David Wood: Gamify your Life | The Authors Unite Show #982

Right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Authors Unite show. Today we have David Wood. Welcome to the show, man.

Hey, thanks, man. Good to see you, Tyler Wagner.

Of course, great to see you as well. So if you want to start us off, just tell us a little bit more about you and what you do.

Sure, I help business owners to double their revenue and their time off. But if, if money is all you want, you should go to somebody else because there are lots of people who focus just on cash. I look at the whole person. So if your relationships are giving you trouble, that's going to slow down your revenue and impact your life. So double revenue, double your time off, and then we look at who you are as a human being. And how you show up as a leader, partner, parent, and human. There's the short version.

Okay. No, perfect. So I kind of, I like to start from the beginning, not the very, very beginning, not from like inception, but because I'm curious, like how—

I had a difficult birth.

Yeah. I'm just always curious as to how people get to where they are, right? So I guess, what was, when you were younger, did you think you'd be doing anything like this?

No, no, no way. Of course, I wanted to be a fireman and I wanted to be an astronaut. But in school, I started getting really good at school at about 14 years old. I don't know what happened, but I just, things became easy and I was really good at math. So what do you do when you're good at math? We figured you become an accountant. But then my mother did some research. She was a teacher and she'd researched and she found this thing called being an actuary. We're like, what the hell is that? It turns out it usually earns more than accountancy. It's a lot harder to qualify. And then, and there's more prestige if anyone actually knows what it is. So we figured that's what I'm going to do. And I did it. I actually qualified as an actuary, bought blood, sweat, and tears. And then I got a job in New York on Park Avenue consulting to Ford, Sony Music, Exxon, and I figured I had it made. But I wasn't that happy and my marriage wasn't that well. So I'm making the money, I'm doing well business-wise, and I'm learning all about business, but my marriage wasn't doing well. And if the marriage isn't doing well, I'm not doing well. So someone recommended a personal growth course and that's when I discovered coaching. So I was 27 years old. I'm in this course and I accidentally changed somebody's life overnight by coaching them. And I'm like, this is amazing stuff. And I realized, Tyler, that while I knew a lot about money and business and systems, At that point in my life, I knew nothing about intimacy and vulnerability and communication and true influence and leadership. So I guess the first 25 years of my life were about business and money and systems. The last 25 years of my life have been about learning those things that were missing so that I can address my whole human and help my clients address their whole human.

And I had read in your bio that you were counseled by Jack Canfield. So is that who you're talking about that you learned from first or was that later on?

No, Jack came later. I'd met Jack at a conference and I was just blown away by seeing him speak. I'm like, I want to speak like that. And so I went up to him and, you know, started a little connection and we started actually cross-promoting. And, you know, since this is about Authors Unite, I was thinking about what would be really useful for authors. And look, whether you're selling a book or you're selling a course or you're selling a widget, you've got to be able to partner with people and cross-promote. And when I told Jack, look, I'd be happy to send an email for you, he said, oh, you've got— your list is half the size of ours. We should definitely do something. And so that started the business relationship. It took a few more years of stalking to, and some luck to get to the point where he said yes to writing the foreword to my book.

Oh, very nice. That is awesome. So I want to actually go back real quick because I wanted to ask that person that you said their life was changed overnight. Can you go into a little bit more detail without getting giving away their identity?

Yeah, I won't. Yeah, yeah, you know, some of my clients have given me permission to use their name.

Oh, great.

Client stories. But, but this one, she— this woman, a participant in the course, was giving me a ride home. And we're sitting in the car and I'm saying goodnight, I'm about to leave. And then we got talking. And it turns out, she's been manipulating her husband for 10 years, and using the fact that he had an affair 10 years ago to control him, and she was feeling really bad about it and really guilty that she'd been— she just discovered this. And then as we got talking, it turned out someone else had an affair 10 years earlier, but she hadn't told him that piece of the puzzle.

Wow.

