewed the top 10 real estate investors in America and I found their seven common denominators for success? What if I was doing a Zoom workshop on that? Who would pay me a thousand bucks to come on? The whole entire audience raised their hand. This is where our world has gone. technology has changed. The world has changed. People are ready to pay for community, for collaboration. So, whether you're the expert or not, you have the opportunity to profit and make an impact and help change the world. Fix education and do what Tony and I want, make self-education the new norm.
Amazing.
I always tell people, what you don't know can be your greatest asset if you let it. So, because it ensures you're going to do it differently.
Absolutely.
And when I landed Neiman Marcus, all these people came up to me and said, I have been doing this for seven years, 10 years, five years. How did you land Neiman Marcus? And I said, I called them. And they just looked at me and I was like, why, what do you do? They're like, well, I go to trade shows and I set up my booth and I'm waiting for the Neiman Marcus buyer to come by. And we've been doing it every year for seven years. I didn't even know there were trade shows.
Wow.
So sometimes just not knowing how it's supposed to be done. You have to have the courage though to say, even though I wasn't trained in this, because a lot of people think, well, I didn't go to school for this, so how could I possibly know? But you know it's inside of you.
Yeah.
And you're willing to be creative and risk failure in a way that most people aren't. You put yourself out there in a major way and you said, hey, come to the bathroom with me. Right. And I'm not gonna do anything weird. It's amazing. It's incredible story.
My dad used to encourage me to fail. So at the dinner table growing up, he would ask my brother and me what we failed at that week. And if we didn't have something to tell him, he'd be disappointed. And I vividly remember being a little girl and saying, I tried out for this dad and I was horrible. And he would high-five me. And he'd go, Way to go.
Wow.
So he was reframing my definition of failure. So failure for me became about not trying, not the outcome.
For those that don't know Spanx, can you share how it all started?
And so Spanx was born out of just being a frustrated consumer. I wanted to wear 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 until Banks sort of looked at it with a different lens and said, no, no, no. I want the hosiery material to actually be 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 Spanks.
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 years ago.
Am I doing my math?
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 even fax machines any more 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, as soon as they put the headset on, I'm like, Stryker, you're too low.
You're too low. And you just stared at me like, what is she talking about?
That's a nice. So how long were you selling the fax machines? I sold the fax machines door 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 dream.
I wanted to be a lawyer. I was like, I'm gonna be a lawyer.
But you wanted to be a lawyer.
But it didn't work out. 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. You're 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. Oh, 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?
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 spank 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 going to 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 did this about eight years ago and I used Alibaba for something and it was easy to find a manufacturer in China and 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 oh really?
Yeah.
So you got a local?
Yes. So, 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.
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.
Always with me.
You still have it? Yeah, of course. and you didn't bring it here. 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. Sarah Blakely. 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. 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 hours. Oh, it's not bad, okay. 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 three 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 & Noble, 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.
Yeah, the legwork you'd done. Yeah, you just kind of needed to button it up and... Yeah, you 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 words, 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?
Where's Ashton?
Yeah, exactly. He thought that his friends were playing a joke on him. No way. Yeah, he goes, who's this girl? 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.
I'm like, how bad 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, it's so bad. Wow. Yes. So anyway, okay, so what's Spank stand for? Well, it's all about the butt. It 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 Spank's and they would hang up.
Right.
And I thought it was probably like a porn thing. Yeah, they thought I was pranking them. I'm called them. I'm like, no, really?
Sarah.
My company really is called Spanx. And I had a 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 lunch into 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 with an X. I paid.
Some money for that. But anyway, yes. So, 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 had a strong K sound in them. 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 Trey Cedric 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 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.
Yeah.
So then I had the name and I had the patent in the works. 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. In the back. 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, it's 70% nylon and 30% lacquer. And I'm like, All right. And so I'm taking notes. My patent lawyer is 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 away.
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. Okay.
Got it.
All change on lacquer immediately. My patent lawyer was laughing. You know how fast you would have a patent if you tried to make this out of paint thinner. 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 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. 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 going to 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. 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. Wow. 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 know. I was like, Just follow me to the bathroom and show you my own panty line. And I went in the 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 gonna 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 pushed me through to Ted. He goes, okay, you need to talk to Ted. So Ted comes back in. He's on the phone and I go, Ted, I need more. And he goes, I just landed in even 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 in even Marcus and I have no crotches. Oh, my God. Is there 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 at crotch.
Crotch machine.
I looked up crotch.
Let me know how you spell crotch. Okay, listen.
This is what I learned.
I'm gonna 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 at. Hilarious. What's Instagram? oh, yeah.
Okay.
I just joined it seven days ago. All right, so where was.
Oh, crotch. Yeah.
Crotch machine.
Yeah.
So anyway, in the yellow pages, it's not under crotch. So I learned there's a fancy word for crotch named gusset. Gusset.
Yes.
What? Gusset.
Never heard that word. So I started calling gusset 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 Spanx one. One skew, right? Or...
Yes, one skew. $20, one skew. Three sizes or... Like four, four sizes.
Yeah.
And... 3000 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 shipping them 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. And I said to get some moves. Yeah, I said go in. I gave them 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.
Brilliant.
You have to.
Wow.
Incredible. 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 Neiman Marcus to over calling, like a month. It just happened that quick.
A 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 This man.
Building 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, 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 all the hustle and... Yeah. But when I got Neim and Marcus, I think a lot of people think that's when you've arrived.
No.
That'S when I double timed. I mean, 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 averages. 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.
They told me what they wanted.
Amazing. Yeah.
How did you train the mind to prepare yourself for the whole world to try to take you down?
Yeah, so I, you know, I think it was kind of a mix of everything. You know, my entire growing up, you know, like I talk about my parents. I talk about the hard work and the leading by example, and they were always, you always there was always something to do. There was that. There was me being one of 32 first cousins. Everything was competitive. Everything was a competition we would, now I realize it was my parents trying to tire us out and hey, run around the pond. Let's see you can run around the pond the fastest as kids. We're like, yeah, let's do it. And so that type of stuff. And so there was that. And then high school baseball. I had an incredible high school baseball coach that would push us and we would always joke that we ran more than the track and cross-country team. And, you know, he was huge in the mental toughness. And, you know, he said he did CrossFit before CrossFit was a thing. That's his joke now. And, you know, we would do these workouts and now I look back having an exercise science degree and I was like, what the heck were we doing? But, it was hard and it was mentally tough and, you know, that was his deal and mental toughness and there was that. And then I had, you know, being in the fire department and those lessons that I learned from that. I think it's just a mix of all of it. I don't think there was one thing that I can pinpoint down or think about the mentality of, you know, what, what one thing it was. I think it was just a mix of all of it, you know, and, like, wanting to win the games where having the, you know, the atmosphere where I could do that, like, having those guys that would train with me in the mornings, in the midday, in the afternoon, those to push me and, you know, my cousin the same way and, you know, just all that, all of that into one. perfect storm, I guess. There wasn't, there's not one thing that.
I can be like, oh yeah, that was it. How did you feel like you handled the pressure though? Because, you know, during those first few years where it seemed like a lot of pressure, you know, so many people there, it's on the line, each event.
Matters or you lose.
What did you think about before every event would start or in the middle when you're like, gosh, I'm exhausted. Yeah. Like, this person's crushing me right now.
How did you stay focused? Yeah, I think a huge part that, like I said, was my faith and not having such a, you know, not having that pressure. It was, there was still pressure. Like, I'm not gonna say that, you know, I didn't have pressure on me, but it was very, it took some of that pressure off.
And what would you think about in that moment when you felt like, oh, this pressure is on me.
What would you say to yourself? Or, you know, the good thing was, is like, I'd had that, that rope fall and I'd embarrass myself greatly or way more than I was gonna embarrass myself again. So it was kind of like, I've already done the worst, the worst that it could happen, in my mind, was the worst thing that could happen. And so it was like, it's gonna be all right, you know? And then, and then the more and more I competed and the more and more the years went on, I noticed that, hey, it's not, it's not about one event, you know, like, as long as there's damage control, you know, like, there's certain events you're not going to do great at if you can damage control in those events. And I think that was one thing that I kind of figured out a lot earlier than people was, you know, everybody was like, well, when I go out there, I compete against myself, and I just do the best that I can and blah, blah, blah and all this, you know, the stuff that people want to tell themselves when they don't want to either don't want to push hard or don't want to take credit for their, you know, something happening. So, what I learned was you can watch people and watch, you know, hey, I need to stay ahead of so and so. You know, there's times that where it bit me in the ass but it was like, you know, luckily for us, you kind of knew what lane you were in, what is what place you were in. And so you could figure out, all right, so is maybe better at this, but if I'm, you know, within a, either a rep or two or a person or two of them, I can make up points or not lose too many points, and then I can get ahead of them in another event. And so I kind of learned that, you know, and you would kind of call audibles in the middle of it. You're like, oh, I gotta push here. I need to, like, do whatever. And so I think that was something that I, one of the things that I figured out a lot earlier than people was it is a sport. Like, as much as, you know, it's just working out, there is some strategy to there is, you're trying to game things and you're trying to like, all right, I know this movement is kind of a rest for me so I can kind of push here or, you know, this movement's gonna be a little bit harder, so I need to slow down and gaming workouts. And that was something I think, you know, training so much and doing so many different things that I did and the volume that I did that I learned, you know, had done certain combinations of movements. They may not have done the exact workout, but I knew how they kind of played off of each other. and so that was something that I'd learned pretty early on and helped a ton.
That's great. How did you handle fear throughout the career?
Yeah, I mean, there was, there were times where, especially, I remember specifically one time in 2013. So I'd gotten 27th on a pool event. I got second on a rowing event. That was, it was the half marathon. But you started out with a 2K Sprint, which was the worst thing ever. So I went 27th. second, seventh, I think, on the, the Marathon. And then I went seventh, I think, on the Burden Run. Well, Kalipo had went first, first, first, first. So he had, like, a huge lead, and I'm just in pissed off, and I'm in a horrible mood. And my wife comes up, and we're kind of sitting in the athlete area between events, and she's like, you don't look like you're having fun. I was like, I'm not having fun. I'm in, like, I was probably in, like, third or fourth at the time. This is awful. Like, whatever. And she's like, go get your stuff. What do you mean get my stuff? She's like, well, if you're not having fun, we need to go home. And I was like, what are you talking about? I'm gonna go get my stuff, leave this. I trained all year for this. She's like, you do the best when you have fun. And I'm like, back, she's never played any type of sports. Anything like that. She did when she was really young. She played basketball and stuff like that, but she never in high school, she's the least competitive, could care less about anything CrossFit related. But she was like, Go get your stuff. We're leaving. Go tell Dave we're leaving. I was like, what are you talking about? Then she's like, well then start having fun. And I was like, all right, well then, and you know, I didn't like start having fun immediately, but it turned around so she always takes credit for, you know, that year that she was, she was. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, you try to have as much fun as you can and over the years you learned that, you know, when I first started competing like a month out, like my nerves would start getting me and you're like, man, and, you know, butterflies and all that. Well, then, you know, after a year or two, it was like two weeks out. Then it was starting. Then it was like a week out. Now it's like the event. The event of. Then I start getting a little nervous still. You know, everybody's like, you still get nervous? I'm like, heck, yeah, I still get nervous. I think when you stop getting nervous is not fun anymore. You know, that's true. But, yeah, I think it's just the nerves and, you know, being a competitor. And, you know, you have that, like, before it, you know, you have all this build up, but then literally, as soon as 312 go happens. It's just like, you gotta go. It's just like everything goes away. You know, you talk about flow or whatever it is, but it literally, like, I can't tell you any music that's played during events. You can't hear any of the cheers. You can't hear any of that stuff. You're just kind of in it and you just kind of go through it and it's, it's kind of, it's hard to explain, you know, it's just like a competitive nature. It's just, you know, it's hard to, people are like, what makes you so competitive? I'm like, I don't know. I just, it is, it's just something that you you just get into and you don't really think about those things. Yeah, the workout sucks and it's gonna hurt. And, you know, for a long time, you know, like I said, I have those certain things that go through my head. You know, the, you know, I had, I'd write Bible verses on my shoes and think about, you know, like the crucifixion of Christ and those were the things early that really got me. But then it's just like after you've done it for so long, it's just, it's what you do.
