INBOUND Bold Talks: Daniel Lewis "How Super Mario Helped Me Grow a Successful Business"

How's everybody doing today? All right, inbound. Let's make some noise for inbound. All right, now I'm a tech loser. So is this my clicker? I'm assuming this is the clicker. Awesome. So what in the world can Super Mario teach us about business, about marketing, about life? We are going to be surprised to learn that this little Italian man could teach us so much to help move our business forward and to think outside of the box. So we all know Super Mario. Show of hands. Perfect. Let's jump right into it. So I'm the founder and retail magician of a specialty tea company right outside. Thank you. There we go. Right outside of Toronto. And we do some magical stuff in our tea shop. And all thanks to Mario. Here we go. Today, we're going to talk about star power. We're going to talk about the mushrooms. We all know about the mushrooms. Not those mushrooms. Yoshi and Luigi slingshots and Princess Peach. When you look at the following gentleman right here, what do you see? What title do you see? CEO. When I throw this picture out there, I often hear CEO, accountant, businessman. All very right. And I spent 10 years of my life as an aspiring musician. I tried the rap, hip hop thing. Definitely didn't work. I tried to be a songwriter. I tried to pitch songs to Lady Gaga. None of those songs are mine. So you're all good. And then I was a Led Zeppelin fan, so I tried to do the rock thing. Definitely didn't work. Ten years of my life in music. And then I was making the switch into business, and I looked at that guy. That's what's shown as a businessman. I'm like, how am I going to pull this off? I had a nightmare that was not going to work. But if you want to play the role right, you got to fit the role. So I did that. That's my face when I'm happy. But I'm not so happy. And a lot of the times in life, in our jobs, in our careers, we find ourselves in this place right here, happy, doing the routine, but not happy. But, Daniel, got a solution for you today. Go into that attic, that closet, pull out that dusty Nintendo 64 and play Mario. Here's what he taught me, little guy. The world's against him. Evil mushrooms attacking him from every angle. And then all of a sudden, he hits this brick, and out comes the star. Does anybody know what happens when the star power happens? Yes. Dun dun dun dun dun dun, dun, dun dun dun dun dun. He goes nuts. But all of a sudden, he starts breaking barriers Breaking through walls. Evil mushrooms can't stop him. And then I played the game and an apple. Out of nowhere, I was inside, but it fell on my head, and I said, wait, are you trying to tell me something? Yeah. Our star power. It's the cheesiest lesson, but it's true. What is your star power? Here you're gently listening to me, and you look beautiful, but show me your Instagram feed, show me your Facebook page, and all of a sudden, pow, poom. The washroom selfie. All of a sudden, this illuminating personality jumps out. Okay, fine. You're not on social media. Drop you off in Dominican with five of your top friends. Dunh dun dun dun dun dun. All of a sudden, you're this magical person, and your friends know it, your spouses know it. The only people that don't get to see that is everybody else in the world. Everybody else in the shopping mall. So I switched my perspective early. I used to stand at trade shows trying to give samples of tea. Like, would you like to try something? Okay, maybe next time. And nobody cared about what I was doing. Then I went back to the music. Me. The put your hands up me. That same things I did on the stage for music. That was my star power. And then I realized I got to show that. And then once I did that, everything changed. That's when Tea by Daniel, really, which is our tea company, started to shine. Star power. What's your star power? How far can it take you? We went from starting a little tea company in my dad's kitchen to serving tea to the Backstreet Boys and Dragons Den and celebrities at the ESPY Awards. Why? It's not because I'm handsome. That's obvious. Why is that funny? It's not because I'm handsome or I'm astute or a great business person. It's because people see something and it's genuine. What's your star power? What's that one thing? If I was to ask five people that know you that they would say, oh, who? What's your lovely name, my dear with beautiful hair? Monique. Oh, Monique, the chef. Oh, she cooks up a store. Everybody would say that one thing. But the world wants to know what your star power is. What's that thing that makes you different? What's your secret sauce? Your recipe. Well, Daniel, you're cool, but I'm a geek. Well, Geek Squad is making billions off being geeks. There's no personality that doesn't have a star power show. Yours guarantee you'll start to see success. Because the secret to Succeeding in business is in the first two letters of business. What? What's the first two letters of business? That's it. Isn't that cute? The mushrooms? Not those mushrooms. These are opportunities. Mario's a little guy. He can't take on the world. I'm a little guy. Sometimes we feel small in our companies and our operations, but life does throw us mushrooms. And if we can catch those mushrooms, we can grow. These are opportunities. And. And often we have to learn how to identify opportunities. That means we are the CEO. What does that stand for? What does CEO stand for? Chief Executive Officer. That's what I thought. But when I put it on my business card, it didn't tell me what to do. There was no call to action because I have no business experience. So what does being a CEO mean to me? Do I walk like this now and fly to Florida? I don't know what to do. But what if CEO stood for catching every opportunity? Whoa. Now I know what to do. Now I'm the CEO that walks into my tea shop and says, wait a minute. Why does that little kid have a balloon while his parents are shopping