Okay, they both had an affair. So I'm watching her and holding space for her to consider telling him the truth after 10 years and apologizing and taking whatever the consequences are going to be and creating the possibility of true intimacy and true love. And watching her with tears streaming down her face, it was such an incredible experience. I got goosebumps right now. And she went away and she went and told him, and she came back to the course and reported to everybody that she and her husband felt like they were floating on air, 6 feet above the ground, fully in love the entire weekend. And all from her risking her marriage to tell the truth. So I was hooked. I'm like, how do I get more of this? And then Landmark Education was where I did my course. And they said, look, if you come back and you do the third course, we will train you as a coach so that you can help other people go through the program. And I'm like, that sounds amazing. And I didn't even know you could do this as a living yet. I just knew I wanted to know how to coach. And then someone had a business card. It said coach on it. I'm like, are you kidding me? This is a thing? Like people are getting paid for this? And this is back in '97. And then by the end of '98, I decided, all right, I'm going to go full on into this. I went and found myself a course. I went and found myself a coach. And I'm like, you know, show me how to do this as an actual business. And what, I guess that was 23 years ago, and here we are.

Got it. And it seems to me, you know, tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that your current business, it's kind of a blend of that, right? So, you started out maybe on like the life coaching, and then now, it's kind of like you brought it all together. So, it's helping your business, your time, and then once that's taken care of, then it goes into like the full life. Is that kind of the way it works?

Yeah, yeah, that's right. When I started, like before I found coaching, I was consulting to big companies and helping them, you know, with the bottom line, right? And risk management, because that's what actuaries do. Actuaries are all about risk management. And then when I got into coaching, I started with the personal because I was so excited about it. And then I quickly found that people paid more for business coaching generally, right? And I'm like, oh, okay. So, well, that's fine. I know a lot about business. Let's do that. So we did the business coaching and then it's like I got lost down a rabbit hole. I started coaching coaches for a long time because everyone's like, how are you doing this? How are you traveling the world, working from wherever you want, picking your own hours and even earning money while you sleep. How do you do this? And this was just after The 4-Hour Workweek came out and I was like, all right, I'm going to write my own version of that and show people one method that I've used to share what you love using the internet and have a successful business. And then 3 years ago, I decided to rebrand because I was like, David, you've always wanted to help people with the personal and here you've just been doing only business. Come on, let's shape up. So now I've rebranded with focus.co and we start on money because I've rarely met a business owner that doesn't want to make more money. So we'll, fine, we'll start there and it pays the bills. Then let's work on your time off and then along the way life's going to happen. And like, I've got one client, she's a wonderful, very smart businesswoman, and she just got diagnosed with a serious illness. So that's what her and her husband are dealing with. So I had a session with both of them. And we ended the session with, all right, what game are you going to play now? Given this, given you don't know how long you've got to live, how are you going to show up and what game are you going to play?

Wow. Yeah, that's wild. Yeah, and it does make sense to me, that equation, right? So, it's like figuring out the money first and then time because I'm sure that happens. I don't know if it's every business owner but I would assume it's most business owners is when you just focus on the money, then what you end up realizing is that you have no time to do anything else and then you got to kind of restructure the business in a way that that you have more time and then you can work on every other part of your life in a sense. So that makes sense.

And it, you know, varies. There are some people, you know, do yoga, meditation and follow the spiritual path. And I have had clients come to me and say, look, I heard you speak about tough conversations and courage and I think I could really use that in my life. Yeah, sure, in my business, but I think I could use it everywhere. So there are some of those clients. But a lot of it, and I know what it's like to be a business owner, you know, you firstly put the oxygen mask on yourself and let's double revenue. So I've got one client and I do have permission to share her story. Amy Youngblood has a great interior design business, Amy Youngblood Interiors, and she came to me and she's like, look, we're not doing as well financially as we used to, can you help? I said, Let me ask some questions. I asked some questions, went through it, and I said, yeah, it looks like I can help. Let's give it a whirl. So over that first year, we doubled revenue. But along the way, so many fascinating things came up. Like, she's got teenage kids. How do I talk to my kids about COVID They think they should be able to go and party and hang out with everybody. They're not worried about it. How do I set boundaries here? How do I deal How do I deal with difficult customers? How do I handle pricing when people seem to want to go price shopping? So I just slipped back into business stuff. And then, you know, how do I deal with a former relationship that's really quite tense and I'm really stressed and now someone's suing? So there's so many life issues that come up and they provide, of course, an opportunity to grow. It doesn't seem like that. It's just like, damn it, I just want this over. So she's one of my favorite clients because we get to do the business stuff. Yeah, that's really fun. We do branding. Okay, how about your messaging? How about your conversions? Let's look at that. But then along the way, how are you showing up? And so one of the things that I'm really pleased to see is her speaking up more, speaking her truth more, and setting boundaries more and doing it with more kindness. Because when we start, we might be a bit bumpy about it. We might use a sledgehammer when a much smaller tool is needed. And I tell you what, watching— I'm growing, right? I don't want anyone to get the sense that I think I'm some kind of guru, I've got everything sorted out. Oh my God, no. I'm constantly learning, but it's fun that as I grow, I get to witness my client's growth as well.