Yeah. You know, it's like, you just get into that space and you get in.
That zone and it's just, it's go. Well, you've already experienced the pain so much. You're like, I know it's gonna suck. Yeah, it's gonna hurt, you know? when is it gonna hurt? You know, like most of the time you're like, all right, this workout's gonna take 10-15 minutes, but you know the pain's really gonna set in about a minute, nine minutes, you know, depending on whatever the workout is. But yeah, it's just, it's like you've almost become not numb to the pain, 'cause it still hurts, but you've almost like embraced that pain and you just know, it's almost like a sick twisted thing where you're just like, this is what it is, you know? And it's, I was talking, I've got kind of an addictive personality and there's some substance abuse in my family history, but I've never had any substance abuse. But I think working out, pain abuse, working out is probably my substance abuse. Yeah, it really is.
How important is pain for everyone in the world to experience on a daily or weekly basis?
When you grow, man, you never grow and you never move forward when you're comfortable. You've got to, as bad as it sounds, you've got to go out and you've got to seek that stuff. You have to that's when you get better and that's when you grow, I think. It's the same as physically, you know, like when it hurts, that's when you know something good is happening. So you almost embrace that where it's like, this is gonna hurt, but I know on the other side I'm gonna come out better and it's the same way mentally. It's like if you're not pushing, you're not growing.
Why do so many people resist pain when they know...
I think people just, you know, it's either their upbringing or it's they've never had that or they just they just don't enjoy it. You're not gonna enjoy pain. Like, let's be honest, you know, we, we talk about, like, some of the most miserable experiences when you're done with it, you're like, that was awesome.
You know, like, you go out and.
Seek these, like, challenges. In the middle of it, you're like, you know, I went on this elk hunting trip for six days, and for the first three days, it was awesome. The fourth day downhill, we didn't see any, any elk. I hiked 60 miles in six days, like, sun up to sundown, going through the woods, and I'm like, this is miserable. Like, I hate this. And then I got done. I can't wait to do that again. You know, like you're just like, it's sick and it's twisted, but you know, like you're growing in that, you know, as long as it's productive pain, like there's different, like there's certain things that aren't productive, but as long as it's something good, you know, you're on the other side, you're going to come out better. And I think, I don't know, I don't know if it's hard for me sometimes to relate to other people that are like, how do you get there that you want to, you want to compete or you want to go to that pain? I'm like, how do you not want to? How do you not see the the benefit of it. It's hard sometimes for me to, like, talk to people that don't get that, you know, like, you get it, you know, we're just talking about it, but it's. It's hard for me, you know? Like, it's just hard to, like, relate to that because I I don't know. I don't know what makes me want to do that. But my wife, she's similar. She's like, I don't. I don't want to do that. I don't want to do anything that's painful. Like, like, I just.
For me, that's just how I do it. Why do you think you're. wired that way to want it. I don't know.
I think it's that, like, that perfect mix of everything that we talked earlier. It's just because you want to win that bad. I want to win that.
It's not even. I want to win that bet.
I don't want to lose. I don't want to make an idiot of myself. Like I said, it could be just us two and nobody else could be watching, but it still just drives me crazy. And it's. It's ridiculous. You know, like, if you really look back and, like, yes, you know, like we're saying.
Grow.
You want to grow through pain, but, like, some of the stuff, it's like, why does that cause? Like, why am I so caught up in that? Sure. It's just the way I am.
It's just the way I'm wired.
It's the way I've always been wired. How did you meet your wife? Met my wife getting my haircut.
I was.
I was a firefighter getting off. Getting off shift. And we had a mutual friend that she cut my hair and she colored Hillary's hair. And so while Hillary she was getting her hair colored. I was getting my cut and we'd actually both gotten out of like four year, four or five year long relationships. We were both miserable in those relationships and finally got out of them. And I was a perfect gentleman to every woman that I ever dated. My mom was always like open every door, do whatever. And I was a jerk to Hillary. And she kept coming. I was like, I'm not ready to.
Get in a relationship.
You know, like, I'm gonna have some fun. I gotta go on that spring break trip. Exactly. And so I'm like, was a complete jerk to her.
Really?
And she just kept coming and was like, you know, I don't know.
She. And she.
She gives it, like, she's. Doesn't take any crap either. And would just, like, there was one time, this is awful, and I'm such a jerk for doing it, but she came to visit me in the fire station, kind of met her. Introduce. This was, like, a little bit later on when we were, like, we'd kind of hung out and talked and text and all that stuff for probably three or four months. And I was just like, you know, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And all this stuff. So we. She comes to the fire. I introduced her to all the guys and she's going to leave and, you know, I take her out to her car, open the door, let her in and she's like, so what are we?
Are we talking?
Are we texting?
You know, we together? Are we?
Yeah.
And I'm like, I don't like titles. The stupidest thing I could have ever said, ever. And she goes, Don't ever talk to me again.
Wow.
I was like, okay, that's not good. So the next day... So you text her the next day? I didn't text her the next day because I was like, All right, I'm gonna see what happens. The next night she goes, why the hell have you text me all day? I was like, you told me not to! And so I was like, all right, this girl, you know. So she, you know, she can dish it out and she's perfect. Like she's completely, the statement opposites attract are literally me and my wife. But we work really well together and she supports me and everything and I support her and her things and, you know, she could care less about anything CrossFit related, you know. We, she, really?
You miss your whole life?
Whole life, man.
She doesn't care about it.
Listen to this. So she's.
She supports you and shows up.
Of course.
Yeah.
Heck yeah. She's my biggest fan, but she could care less, like, as long as, you know, whatever. And so we have three kids, our oldest, Lakeland. She bought all the most expensive, like, dolly clothes for her. And Lakeland hates them now, but at the time, you know, Lakeland maybe wore this stuff once, twice, whatever. So I'm doing some laundry one night with her, and so. Full laundry, I take it up to Lakeland's room, I open this closet and it's just like the amount of money hits me that we spent on these clothes and it's just been used once. And so I'm like, whatever. And so, you know, and we had some infertility issues and all that stuff and Lakeland's adopted, all three of our kids are adopted. But so I, you know, it didn't really, like I would give her crap about spending money, but I'm like, hey, you know, we waited long enough for this kid. Yeah, yeah. You know, I want her to And so, this is years later. And so, I walked back downstairs and I'm like, I have to be a dick. Like, I'm just, I just want to know, how much money do you think is in that closet up there? And she's like, It's a hobby. And I was like, It's an expensive hobby. And she goes, well, if you weren't so good at CrossFit, that would be an expensive hobby. And I was like, that doesn't make sense at all. That pays for this stuff. Like, yeah, this is what I do. And she's like, well, you know what I mean.
And I'm like, no, actually, I don't.
Know what so that's in a nutshell that's our relationship.
When are the moments that you doubt yourself the most? Because I know you're extremely confident in yourself but are there moments and what are they and how do you get through it when you have that doubt in anything you're doing?
One of the weird things I do is I'm in a funny place now where I'm not putting myself in a place where I doubt myself and so I always wonder is that like Not challenging myself or is that like staying in my lane? But like, I will tell you like the only thing I think about being like when you ask me like what's scary here's reading in public is scary. It's terrifying because I can't read. Yeah, even like the last time I did the AskGaryVee book like for the audiobook you just kind of rifts. Well, you know what's funny? I always do that. Yeah, because I get bored because that's why I got F. So I'm like, I don't want to read my own fuck. Like, you know, I'm like fuck this. I know what's in here. Like, you know, That's why people buy the book and the audiobook, because they're basically not even the same. It was fun actually for me, because I'm like, oh, I'm a better reader than I've gotten, you know, I think I've been forced to read so much over the last 10 years as we became a computer-based, email-based, text-based world. But I don't like to, like, I would be, if you were like, Hey, read my notes here right now to the podcast, I'd be like, you, could literally ask me to get naked. I'm like, All right, well fuck it. But if you said read, this right now verbatim. I'm like, because I'm, I don't like that. But man, it's then it's things like, like throw me in a pit of snakes. I'm like, I don't want that.
Right. Like jump off this building. Fuck that. But there's nothing in business that makes you doubt yourself. Is there a situation that you could see, like you've spoken in front of 50,000 people?
That's not scary at all. At this point in my career, I've been in the room with everybody, and that means I have not been in.
A room with a ton of people. All the big leaders, every billionaire, every.
CEO, I'm of the cloth. I belong.
You're confident, too.
I'll be very frank with you, I think I'm better. I think when it's all said and done, I win this generation. I think Elon and Zuck and the Uber guys, I think a ton of people make more money. I'm convinced now that nobody will make more money, nobody will make more money and help people make more money than me and this generation. I will win-- In that game, yeah. In the game that I like, which is winning personally and winning helping other people, I don't think I'm gonna be touched. I think I will be the guy. I think they will go back and be like, Look, here were the people that were entrepreneurs during a time when entrepreneurship was cool, and here are all the different things. Elon invented the craziest shit, and Mark Zuckerberg created the greatest, and Bezos created the best companies and made the most money. And then Gary did the best job of making a the most money and he bought the jets and that became symbolic, but he also created millions of hundred thousand heirs and millionaires. That's what Crush It's about. That's why crushing it's about. I think that's really cool. I spend an enormous amount of time trying to make my audience awesome out of the selfishness of the legacy not to get them into a top of the funnel to buy my book or my sneaker. I ask for it, but I have zero vulnerability or expectation. Listen, you have a great business around your brand. A lot of other people do. I think that's great and think it's cool. I just like that I make my economics in other places, but I'm paying the price. I'm eating the shit. Like, one could argue what's better, but I absolutely think I'm gonna win the game as made most because it's keeping score. I mean, it's part of the equation. But I'm not driven by that. I'm driven by, you know, I mean, look, dude, you are fucking crushing it. You are winning. You're doing so many great things. Do you know how amazing, like when I read, because you know, Stephanie Land, my ghostwriter interviewed you for it, and then I'm going through it. Just reading your story about the book Crush It, and then of course I remember like getting picked up and going.
To the cost plus and all that.
I picked you up in a beater.
Car, you know, in a nobody. But it's fun, right? First of all, one thing I know is everybody's got it in them. It's not like I'm manufacturing. You were doing the LinkedIn party stuff. That's not crush it. But man, I have definitely suffocated excuses better than a lot of people, which is really the biggest reason so many people who are listening right now are not winning. They are surrounded by people that are willing to accept their excuses. on one very interesting insight. It's because those people don't give a fuck. Your friends and your family are letting you get away with your excuses because they don't care. I weirdly don't know you and I care and let me tell you how to fix this. Get your fucking excuses out of your mouth. And so like I think between that and then showing people this whole $80 strategy, I don't know if you've seen this, this has been great for me. You know, once at a blue moon I come up with very tangible advice So I've been talking a lot about leaving comments in people's Instagram posts, but not like follow me or like fucking just to game it. No, take the out. You want to grow your... Everyone's like, how do I grow? I'm like, there's a way. It's called the thank you economy. Quietly go in like nice and calmly. Like if you're a photographer, go to Nick's page. He's got fucking legit shit. He takes a photo of some pretty person, boy or girl, he's very good at that, and some beautiful setting, and like look at it. and then leave a fucking comment that's meaningful. Like, Hey Nick, you know, are you using this filter or I noticed what you did with the light there? Like something that means something, not like cool or fucking lit. You know, like you're not leaving the comment for the sake of leaving the comment. You're taking the actual hour and a half to like look, add something of value. You do that on, you know, 90 different, the way I came up with it was leave your two cents, you know, in a comment, leaving your two cents, Go take nine hashtags that are relevant to your business and then go to 10 accounts or 10 hashtags. Top nine, it used to be the top now. Now it's just random nine. So pick 10 hashtags, the random nine, that's 90. Leave two cents. Now you've left a dollar 80 for the day. Watching the last two, three, four, five, six weeks of people like, you know, 'cause it's funny, right? People are buying fucking likes and comments. comments, people are like trying to do dumb shit, give away fucking iPads or Yeezys or off-whites to get followers, or you can actually work for an hour. Add value.
