The # 1 Mistake Entrepreneurs Make That's Killing Their Growth

So hey guys listen we're all trying to get more productive and the question is how do you find a way to get an edge I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth a growth-based environment that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster and that's why I love growth day growth day is an app that my friend Brendan brashard has created that I'm a big fan Of write this down growth day.com Ed so if you want to be more productive by the way

he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that get your day off to the right start he's got about 5,000 $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app and I'm honored that he asked me To be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis and I do so go over there and get signed up

you're going to get a free tuition free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well so you get a free event out of it also so go to growth.com sled that's growth day.com sled all these things which were your ideas when they fail who cares it was just an idea that I was trying and I've learned Something from that idea if you're an entrepreneur how conscious are you from the entire experience the client has with you are you in the service Bu from the minute they

got there you have to make it as fun or as positive as it can be that is the best PR machine you could ever create $10,000 the next day I went from nothing parents house my parents talking like are you ever going to figure this thing out you're really just playing video games everything you can Imagine $10,000 next okay you just can't focus on your boss you got to focus on your boss's boss when you get in with that person that's one level or two levels up that's when you got to make the most of

it because that's when you show people you've got potential so this week a lot of you have been asking me if I would cover some stuff on business and being a leader in business and some of the things that I've learned over the years in terms of lessons that have Helped me grow and scale different businesses and so I'm going to do that with you this week obviously this could be 100 hours if we wanted it to be so I'm going to try to do is cover some things that I think are less covered when

the topics of business and Leadership come up just to give you additional things to add to your tool chest as a leader and so first thing is that I want to talk about a couple books that I read that really impacted me as An entrepreneur on my journey I read a book many many years ago by an author named Michael Gerber called the emyth and it really made me look at business differently it's a really brilliant book about the nature of being an entrepreneur and in this book there's many things that I took away but

to this day I remember him saying if you're a good entrepreneur you're going to picture your business as a product Actually sitting on a shelf the actual business is a product and then you can pull that product off the shelf and you can look at every single element of that business on its own and he talks in the book about many people suffer from what he calls like an entrepreneurial seizure he calls it meaning that there's a bunch of people who have gone into entrepreneurship who don't know the difference between working on their business and

in their business so I want To start out by talking a little bit about that this entrepreneurial seizure that I learned about is that like a lot of people have a passion for something let's say they're a great baker they go man I'd love to open up a bakery and so what you end up having is a baker who's a technician owning a bakery but they don't know how to run a business and so they work in their business all the time on the logistics of the baking and putting the product out there but Everything

from marketing to scaling to inventory to taxes to HR to you know uh profitability these are things they don't understand as an entrepreneur and so they're very much a technician in their business technicians have a tendency to have a passion or have Focus like I watch a lot of people that are in the financial business they're very technically good at what they're doing in their business so they work in their business but they don't have to work on It where they scale and grow a business I've watched this with people that own gyms that they're

passionate about Fitness they're passionate about people getting in shape and so they're great at the technical writing of the nutrition plan and and having trainers and having the best equipment so they work in their business very very well but they're not so good at working on it from a bigger perspective on growing it and scaling it and getting above it and looking at Their business as a product itself sitting on a shelf that needs everything any other product would need if you have a product a normal product you market right you're looking at all of

it you're looking at its its cost you're looking at its scalability you're looking at its value you're looking at its the difference that it makes you're looking at every element of how it feels when someone's consuming it everything about it yet most people don't look at their Businesses this way so there's two mistakes entrepreneurs make there's the entrepreneur who's the technician in my opinion when I've watched this over the years they're very technically Savvy at whatever their career is whether that be real estate or like I said nutrition or they've got a chain of dry

cleaners or they're a baker they own restaurant they're very good technically at that part of the business but they don't work on their business so they work in it too Much then there's the reverse I watch a lot of entrepreneurs who no longer really work in their business I've made this mistake where they only work on it they're only thinking they're only strategizing but they don't work in it enough to know what the market requires to know what the problems are that their employees are experiencing to know what the client or the consumer really wants

to have in their life and so they no longer work in it they don't get their Hands dirty enough it's one of the mistakes that where many entrepreneurs begin to lose their business is they start out working in it and then at some point they know man I got to begin to work on it or it's not going to grow and then what happens is they begin to work on it only and they take the best player Off the Bench oftentimes the best salesperson the best marketer the best Vision Caster is you yet because you

think you need to work on it now you Take yourself completely out of it and now all you do is work on your business I found most of the great entrepreneurs depending on the stage of their business have learned a Nuance part of the time working on it and other times working in it I found that when I'm working in my businesses I'm much more effective at working on it and knowing what I can do to grow it and scale it but when I lose the ability to work in it and I've made this mistake

I'm not as Savvy at knowing What will grow it what will move it and so you got to ask yourself this and also stage of business some of you keep hearing all the time you got to work on your business you got to be a thinker but not in the beginning stage in the beginning stages of a business you're mainly working in it this requires your grit your grind your marketing your sales your everything and so really businesses be becomes about learning the Transitions and and the uh ratios of Working on it and working in

it and obviously as a company gets bigger and bigger and bigger the leader of that company will be working on it more and more and in it less and less but I still believe the great CEOs the great leaders that I know still walk the floor still go with employees still go on Ride Along still want to know what's going on so they're in touch with the current Marketplace in order to know how to work on it and so I just want you to begin to Look at yourself as an entrepreneur and ask yourself today

am I working on my business enough or am I only working in it where I I'm I can't see the forest for the trees I basically I'm basically in it in the grind but I don't have a real marketing plan I don't have a scaling plan I don't have a growth strategy I'm not doing the things and pushing the levers that'll make this thing bigger that's one type of entrepreneur the other one is saying no I'm the reverse I've got so much working on this thing I'm so much of a thinker I have so many

meetings I'm not in the day-to-day grind like I need to be and I need to be working in my business more often this ratio this Nuance this Rhythm I believe is one of the biggest keys not discussed anymore in business that will be a Telltale sign as to how you grow or if you grow in your business the best entrepreneurs know how much time to be on it and how much time to be in it and They do they are not delusional one way the other they're honest they go I am just in it all