Yeah. No, I can see how doing that would be very fulfilling, especially even just going back to your first story, like, you know, having that long conversation with her and then her whole life kind of changing very quickly after. And then, you know, obviously, it was her that did the actual, like, doing of it, but your conversation is the compass for it. So, I can just imagine it's very fulfilling. So, one thing that was really intriguing which I'm sure on interviews you get this a lot but again, it is in your bio, is you somehow managed to rank number 1 on Google with the term life coaching which seems like it would be near impossible because it's probably a pretty highly searched term. So, I guess, Actually, I mean, our listeners probably would be interested in that. So like, if you want to get a little bit into the details, obviously, I know there's a lot to SEO, but I guess, how did you, how were you able to do that in a simple way of explaining?

Yeah, well, I'll try and give you the meta version because whatever I was doing back then wouldn't apply now, right? Because it keeps shifting. But I, you know, basically I Googled. Google wasn't around then. But I was, and I was like AltaVista was a big search engine back then. And I remember when Google did come around and I was number 1 on Google, I remember I keep looking at how many results were returned because being number 1 out of 500 results doesn't mean that much. But being 1 out of 23 million results, that was awesome. I'm like, yes, you know, I'm a rock star. And now initially I just looked up on the search engines, how do you do it? And back then it was fairly simple. You needed your anchor Your anchor text needed to be about life coaching. You needed to have related words. You needed to have a lot of good content. And then eventually it came around to links. They're like, all right, we need you to have links. So I went and did link campaigns and I asked people to link and I did link swaps and all that stuff. And a lot of that stuff you could do until it didn't work, right? There were link farms that would link back to you. And then a friend of mine, you know, we did grey hat stuff, like you'd put like 1,000 links on some pages and see if that did anything. Anything. And it would work for a little bit until Google did an update. But basically I just, I researched how to do it and then I put a lot of work into it. The reason I'm no longer ranked number 1 is because you've got to keep it going. You've really got to keep on providing lots of value. You've got to keep on, which I do now, but I keep shifting my brand and shifting the website. That old site was life coaching-resource.com. That was the one that, I mean, now it's probably like ranked 5,000 because I don't maintain it, but that's how I got to ranked number 1, 3, 7, and 9 even on some of the search engines. Some people are complaining, they're like, this is ridiculous, but I was early into it as well. Now these days you wouldn't do it, you wouldn't try and rank for life coaching unless you're a multi-million dollar corporation you'd use long tail now. So you'd look for like life coaching Boulder, Colorado, maybe, right? Now you're just competing with all the life coaches in Boulder, which is still a few hundred, but you could probably do that. But life coaching is too general as well. So you might go for relationship coaching Boulder. I'd still want to go deeper into that with the long tail and, you know, find them, A friend of mine and I joke that SEO is dead. I don't know that it is, but it's just the competition keeps on getting so much more intense.

Yeah. No, that's actually refreshing to hear though because I think a lot of people have the misconception that you basically, you know, whatever the strategy is and Google's always changing their algorithm and stuff, but is once you're there, then you're there. And it's not the way it works, right? Because once you are on page 1, you actually have to maintain page 1 because then others are So it's really not something that's like, you know, you spend 6 months to a year, you get there and then you're like, ah, okay, I'm there. Let's go.

No, no. If I had everything over again, I would try and maintain that position. I would go back in time and I would have someone just, you know, constantly adding material to the blog, constantly updating pages, tweaking, making spell corrections and just making sure it's like a really, it's a live site and then constantly working on link exchanges, getting on government sites. If you can get on like a link from a university site, go and build a relationship with the webmaster, go and build a relationship with the university, get a university or government site to link to you. I think that goes a long way. Also some of the big magazines, if you can, you know, say you get on Forbes and you can get them to link to you, It's work. You've got to do it or you've got to pay someone to do it. My recommendation is pick your traffic source and then go deep with that. So if it's going to be SEO, then for a year you're going to do SEO. If it's going to be Facebook ads, get really good at that. Maybe get a company that's really good at that and go deep in Facebook ads and nail it. Particularly in this day and age, you can't afford to be straddling 6 or 7 different traffic sources and expect to do them well.