Know your craft.
And like Nick, I'm actually looking at it like, do you know what would happen? Because he actually knows his craft if he actually spent three hours a day. Three hours is a lot of time. A lot of time. But if he gave a fuck, and I don't think he should or shouldn't, but if he gave a fuck, the fact that if he He spent three hours looking at 20 hashtags in photography because he's crafted and skilled and gifted and went to those people's photos and said shit that I would never understand. I'd just be like, nice thong or like nice muscles or like cool coconuts. If he said like, oh shit, I see what you did there off the fucking reflection horizon. I don't fucking, you know. Well that matters because people see that you're leaving something meaningful Right?
Mm-.
Anyway, nonetheless, I don't even remember why the fuck I'm talking about that. Basically, I'm thinking about bringing the most value. I think it's mindset and strategy. I used to not like the motivational version of me. I've gotten much more comfortable in the last 18 months because I'm like, huh, if I didn't think of it as motivational and I thought of it as strategy, because mindset strategy, right? Like, like being insecure, is a mindset, it was put into you for a million different reasons. Figuring out how to get out of that hole by who you surround with, how you think, what you do, if you insecurity is the biggest poison in our lives. Like insecurity scares the fuck out of me. Lack of self-esteem is why people do everything bad. Buy dumb shit to make themselves feel better, do dumb shit, like take dumb shit and put into their body, It's all insecurity. I used to remember in high school back to dating now, I'm gonna tie these stories together. I remember when I realized, oh, my friends drink alcohol to get courage. But they don't even that drunk, they just use it as an excuse to do shit that they wanted to do anyway. It's just all fucking insecurity, man.
Yeah. What's your insecurity?
What is my insecurity? My insecurity is probably my insecurity. I don't know if this is an insecurity. This is gonna be very weird for a lot of people who don't know me. I hate being disliked. Which is a really funny insight because the way I act in public and in my content shows a huge willingness to be disliked. But I only think of it simply as if you you really break down my content and my ethos and who I am, I'm willing to be disliked in the micro. I'm willing for you to not like me because I'm suffocating you and you don't like that I've put you into a corner, but you're gonna love me in three years. I hate being disliked.
Why?
Because I think I should be nice and I think I like people. I think it's a bad idea. I don't like I'm very, I don't know if it's an Security like I man the thought that there's like I think I don't know if you saw like I had Tim Ferriss on my podcast that I apologized him at the end because in my early part of my career I got on a tangent in one speech at blogs with balls where I was like fuck four hours of working like fucking go all in and it just I didn't like the way it came out I knew what my intent was which is why I'm kind of fine But I've been apologizing for to Tim for a decade Because.
I don't want Tim to-- From that one speech.
Yeah, because it hurt Tim's feelings, rightfully so. Like if you go and find Blogs with Balls 2009, I went on a good three, four minute tangent. I didn't talk about, I've never read anything. I don't even, from what I know, four hour work week is about efficiency, not about working four hours. So, I just don't like being this, like I look at Ray Lewis on your wall, right? In the right circumstance, at a Jets-Ravens game, There is no question that, you know, Ray would never remember, and I, this didn't happen, but like Tom Brady, I fucking hate Tom Brady, but do I? Like, like, like, I hate him, right? But you love him, but I would appreciate, no, no, I don't even appreciate him. Fuck him. I know how great he is. I have zero appreciation for him being great.
None.
I know it's there, I don't appreciate it. If it was on your team, you would. No shit. And I hate him, and I say it in public, and fuck you, and this and that, and at games, Like, if he was on the sideline, I flat out like, fuck you, you fucking suck, like, mean it, right? But in, like, kind of like in real life, like, if I cross paths with him, and I feel like, you know what scares me now is I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm definitely gonna cross paths with, like, the Kobes and Tom, like, all these guys want to be entrepreneurs and will be entrepreneurs. So I'm like, eh, the sports thing's weird now. Like, like, I'm gonna see him at some, like, fucking, you know, like, Allen and Co. or whatever. Exactly. I don't want, like, I don't want to be disliked because I think there's no reason to. I hate cynicism and hate. I hate it so much and being associated with it would really upset me. So I'm insecure at, like, I don't know if it's insecure is the right word, but I am aware that I'm awfully peacocky on stage in a podcast. Like, you can ask me questions here and I could say, shit that I believe, but I don't want to deal with the ramifications of my truth. And more importantly, it's a great time to say it, and Babin, I hope you're filming. There is something that's really interesting to me, which is I really know that I mean nothing. I think the biggest reason I'm willing to spit authentic is because I don't think so highly of myself. Meaning I'm not insecure It's just that me thinking Nick is not good at something, like business, forget about photography where who gives a fuck, me saying your business stinks, even with all my business things, I still think is just one fucking dude's opinion. I understand it's a solid opinion, I understand that it comes with some heritage and value, but it's still too many great people who've won so much in things have told me I'm not gonna to win and then I've won, that I know I'm the same. And so I think one of the reasons I'm willing to spit is like my opinion is still my opinion and like, you know, take it with a grain of salt.
Yeah. What do you think? You talk a lot about, you know, delayed gratification, there's time and everyone has a lot of time and people are wanting things right now. What do you think? Even with that mentality, I know that you would love to get results, bigger results all the time with what you're doing. You know, if you sell 100,000 books, you would like to sell 200,000 books right now.
That's exactly right.
Right?
What?
Micro, micro, macro.
Yes, exactly.
That's it.
But what do you think you're gonna need to do to step into getting faster results in the micro and the macro? What would take you to the next level?
I think what takes everybody to the next level is cutting out dumb shit. Like what, if you really look at anything, It's always cutting. So what Jack Welch had such a great career, he was so right in like when it was a revolutionary thought of like cut your bottom 10% of your staff each year. But it's right. I mean like no question whether in your training, in your business, in your friendships, do you understand that if every person who's listening right now started to weed off the friend that is bringing the least value, and I mean they're a bad influence, they're they're bad mojo. They're bad. Like, I'm bad. I mean, they're just negative. They're a negative person, so they're dragging you down. They're selfish. They have bad habits, like a drug addiction or something. And you don't want to leave them. I want to make sure people, people, when they hear me say this, oh, you get rid of your friend. No, just if you audit your circle of who you spend time with, if you just spent less time with something that is broken and you added one person that was incredibly valuable, your life would be a lot better. That's just real. And so I think the thing that I'm not good at, but I will never give it up, so I don't know if it's a strength or weakness. I do a lot of meetings on spec when people ask me to.
Some of those pay off long term and some of them you're just like, am I wasting my time?
You're like, can I... Even this was back in the day. Can I drive you to the cost plus? I'm glad I did it. Now we know each other for a long time. But yeah, I think at this point, no question my time has become remarkably valuable. And I still do, 20% of my time this year will be highly questionable in somebody was auditing my life. But you're gonna have to, at some level, you gotta accept some of your humanity.
Yeah.
Aspects, so, but I think that is the thing that would take me to the next level, getting even more disciplined on every single thing I do, debating every single idea. I'll give you a good one. This is super funny. If Tyler was in a room right now, he would argue that I've made a mistake by being here today for an hour.
Your assistant Tyler? Yeah, yeah.
We've got a lot of things going on. We've, I'll break it down. This is going to be interesting for people listening. We had a bunch of new business meetings, new people I could have met. Hi, big, good. Would have been on your biggest wall, right? And Tyler gave me a list of things. He's like, you can do one of these four things. And I did this. I would argue somebody analyzing me would say, this is the wrong move. Couple reasons. Number one, the new book crushing it. is sounding so well that I'm not even trading for speaking or doing podcasts or I'm not, I mean, I've never been this passive two weeks away from a book release. I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm like, I'm like, this is like, I'm weirded out myself. I almost like weirdly want it to collapse and everybody returns the pre-sales so I get punched in the mouth for being so passive. This audience that is listening right now has heavy crossover. I've been on the show, Not too long ago, a lot of people that like you, like me, vice versa. So, you know, I get somebody analyzing how do you get better, that this was the wrong choice for the hour. And I just like you. I just wanted to see you. So like I think, you know, that's a human thing. Like sometimes you just have to do those things. So that's why I say I won't change what would make me better. But what would make me better is to analyze my time more fruitfully for micro results. But for macro results, friendship, whose funeral are you gonna show up to and why? I think this is the better decision. And so I will always make a macro decision and I will take 100% of the macro results and only 60% of the micro results. And I think everybody who's listening, man, do I think 99% of the people are trying to maximize micro? Every fucking person, I'm blown away by people literally analyzing what's in it for me in this fucking microsecond of this thing. Everybody, it's fucking so awesome for me to watch, 'cause I'm like, you,'ve lost. And people do that, and people do it when they don't fucking mean shit. I love people getting put on just a little bit, and they think they're fancy, and they just start valuing, Right. Anyway, Bab and you're smiling because that's a big thing you've learned, right? That's huge. That as somebody who really gets to see everything I do in every minute, that's the one, right? This lasts seven, eight minutes. If we can deconstruct this in a meaningful way, it's the one. I genuinely think that people are in the business of thinking what's in it for me. And I only think what's in it for me is my legacy.
What are the five non-negotiable habits for you on a daily basis?
Oh, that's a good question. So obviously this is going to depend on your goals. For me specifically, I think there are a few core habits that are going to serve everybody and certainly serve me well. So exercise is a huge one. I don't do it daily, but I exercise. I train four times a week.
Yeah.
And I feel like if I didn't exercise, I don't know that I would be an entrepreneur. I don't know if I could handle the psychological roller coaster without the physical outlet. Yeah, the release. You probably feel that as an athlete too. Being an athlete for so many years, I feel like I need to push myself physically in addition to mentally. If it's just mental, it doesn't do it for me.
I need to have a physical outlet.
Exercise. Exercise is one. The other, the ultimate meta habit is reading. Because if you build a habit of reading, you can solve pretty much any other problem. You know, you want to learn how to be a better podcaster, you can read about that. You want to learn how to meditate, you can read about that. You want to learn how to make more money, you can read about that. And so what you need is to develop a habit of reading and then whatever problem you're facing at the time, you can you have a method for solving that.
Okay.
Writing for me is huge. I don't actually know what I think about something until I write about it. I find that if you get your.
Ideas that you get it out.
If you ask me something right now that I haven't written about before, what is really happening is I'm just talking my emotions. So, what I mean is that you'll ask me something and I'll get an implicit feeling about what that topic is. I'll have some intuition, a gut feeling about it and I'll say whatever that feeling is driving me to say. But I don't actually know if that's what I really think, what I deeply think until I have the time to sit down, write it out, logically go through it because a lot of the time, you know, if you would ask me the same question next week, I might have a different feeling at that time. So, I'm talking different emotions. So, I think I actually need to have time to sit with it a little bit and write it through to.
Learn what I actually think. -Okay. -Writing's third.
-Exercise, reading, writing.
I don't know.
I would say that those are probably my main three. If I was going to pick five and the other two that I would add going for a daily walk would be a huge one. That's one that like I kind of aspire to because I don't do that every day. But anytime I do, it really benefits me.
In what ways?