the time grind grind grind I don't ever look up I don't have a plan I don't have a 300 thou or 30,000 foot perspective I don't know where I'm taking this thing I I'm just going to get around to that that's a problem the other problem is the one who doesn't do that at all anymore though and that's a lot of people because they they don't really Enjoy being in the grind of their business any longer and so they would prefer to be just working on it all the time and get away from what is

the hard work the real work in life so begin to Nuance that based on the stage of your business the next thing that I want to talk about is you being focused on the experience you're creating for your customers and your employees or your let's say independent contractors depending on your business what gets People coming back what gets people giving you referrals without you having to ask for them is how they felt when they did business with you so step back today and ask yourself what's the experience you're creating for your customer or your client

not just whether it not just whether the product benefits them what was the experiencing the getting them there were they did they feel grinded on did they feel pushed too much did they feel taken advantage of Did they feel too pressured right did they not enjoy the process you have to look at everything from how they interact with your team to post sale uh experience to during the transaction um every element is experience generated as an entrepreneur and I I think one of the things that's lost nowadays is you know how many sales did you

get how much marketing did you do what was the profitability does the product help people that's all great but the greatest Companies give you the best experiences the best restaurant you've ever been to it's an experience right dealing with uh even your phone like what's the experience of using the phone the experience of buying the phone every element of every business when you walk into a gym what's the experience like when you walk in you know I've been to gyms where I walk in and the person who greets you in the front I can tell

as well trained good morning Mr myet it's Great to have you here have a great workout today how are you I've also walked in where they're like on their computer hey go just click in right there and immediately you're disconnected the experience of being in the gym where you know what's the music they play in there how well how kept is the gym are the weights recked all these different things are part of the experience of being in any business yet most Entrepreneurs the busier and busier they get they become less and less connected to

the experience the experience is what gets you referrals the experience is what gets you more clients the experiences what you what you get in terms of uh repeatability if a client can renew with you if you have that type of a business word of mouth and then also the experience of working for you is it joyful is it fun is it exciting is it productive is it growth oriented do They feel like they're contributing do they feel a sense of certainty yet have Variety in their business do they get recognition are they good at are

you good at recognition which I'll talk about in a little bit so these are all elements I think that are under discussed which is why I'm throwing them out at you today cuz a lot of you that listen today are are entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs at least and or want to be one if you're not one and you'd like the Lessons of doing it the next thing is another book that I read was called selling the dream many many years ago written by Guy Kawasaki and Kawasaki was basically as I get it kind of like the

marketing guy for Apple for Macintosh back in the day and what I learned from that book was that although the entrepreneur needs to learn how to be in their business and on it they need to learn how to create the experience the next level I believe that's under Discussed is their ability to cast a vision is to sell the dream and he talks a lot about how Steve Jobs and and after that was so great at selling the dream and casting the vision and it's something that I took very seriously I had to look at

myself and say how good am I at selling the dream remember this as a leader of a company of a business whatever it might be a real estate office a gym whatever it may be you need to be able to sell a big enough vision And dream that that the dreams of everybody who works with you they can see themselves fitting inside that dream or their dreams coming true inside the dream you're selling okay and it's got to be a real dream and so the best leaders are great dream Sellers and one of the things

they're reminded of of repeating that dream over and over again and also that they sell it in such a way that the people that work with them can see their dreams fitting inside the one They're selling and marketing now by the way it's got to be a real dream also one thing as a leader write this down it needs to be repeated more often than you think you almost have to get almost tired of saying it yourself and thinking you're saying it too much because business is not about saying you know new things to old

people it's about saying old things to new people you've got to be really good at repeating the vision repeating the dream the more Something is repeated and by the way we'll talk about in a minute other things you have to do the more it's repeated the more it's likely to happen and I think think entrepreneurs get what I call like a leadership fatigue of just repeating the vision repeating the dream thinking everyone's already got it already no everybody doesn't have it already and oftentimes it need re- reminding and oftentimes you need re- reminding so that's

that's selling the Dream and I want you to write this down number one thing you got to do when you sell the dream and I've made this mistake you need to back it up with your personal example you validate the dream by showing up and working hard and maybe that's in the business and maybe it's on the business but I have to tell you that if you set the example and I've done a great job of this in my career and there's other times candidly where I haven't where I've just gotten so busy Or have

so many other things going on that my own example suffered and then the dream isn't as valid it's not it's not as real for everybody around you but if they see you showing up early leaving late doing the things that leaders do that example can scream more loudly than even the repeating of the vision like I said there's stages of my career I've been tremendous at it and in self-reflection there's been other times in my career I was spread too thin or Not focused enough and um I wish I had been and that's why I'm

sharing this with you so being an example of selling the dream is important second thing is this in addition to selling the dream I think you need to consider what are you also against or do you have an enemy or is there something that you're trying to eradicate so I would write down against or enemy or eradication I think great businesses a big dream they're trying to create and they also have something Maybe they stand against um that they want to fix a correct an injustice have something that you also can say and this is

what we're not or this is what we're going to fix or this is the challenge so you know often times great businesses have this big vision and they're also like and we're going to eradicate this problem this is a challenge this is what people need there's this huge need in the market and so what are you against if you could find something you're Against or you stand against or you want to fix or you want to improve or an enemy even in business these are things that help solidify your business that's not talked about enough

the third thing is cause what cause are you after what's your Crusade what's your mission mission-driven cause oriented leaders who sell Big Dreams man that also have something they're against that cause is something so many people in their life have a huge need for contribution they Want to be part of something bigger than themselves particularly young people in our country right now all the data tells us that young people right now would rather make less money and be a part of something they think is making a difference in the world than ever before but I

can tell you as a guy who's not a young person that I think most human beings are wired that way let's step back for a second you've got this business where you're working on it the Right amount and in it you found that example you're selling a big dream that you're repeating that the dreams of everybody can fit inside right you got that part going for you you solidify it with an example you you're standing against something or something you want to fix an injustice now you've got a cause and a crusade and a mission

man you've got something special now you're starting to put together a business and by the way as you're listening to this Or watching it today maybe you're checking most of these boxes but you're missing one then use the things I'm covering they go that's the ones for me or maybe it's all of it but the reason I'm throwing out these things I'm going to throw a few more out at you is I want you to go that's the one we're missing or that's where we're a littleit bit off or that's the thing I need to