100%. Yeah, no, I totally agree. So I want to ask you about kind of like, because you work with so many business owners, like what are some commonalities that you see? So when somebody comes to you and let's just start with the first one with money and their revenue is down, what do you see typically as being like the reason for that? Or have you noticed commonalities?

Yeah, well, I've identified 3 big buckets when I'm assessing a company to see why they're not making more money or what the potential is. So the first big bucket is productivity. And we look at what are your goals? Are you really clear on your goals? And are they layered? Like, do you know what your goals are in 12 months, in 3 months? And every 7 days, do you have a new cycle of goals? Also, every day, do you know what you're going to wake up doing? So we look at that. We look at productivity, meaning when you sit down to actually work, can you crank it out? Can you do a 2-hour sprint and do what's going to move the needle in your business? It sounds very simple, but with all the distractions today, So many of us are naturally scattered. So we look at that and then we look at mindset and then that's the productivity basket because I want you, like within the first few weeks, I want you producing twice as much as you are now. And it's actually possible to produce twice as much of what matters in half the time, which is basically quadrupling your productivity. So we start with that. Then the second bucket is your money. Do you have a flood of leads or do you have a trickle of leads? Let's look at that. What's your traffic source? How's your messaging? Do you have caveman messaging such that a caveman could grunt it? Yeah, double revenue one year. There's a message a caveman can grunt. Then we look at your conversions because there's no use having a flood of leads if people are coming in your website and just disappearing. And then we look at, are you leveraging your existing customers? Are you loving them up and getting referrals and testimonials and upsells and like that? Or are you constantly searching for the next sale? So that's the second bucket. Then the last bucket, you've got to leverage because in most businesses, the business owner is the bottleneck. So we look at clarifying your genius. So if I was doing a session with you, Tyler Wagner, on this, we'd look at what do you love to do that you are great at and then create a plan to offload all the rest. Then you've got to hire that staff or those contractors. And then the last piece in the leverage bucket is motivate them and accountability, which is really fascinating because I finally, like once I had the course, I realized that this last piece is basically doing for your team what we did for you in the first 3 weeks. All that stuff about goal setting and accountability and productivity and motivating yourself, now we roll that out for the entire team. So that's basically the 8-week Samurai course I have. And I have a training and I'm happy to give it away to listeners if you like. It's a very important training because it doesn't make sense for I don't expect anyone to do all 9 of those steps. You might be, Tyler, you might be strong in 1, 3, 5, and 7. So what you first need to do is assess where you're strong and where you're weak. Now we know what you're going to work on in the first 3 months. So that assessment training is really important. I don't want anyone to just go paint by numbers. I'm just going to go through and do all 9 weeks of this program. No. You work out which 3 areas out of this whole course are going to really be the leverage for you.

Yeah, no, I love that. I think the thing, it's kind of like the entrepreneur's dilemma, right? Is that you build this business and when you start out, typically, you are wearing all the hats but then, you have to like let go. And that was one of the biggest things for me as my business started to grow was like, just letting go of like kind of micromanaging everything so it's perfect because at some point you literally are just from a time perspective are unable to do that. And to hear you speak, you know, with The 4-Hour Workweek, what's interesting to me about it is like that was the book that like changed everything for me. And one of the things productivity which I love to dive deeper with you on is batching that I learned from that book, right? So, like I have some days that I only do sales calls, some days that I only do podcasts, and then I have some days that I will not allow like anything on my schedule and I just, that's my like creative and like kind of get in the zone focus type of work. So, I'm curious, have you found like any productivity tips that you have?

Oh yeah, for sure. And batching is a great one. I use it myself. I don't want to do review the books every month. I'm not recommending this for everyone, but because I'm so into batching, I'd rather review the books once a year. You know, if I'm going to load all that up in my head, let's review them. Yeah, sure, there might be a few expenses that I could have jumped on and stopped earlier on, but I don't care that much. I'd rather just make more money. So batching is a good one. And Related to batching is this concept of sprint. So, and I also another giveaway. I've got a little gift basket. Oh yeah.