Well, you see this with a lot of anybody who does creative work in particular, that something about getting outside and walking, I think there's, this is just me spitballing. I don't actually have science behind this idea. But when your body is moving, it's very hard for you one, to not be active mentally. Think about someone who's shut down mentally. What does their body language look like? They're usually closed off, their arms, they're sitting, they're not moving very much. Try to be closed off mentally and be dancing physically. It's very hard to do. If your body is moving like that, it's really hard for your mind to be shut down. That's one thing that gets the juices flowing. The second thing, and this is where I'm spitballing, I don't know if this is actually true, but I wonder about your non-conscious mind being like a bottleneck sometimes. And so, if you're moving, if you're walking, it gives your non-conscious mind something to do. So, you're like, it gets out of the way and now you can actually have this stuff arise or think in a different way than if you're sitting. So, I don't know. I think that those are two different things. Yeah, that's cool.
Okay, so that'd be the fourth thing.
Sleep is the fifth one. And this is one that I actually pretty good about. So my cardinal rule is that I don't cheat myself on sleep. So if I stay up late and work till midnight, I'm gonna sleep till eight or nine. Sleeping in. Yeah, like I'm not gonna get up early because I don't want to cheat myself on that. But yeah, I think that those are kind of the core things. It's funny, sometimes people ask like, oh, how can I double my productivity or something like that? And you'll see articles like that all the time, like, follow this one five-minute trick to double your productivity. But the real answer to most of that stuff stuff is like, get eight hours of sleep a night, exercise, don't eat like crap, and then instantly you have this boost of productivity and motivation. Yeah, the fundamentals cover 90% of it.
Yeah, exactly. You said this, you said you did not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. What are the systems you created to be successful beyond those kind of core habits right there?
Yeah, so this is a really good question. First, I just want to talk a little bit about that point that you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. What do I mean by that? So often when we set about to change something or to achieve something, the first step is almost always setting a goal. And this is coming from someone like I was very goal-oriented for a long time, right? Like an athlete. Yeah, I was like goals were the things I wanted to do in sports, the goals for the grades I wanted in class, the goals for how much money I wanted to make in my business. and sometimes I would achieve those, but then sometimes I wouldn't. And so I had this question like, well, clearly I'm setting goals for both, so like that can't be the thing that determines it. And you see this a lot, that the winners and losers in a particular domain often have the same goals. Like every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Sure. Every job candidate wants to get the job. So if the winners and the losers have the same goal, then the goal cannot be the thing that distinguishes the two. And the thing that distinguishes them is the process, the system behind the goal. This is also important because achieving a goal often only changes your life for the moment. So like, you know, say you're, just take like a simple example. Say you have a messy room, you know, and you set, you get motivated and you set the goal to clean your room. Well, you can do that in an hour and then you have a clean room. But if you don't change the sloppy habits that led to a messy room in the first place, then you just end up with a dirty room again. So it's like treating a symptom without treating the cause. And habits are a better solution in that case, because if you fix the inputs, the outputs fix themselves automatically. You don't have to fight to have a clean room if you have clean habits. And I think that that's true in a larger sense as well. People want outcomes. They want to earn more money or lose weight or be more productive or reduce stress. But the outcome is not the thing that needs to change. It's the system that precedes it.
So, give me the, let's bust the myth of how many days it takes to set a habit. Because there's 14 days, 28 days, 60 days a year. If you do something every single day and maybe it changes for each person, but what's the science or the statistics say about how long it takes to form a positive or negative habit, I guess.
So, 21 days is the thing you hear all the time, 30 days, 100 days, whatever. Right now, 66 days is making the.
Rounds as the latest- I saw that in another book.
What was that book? Well, there was one study done that found that 66 days was the average for how long it takes. And as a rule of thumb, I don't think it's terrible. Like you should remind yourself, yeah, this is going to be months of work. It's not just going to be something quick. But even within that study, the range was quite wide. So, if you did something simple like drink a glass of water at lunch each day. It would take like three weeks. If you did something more difficult, like go for a run after work every day, that would be like seven or eight months. But I think actually that question to begin with is sort of a, there's like a broken mentality.
The wrong question.
Yeah, it is. Because if you ask that question, the implicit assumption is, when do I have to stop working? Or when is this done?
And is it automatic after a certain period of time.
Well, the honest answer to how long it takes to build a new habit is forever because if you stop, then it's no longer a habit.
It's a constant choice and a decision, right?
I think people often look at habits as like a finish line to be crossed, but it's actually a lifestyle to be lived. And if you look at it as a lifestyle change, then you're saying, okay, what's something small and sustainable I can stick to, right? What's something that can actually last over time? so it is true that you can actually map this through research, that a habit will become more automatic with practice. But this reveals another important point, which is that there's nothing about the amount of time elapsed that leads to habits being built. You could practice something once in 30 days or you could practice it a thousand times. What actually leads to a habit becoming automatic and becoming learned and ingrained is repetition. So The phrase that I like to use is not 21 days or 30 days but put in your reps. I mean, that's the real thing is you need to practice and if you put in your reps then your brain.
Starts to automate how that process works. -Yeah. What makes you an expert on habits based on lots of other people that are talking about habits? -Why are you talking about it differently.
And what have you discovered that's different than everyone else? -Okay. So, two questions there. So, the first one is expertise and I think that and I've said this many times before before. I'm just going through this with everybody else. I consider my readers my peers in the sense that we're all just trying things out. The only difference is I write about what I learn and share it each week, but we're all just learning along the way. Early on, I had a feeling like that. I was like, who am I to, you know, I'm just a guy. Who am I to write about this? And I had a friend tell me the way you develop expertise is by writing about it every week. So I wrote a new article about habits every Monday and Thursday, for three years. And that was how I developed the expertise on the topic by writing about it.
You did research and you said, Here's what I found. Here's what I tried.
Here's what worked, what didn't work. It's a combination of me reading the scientific literature and reading the research and then trying to distill practical insights from that and testing things out in my own life as a weightlifter, a travel photographer, a writer, an entrepreneur, and seeing what that looks like and then the two together. I think you need both. Like, I don't to be some new age version of an academic who's in an ivory tower just like theorizing about ideas. It's different what it looks like to put ideas into practice, right? Like imagine you're a peak performance coach and you show up to a coach like an NBA team. These guys are like, dude, you need to step on the court if you know what I mean, right? To see what it's actually like.
So you need to have both to have a firm understanding of that. So you were researching and you were applying it into your life and what.
Was it second part of the second question. -The second question which I think is probably the more interesting one which is what makes my angle different? What makes this different than every other.
Book out there about habits?
-So, you can broadly put books about habits into 2 categories. The first book, the first category is what I'll call motivation models. So, motivation models are about what sparks a behavior. How do you get started? How do you get motivated? The second category is what I'll call reinforcement models. So how does a habit stick? How does it last? Why do certain behaviors get reinforced? And sometimes books will touch on one but focus primarily on the other. A lot of the time they'll just kind of live in separate worlds. That's what I would say is happening in like the self-improvement space. Then you have the academic space, so psychology or neuroscience or whatever. And a lot of those books are focused on the why, but not the how. They'll tell you why something happens, why a particular neuron fires, why a particular biological process works the way it does, but they don't tell you how to implement it in your daily life. And so what I wanted to do was try to combine the two.
Why and how.
Yes, a book that is both why and how. Why do habits form the way they do? Why are they important? And then how do they actually work? and my hope is that Atomic Habits was able to do that largely because of the framework that I put together. So in the book, I lay out these four stages that all habits go through. And I felt like we needed a new model because most of the models right now are either a motivation model or a reinforcement model, but not both.
Okay.
And you need to understand what both sparks a habit and what makes a habit stick. Maintains it, yes. If you want to be able to understand how they work and how to make them last.
And what are those four frameworks?
So, the first stage of every habit is a cue. The second stage is a craving or some kind of prediction that your brain makes. I'll give you an example of these in a second. The third stage is the response and then the fourth stage is the reward. So, you walk into a... the question I had that no model I could find could solve in any good way or explain in any good good way was why can the same person respond to the same cue in a different way? So let's say you get into the habit of going to the gym at 5 o'clock every day. But then sometimes work gets busy and you don't go to the gym at 5 o'clock. Current models don't explain that very well because it's like well the cue is 5, you should be going to the gym right now. It says the routine falls automatically after the cue. Or why does someone walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies and then they automatically want to eat it. But you could just as easily imagine that you just got done eating dinner in the other room and you're stuffed and you're full and you walk in and you see a plate of cookies and you're like, I'm stuffed. I don't want to eat anything. So what's going on there? And I think these four stages explain it, which is you see the cue or you experience a cue and then your craving or your prediction differs based on your current state. So the way that you interpret the cues in your life is contingent upon the current state that you're in.
The way you're feeling. Right.
And also other things like your beliefs or your identity, the social group that you're part of, right? So like if you're in a different group, then maybe you interpret things in a different way. You know, you can imagine one group, they practice a particular religion, they walk into a butcher shop and see pork and they don't, they're like, oh, we can't eat that.
Right.
Another person walks in and they're like, oh yeah, I'll have a pork sandwich. because it's obvious and easy and right there. So, what you choose is contingent upon how you interpret the cues in your life.
How do we change what we interpret?
Yes, good question. All right, so this is a key point in the book, which is that social norms, society leans heavily on us all. So, if you, there are just broad examples of this.
Salary pressure, religious pressure, media pressure, all kinds of pressure. Yeah.
Let's say, so just some broad examples. You walk into an elevator and you turn around to face the front. You have a job interview and you wear a suit and tie or a dress or something nice. There's no reason it has to be that way, right? Like you could face the back of the elevator. You could wear a swimsuit to a job interview. But you don't do that because it violates the shared norms of the group, right? It violates the shared expectations of what that society has. But that's true not only in a broad sense that we're part of these tribes, like big tribes, you know, what it means to be a Christian or to be American or to be Australian or whatever. But it's also true in the small tribes that we belong to, what it means to be a neighbor on this street or a member of your local CrossFit gym or to volunteer for a local organization. All of those tribes, all those groups that you belong have a set of shared expectations, a set of shared norms. And the key, if you want to build habits that last, if you want to change the way that you interpret cues, is to join a group where the desired behavior is the normal behavior. There are plenty of people who they want to work out, but going to the gym feels like a lot to them. It feels hard, feels like sacrifice. But there are also people who go to the gym every week, week and it's just normal. It doesn't feel like an obligation. That's the desired behavior is the normal behavior. It's their lifestyle. Right. Same thing for musicians. You know, like if you want to learn an instrument, hang out with people.
Who play all the time.
You know, like if you hang out with a bunch of musicians, it's like, well, yeah. That's what we do all the time. Yeah, we play four days a week. We play seven days a week. Because it just happens. That's what the tribe does. The caveat to this and the thing that I don't see people mention a lot is that the reason social norms influence our behavior so much is because we want to belong to the tribe. We want to be friends with those people. And so we don't want to lose the friendship or lose belonging over violating the norms.
Yeah, you're not gonna hang out with a bunch of vegans and have pork. Right.
And just like be the only one eating that. You won't hang out with them for.
Very long because you're not gonna be friends with them anymore. Exactly.
They'll kick you out. So you want to rise to the standard of that group, of that community. So the key I think is to join a group where your desired behavior behaviors and normal behavior and you already have something else in common with that group. So Steve Kaminski is a good example of this. So like Steve runs Nerd Fitness, right? And all these people want to get in shape who are coming into his community but they also love Star Wars or Batman or Spider-Man or you know all these other things that nerds are into. And if you show up, it can be intimidating to want to get in shape or you know work out the first time but if you can connect with the group, over your mutual love of Star Wars, then you're like, oh, well, I'm friends with these people and now I also want to pick up those other habits with them because I want to belong with the group because we're already friends. And so, I think you can apply that methodology to most new tribes that you join. Don't just join a new tribe because they have the desired behavior. Also try to find a way that you can overlap with them. Find some shared context.
Some other stuff too, yeah. That you can bond over and then it's easier to adopt the habits. Musicians that like to be be healthy.
Yeah.
If you want to do both, right? It's like finding that even subgroup.
It's like, Hey, we love, you know, we love playing music and then also you're going to start eating better because.
We all want to eat healthy. Exactly.