for tea? Maybe it's the birthday. Come on, retail magicians, hit the birthday song. Grab the chocolates, grab the streamers. We can do magical things if we get off the high horse of being CEOs and start catching every opportunity. That's what a CEO really is. We have to learn to define our title. That's why I say I'm the founder of T by Daniel and a retail magician. I don't just sell stuff. I sell magic. All right, CEO. You are the CEO. Let's learn to catch those mushrooms. I could be an opportunity. If you see it that way. Inbound 16 could be a great opportunity if you see it that way. Life keeps throwing mushrooms at us. We gotta learn how to catch those. All right, Yoshi and Luigi. Now, when you are out there catching all these opportunities, catching all these opportunities, it's like Pokemon. You just want to catch them all. We all feel so well. Super. And that's my real body, by the way. Why is that funny? It was cold. I doubled up on the shirts. So you get unstoppable. Because now you're at Inbound. And after you leave Inbound, you fly over to speak here. And after that, they. The CFO wants to meet you of this company. You're just catching everything, and you feel unstoppable because we get to that place, you know, and then you realize, wait a minute, this happened. You get busy, and then opportunities start to fall by the wayside. Now, I wasn't prepared to speak, so I really didn't know what to do here. And, oh, I didn't get back to Lisa, who wanted. We can't do it all. So when you get too overwhelmed sometimes in business and in life, I want you to play Mario because he showed me what to do. There was one stage where Koopa and all these, you know, the turtle that just walks, the turtle was after him, like so many turtles were after him. And guess what happened? He didn't use his star power because it only lasted 20 seconds. All of a sudden. That was a terrible Yoshi. But Yoshi and Luigi came bursting at the scene. They just came out of nowhere. This, folks, is our help. We can't do it all. We need to identify who's your Yoshi, who's your Luigi, who's that person that you trust that is going to take you to the next level in your business, in your company, in your idea? Yoshis and Luigis are all around us. We have to learn to identify. Identify is that key word that there are Yoshis and Luigis in our lives. We gotta find them. They'll help us get to the next level. My wife was that person. She became the brains, while I remained the beauty of the company. Of. Yeah, it works. It just works. My lovely wife, Renata. I told her, quit your job. I think we have a company here. I known her since I was in grade three. She trusts me. So she quit her job, jumped into the company and cleaned it up. Ladies, hats off to you. You just know how to do things right. Yes. I'm just trying to earn wife points. Please make it look good. Yes, she jumped in. This was my help. She helped take Tea by Daniel the tea company to the next level. Things I could never do. And there were so many other people along the way that helped. Who's your help? Who's your Yoshi? Who's your Luigi? Define it. Sometimes you just need help. That's my wife's real body. So the slingshot theory, it's something my dad taught me. He said, dan, let's say you start this company, you start this marketing company, let's say. And the first week you get acquired by Facebook, you get. You're a multimillionaire, you're cruising Lamborghinis. Life is so perfect. Sorry? Life is so perfect. When you go to make the next step in life, this is what happens. Because life was so good. That's how far you go. But let's say you start this marketing agency, and you can't get acquired. You're not seeing a profit in two, three years. And all these different setbacks. You fly out to Germany to meet with a big client. The deal doesn't go through. It bombs. Those are called setbacks. But our setbacks, every time we get pulled back. Setback, setback. Our setbacks in life actually propel us farther ahead. If we see it that way. So every time it didn't work, it didn't work. Change our perspective. This is not a bad thing. We're just getting ready to launch forward. Our setbacks in life propel us farther ahead. This happened in Mario. It just comes booming at you, and star power can't help you. Yoshi can't help you. Luigi can't help you. This is when something serious in life happens. Like with my incident. I went through a tragic moment where I was stabbed five times over something I said in a rap song here, nearly fatal. If I sneezed hard enough, I would have been gone. But instead of the sob story, that was my opportunity. It was a huge setback. But now I'm in Boston for the first time talking, giving a bold talk at Inbound. Why? Because. Because that was a setback. And I learned, just like Mario, that I got to fire back in life. Not at these guys that did that. We don't need to play that. Let's become more, do more. Let's help more people than we've ever helped in our lives. That's how we fire back. That's the slingshot theory. And lastly, we want to talk about Princess Peach. You know, so often I talk in schools and I ask the students or corporate functions, you know, what's the goal of this company? And obviously, everyone's saying to our ROI and, you know, increase the bottom line, and that's fine and dandy. I'll tell you, when you're right here, it doesn't matter how much money you have. So let's look to the game Mario, that, yes, we need to go through life collecting coins. Get as many coins as you can. You're gonna need them. But at the end of the game, you don't stand in Super Mario podium and get a Super Mario check. That's very much like life. You get the princess. Do it because you love to do it. The joy's richer. And believe me, when. When you impact people's lives in a positive way. When I go back to Toronto tonight, that's staying right here. That's your Princess Peach. Do it because you love to do it. Thank you very much.