What's the link for that first giveaway? Oh yeah.

The link, it's always the same link. I created a gift basket of goodies. It's myfocusgift.com.

Oh, okay. Fantastic.

Yeah. Because I want to give you the gift of focus. So I created the most memorable URL I could, myfocusgift.com. It'll give you that free training. I've also got a checklist. And some of the first few things on the checklist is one, you've got to have happy goals. You've got to know what would have you dance your ass off if you achieved it at the end of 12 months. And then you want to layer those goals. And then let's suppose you wake up knowing what you're going to do because you've gone through the checklist and you know that it's smart to wake up knowing what's important. So you wake up with that. You've got to have some sprints. And that could be related to batching. So Wednesdays, I have no calls scheduled.

That's how my Wednesdays are.

Nice.

That's sick.

And it breaks up the week, right?

Exactly what I thought. Yeah.

Calls Monday, calls Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Wednesday is totally free that I can really dive in and get some solid work done. So that's batching big time. That's like a major sprint. But you can also have, say, 9 to 11 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday could be your sprint time where you turn off all distractions. No pinging via email, no Facebook notification, no ding on your phone because you got a text message. Mine's on do not disturb right now. Put a sign on your door and let the family know, hey, This is my focus time, short of a fire. Please support me by letting me, leaving me alone, letting me work, and I'll come out and I'll hug everybody when the timer goes off. Right? And then you choose what I will do for this sprint, say 2 hours. And if I'm going to do a 2-hour sprint, I'll chunk it down even further because here's a big mistake. Alright, I got 2 hours. I'm going to work on my website. Bah, you just failed. Work on your website is not a constrained resource. It's not a container. It could go for 3 weeks nonstop. What would be even better is, right, the first half hour I will draft my bio, even a bad draft. The second half hour I will send it out to people for feedback. The third half hour, I will choose pictures and upload 3 to the website. The fourth half hour, you get the picture.

Exactly.

Now it's game on and I set the timer, 25 minutes. Boom. Now I'm focused. I've only got 25 minutes to achieve this goal. Now what you might find, listeners, is you, you know, my clients start with the best intentions and then the next week they come back, they're like, Yeah, it didn't really work. What happened? Well, I, well, I, you know, I sat down to do the sprints, but then there were knocks at the door, and then I had a phone call that I had to take, or there was an email. And I'm like, really? How did you know there was an email? I went and checked it. Okay, all right. Now we know one way that you fall off the horse is you check email. So you need some discipline. Don't do that. And then they might be like, all right, next week. I didn't check email, but then I remembered some Amazon orders I had forgotten to do. And so I went and did that and I didn't actually do what I said I'd do. So it does take some discipline and some practice. But if you go through each item on this checklist, and you can get this checklist as well at myfocusgift.com, what I want is not only for you to make more money and for you to have more time off, but I want you to feel great at the end of each day. And it feels good to wake up saying, all right, today, um, I'm going to work on that alliance email. Not work on, you see, I just made that mistake. Today I'm going to tweak the alliance email and send it off to my partner so they can send it out as an email blast, right? That's the biggest thing I can do. And secondly, And I'm looking up at my board here. I'm going to choose a bookkeeper and get them started on the reconciliations. All right. Boom. Two really big things for my business. So you wake up knowing that. And then to actually, at the end of the day, cross it off, you feel like a rock star. I want you to have that feeling at the end of every single business day.

Now, have you, and I'm curious, for you and for others, because I feel like this is common, is once you created this like freedom in your life and you had like a lot of time, what did you— did you kind of go through like a little bit of, uh, I don't want to call it a crisis, it might not be that extreme, but for some it is. Like, I feel like that's kind of a crisis a lot of successful people go through, is once they create this freedom, then they're like, Oh, okay. Well, what do I do? Because I've been so used to working and getting lost in work. And now, it's like I have all this free time, like, but we'll just say the 4-hour work week, like, literally, if you are able to achieve 4 hours of working a week and that's it, you have a lot of free time. You can get into a lot of trouble with that time. So, it's like, you know, yeah, okay, great. Let's hear about this.