shift and change or that's the one I got to emphasize more right now business is Like you know it's almost like spinning tops you sometimes one of them getting a little bit wobbly you got to go spin that one you you know those tops you see so sometimes you're like well we're doing a great job in selling the dream but man it's been a long time since we've really talked about our cause and our mission or you know what we're really Mission driven right now but we haven't talked enough about what we're trying to eradicate

or fix or I'm Spending way too much time working in it I gotta start working on it more often or maybe it's the reverse maybe right now you're like man I am so working at 30,000 ft I need to get back to the grindstone and do more selling and marketing myself so so cause is the next one after that great leaders do what I'm going to give you next they transfer skill they're teachers great leaders are not just motivators or inspirers they're teachers and if they can't be they put People in place who can teach

the skills required it's one thing to be good at something it's another thing to transfer that skill well to people and just being good at something does not make you a great teacher in fact like in baseball for example most of the great coaches weren't great players they were okay players some didn't even play at all and the reason is is that a lot of times a really great player can't relate to someone who doesn't have their talent Or drive or ambition and they're not great at transferring the skill because they did things so naturally

and so a lot of times the way you're doing it isn't duplicatable isn't transferable to other people whatever that is in business and so make sure that you're transferring skills great leaders transfer skill they teach they equip people is what John Maxwell calls it equipping people and then the last thing I want you to consider today is Recognition I believe great leaders are exceptional at recognizing people people who run great companies are exceptional at recognition recognizing their clients if there's such a way to do that and giving them acknowledgement and praise but especially recognizing the

people that work with them every single day they find reasons to recognize I think they create two types of awards spontaneous awards that are just based on values and delivering on The company's core values and standards and then sometimes what I call like historic Awards like every year you know there's going to give away an MVP award or a a most supportive person every year but what they're doing is they're looking for ways to recognize people I'm telling you that we are a world stripped of recognition that if you begin to look at everybody that

you meet I learned this very young in business says they've got a flashing sign on them that says Make me feel good make me feel special tell me how great I am today and in my case I would say to you and say it with certainty say it with truth say it with passion that you got to get better at recognizing people publicly and privately the best recognition is not just in public it can also be done one-on-one where someone comes in and say listen just sit down for a second I haven't told you enough

lately how much I appreciate you how grateful we are to Have you here how amazing you are I have to tell you recognizing people is a trait of all the best leaders that I've ever worked with in my career if you made me pick the five best leaders that I've ever worked with I could tell you that I would probably pick them based on their ability to sell the dream their unrelenting example their incredible ability to express our cause and what we're standing against they were really great at teaching me something but man Probably above

everything they made me feel a certain way about myself the work I was doing and that I mattered and so take a look at how you recognize people have traditional historic type Awards and have spontaneous stuff have things people have to earn and things they didn't have to earn at all just for who they are and if you get become a great Master recognizer of people and you do the other things I've discussed today I think you're a Better Business leader Than before this podcast and so the reason I wanted to teach these things to

you today and bring them up is they're not things discussed often enough right and so if we go all the way back to the beginning by the way if you want to go get the emth I think it's a great read if you want to go read selling the dream I think it's a great read if you want to read the power of one more where I talk about some of these things in this book but today was really stuff that's even Not in the book I recommend it my book The Power of one more

and so be great about selling the dream be great about working on your business and not in it do an unbelievable about job of focus on the experiencing you're creating for the people that work with you and your customers and clients sell that dream big enough that everybody's dreams can fit in it make sure you're against something or you're standing for something or want to eradicate something Have an enemy focus on your cause set a great example transfer skill and recognize people and I think you'll have some sort of upgrade into the way that you

lead I hope today helped you I went through a bunch really really really really quickly because I feel so strongly about this and I like to keep these episodes sort of tight and concise and also I wanted to cover things that aren't covered all the time leadership being an Entrepreneur there's hundreds of things that we can cover this is a very short list of just things that I found lately as I see content and read books just aren't discussed very much anymore the emth is a very old book sing the dream is a very old

book and the things that I'm talking about today are tried and true principles and the applications can be done different in modern times what skill do I think is the most important as an entrepreneur that's a really Difficult question but if I could go back and you could only give me one skill to begin with and I had to build from all of it I can tell you for sure what it would be for me and that would be the ability to influence so it's the ability to persuade people without that skill set the vast

majority of my wealth does not exist if you can't persuade people if you can't influence people to make decisions that are in their own best interest but that also grow your Business your brand your company your net worth you can't ever become successful one thing that everybody I know that's a leader in everything they do can do is persuade people now I watch people do that in all different types of ways some do it through intimidation some do it through Force some do it through humor some do it through persuasive strategies transfer of energy you

name it but all leaders can persuade all successful people can get people to Make decisions in their own best interest that also get them to participate with their company it's the number one skill that I see most people not spending the most time on is their ability to communicate their ability to persuade people and because they're constantly trying to go to a different course or they think that somehow if their product is good enough or they get the right sales pitch that somehow they're going to win but the fact of the Matter is you've got

to become a better Persuader I'm constantly personally working on that skill and refining it my ability to persuade from the stage through the camera here to make to get you to make the decisions that are in your own best interest to persuade you that I can help you um to persuade my children uh when I'm negotiating on buying a company or buying a car or buying a Jet it's my ability to persuade people to make the decision that's in Their own best interest to participate with me and so if I was a quarterback in football

it's my ability to persuade the team to work the hardest to run the best routes to get open to give it all they've got head coaches in football school teachers their ability to persuade and influence pastors you name it personal trainer they've got to persuade people to do the exercise that they're the expert so it's our ability ility constantly to influence and Persuade people that I think is the number one skill in life and so if that's the case what are some of the keys in doing that so number one thing as a business leader

that you should be evaluating is are you constantly refining constantly getting better constantly making alterations constantly being aware of how you can improve in all of these areas the thing that happens when I say that to most people that are average let me tell you what Their response is I already have that I already got that down I'm already persuasive I already can do that and even as I say that to people I hear people all the time say oh I'm already good at that let me be very clear with you as a friend if