Yeah.
Interesting. Okay, so that's the second part, the.
Cue and then the desired habits, right?
The craving.
Cue, craving, response, reward. Okay, what's the response? So, this is mostly about making it easy. So, this is the habit itself and the easier a habit is, the friction that is associated with the habit, the more likely you're going to be to do it. So the way that I like to describe this, imagine you have like a hose, right, and there's a bend in the middle. There's a little bit of water trickling out. If you want to increase the amount of water going through the hose, you have two options. You could either crank up the valve and force more water through, or you could just remove the bend and let it flow through naturally. And a lot of the time, advice is centered on cranking up the valve. It's like you you need to try harder, you need grit, you need perseverance, you need motivation, you need to overcome the obstacles in your life. And all those things are fine, but I think they're all short-term solutions. You might be able to do that for a day or a week, but I've never consistently seen someone stick to positive habits in a negative environment. It's really hard to fight that day in and day out. So the solution, I think, is to reduce friction. There are a ton of ways you can do this. One way is just to scale the habit make it as easy as possible. So, people have heard things like this before, start small, small steps, whatever. But even when you know you should start small, it's still really easy to start too big. So, you know, say you want to get in shape and you're like, all right, I want to run a couple days a week, but I know it should start small, so I'll only run for 15 minutes. But even that is like way bigger than what I'm talking about. I mean, it should be so small that you... In the book, I call it the two-minute rule. rule. But you should downscale any habit to fit within two minutes. So it's like, Alright, I want to go for a run three days a week. My habit is I put on my running shoes and I step out the door. Anything else that happens after that is just bonus. -It's a success. -Now, sometimes people resist that because they're like, well, this sounds kind of like a mental trick, right? Like I know the real goal isn't just to put my shoes on. I know the real goal is to go for a run. So if you feel that way, my suggestion would to be only do the first two minutes for the first few weeks. Because what you need to do is master the art of showing up. Like I had a reader who ended up losing over 100 pounds and one of the things that he did was he went to the gym but he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So he would show up, be there do like half an exercise, five minutes would go he'd leave. He did this for like six weeks.
Wow.
Now it sounds ridiculous. it sounds silly because it's the opposite. -You just work out for a half hour. -Yeah, yeah. But what he was doing was mastering the art of showing up and a habit must be established before it can be improved, right? If you don't establish the habit, there's nothing to optimize.
If you're not showing up at the gym every day, you don't even, who.
Cares about what workout you're doing, you're not even there. -Don't start running an hour a day if you've never run in a long time. -Be the person who shows up and.
Puts their running shoes on every day before you worry about how far you're running, what kind of workout you're doing.
And all that type of stuff.
Establish the art of showing up first before going all in on the desired goal you want.
I think that's right. I mean, you can find examples of people who flip a switch and transform their lives or have an epiphany and do it overnight. But I think that it's rare. I think that the more sustainable strategy, the more reliable strategy is to scale it down to the first two minutes, focus on that, establish it, master the art of showing up and then go from there. So really you should like, usually when people think about building better habits, they optimize for the finish line, right? It's like, how much weight do I need to lose? How much money do I need to make? You know, how when can I finish this book? It's all focused on the result. But I think instead if you optimize for the starting line, make it as easy as possible to start, scale it down, organize your environment so all that stuff is set up. This is another strategy for making it easy, which is that you can prime your environment to make the future action easier, right? Like if you chop up a bunch of vegetables and fruit on Sunday, it's now easier to have a healthy snack during the week. If you set your workout clothes out the night before, it's now easier to get into the workout the next day. But doing all that stuff to make it easy to show up, that is probably the more important piece early on. There's also like all these, there are all these logistical details. for building a habit that nobody thinks.
About in the beginning? Like what?
Well, like take the example of my reader who went to the gym. It's like, okay, what gym are you gonna go to? How are you gonna get there? Are you going by yourself or are.
You gonna go with a friend?
Do you need to... What time are you gonna go? Yeah, what time are you gonna have your own water bottle or is there a water fountain at the gym? And that stuff sounds like silly and small, but when someone starts... The fact that like, oh, the gym doesn't have a water fountain. and I always forget to bring my own. That's enough friction for someone to quit. So, by focusing on just the first two minutes, you figure all that stuff out and then once you've got that piece mastered, now you can worry about how long the workout is and what.
Program you're doing and all that stuff. So, figuring out the logistics first is an important step.
I think that's something that just comes naturally with scaling a habit down. You figure out what's required to show up because you're not worried about the results or the outcome or how how long you worked out or judging yourself for running 30 minutes when you should have run 45 or what.
Got it. Okay. So, this is the response still?
Right.
Okay. And what's the fourth? The fourth one, and this is crucial for getting a habit to stick, is the reward or the outcome. So, every behavior is followed by some kind of outcome. It's just basic cause and effect. And if the immediate outcome is favorable, is enjoyable, you have a reason to repeat. repeated in the future. It's kind of like... Donuts. Yeah, exactly. It's like that example.
If.
You feel good, if you feel satisfied right after you do something, then it's like this positive emotional signal and it's like, yeah, I should do this again. So you can see this actually, business is a really interesting example with this. There are a lot of products and some of the most successful products have some type of immediate satisfaction that is layered into them. So toothpaste is a very common example. There's no reason a toothpaste needs to taste like mint, but it does because the minty flavor and the refreshingness of it, it makes sure it gives your mouth this clean feel. It's more satisfying so you have a reason to do it again in the future. I heard an interesting one recently about car manufacturers that some of them are adding a fake guttural roar to the car or the truck when you press the accelerator because it just adds to the actual natural sound of the engine so it makes it more satisfying to step on the gas and to drive the car. So there are a variety of examples like this but if you can add and the key is it needs to be immediate. So like this is in the book I refer to this as the cardinal rule of behavior change which is behaviors that are immediately rewarded get repeated, behaviors that are immediately punished get avoided. And it's really about the speed of how quickly you feel successful. If it feels good, you have a reason to do it again.
Is that why video games do so well?
Video games are masters at this. They're masters at it. So, they're masters actually at a variety of aspects related to habit formation. So, one is they're really good at this immediate satisfaction. There are all kinds of things. You're actually constantly getting feedback in a video game. Even if you're just running, you hear the pitter patter of the steps.
That'S gratifying. It's yeah.
The jingles of like picking up another power up or you know seeing a kill or something like that, whatever the game is, you're always getting constant feedback. Sound, things that are on screen, they're really good at dripping now. Watching the score increase in the top corner, that is immediate feedback. So they have all these different ways of making you feel satisfied and when you see that progress, you have a reason to continue in the future. This is one of the most effective forms of immediate satisfaction is progress. As soon as you feel progress, you have a reason to continue. Feels really good to see that you're making headway.
Where did you learn how to become such a great coach? Was there a mentor you had early on or was it just by coaching and learning by tons of mistakes the first few years?
It's pretty much it because I was a head coach at the age of 24.
-Early. I remember seeing that. I was like, Man, right after college.
You were a head coach. -I was Jim Boehm's first assistant. And then I got the head coaching job at Boston University at 24.
I was coaching players 21 to 22 years of age. -How is this possible? Because that wouldn't happen today, right? Maybe like a 31-year-old, maybe.
-Possibly. -At like a D-1 school that's really young. -Yeah. I got lucky because my college coach was a great player at Boston University and he recommended me. So I got lucky with the job. I didn't know, it was all trial and error, not until I became the assistant coach of the New York Knicks. Now I learned all about the zone with Jim Boeheim. He was a great tactician, but I really learned basketball from a scouting motivational standpoint when I was assistant coach of the Knicks with UB Brown. The two years I was with UB Brown assistant with the Knicks really was like going into a basketball library for two years.
Now, why the scouting motivational side of things?
Well, the pros is all about scouting. It's all about preparation. It's all about motivating the pros because they're playing 82, a lot of games, 90 something games, depending on the playoffs. And they're fatigued. They're constantly fatigued. And you've got to motivate them. And I what I call find their motive and turn it into action because they're all different. You know, Patrick Ewing is much different than Mark Jackson. Mark Jackson is much different than Charles Oakley. Charles Oakley was the physical presence on the team. And I remember calling Doug Collins and asking him about him because we traded for him. And he said, Coach, he'll either kill you or kill for you. So Oak was gonna be my best friend.
So you gotta find, you're more of a psychologist and an anthropologist of understanding what makes people tick as a coach.
Very much so. I believe, you know, we all have our way of coaching. I'm a running, pressing coach. Defense is a premium with us. But to me, it's all about getting the most out of someone's abilities. And that's the way I recruit. I don't go after necessarily top 10 basketball players. I go after guys I learned a long time ago, Mario Gabelli, a financial investor in New York City. I went to him to try and invest Jamal Mashburn, one of my players, money. Helen Mashburn asked me to find somebody to manage his money. And I visited Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch at the time, and Mario Gabelli Gabelli Asset was the last person I visited in Rye, New York. and I tried to sound intelligent. I was young back then as the Kentucky coach and I said, Where do you get your talent from? University of Chicago, Harvard Business School, Wharton School. He said, no, not really. He took me to a back room where everybody sat. He said, I look for PhDs. I said, that's strange to look for PhDs in your business. He said, Look, I look for poor, hungry, and driven people. I don't care where they go to school. And so I changed it to passionate passionate, hungry and driven people.
I like that.
And I go after passionate, hungry and driven athletes who really want to pay the price to get somewhere. And then I put the team together.
How do you find that PhD? How do you find that within someone? Like, is it something they say? Is it a way, the way they look at you? Is it the hunger they have or what is.
Well, when I bring them in recruiting wise, I want them to watch us practice. We go really hard and some, some players right away. you can tell they don't want to work that hard.
If it's not exciting to them, they're out.
Well, they don't want to work that hard. You can tell. You can check what other schools are interested in as well, and they watch practice, what'd you think? I said, Boy, you guys go really hard. When they say that, you know they're not for you. When they say, Boy, I really, really like that intensity, you know they're for you.
Interesting. So it's a, you create an environment for them. so they can experience something. Then you ask them a couple of questions to see how they're going to respond.
Very much so.
Now, what if they seem hungry? And then two weeks in, a month in, they start to realize, wow, this is a lot more than I thought. Like, I thought I wanted this drive, but you're putting me through the ringer coach, and I'm dead here.
Well, a lot of them go through that. Freshmen.
Yeah.
Freshmen are like rookies in the pros and. And freshmen. They want, they look for ways out because they don't see gratification right away. And these young people today, they want it now. You know, they don't want to start at the bottom and work their way up. They want to start in the middle and get up in two weeks.
Right. So it's, they want to score 25 in the first game. They want to be dunking from the free throw line in the game, everything, right?
And it's the entitled generation. Everybody talks about it, the entitlement of this generation. So you have to show them we have to that's going to take them. You have to point it out to them. Look, this is what you're going to get.
How do you get people to buy into a system or a belief of the whole season as opposed to, you know, one game where you're going to score a bunch? How do you instill that belief in people?
Well, a lot of them want to transfer right away. Because they're not getting, you know, if.
They'Re not starting right away.
They're not getting the playing time.
And they're not getting, and it's more, it comes today, believe it or not, from the parents. the parents really, they call and say, how come he's not playing? And he's going to play and he's going to be terrific. But it's going to take a little time. Perfect example is this young man I coached, Russ Smith. I called him Rusticulous. Didn't play as a freshman. He knew he wasn't going to play as a freshman because I told him. He wanted to transfer right away. I said, well, I told you you weren't going to play as a freshman. There are better people ahead of you. And the dad fortunately knew me real well as the Nick coach. He said, Rush, you're not transferring. And he asked me, Is he going to play next year? I said, well, he's going to have to change his practice habits if he wants to play. He changed. Now nobody recruited him out of high school. No big time schools. Well, he ended up a first team College All-American. First team. Sophomore or are they-- His senior year, wins a National Championship. Championship goes to China and scores 61 a game in China.