Yeah, I do. It brings up a new challenge. And I want everybody to get a chance to face that challenge. So I have, I have so much time available because of the way I've leveraged my business. So I was doing one-on-one coaching for a long time and I still do for some clients, but I found group coaching very powerful and it allows me to leverage my time. Plus in some ways it's better. Because you're not just getting David Wood's strategies and ideas, you're getting feedback and ideas from a whole group. But it does create a lot of time that I don't have to spend working. And I don't want to be coaching 40 hours a week. If I was coaching 40 hours a week, I don't think I'd be of any use to any of my clients. You really want a coach who loves what they do and they come to a session going, alright, let's get into it. You don't want a coach going, "Oh my God, another session. Please kill me now." So I've got a lot of time and sometimes it really is a challenge for me to work out what I'm going to do. So I've explored different things. I started playing tennis for a while. That was a lot of fun. I've done some volunteering, being of service, going into Colorado prisons and helping train inmates in the art of being human and tough conversations. On the weekend, I got to go and be with a friend who's suicidal right now. I've got a puppy. Sometimes she gets my attention. And yesterday, yesterday was Sunday and I woke up and I'm like, what are you going to do with yourself, David? And I'm a nerd. I'm an absolute nerd. And I've always wished I was a programmer in another life. And so I thought, you know what? Find yourself a Python course and just get started and just play with that. So I went and did that. And I love all sorts of games. So whether it's tennis or squash or ultimate frisbee or chess or video games, if I can find a good one, I spend a lot of time on that. The thing is I've got to constantly come back to find some balance because you cannot do any of those things for 10 hours a day and not pay a price of some kind. So I try and mix up the gaming and the friend time, a little bit of service. And before the pandemic, I was much better at exercise than I am now. But I want everybody to get to that problem where they're like, you know what, I now have more time. How do I want to use it? Well, is there a legacy? I want to leave? Is it more time with my kids? In fact, I'm going to challenge listeners right now to grab a piece of paper, grab a pen, and you can pause the recording and write at the top, if I had 10 to 20 more hours in the week, how would I spend that so that I feel like I'm truly living? What would really really be worthwhile so that on my deathbed, I can say I gave it all. Now for me, video games is not it, right? But supporting a friend who's suicidal or yesterday I learned something. I'm on a dating app and someone sent me an audio and I listened to it. I'm like, oh my God, yes, this is, you know, it woke me up. I'm like, You know, I won't go into the details, but I'm like, wow, you know, I could really learn something here. And so, you know, insights like that are gold to me.

Yeah, no, for sure. It's definitely, and I think that's really powerful, especially for people listening that have not run into that problem yet. Because I don't know many people that have thought about it really before running into it, right? Because again, you're just, at least for myself and others that I know, you're so singularly focused on like building the business that until that time freedom happens, you really don't, you don't even think about it, right? Because you're just so zoned into the business and then like somehow, you just like keep tweaking and pivoting and growing and then you kind of just like, this is how it happened for me at least, and you just kind of get to the other side and you're like, Holy crap, what do I want to do? Like, this is another— and it can kind of lead into some interesting rabbit holes, I guess, where you really do learn about yourself. And it's like, you know, why did I start this in the beginning? Like, what was it really driving me? And then for me, I guess similar to you with the nerd thing, for me, the podcast is really that. Like, this is my favorite way to learn that I found. Like, I love audiobooks, They're great, but they're not interactive. So like interviewing people is really just a way for me to learn. And it's good for you and it's interactive.

So you've got yourself an interactive audiobook, right?

Yeah. Yes.

Thank you. That's nice.

Yeah.

And I, you know, I realized, I realized too, like there is, there's like the dark side of the force that you'd be like, all right, I got all this time. I'm just going to watch TV and video game. Right? There is that. I personally need to be constantly vigilant. So I created a project, I'm writing a book called Name That Mouse to help people because the elephant is not the only animal in the room. So that's a project that's like a labor of love. And then coaching is important for me to actually have clients and keep being of service or I can disappear down a rabbit hole.

Yeah, totally. Yeah, I gotta stay And the other thing was travel for me. But yeah, obviously with COVID it's a little bit difficult to, or it's more difficult than it was, I suppose, but still possible. So I guess one of my last questions for you here is like— Oh, wait, wait, wait.

I just remembered, I just, you know, I feel like I just shortchanged everybody because I said, no, I won't go into the insight that I just got from this woman off the dating app. But I'm like, I don't want to rip people off. So can I share that insight?

No, please do. I thought she said something inappropriate in the message. That's what I thought.