you were really good at that you'd be more wealthy you'd be happier you'd have a bigger business you'd have a better family life than you have so it's your vast overestimation of your ability about that one skill set That is probably going to hold you back more than anything as a friend let me tell you you're nowhere near as good as you think you are at that skill and the fact that you think you're great at it may be your greatest detriment to moving forward in your life because you don't think there's this gap between

where you should be and where you are that'll cause you to do the work to get there so I never overestimate my ability to persuade I always think I can get better I always think I can grow and I know there are multiple areas and sectors in which we persuade people so I might be really good speaking from the stage but the question is how am I in front of 30,000 people or 100 people how about oneon-one how about in my family how about to a group of three what about in a boardroom what about

the white collar people what about the blue collar people what about in my personal life right what about getting people just to make Their best effort what about putting money somewhere and so there are thousands of areas of which we persuade people persuade people to like you persuade people to laugh at your joke right so constantly when you buy something persuade them when you sell something persuade them persuade your children so it's your it's your overestimation and thinking you're great at that that constantly holds you back you're nowhere near as good at that as You

think you are and the fact that you think it is already an indication you're not very good at it so you might be great in one area but not great in the others and so please don't check the box and think you're outstanding at that because if someone who's spoken in front of millions of people on stages from 6,000 people to six people who's made millions and hundreds of millions of dollars in business traveled the world and multiple different businesses in Athletics I've coached athletes entertainers politicians business people one-on-one and I coach in large groups

if I know I need to get better in those areas I would submit to you that you probably do as well because I'm not as good as I could be or as good as I should be in almost every area of persuasion having said that let's take the business context for a second one thing I want to challenge you to be as a leader of your business whether it's Just you're a leader of one which is you as a salesperson or a leader of 10 as a team or a company of 25,000 employees is you

must become Evangelical about your cause and your mission the greatest business people have an Evangel vcal property about them they're evangelizing all the time they're propagating the the strengths the benefits of their business of their mission of their cause one of the great evangelists of all time is Steve Jobs there's a great book written By a guy named guy Kawasaki many years ago called selling the dream and in that book he talks about the way that Steve Jobs sold the dream of apple and he literally called him an evangelist for the cause there's a great

story in that book about Steve Jobs when he was recruiting he knew he needed to have a CEO of his company and he wanted to have the best and at that time there was a man named Scully who was the head of Pepsi and jobs was this young kid in his 20s trying to recruit this executive who made millions of dollars and he couldn't get them and he couldn't get them and he couldn't get them and finally he he gets the voicemail back in those days the answering machine actually of Scully and he says listen

listen man when you're tired of selling sugar water to kids over there at Pepsi and you want to come change the world freaking call me back and we'll do it together boom and he hangs up right he was Evangelical about The cause sugar and Pepsi changed the world at Apple right and Scully who's making millions of dollars he's CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the world looks to his wife and she says I think he's right we aren't changing the world and it was that one cause-oriented Evangelical phone call from Steve Jobs

and it exuded out of his pores every stage speech he gave every one-on-one every board meeting when he'd meet with their software Engineers when He'd meet with the programmers he was always Evangelical internally and externally and built a culture of one of the greatest movements of all time in the history of business there's great lessons there about being Evangelical the greatest presidential or political leaders have an Evangelical property about them the greatest salese do the greatest dads the greatest pastors they're Evangelical aren't they so you've got to become more of an Evangelist for your cause

and your mission number one number two you have to sell a big enough dream to your team to your company to your clients to the people around you that the dreams of everybody associated with you can fit inside the one you're selling it's got to be big it's got to be bold it's got to be expanding number three it's got to be repetitious you can't get tired of saying the same things over and over and over again one of the deficiencies of Leaders that are weak is they constantly think they have to say new things

to old people creating new things to say to old people the best leaders say old things to new people they say the same things over and over again to more and more new people new teammates new employees new recruits new clients new speeches new groups right they say old things to new people they're repeating over and over the vision and the cause of their business of their movement these are Great communicators the next thing all great communicators understand whether it's words physiology the look you give somebody or writing influence is energy it's the transfer of

energy it's getting you to feel about my company feel about my mission feel about my product feel about my cause what I feel they're conscious of transferring energy to people because that's what moves people that's what gets them to act it's not just the words it's not just your face It's not just how you're dressed it's an energy transfer there's a hook by the way you can't transfer to me that which you're not experiencing yourself you have to physically be experiencing it in the moment it can't just be the words you're reading from a sheet

you have to really believe it one of the reasons a lot of salespeople struggle or recruiters struggle is they just don't believe enough they don't spend enough time making the case like a lawyer Litigating to themselves about how powerful what they do is and the more and more you really believe if you're a True Believer you can evangelize your product you can evangelize your message so invest more time in your own belief in your research in your knowledge finding third-party articles magazines blogs things that reinforce whatever it is you're doing that feeds your own belief

that way you can give it to me you can't give it to me if you don't Have it and so they don't spend enough time spend more time feeding your own belief and be conscious of the transfer of energy to another person there's a great study out right now that I was just reading about bees and them deciding which flour to pollinate is based on the energy the flower puts off they sense the energy from the flow and they move towards that one deciding to pollinate that one well if you want more people to pollinate

your business Pollinate your life if you want to track the right relationship the right right amount of money the right clients the right employees the right recruits the right vendors the right support you got to be putting off that energy because people are going to pollinate it somewhere you want them pollinating with you right and that's an energy feeling they get from people the bottom line is people got to be when they get around you they got to feel something special About you special about where you're going special about your cause special about your mission

that something special is happening something historic something big a big old dream in fact one big enough that my dream can fit inside the one these people are selling me right and so this is the key of moving people the number one skill go all the way back to the beginning my number one skill that if I could keep only one would be this right here the Ability to persuade people in multiple areas of my life how do I get better at it transfer energy number one feed your belief number two number three make sure

that it's repetitious over and over again say old things to new people right and you got to be Evangelical and sell a big old dream the bottom line is is that this is a process that never ends of growing us of growing our ability to persuade people one of the things about communicating as well is doing it with a Lot of specificity great communicators great influencers great persuaders are very specific and very clear about what their message is and so even communicating yourself and leading yourself I grew up walking this beach right here this exact