Wow.
So he had a fantastic career, played in two final fours and won a national championship, but he wanted to leave as a freshman.
Yeah.
It's a delayed gratification is what we should be looking for. Yeah.
I think you have to understand the journey you're about to take, and it's. It's the last stop is where you want to get to, but you're gonna have to work along the way.
What's the speech you give the first day everyone's together? What's the message you send to people about the season and the journey, especially in college?
I meet with them individually first and I tell them, I'm going to get you to where you want to go. And most of them, it's the NBA. And if it's a realistic thing, I say, I'm going to get you there, but you're going to have to put the time and effort effort because you're not ready to get there. So I put him through in between classes. I put him through the player development workout.
A physical workout or is it?
It's 45 minutes of offensive basketball. It's what you need to become a pro. But you're going to need it five days a week.
Wow.
For as many years as I can that you need to get this is before practice. Before in between classes.
Just like ball We'll do shooting, three-point shooting.
We'll do one-on-one moves with the ball without the basketball. And by that I mean you'll move without the ball, you'll catch it, you'll rip it, you'll ball fake, you'll shot fake, I'll put you through all the drills necessary. The fundamentals. The fundamentals of becoming a really well-rounded basketball player.
Not just an athletic phenom, which a lot of these guys are.
They're probably just athletic freaks. Yeah, great athletes Don't necessarily make it anymore in the pros because now centers, back when I first started coaching Patrick Ewing, you had Akem Elaisha, you had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you had all the great centers in the game from Moses Malone. Today those guys, and Shaquille O'Neal is probably the last dominating one. Today the 6'11, 7-footers are shooting threes. You know you have cousins shooting threes, you have Durant at 6'11 shooting threes. So the The game has changed dramatically and these guys, no matter how tall they are, they want a perimeter game and that's what you try and teach them.
Why do they want that? Because they want to score more.
They watch it on TV, they watch.
It on TV, they want to be- It's not as physical, it's not as demanding on the body.
You're not getting fouled every other play probably.
It's more glamorous. Yeah, right. Well, and when was the last time you were coaching in the NBA?
Was it 2000? I was coaching was 17 years ago with the Celtics, 18 years ago. And that was a different experience than the Knicks.
Yeah.
Because I took over a program that won 14 games, got it to 36-38 and, but I was unhappy. I was also president of the Boston Celtics. And that was my big mistake. I shouldn't have taken on that.
President and the head coach.
Well, I wasn't ready to be an administrator. I ready to run an organization. And it took away from my feelings as a coach. You know, I was making trades based on saving money and as a coach, your job is to win. You can't pay attention to those other things.
Yeah, you've got to be working with the president saying, this is what I need to win, give me this.
Right, not worried about saving the owner money or the salary cap.
Oh, that's challenging. Wow. What did you enjoy more, Coaching college athletes or professionals?
Well, it's gonna sound a little trite, but wherever we won is what I enjoyed.
I like that answer.
Because we won with the Knicks, we won the Atlantic Division Championship, we won at Providence, Kentucky, Boston University, but we lost with the Celtics. So I didn't enjoy the last part of it, we lost. When you build a winning culture, the team gets along better, everybody strives for the common goal of winning, and it all comes together when you win. Your relationships are better with the players. When you lose, it goes the other way on you.
Really?
Especially with professional sports.
Yeah. What's the greatest lesson you've learned through losing?
Well, failure is fertilizer. You know, there's no question about it. to help other things grow. And you understand the steps, where you make your mistakes, and what not to do going down the road. Give you a prime example. I coached this young man, Bill Cartwright, with the Knicks. Seven-foot center, great guy. And we had to have him for this game. We're on a huge winning streak with the Knicks.
And.
I called him, He missed walk-through. He said, Coach, I'm sick. I've got to stay in bed. I'm hoping to make the game. I said, Hey, Bill, you've got to make this game. We need you. And he said, Coach, I just need to relax. He said, okay. Then all of a sudden I told the trainer, I said, Look, we need to get him in, get a shot from the doctor to stop his stomach problems, get him in early and get him in. And Bill wanted rest. so you have to be your own messenger. I now sent the trainer to get to go to him, get him into the city. He's got to travel from New Jersey into the city. 45 minute drive. He wasn't up to it. He wanted to stay in bed. He gets him into my whole thing was to see the doctor, get the right medication to help him feel better for the game.
Give him a chance to play the game.
Bill took it as I believe him that he was sick because I wasn't my own messenger. I sent to Trainer. Trainer now relays the message, Hey, Bill, Coach wants you in the city right away to see the doctor. He didn't say why we needed him. I needed your big Bill to play the game the whole bit. And so now he gets that he's upset and I couldn't figure out why. Two games go by and I said, Bill, what's the problem? When I went on St. Paige here. He said, you didn't believe that I was sick? Of course I believed. I had to have the doctor see you right away so you could play in this game. He said, well, that's not the way I took it. I took it that you didn't believe I was sick and you wanted me to go see the doctor because you didn't believe it. So you have to be your own messenger, and especially in the pros. In the pros, you have a problem. You can't let it fester. You deal with it right away. Wow. And you don't understand the communication you got to let them talk. You have to be a great listener to be a pro coach.
Really?
You have to because the guy's, he's not playing and he wants to know why he's not playing. You've got to be a listener and you got to explain it to him.
College, you don't necessarily have to do that.
You don't listen as much. You're sort of a little bit more authoritative. You're the father figure.
You're away.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in the pros, every, there's so many personalities. and everyone's got an opinion and everyone, you need them to play for you as well, so you gotta listen to them.
No question.
Yeah.
Well, I wonder what happened with the, you don't have to comment on this, but the Kawhi Leonard situation. Is he, does he not communicate or.
Is he not, well, he's a quiet young man from what I understand, but it all depends what age group you are. I remember asking Red Auerbach a big question, the legend legendary coach of the Celtics. I said, Red, we're losing. And these guys, they just don't pay attention as well. He says this to me. He said, you, know what you should do, what I used to do when I coached Bill Russell and Bob Cousy and Tommy HeiNson. I said, what's that? He said, you,'re always sitting the guys down, diagramming plays, moving your magnetic pieces around. Why don't you let them stand up in the huddle and say, like I did. Hey, Koos, what do you think we should run? Hablecik, what do you think we should run? Hey, Bill, what do you think we should run? Let them come up with the play. So the next game we're playing the Lakers at home. I said, I'm gonna try it. I set the guys down. I don't want them stand up. They're exhausted because we've been in a great game. And I turned to Antoine Walker who I coached in college, Walter McCarty, Ron Mercer, three guys I had with Kentucky are playing for me with the Celtics. I said, Guys, what do you think we should run? We're down one, so many seconds left in the game. What do you think we should run?
Did their jaws drop?
Because they're like, wait, you asked us. They didn't answer me. They're staring at me. Finally, I said to Antoine, Antoine, what do you think we should run? He says a profanity, which I won't mention. He says, Coach, you get paid to coach.
We get paid to play.
You come up with the damn play. We're tired.
No way.
So I called Red that night and I said, Red, you wanna hear the answer they gave me? He started laughing hysterically. He said, Wait till they get a little older. They won't shut up. They'll all come up with different plays.
They'll all wanna be the coaches.
But he says, How the hell will we know? We're tired. You come up with the play.
Amazing. So the most challenging place was when you were losing.
Yeah, losing in the pros. because there's so many things that go into it. When you lose in the pros and you're out of the playoffs, they all go for stats. They want their stats because it's money time and that's what they're based on at that point. They're not going to make the playoffs. So if you're not in the playoffs, they lose their interest and they want their stats. You want to shoot the ball. It's not as much of a team. Winning is not as important when you're.
Out of the playoffs.
Yeah.
I'm curious, you know, as a coach, you're either a hero or the loser and people are raving about you or the next day they hate you, right? As a city or an alumni, whatever it may be. How have you learned to let go what other people think about you? Whether you're winning or losing?
Well, today it's difficult. My son's the head coach in Minnesota and he gets on, he reads everything and his wife reads everything. And it's like in media, you yes. Well, it's, you go on the internet and you could have, he's at Minnesota and you could have Wisconsin fans, Ohio State fans, Michigan State fans get on the internet and just kill you. And it's like injecting yourself with poison almost. So you've got to have blinders on. You can't lose focus as a coach. Your job is to motivate the team, put them in the best situation where they have a chance of winning. Give them everything you can from analytics to scouting to preparation to player development. Give them everything you can. And you can't lose focus. You have to have blinders on. And if you pay attention to the internet, if you pay attention to what the media is saying, it opens up Pandora's box. And it's a big negative. And we have right now a president that reads everything and listens to everything. everything and watches everything and then turns around and responds and responds, reacts.
Yeah.
You just can't be that way as a coach. You have to have blindness on and focus on, on the game at hand, which is winning the next game, player development. And, and if you don't have that, if you start getting distracted like that, you, you lose your ability to win.
How did you learn how to not let it affect you emotionally, you know, during any, anytime during season when you're on a winning streak or when you're on a losing streak and everyone's against you. How do you put the blinders on?
Well, it's fortunately for me, it's happened only once in my life with the Boston Celtics. Outside of that, we've won. We've won.
That's gotta be nice.
Well, you don't win right away because you're taking over programs that are down and you understand it and you explain to the fans, this is what's gonna take, this is the period of time. And you hopefully you come through earlier than expected.
Right.
And that's a key. But you tell them right up front, this is what it's gonna take. It's gonna take some time.
It's gonna take a couple years of recruiting. Yeah.
And then if you get the one great player that turns it around quicker, because in basketball, unlike football, the one.
Player can turn it around for you.
Really? You know, you get Michael Jordan to come to the Bulls, you get Jamal Mashburn to go to Kentucky, You get the one guy, you get LeBron to go back to Cleveland, and then it takes a couple more players to get involved with that one player, and then you got to turn it around.
You got a team, yeah. Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day.
What success really means I'd like to share with you and your audience. I'm working at Steward's Cleaners. I come there one day after John Marshall High School, that was my job after high school. I swept the floors, I brushed the blankets, I put the little drapes on the hangers and all that good stuff. So I came there and Steward, who was tight, this guy was so tight he squeaked when he walks, really a tight one. He had to pay me a dollar and a quarter an hour because it was required for young people. You cannot pay him less than that, okay? or he'd pay me 50 cents an hour. So I go to the 50s, late 50s now. This is now going into the late 50s. Yeah, it would be the late 50s, early 60s, late 50s. Anyways, Stewart said to me, I want to talk to you, Johnny. That's what they called me in those days. I said, okay. I said, oh my God, what did I do wrong? He says, Last night I was working late. And that little mezzanine where we have the cot upstairs, I wanted to rest a bit. So I went out there, took my wash off, put the little table, and it dropped on the floor. This is a cot where those old spring cots that open on the bottom, a little mattress on top. He says, I reached down to get it and I noticed under the cot there wasn't any dust. He says, I just moved it. So he said, Move this thing. And the filing cabinets behind, there was no dust. He says, you, move everything when you clean it. As if I'm watching you all the time. I said, Stuart, I like my job. My mom growing up had my brother and I clean the house. We would do dishes, everything. We were part of it. You hired me for a job. I'm going to do it whether you're lucky or not. He says, I've never ever had anyone work for me that does that well. I'm going to give you a raise. You're now making $1.50 an hour. Now where I went to high school, for those kids that even were lucky enough to have a job, I probably was the highest paid kid at the time.
Sure.
But it showed me this. What is success? Success is not how much money or how much power you have. Success is how well Do you do what you do when no one else is looking and keep on doing it? Successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don't want to do. And my two biggest suggestions to people that are entrepreneurs working for someone or working for yourself as an entrepreneur is two things. One, be prepared for a lot of rejection. You're gonna get it. Sell an encyclopedia. The average lifespan is three days. It's door-to-door commission only. I'll work no leads.
And everyone says no.