No, no, it was amazing. It was basically, she sent me an audio from David Deida, D-E-I-D-A. And I was listening to this audio and I've been judging a lot of my life because I have this vision of the perfect life. And if I'm not that, then I judge myself. And, you know, like video games and drinking alcohol and whatever. I was judging all that. And David Deida said this most amazing thing. He said, I'm going to paraphrase. He's like, who cares? He said, I care how open your heart is. I care if you're giving your gifts. And this woman was complaining that her man would get drunk. He's like, Does he love? Is his heart open? Is he present? Is he showing up fully in life? Maybe he needs the alcohol to get by. He said, now, if the alcohol is stopping him from showing up and loving and opening his heart, you need to intervene. And what I got from that audio was I'm going to judge my life on different criteria going forward. I'm going to judge my life by, is my heart open? So maybe I am nerding out on programming, but am I present? Am I relaxed? Am I breathing into my belly? If I am playing a video game and stomping someone, you know, in the Netherlands, how am I doing it? Am I just trying to dominate? How's my energy while I'm doing it? And who am I serving in the day? That's how I'm going to judge. He said, look, you use glasses if you can't see well, right? That's a crutch to help you see better. He said, maybe your man's getting drunk. Maybe, you know, everyone's different. Maybe that's what he needs. And I was just blown away and decided that, realized that I'd collapsed, you know, my escapes and some of my habits with how I'm showing up in the world. And now I'm going to judge myself, you know, and who knows, maybe you talk to me in a month and I'll stop judging myself in this way. But the yardstick now is, is my heart open? Am I connected? Am I feeling? Am I present in my body?

100%. And to go deeper into that, I actually just saw this guy put a clip out like a week ago and he said, life's not what you do, but how you do it, which I think is a great quote. I think obviously, it also matters what you do to some extent. But like, you know, I totally see how that can be profound for people. And something else that you said too, of like visiting the prison, I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of people are like afraid to ask successful people like how they got there or for like mentorship. And I think what they don't realize is that it actually feels good to like give back, right? Like a lot of when I was younger, 20 years old, I would reach out to conference coordinators and basically ask them if I could come to the event for free in exchange for helping them with the event. And literally, I got like yeses, like a lot of them, like over 100 of them. And, and the thing was like, yeah, it was, it was very interesting. And I believe now that I'm kind of on like the other end of it, I totally, it's like, it feels good to actually like have those conversations. Even, you know, a college kid who's like in debt, they can't, you know, provide any like financial value to you. But that's not the only way value is determined. And, you know, if that's the way you view life, that's kind of sad, right? So, I don't know, just for anybody listening that is looking for mentorship, you'd be surprised, right? Because you're actually taking time, and I know that's a little bit different, but you're literally taking time out of your day to go to a prison. And, you know, let's actually look at that real quick, right? Because you're helping them, but it feels good to you, right? So, it's actually like you serving yourself as well, in a sense.

I think everything we do can be traced back to something that's selfish, and I think that's great. Yeah, that's fine. Just be aware of it. So yeah, I did it because it was interesting, because I got to feel good. I had some incredibly connected, intimate experiences teaching, and You know, I think it's also, it doesn't hurt my profile and my brand as well to have some kind of service. I think, you know, true altruistic service is also really useful. So sometimes it's useful to just give some anonymous money or do some anonymous good because then you know you can't get anything from it at all. But yeah, I think everything that we do would be traced back. You know, you go and do something for some, help an old lady cross the street, that's a Classic one. You feel good.

Yeah, yeah, no, totally. Yeah, yeah, you definitely feel good. But no, totally, it's, um, it's, it's, it's interesting to kind of go down those rabbit holes and trace it back. But, um, I want to—

what, what was it that had you, uh, want to talk about the prison?

Um, oh, I just, I, I just found it interesting because like for me, um, like that's a few years ago is when I kind of went through this my, myself. So I Like, podcasting was kind of my way of filling that time. Like, I started the podcast like 2.5, 3 years ago. And again, like I said, I did it from learning. But then, what I also started to do was kind of, I have, my Fridays are for like connection calls, right? So, what those calls mostly are for now is for if people like are looking for mentorship, like I have a special link that I'll only let people like that, I guess, book. And then, my Fridays are just kind of like chilling back and I just have conversations with people and it's just about helping them. Now, to be realistic, I feel good as well, but I don't think that takes away from the actual doing of it.