Beach Beach and I didn't live like this but I told my family someday told myself someday I'm going to live on this beach I didn't know who these people were that owned all these beach houses I didn't know Exactly how you got one but I began to repetitiously transfer that energy to myself about my dream over and over again literally thousands if not millions of times and now someday it happened now that day is here and I live on this beach as one of four homes that I own and so that's how you communicate with

yourself and others that transfer of energy I can tell you that in my own situation I'm always trying to how do I Evolve it how do I modify it how do I feed my own belief more how do I sell it bigger how do I back it up with more facts the best leaders sell a big old Vision they tell a great story the best people I know are great storytellers remember this facts tell stories sell most people make decisions emotionally from the story they rationalize it logically with the facts so make sure you're selling

a big dream a big story and then you give people the facts This is the way we begin to move people in our lives this is the skill of entrepreneurs this is the skill of building something big and building something small and building something permanent too is your ability to persuade focus on your energy focus on your belief level and focus on refining your message the last thing is this say it faster and say it quicker less is more you don't have to tell them everything you know leave a little bit To the imagination one

thing that happens the longer and longer we're in business the longer longer and longer we're around the more and more we learn we feel compelled to tell someone everything we know about our product everything we know about the business and that's not how you energize people you give them just enough and then shut up my dad used to tell me when I was a kid when I'd be asking for money to take my girlfriend of the movies he'd say hey Don't sell past the clothes right he had already agreed and I'd keep selling them I'd

keep selling them and sometimes I'd lose him with this extra BS I'd be given him so I want to challenge you don't sell past the clothes so of all things in business right time management goal setting Vision identity all those things we're going to talk about in on this channel are very important but if you can't communicate if you can't persuade you are toast the last thing I would say To you how do I get better there's lots of books lots of tapes but it's really for me it's modeling I learn to model certain people

initially and then modify model and modify so I would model people not copy them but I would model certain people's Styles one or two different people and then I'd modify it to fit my own personality model and modify right don't try to create everything on your own and don't try to copy somebody else that's different than you you got to be You so model and modify the last thing I would tell you is to the extent that you can transfer this skill to other people will be to the extent that you can scale your business

so it's one thing to be able to persuade yourself and transfer energy it's an entirely other thing to equip other people around you to do likewise the best leaders are not just Evangelical about their cause can't just transfer energy they have the ability to transfer that skill of transferring Energy to other people and then you begin to build your movement whether that's 1 or two or 10 or 25,000 or millions and millions of people sometimes your clients can be your top evangelizers for you when they use your product so it's your ability to transfer that

skill and you have to do that through repetition the way to transfer the skill of trans of energy to people is through repetition and role play repetition and role play far too many People just talk and teach their teams how to do things they talk at them rather than work with them the way you get me to do it is there's no substitute for experience 100 hours in the classroom is worth one hour in the field a 100 hours of teaching is worth one hour of roleplay where we do it together getting them on the

stage getting them when I started speaking one of the great speakers that he was an older guy so this is going to date him but when I First started speaking I got on the stage and I would open up for this one speaker and when I'd come off stage he he was really older guy but he'd say what was it like to play on stage with Elvis meaning he was the Elvis right but I got to know what it was like to be on the same stage with the Elvis of speaking at that time and

in business too often we just talk at people and don't let them get on stage with you Elvis there's not enough role play There's not enough engagement and so it's repetition over and over repetition is the mother of learning repetition is the mother of skill it's the mother of owning it over and over and over and over again until it becomes reflexive because when the the words and the message and the energy becomes reflexive then when you're under pressure when you're stressed when you're down when the client's objecting you reflexively respond with your habit but

if you don't Have that habit that reflex uh uh uh you begin to respond and lose energy and so the reason repetition matters is it allows your responses to be reflexive under pressure and then the second thing is roleplay there's no substitute for that experience of being on stage with elas I say it you say it I say it you say it and it's not just the words it's the feeling it's the transfer of energy the number one skill of entrepreneurs and leaders of entrepreneurs is the Ability to persuade and hope these were some of

the tips that you should be conscious of of becoming worldclass at it knowing you'll never be world class at it knowing we can always get better we can always stretch we can always grow and improve our skills in multiple areas hope this helps you all right it's that time year it's cold out one of my favorite things I've gone back to is hot chocolate I'm doing that all the time right now and I love laying on the couch With a blanket on when it's cold out watch a little football or some Netflix yes I do

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use the code melet to get 20% off your First shipment and save yourself the hassle this ski season that's sh sh skis.com make sure you use the code myet so they know we sent you I read this blog you wrote I think you might have wrote it a year ago but you republished it recently or at least it came out about the elephant in the room and when I was coming up in business I had a good fortune of Getting to Know Jack Welsh just a little bit and one of Jack's big principles was cander

being candid with People could you share with everybody the story about when you were let go at your job and then your philosophy about you know discussing the hard things in business in the elephant in the room this is huge everybody yeah you know it it's people have this false sense of wanting to preserves people's not hurt somebody's feelings yeah uh and you don't what I've kind of learned is that you're never fooling anybody and worse when there's an employee who is not Working out and out of perhaps your sense of goodness you're trying to

make it work or you don't want to hurt their feelings or you go this person it's terrible for two big re reasons one is people aren't stupid and they can see that this person is not performing and then they worse they form the opinion about you and they go either either mark is stupid and he cannot tell that this person's a loser or even worse Mark is weak and he's afraid to do something About it and wow that is always kind of resonated with me when all of a sudden I realized how it backfires when

you're afraid raid to take action and there's so many examples of this I mean listen listen we've all worked for companies before and there's this classic thing when someone is not performing and they put them on a I would you call it a pip a produ performance Improvement plan or something yeah and I go that is such cruel and unusual punishment that we're Going to do this Kabuki theater for six months where I'm going to pretend that you're going to actually get good at your job and you're going to pretend you're going to go through

with it but both of us know you're going to get ultimately fired and all I'm doing is covering my ass how much better it is to call the person in and say Ed it's not working out you know it I can know it we all know this but it's not because you're a bad person it's because you're Just not a good match for what we need right now and let me help you find a great job I'll give you the recommendations I believe in you let's find something that works God that's just such a I