Oh, no. They say no, oh God. But they told me, and I believed them, that when you do it, if you knock on 50 or 100 doors and they slam it in your face, it's the guys that have that energetic attitude to keep on going and don't let it get you. Knock on door number 100 just as enthusiastic as door number one and you'll succeed. And he was right. I don't know if it was 100 doors, 150 doors, nobody would let me in. Finally, he let me in. Did I make the first sale? No. but I eventually after a week made a sale and I believe what they said. So one of the great things is if you're ready for rejection, whether it's your parents, your friends that say you don't have enough money, you don't look like this, you're not that, no one's gonna like you, we hate your idea no matter what it is, you're gonna get rejection. When people say, no, no, no, no, no, you know you're gonna get it. Be prepared for rejection. If you're prepared, it's not gonna hurt you as much. The second thing we already covered, go into the reorder business. Have the quality of your product or service so darn good, people are going to reorder and use it again.
Why do you think now, especially, so many people are afraid of rejection? I feel like people don't want to launch something, their business idea, their book, a podcast, whatever it is, because they're so afraid of what might happen wrong.
That is an unbelievably perfect question. What world are we looking in today? An example, politically, no disrespect, so you know where I stand politically, I am an independent. I'm not a Democrat, I'm not a Republican, I actually give to both parties, but only individuals that I like or think are going to do some good, so I'm in the middle, right? But what do I see around me? This is not America. If you're, for example, God forbid, someone that puts up a Trump sign, not that I agree with them, okay, but someone puts up a Trump sign, it's, oh, you're a racist. Oh my God, you don't believe in freedom and you don't believe in ecology. No, wait, wait, hold on. you don't have to say that to people. They may be wrong, you may believe differently, or vice versa. You know, oh no, we should be socialistic, everybody should have everything free. It's like, well wait a minute, why are you segregating? America is we, the people of the United States of America. I don't care if you're to the left, to the right, express your opinion and don't put somebody down for their opinion. But whether someone is right or somebody is wrong, we've got to stick together. We can't have a split nation. And I think if we go forth with love and realize that it's going to be good in everything we do.
Sure, yeah. Is that why you think people are afraid to say something, to launch a business, to create something in the world? Because they're going to get so much hate or backlash or rejection? That is correct.
Because they're just afraid of the world. A lot of people are afraid because they look at both sides, how everyone is putting everybody down. As this one is saying, if you vote for them, you're going to start losing jobs. The economy is going down. Now, whether that right or wrong? Who knows? The other side of you vote for this guy again, whatever, look at all the misery that's going to happen, wars, everyone hates us. I mean, it's one against the other. Well, of course you'd be afraid. And then we're through a time in our lives where a lot of people aren't working, a lot of people are saying a lot of things about other people. One of the great rules of life, and this guy wrote this great book, was it the Four and Five Agreements?
The Four Agreements.
And they were no tele-5 agreements. One of them in there is the most important agreement of it all and it is this, do not spread gossip or put anybody down. You start spreading the wrong information to people and all of a sudden you find out you were wrong, they told someone, they told someone else, they told somebody else, you're destroyed. Now you find, oh no, it wasn't true. One of them is don't be around people that gossip, stay away from that. If there's bad news, don't give it out. Look at the higher side, the positive side, because you tell one person and if they're low on the tone scale, they're going to tell another. And if someone's really down, they're low or angry or upset, they're going to say, oh yeah, this is the truth and tell others to kind of agree with how they're down, how everyone should be down because look how bad things are. Opposed to, no, no, no, no, things aren't that bad. That's why I'd love to share the story with you and your podcast. You let people see the truth. by people knowing I started Paul Mitchell with $700. My partner threw in $350. My mom put in some money, not even knowing that's what she was doing, but a little bit. America still works. It's we, the people. All this negativity, don't pay attention to it. Look at the higher side. Yes, there's things wrong. There have been things wrong with our lives for millenniums. My God, maybe for lifetimes, okay? But each time we're getting better. Each time, whether you like that president or not that's in there, there's something good you could find out that's been done to please all of us. Look at the upper side. Look at the past people. There's something good that's being done. And when you move forward, if you move forward with a positive attitude, no matter who becomes president, you help our country become better instead of stalling and saying, well, I'm not going to do anything because I don't like that president. It's we the people of the United States of America, and it's we the people on business. Don't be afraid. Put your message out there. Put it out there. It's okay. So many people are afraid to put their message out because, well, that might be too much this way, too much that way. Ooh, people may consider that instead of solar energy, it's a new form of energy. I've been only talking about solar energy, otherwise I'm gonna be big in trouble, you know? Be free. God wants you to be free. He created you in His image. He wants you to be free to speak your word. If someone doesn't agree, that's their problem. But don't put anybody down for saying their word or their products or their look. don't be afraid to start something. People, we started Paul Mitchell when it was the worst scenario ever with no money. We weren't afraid, we believed in ourselves with all the doors closed, we kept on going forward. When the going's tough, the tough get going.
That's true, yeah. It seems like people are more afraid of the fear of rejection than actually being rejected. It's like they've never even been rejected. but they're just afraid that it might happen in the future. How does someone learn to overcome the fear of potentially being rejected?
Great question, okay? First of all, what is fear? Fear is the unknown. It's the only reason people are afraid. They're afraid because they don't know what's going to happen. They don't know what this person is going to do. They're afraid. They don't know the outcome. So, if you're fearful, find the problem or find the unknown. Even in a problem, there's an unknown. When the unknown is exposed, there's no longer a problem. Find the unknown and go forward. How? And don't create things because they don't exist.
Were you ever afraid of rejection personally or since you were just doing door-to-door for so long and tried so many different things that you would experience so much rejection that you embraced it? Is that how you got overcame the fear of it?
I could tell you that one that is the funniest of them all. I'm 11 years old. I'm in Atwater, California, walking up Boise Street, I think it was, with my friend Michael Vusich, who sold papers with me. And we came up with the greatest idea. Let's make a song. We'll go together with our newspaper now, we'll go door to door, we'll split the orders. We got a dollar for every new order, by the way. That was a lot of money when we were kids, right? We'll split it, you know, and together we'll present it and we came up with a song. and the song was, Good evening, good evening, we're the Examiner Boys, if you'll subscribe to the Examiner. We'll sing a song for you, ooh, like that, right? So Michael and I never did this before. We went to our first door, knocked, had our papers, the minute he opened doors, we started singing. The minute we were done, we looked at each other and just ran away.
This guy thought we were nuts.
We just ran away. That was the only time after that we could do anything. And yes, you get a lot of rejection, but when I actually got out there in door-to-door sales, cycling encyclopedias, it struck it with me. You must knock on all the doors, overcome that rejection. I would say I learned more about overcoming rejection for the four years I sold Encyclopedia Britannica's door-to-door commission only than what could ever imagine. Yep, four years. Average guy lasts three years. So yeah, and when I got in the Navy in '64 to '65, '66, '67, three years. Three years is all books you own.
After the Navy, What was a big lesson you learned while being in the Navy?
Greatest lesson I learned is when I was in Washington D.C. a couple of years ago and I received the Lone Sailor Award, I gave the lesson out. Being in the Navy, I was a normal everyday human being, okay? And I became an officer many years after I got out of the Navy and an admiral, but that's a whole different story. But being in the United States Navy as an enlisted man, what I learned was I graduated from I was a common person. How a bunch of common people could get together and be trained properly. But as a team, they achieve extraordinary results. Boy, did I learn that lesson. Meaning that you can't do it alone. I'm a common person. But let's get us ordinary people together, be taught properly, and as a team, we achieve extraordinary results. That I learned out of the Navy. And I thought it was a great thing to do. And of course, how to really be neat with my clothes. really need and package them and how to listen to people when you may not agree with them, but there you have no choice. When they say do something, you just do it. Get the command. But I learned how to do that easily. So it was an easy segue for me to go along with other people I didn't agree with, but I would listen to them. And I learned the famous word selling encyclopedias. When someone said no or even not selling, somebody had a, we were talking about something and someone has a different viewpoint than mine. I learned the magical words. I could appreciate that, however. So you could tell me that, oh, this is white. I say, well, no, no, it's black. We're not going to go back and forth. I'm going to say, you know, I can appreciate that. I can say, however, from my viewpoint with my lens, it turns out to be black. But we all see things a little differently. Here's why through my lens it's doing it. I'm agreeing with you. I'm not saying you're wrong. It's like even in selling. Would you like this? No, sorry we have too many lines. Well, you know, I could appreciate that, I really can. However, if you would just take half of this order, I will not only guarantee it'll be one of the greatest things you'll ever have, but within one month anything you haven't sold out the door or used, we'll take it back and give you your money back. Now that's fair enough, isn't it? No, I'm sorry, no. Why should I push your line, you're in the unknown line and have all these other lines, the big ones? I could appreciate that, however, I know you're gonna succeed with this, there's no way you can lose money. I'll come back, hold a class with you, I would do that three times. And in most cases, by the third time, they at least bought one or two bottles from me. Sometimes they bought nothing from me, okay? Like for a whole week, I made 12 sales and I think I'm pretty good at presenting something. It was tough, but I stuck with it.
And then I made more and more as time went on. I'm curious about what you learned in the Navy and how you applied it to business from this teamwork mentality. Was there something you learned in the Navy that actually you saw within the first year, five years of Paul Mitchell that you were able to apply, that accelerated the growth.
Oh, definitely, is give normal people that are ordinary people an opportunity to achieve on their own. JP, I owe you so much. So to go to the next step, I needed a Lou J. Cabellis, I needed Jim, I needed Henrietta, I need more people into what the heck they're doing, okay, because I don't. But I know if we get together as a team, we'll be able to succeed. and that's where I learned, and it was the hardest lesson to learn because I wanted to do everything, be in charge of this and that and that, and the late 80s, I couldn't do that anymore. So getting into 1989, 1990, it was let's bring the others in and work together as a team. Well, along the way, I was lucky. Some really brilliant people had already done something great already got involved with us, but that's where I learned it. You know, you can't do it all, you need a team to work with.
When did you realize that? the company started to really take off. When was that year that it doubled, it quadrupled?
We started in 80, right? Throughout 80, we barely made it. Throughout 81, we barely made it. After we were in business two years, the big point of, ah, thank you God, the big point, right, was my partner and I, he came over with his girlfriend from Hawaii, we were in LA together, and we were able to pay our bills on time. Not pay them off, but pay them on time and have $4,000 left over, $2,000 each. We said, My God, we made it. We are paying our bills on time and we have extra money. Yay, we made it. Then we knew, Great, we made it, right? For us, that was huge because it was really week to week that we even lived. If you went to college, I think, and got a big degree, they said, Get out. Don't even start that business. business and just get out. Because every week, there's no way the hell you're gonna make it, guys. But that was the aha moment. It wasn't maybe in anyone else's eyes, but in our eyes, it was gigantic. What a win.
We paid our bills on time. On time. And when was the moment or the year that you realized, wow, like, I don't need to worry about money anymore with this business. When was it like, okay, there's an abundance coming in. I, you know, I don't have to stress about this anymore.
Paying my bills, having enough money to pay. Five years in business, 1988. 1985. Really. It was enough where enough money started coming in where there was a little extra not just to try to pay off the little house payment, but also put some money aside. Yeah, that's when it started in 1985, five years in business. Where you would call money was it was building up to that point where at that point it was, yeah, you know, I, this is enough. I'm going to go okay for the rest of my life. And the first thing I want to do, I would suggest to everybody, if you run into a lot of money, first thing you ever do, pay off your house. Pay your house off, okay? Even if it's a 1% interest rate, pay it off. Why is that? Because if everything goes wrong, you have a place to live, okay? When you pay on your way to paying your house off, have enough money in the bank, which is the worst place to put your money because you make no money in your bank. You go negative today, right, in your bank. Have enough though in their cash on hand for six months of living. What's your mortgage payment? What's your insurance? Go to the movie theater, food. So if everything went wrong, like what happened these last several months with this pandemic going on, you know you're going to survive even if you didn't have a job for six months. So you have that in the bank while you're doing that, pay it off. Now, once you have a home, you have that in the bank. Now your next thing to do is to put enough money aside. Don't raise your standard of living much at all. Raise it very little, okay? That extra money invested somehow where if everything went wrong, you have that six months now for the rest of your life. And it doesn't take that much money to do it, right? You have that. Once you have that, never touch that. That is secure, never mortgage it, keep it all safe, and then go on with whatever else you want to build. At least you and your family can live okay in a house and support yourself for the rest of your life. Sure.