Agreed. And now, I've remembered there was something I want to say about the mentor thing. I'm a big fan of the law of large numbers. So, You know, you reached out to a whole bunch of conferences and said and asked, can I, can I come for free and I'll help out? Now, I bet a bunch of them said no.

Yes, they did.

Right. Yeah. But you keep asking. Now, I wanted Jack Canfield as a mentor, and I even floated the idea to him once, and he said something like, well, we'll see what happens. Now, if I'd kept, if I'd really kept pushing that If I'd been committed and let's suppose I asked every month for a year or 2 years, I feel very confident that at some point Jack would have said okay and I could keep looking, keep looking. What can I provide you? What can I provide you in exchange? So if you want some amazing mentors, go and ask 50 of them and the 10 that you really care about, keep asking, keep asking and also keep offering and keep looking for where you can help out. Someone modeled this beautifully in the last week or two with me as, and I don't think she'd mind me mentioning her name, Meredith Bell is a podcast host and she heard me on a podcast and she reached out and said, I got so much value. I got more value in this podcast than any other 100 podcasts And I'm paraphrasing here. I can't remember exactly what she said, but she said, it was so amazing. I've just gone and shared this on Facebook. I'd like to tag you. Could you add me as a friend? So I went and did that. And then she's like, I want to introduce you to everybody. And so she just led with the giving hand. And she's like, you know, here are 8 podcast hosts I think you'd be great for. I'm going to make an introduction if that's okay. I'm like, yes, that would be okay. Thank you for doing that. Then when I got on a call with her and initially I was a no because she asked if I'd be on her podcast and she had 18 reviews. I said, I have a minimum of 20 reviews. If you reach 20, I'm happy to do it. She reached out a day later, said, I've got 20 reviews now. And I'm like, all right. And then the guy that had interviewed me, he reached out to me and said, you should be on her show. She's the best connector I know. I'm like, alright, so she's working it right from different angles, but she led with the giving hand. And so when I got on a call with her, I felt compelled to want to help her. And I gave her something I haven't given anybody. I've got like a secret weapon when it comes to podcasting. I said, I'm going to give you backdoor access to this thing. That's my secret weapon. Because I wanted to reciprocate.

Totally.

So you can, and if she wanted mentoring, I don't know, I might be open to it. She might be like, how about I offer you this and in return once a week you give me some mentorship. Someone gives me a hot enough offer, I'm a yes. So law of large numbers, if you want something, keep on asking for it. Ask a lot of people. Byron Katie says You can have anything you want in life if you're willing to ask 1,000 people.

Yes. Yo, I literally say that all the time, meaning like, it's just, it's about how many people can you ask? It's, I wouldn't, I couldn't say it better. I'm just gonna stop there because you're literally just, you're hitting my chords right now. That's good, dude. So, really, I want to leave it to you just in case we didn't touch on anything, like, is there anything else you want to share? The floor is yours. And then also, website. I think we talked about that, but where can people stay connected with you? Best socials, you know, anything related to that?

Yeah, sure. I, look, I'm a fan. I'm on a life journey of trying to play the game better. The game of life, the game of work. Like, how do I do it better? And I've always thought it makes sense if I really care about it, I'll go and get some help. I'll go and get some help. I'm smart and I'm independent. I can do almost anything myself. But I could do it faster with some guidance. So, you know, if I want to play a video game better, I'll get a coach. If I want to date better, I go and get a coach. I want my business to do better, I go and get a coach. So that's my philosophy. If you, listeners, if something's resonated for you during this interview and you're thinking, I can do better too, and maybe this guy can help me, go to myfocusgift.com. And you can take the free training for the Samurai Program and see if you might be a fit for the program. I don't take everybody because that wouldn't work very well for you or for me or for the people in the program. I only take people that I feel confident that I can really help so that everybody wins. But I'd love you to go and check it out at myfocusgift.com if you think you might be a fit, there's a way you can reach out to me. We'll get on the phone and make sure that that's true. And if you're not, I'll politely tell you and maybe point you in the right direction. And if you are a fit, well, game on. We'll have a lot of fun.

Beautiful. Thank you again for coming on the show.

Yeah, my pleasure. I'm glad to meet you and I'm really appreciating your thirst for knowledge. ¡Gracias!