mean listen a person's going to be shocked it hurts to lose your job I'm not saying it it easy but when you look back on it everyone feels better about their being honesty behind this whole this whole approach I agree and just so you know this was born out Of a situation where you lost your job and you basically talked your boss into letting you stay that's right how ridiculous yeah I I said I heard this stupid story that this is you know years and years ago but I had heard that it's easier to get

a job when you have a job so I talked him into saying let me stay for whatever it was two months or whatever this the the severance they were going to give me and it was terrible because I was The Walking Dead everyone knew that I'd been fired but they were all playing along with this ridiculous uh play acting and of course I didn't use the time to get another job yeah what it does is it erodes your culture when you don't have cander when you keep people around that shouldn't be around at least move

their butt to a different seat it erods the culture in your company and you just don't perform to the to at the level that you could and you business is Millimeters it's inches these little things are the differentiation between having an exit someday or becoming a world-class company or even you becoming a millionaire or multi-millionaire and not these little things that we're talking about here the other one though that you speak very eloquently about I really love the way that you talk about this is dealing with failure so I the more and more uh as

as I get older as an entrepreneur and just observing humans My son wants to become in one of my companies in the financial industry in sales and Dad think I'd do well cuz he's articulate and patient and hardworking and I said I said max yes but here's my concern can you can you really deal with rejection and failure because ultimately that's what takes people out most of the time yet it's talked about in the 10 things you should do but to me it may actually be the most important thing is your ability to deal and

how you process Failure ultimately and you you speak about like 97.3% of all the tests you run run were failures but talk to everybody about this notion of failure and what it means and someone like yourself how you process what most people would call failure yeah it's funny because you know I do a fair amount of um of work with entrepreneur programs and with i t Mentor entrepreneurs and that question gets asked so often and they put it a Different way they go how do I know when to give up um how do you deal

with failure and it's always kind of been a strange question for me cuz I don't resonate with that I don't really get it and I've kind of realized and this is not something that's corny I don't think about failure as failure and I've kind of only now realized in the last handful of years what's going on is that I never fall in love with the idea I always fall in love with the Problem and when you fall in love with the problem well the problem never goes away the problem never fails the problem is always

there and then what happens is all these things which were your ideas when they fail who cares it was just an idea that I was trying and I've learned something from that idea that each of these failures is a jumping off point to more exploration even when something goes totally wrong well at least now I can cross those three things off the List and I've narrowed down the possible approaches I have which actually might work and for me that that this is great that's the fundamental reason that I'm so motivated and excited that I've gotten

to spend my entire life as an entrepreneur not because it's worked out economically well for me not because of any of the other things that go on it's because every day it's this adventure of I've got this thing I'm trying to solve and I get to come into work and I get to Sit around the table with these smart people and try things wow and wow Sometimes some of them really work most of the time they don't but that's okay that's what makes it fun and always been this positive Mark were you this way before

you were successful like this was a philosophy you've carried most of your life oh absolutely you know back I started as an entrepreneur 40 years ago and back then I mean there were entrepreneurs but no one called it that Or no one talked about it and there sure as hell weren't classes or business majors or shark tanks about it you just were a person who was compulsively driven to see something which wasn't working and go I've got to there's got to be a way to fix that go to the problem solving thing for a second

I'm just curious because if that's the thing you love doing you know I'm I used to think here's a problem what's the right and the wrong thing to do and I don't Feel that way anymore do you have a personal problem solving sort of philosophy that you would share with everybody if that's so critical if that's something you love doing do you have a philosophy regarding that oh of course I do and it's one of the things that's taken me a long time to learn and I've learned that ideas don't count for they they don't

I hear so many pitches you know I do a lot of Angel Investing I work with entrepreneurs all Over the world they all want to pitch me their idea and they're fun and you're listening but the thing is no idea zero ideas end up turning into the companies that they become the successful companies all are this winding path of one thing leads to another Almost Never in fact never do things that are successful go lead directly from the idea they started with and so what I've learned is that the key thing is you got to

do it that the more time you spend Thinking about it the more time you're wasting that you're trying to Envision can I see around the corner can I figure it out and even worse entrepreneurs get these things stuck in their heads and they're safe and they're warm and they can build them and they can make them into multinational corporations and they can imagine all the amazing things when everyone's using this app without spending the first moment figuring out how they're going to actually get the One person to use the app and here's the trick the

one way is you just got to do it you've got to say I'm just G to start and I'm GNA start completely half-ass and I know I'm G to stumble it's not going to work but by taking that first step I'm going to start the process of learning what might work and what I've learned my process is to break down all Pride to break down all sense that this is going to happen or work well and just just freaking do it and what's taken me A while is to get more and more comfortable with how

crappy it can be and still be a learning experience and I've come to learn that this in my opinion is the skill that separates the great entrepreneurs from the mediocre ones is not how good their ideas are but how clever and creative they can be about figuring out ways to try their ideas quickly simply and cheaply and I do not mean minimal viable product bull crap because that is still way too much Effort it's thought experiments it's simple tests it's ways of colliding your idea with reality as quickly as you can like the classic story

listen I'm getting wound up here so you got to stop me if you need to but the classic story is that when Reed Hastings and I were driving commuting to work and we were brainstorming ideas for what I could sell on the internet and we had a bunch of them which I can share with you if we have time but we had this idea let's Maybe we could do video rental by mail and then that was a bad idea but a few months later we heard about the DVD and all of a sudden wow this

could unlock the old idea now we did not go cool let's go to the office and write a business plan we did not go amazing let's go put together a pitch deck we said let's figure out whether this is ridiculous or not and we turned the car around in midc commute and drove back down to our town where we lived and Looked for a DV D because it was a DVD business and couldn't find one so we said let's just buy a used music CD Wow and we mailed that in a little pink gift envelope

to Reed's house in Santa Cruz and found out less than 24 hours later that this idea actually might work because the D the CD got to read in less than 24 hours for the price of a stamp but we found that out within 24 hours of having the idea wow that is the kind of thinking that I look for you know Entrepreneurs that's the kind of way that I pursue you know one things you said I unpack something and then ask you about this that's one thing there's all this entrepreneur skools you got have a