And in your opinion, what do you think is the best investment an entrepreneur should make? Say they're at year three to five like you were at, they started to make some money finally, they've got an extra 100 grand, 500 grand, maybe even a million dollars in the bank that they brought in pretty quickly, that this money that they've never had before, it's there. What would you say they should do with their money? Should they put it back into their business, all of it? Should they diversify in real estate, start another business? What would you suggest?
We put everything in because we had nothing. That's why it took two because we had nothing. So it took two years to even have a couple thousand dollars. If your bills are paid already and you have this extra abundance some money if you're fortunate enough to have that. And in America, you can. Even homeless people like me made it, okay? You have it. Is six months is that in the bank? How do we pay this mortgage off? So I have a home, okay? And then from there, you want is very, very important. There's so many great opportunities out there. And I've lost money in new business, everything. Invest in your business before you invest in anyone else's business. I've lost money investing in other people's businesses. And if you're not going to invest in other people, your own business, if you have more than enough, before you start investing in someone else's business, remember this. If that year, and I tell a lot of friends of my entertainment, the same thing, a big year's entertainment, right? This year that you're working, you made this money, that's it. You'll never make another dime. So if this is what you made that year, where would you put it? And do that every single year till you have such an abundance that when you start investing in other people, it's not going to hurt you or your family as time goes on. But invest in your business before anyone else's business.
Right.
Because you have control of it and you know what comes out of it.
That's true. Did you ever start investing in real estate or stock market eventually? And was that something that you would recommend for people or just stay focused on your business?
Yeah, when you get in the stock market, you know, you can make and you can lose a lot in the stock market. Quickly. My suggestion, don't hit the stock market, wait a little while. If you do invest in the stock market, man, look at companies that have been around for decades that have growth through the 80s, 90s, and do that have growth every single year, even though they go up and down, their growth is every single year, okay? Look at those companies. There are some that may pay a dividend out, they've been around for a long time. Don't gamble that money. Real estate is good, but a lot of people over mortgage. They'll get into real estate for 20% or less and buy at a high market. All of a sudden the market drops and they still owe that to the bank and it dropped below the 20% profit and the sale of that with the commission for the person who sells it, well now they're upside down. I remember in the 80s when I didn't have any money, okay, in the early days, I had a friend of mine that was a multimillionaire, right? 23 million on paper.
Wow.
Okay, real estate mainly. Going into the 90s, the real estate market dropped flat on its heals, right? He over-mortgaged himself. You would buy this, you'd over-mortgage, buy this, buy this, all of a sudden he couldn't sell anything because it was worth less than what he owed on it and he went bankrupt. Never mortgage your future. Don't worry, credit cards, pay them off in full. Don't keep charging your credit card. Pay it off in full.
Everyone's paying off.
Pay it off in full. And if you can't pay it off in full, don't charge anything to it.
People got 12 credit cards, three, four.
We'Ll charge this one, all of a sudden they're upside down.
I'm 37 right now. Can you remember where you were at in 37?
Yeah, I can remember exactly where I was at at 37 years old. Paul Mitchell is now three years old, maybe four years old. I'm here in Los Angeles living here and building a company and just starting to make some money that year. Just starting to make some. We already made our 2000 each after sure.
So as I get closer to 40, what advice would you have to your 40 year old self that you wish you would have done then to help you where you're at now? Is there anything that you, whether it be in personal relationships, whether it be in business, your physical health, what advice would you say? JP, you really need to focus on this at 40 because for the next decade, here's why it's gonna be important.
I would say if I could change that and go back, it would be to spend some time just being a being.
Not a doing. Not a doing, but a being.
In other words, spend some time whether it's meditating, whether it's the middle of the day, just stop for 10 minutes and just try and clear your mind. Look around you, maybe go outside the trees, the sky, just be. If one could just be and look at something where you're just being, all of a sudden you see you're not just being through your eyes, there's something more around you that's seeing through these eyes, just be. Calm yourself and think. Many decisions I made in those days that were very quick without even thinking, they were emotional decisions. Had I thought about them overnight, it would have been a little different. And don't always believe what the other person tells you. Sometimes they lead you the wrong way. These are the advice I would give. just give love. And if someone is in your life, big lesson to be learned, if someone that's in your life that's very negative, always gossiping about somebody else, always doing stuff that doesn't make any sense, detach from them. Don't be around down, down town people is what I call it. Someone that's negative and just complains all the time, whether it's physically or just whatever, they complain all the time, get away from those people. You could love them, but love them from afar like, oh, I love you, but stay over there. You don't have to say those work, you know, but just stay away from them. I've had experience in my own life, whether it's for families, just other people, I thought we're the greatest, but all they do is blame everything else on everybody else. It's their fault, their fault, their fault. Well, yeah, maybe it's a little my fault, but they're really the person. No, it's you and what you did to get you there. If something went wrong, why don't you get away from that and divorce yourself from it and do what's right. Or if you did something wrong, and I'd happen to me when I was in my late 30s, early 40s, I would do something wrong, I would justify it. Oh, no, it's that person's fault. No, I didn't do this. No, no, no. Stubbornly. But it was my fault.
I justified it.
Just realize there's something called justification where human beings are implanted, I think, with the idea of it's not my fault. I want to be right, not wrong. It's okay to be wrong. That's how you learn. Because when you start justifying, you're lying to yourself and lying to others, right? Yeah, okay, I screwed up. I don't want to talk about it because it's nothing I really want to go into. Don't lie, don't justify it. Just take it on as yourself and be you, be in your own universe, not the effect of everyone else's universe.
Sure.
And how long have you been married for?
27 years. Always are married in '93.
27 years. What's the greatest lesson your wife taught you that you started to apply to your business that supported your business? being with her.
Actually, wonderful lady, not only beautiful in appearance, she's probably the most beautiful woman in the world, but also beautiful with her heart. She's a very, very good person. And from her, I learned, I don't know about that person. Feel them out a little bit, okay? I feel something wrong here. And she would say that, you know, I feel something wrong there. And I would go, okay, but I don't see that. But I didn't look at what she was feeling. I looked at the entity and what's coming out of it, opposed to feeling the being and the individual where she would feel it more than I would. And on several people she talked about, she was 100% correct. Well, they turned to be rip-offs later on, 100% correct. But one of the greatest lessons I learned was from my friend John Capra, my buddy of over 50 years. And he said, you, know the best way to get along with your wife, especially if she says, Look what you did, right? He says, I want to teach you some magic words. words, okay? She says, why did you do this? All the wives or your husbands, whatever, significant others say, well, why did you do that?
Right?
He taught me the most magical words. He says, Just look her in the eye and say, It's the truth. I don't know. I just did it. She'll immediately come back, yeah, because you're a guy. You have no feelings. You gotta have feelings, right? The most magical words. I don't know. It's the truth. We many times don't know why we did things until we find out in life why we do things right. and we correct them. But if you don't know why you just don't, I don't know. All of a sudden there's no argument. There's no hidden thing. It's all done. Well, it says because you don't have feelings, whatever.
It's over.
Don't say, well, this is wrong. You go head to head, right? Great lesson.
Yeah.
What do you think is the greatest negotiation you've ever made in your life? Whether it be personal negotiation with yourself, with a spouse, family member, business deal.
What'S the greatest negotiation you've made? I think the greatest negotiation I've ever did was a no negotiation where I had every right to negotiate, just you're right and I want the world to know this, okay? And that was when I was a guest appearance three and a half, four years ago on Shark Tank. A guy came out there, overvalued his tree teepee, something you would put around a tree so it grows better, you use less water, less... It was incredible.
The farmer guy, right?
The farmer guy, yeah, Johnny Georges. And it was like all the other shows.
You invested in him, right?
Oh, everything. It was everything they were, well, and they were right. He was overpriced. Everyone wanted to make more money. You can't sell them for $6. You got to sell them for $12. We need our profit. But I sat back and listened to him. I could have negotiated him down. 25% still got it like that. But in my mind it was the negotiation is you are a farmer. America needs farmers. I'm giving you everything you need because we're gonna show people we need farmers. They replayed that show I believe over 200 times in the last three and a half years. People have seen it weeks or months ago and said, I just saw you in Shark Tank. I shot that and filmed that three and a half four years ago. That negotiation was, he was so right, there's no need for negotiation. He was so right. But if ever you're gonna negotiate for somebody, Just think about this. They may start over here, you may start over there. But what's fair where everybody wins? Or everybody only loses a little bit, but everybody wins in the end because it's fair. If you go just for you and all of a sudden you topple the other side, they'll regret it, okay? And there'll be covert hostility. So when you negotiate, well, yes, we want something fair, but fair for both. Not just more fair for me and less fair for you or vice versa. Let's just set where we both benefit. that we go on as friends. Big lesson to be learned. And I've been there before where I wanted more tip towards me in my younger days, but that's so many decades ago, you know? And knowing this has been one of the greatest helps in the last 30 years with me.
Wow. What's the strategy you go into when you're making a business deal, a partnership, a negotiation of any kind? What's the mindset you go into thinking about? Is it the outcome you want? Is it how do I connect with this person in a certain way? What do you go there?
Well in many cases is what I'm looking at something I want and is it going to do the greatest good for the greatest number? Today I look at who I'm with. I'll give you a couple of examples, okay? I did something in North Africa, oil and gas, all right? Put a lot of money in there. It didn't happen. I was sued by people in the country that were very, very powerful. Not one attorney would represent me. Of course they found us guilty, made it 10 times whatever what they should have even asked for in the first place. Took years for them. I couldn't even get an attorney, right? When we came to the United States, that's for the next thing I'm going to give you. We came to the United States. I lost in one judicial system, but they brought it back and I won. I won in a federal court. I won in the appellate court. And the Supreme Court refused to say, no, this is fine. We're not going to review this period, right? But I stuck by it all the time. I stuck by it. and that lesson to be learned there is be careful who you do business with, okay? Because those that you think you could trust can turn on you for financial reasons, period. I've had people sue me saying that, oh, you fired this person and it was your fault and you did it so it'd save you millions of dollars. Biggest bunch of I've ever heard in my life. That's the story they came up with. It was amazing. So, when you're there, a lot of people come after you and you figure, How unjust is this? This is totally unjust. How dare can you? So here's the next phrase I want to give everybody. Put it on your mirror, especially if you're down and you're going through troubled times and you can't sleep at night. And the quote is this. In the end, everything will be okay... and if it's not okay... it's not the end. The... is pause. In the end, everything will be okay. and if it's not okay, it's not the end. I look back at some of my big situations where people falsely have accused me of stuff. I didn't do it, which really pissed me off, right? I'm on some lady's website for 10 years. I've never met in my life and she says, Me and her husband were in cahoots against her. I've never met this lady in my life. She doesn't know me. But every bit of that she could bring up or lies or exaggeration, she brings up, she takes a little thing, I mean just, why would you do this to me? But I learned in the end, everything's going to be okay as long as you know yourself. so if someone has this no matter what you're in and think about in your own life, whether it was financial or with an affair you had with somebody in your life or with your mom or dad, just something went wrong. In the end it came out okay, but during that time you were fearful, you didn't know the outcome. There was an unknown. It usually turns out in the end everything's going to be okay and fear is your biggest obstacle and it usually turns out to be okay.
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Really helped with my sanity to have.
That sort of that sort of something that was so clear to me that was black and white.
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