vision you got have a vision you got have a vision and I think often times I made this mistake I was I got so committed to my original Vision that I was paralyzed and inflexible by it rather than having the flexibility to evolve like what you've described here It's a huge distinction for sure and then the second thing I think I'd ask you is my threshold for looking like an ass is really you know what I'm saying I think that's one of the traits like I don't mind looking really stupid and I think too many

people it's not just the low-level message is don't worry about what people think about you that's lowlevel high level is can you enjoy looking like a fool right and that's the Would you not agree with that because that's ultimately what's going to have to happen for you to take the risks to do all these tests do this Evolution that you've described of course absolutely and you know it's like one of my lifelong uh challenges been learning foreign languages and I've concluded the key is you've got to be willing to sound like you're a eight-year-old you

know because if you don't if you're constantly just Translating in your head you never make that rapid connection but startups are exactly the same way you've got to make a fool of yourself how many do you speak what I'm sorry how many do you speak now I speak four of them terribly in other words I think English I can tell you that yeah I do English is okay but it's for it's more the challenge of learning something rather than is perfecting it because I get bored so there's this idea of being able to look like

a fool that You talk so eloquently about then there's this other element that isn't discussed much and I've heard you talk about it that I relate to which is that often times trying to do something great let's just call being an entrepreneur but could be wanting to be a great athlete want to be a great mother it can be lonely you know and I I wonder if you ever felt that way on your journey I think there's millions of people you Know that are going to be listening to this in their car on the treadmill

right now and they're feeling connected and they're getting inspiration and value and then when this is over they're back to feeling pretty alone and I think an acceptance that that's actually an indicator you're on a good journey uh is something that you should all know do you agree with that did you ever feel alone and lonely as you were pursuing this because I think that's one of the Emotional things you have to deal with as well I I completely agree and it's something that doesn't get taught and it's something that isn't talked about and it's

such a shame because it is the reality of being an entrepreneur I mean people when they see entrepreneurs portray in the media you know they're on Shark Tank and it's exciting or they're pitching or they're having the launch party when they watch The Social Network movie whatever it is but it's not like That a lot of it is this overwhelming responsibility you know I remember early at Netflix we were probably only a year in and things were not going well we had this idea everyone said will never work turned out to be right and we

were really struggling and I remember standing in the stairwell just looking out at the parking lot and thinking I'm I'm responsible for all those car payments I have to make this work I have my friends and family who've invested I Have to make this work I have this dream of making this company I have to make this work and it's on your shoulders and you think about it all the time and it's a very very natural thing but it's it's one of the reasons why they consider a two-person founding team a more stable configuration doesn't

mean you have to but it certainly makes it easy and and one of the roles that I've kind of played over the last 15 years or so since I left Netflix was as a mentor As a person that a CEO of a company could talk to who did not have an agenda I wasn't their board who was their boss I wasn't their employee so they had to be careful what they communicated about I was someone who understood the problem well enough who they could talk to about it um and that's a really really rare thing

and it's something a lot of Founders including myself um have struggled with I I see you being incredible at doing that even we're Talking now I feel some of that for myself and and and I'm grateful for it and you know I think one thing entrepreneurs need to know by the way people need to know even if you're going to lead a family because one of the things that comes with that is you will probably car carry what I call the emotional load to degree maybe even more than you estimate there's an emotional load you're

going to carry that you need to be equipped for and prepared for for The moments like you had in the stairwell you know for the moments when you get back on that jet coming back from Dallas for the moments when you know inventory runs out or your order get shipped the wrong way these are all part of the emotional load regardless of your business model when someone quits that you depend on if you're in the sales business one of your top producers leave or a client account goes the other way can you carry the emotional

load and So I hope everybody senses that I've heard you say this before cuz you're a trainer but you approached the business I just I thought this was awesome because it's it's uh true of almost any business we would describe what business are you really in so you're a trainer but you what business would you say you're in above all I'm great at connecting people I can't monetize it for I I wish there were a way to say Let me introduce you oh you need a contractor well oh you're looking for a car oh your

wife needs a new OBGYN oh you want I can connect so many things that have nothing to and and you know we all in our trade we develop certain go-to lines and I always say I can't get you into any restaurants or clubs but anything in health Wellness medical I got you I know the top shoulder surgeon I know the top knee surgeon I know the top nutritious the top dentist dentist I Got dentist I got orthodontist and then I have just yeah so but it's being years where I am and I can also call

them on their cell and connect you like that right but I'll tell you clubs I don't even know what clubs are hot now restaurant I got a couple goto restaurants but it's nothing that you'd probably want to go to um and I and I and it makes me happy nothing makes me happier than someone I had a call two week yeah a couple weeks ago somebody Said I chip my tooth what can I do and it was a Friday afternoon I go stand by boom yep and they were in the chair within 2 hours getting

the V and I thought yeah yeah that's what I can do cuz you approach it like a I've never heard this before you approach it this is such a lesson cuz a lot of trainers watch this how do I grow my practice right but that goes both ways if that dentist gets someone who's lying there going you know I feel so fat when I lie In this chair it makes me really see my stomach well I mean the analogy I would use is a restaurant analogy right it's you pull in you pull into the gym

you pull up through a restaurant is there a place to park and I goof about parking but in La parking is a very real thing um is that difficult how much of a headache was that getting into the place you walk in is there someone who stops you greets you do they remember you is there a rhythm and a flow to to what you Do when you get there or is it a whole check in who are you again I mean little things like that can can slow the role and it it's a lot less

fun overall and the next time the person has to go to that they go H I'm not going and then to me then your cancellation rat goes up even if you're charging for cancellations over time that goes away too you won't go back to the same restaurant if forget the food the food I take for granted if the whole experience That that preceded the meal was a pain in the ass bro that's I had one of those last night the food was great the experience was crap we'll never The Experience can be bad on either

end yeah right usually we tend to selective Amnesia we Trend to forget what happened in the middle if the food was good right but if you ask for the bill and it's 20 minutes put you in a bad mood on the way out if you get to valet 20 minutes and valet is a real Thing in La every restaurant is valet or a lot of them right that put that kills the whole vibe right yeah or the the waiter just disappears and you can't even ask us you're like we've been here 15 minutes you you

were at my dinner last night all all of those things have no but I think as you're an entrepreneur if you if you are one watching this how conscious are you from the entire experience the client has with you are you in the service with from the minute They got there cold water room temp some of my clients like cold some like room temp we have water and towels out for every person that's a service well I don't provide that well you should and if you don't we can't afford that but raise your rates if

I if I ran a hotel the mini bar would be free now the room would cost a lot more but the mini bar would be free all the time yes you're going to get a couple of jerk offs who empty the mini bar out as they Leave okay fine but you're also going to get people who don't touch it yeah and you need to find that sweet spot in your price point to make that work for you because nobody at the higher end of any service wants to be nickel and Di I I 100% believe

that and I think you entrepreneurs listen to this I don't care what you I don't care if you have a bakery a dry cleaners or you're a software engineer all of these things are so important as an entrepr see these Are the things like and I mean this with respect you know this it's not just the ZIP code cuz for someone to they have to want to come back they have to want to keep coming back it's their disposable income watch this it's their disposable income their limited free time for something that is arguably painful

right how are you how how are you making that hey want to come back right right you have to make it as fun Or as positive as it can be there should be so many and fact only positive associations with their experience with you that when training comes up when cold water comes up or room temp water or your name comes up there's a positive Association that happens that is the best PR machine you could ever create you were saying earlier we were talking I hope you don't mind me saying this but you don't you're

very well known that you don't have a publicist and I and I Think the reason you're so wellknown is what you just described when your name comes up there's a positive Association and your your clients are raving fans about you if you were an entrepreneur knowing that this see if someone could have knocked on my door in 1985 and said hey the internet's coming maybe you ought to start thinking about that as a businessman this thing's coming this wave's coming start to think strategically About businesses products Services methods of delivery that could help there I

feel like what we're describing this this um longevity industry we'll call it that is the next big wave and if I were an entrepreneur listening to this i' be thinking how do I prepare myself what should I be thinking what should I be looking at so I know it's a difficult question but what advice would you give to an entrepreneur who's hearing these things from you and all the Possibilities that come along with it what should they be thinking or doing yeah well so the world has changed a lot in the last few years I

was the first young guy to start companies on longevity and I if people are wondering it's all on my website I've started more than 15 companies I help I've helped dozens and I've taken four public awesome um I reinvest all that money by the way in startups and jobs and philanthropy so I'm not not trying to Make money I'm trying to leave leave the world but if someone could have instructed me when I was young what I would have said to them is identify a trend and if you don't have the money to invest get

involved in startups but but work with the best people don't work with mediocre people cuz the best things are going to get really hard when you start up a company things are going to fail you may be near bankruptcy and you want to be with people that you can Trust so I don't work with anymore done with that awesome really that that's the first Criterion and uh you know my friends are all like family to me and vice versa that's actually one of the best bits about getting older is you you have this group of

people you can trust but from the outset I wish that I had always worked with the best of the best so look for that if you have a little bit of money you can invest in Something like this some of these companies are just getting started and the field is exploding so I agree with you that longevity research is going to make the iPhone look like old news I do too and I love what you said about Trends and finding the best people those are two huge keys if you're entreprene thinking about this you should

be thinking about what are the trends how's it impact the business you're in currently right what are the changes Going to be there okay I have one last question for you um because I'm just fascinated to know this are you doing are you afraid to die no you're not that's an easy question in fact I used to be afraid to die when I was in my 20s and 30s cuz I wanted to see where things would go and there's this natural fear in all of us but I now know that I'm Not Afraid cuz I

fly a lot and a few times those planes were going down and I I had felt that I was going to die it was Going to be sad that IID missed my family my family would have to do without me but personally I'm not worried about that my wife is the opposite she grabs under my arm and she's I'm going to die and I said if we die we die I don't want to die and I'm just like as long as it's not too painful I'm good with it so letting go of the fear of

death was one of the best things I ever did in my life cuz now I can live without fear you got it that's The key what we're going to do now we're going to step in we're going to finish the story but now you're going to step into what I know about this man we're going to step into his Brilliance he calls him superpowers you have a lot of them you you distill it down to one but I I think one of them is your and you won't acknowledge this I think you have a high

IQ I think you critically think quickly and I think you have an unbelievable which all great Visionary People do to take very complicated things and make them sound very simple which is why this is going to be so good what we're about to transfer into but we need we need to know how you get there to step in cuz it almost became out of almost like necessity that you end up in the space I worked at a call center enrolling people into online colleges it was a college called Ashford University and my job was to

make 600 calls a day enrolling people into the school I'm not Even get started on there but that's where my passion for Education really sparked because it was the opposite like before it was you know what do these people at the University of San Diego know that the people on welfare don't know but at that school and I don't want to talk bad about anybody ever but to me they were calling people who never graduated college and they were saying do you want your degree they were getting them to fill out fast for forms To

get money and then giving it to them they would never finish and the company would still get paid but they were really taking advantage of uneducated people yeah and once I understood it it just validated everything I said in the beginning the difference between welfare and educated like it was just I got really upset but then I also learned things from there and I learned that like there's a ,000 employees and I learned about online education at the Time and so I found this company that was selling online quit smoking programs to help peopleit smoking

and I said dude if I can take your program and put into the online classroom format then we can can make billions of dollars this is crazy and so I called up a friend whose mom just made a bunch of money from inheritance or selling a house and I knew that so I said hey man let's get into this online education stuff I pitched him he gave me 30,000 bucks I Made the stupidest mistake I've ever made in business you guys should listen to this this is why you never people ask me what's the fastest

way to build a business find somebody who's already done that and ask them how to build a business that's step one and always step one dude I bought 30,000 bucks from my buddy okay I spent 27,500 of those dollars on the biggest mistake ever which was it was on technology to actually host the online Courses and in my brain I called one company and they said we can do it for X price so I thought that's just what it was so I took all of the the money my friend let me borrow gave it to

there didn't think about anything else and we lost it and here's what I found out a year later the platform that I paid for was actually free oh gosh I paid them to customize it for us but it was actually free oh my gosh I could have and then later I ended up redoing the same thing I ended up paying someone 500 bucks to do the same exact job except better gosh that's crazy I'm telling you if you were an entrepreneur underneath the million dooll mark there's only two things Stopping You ignorance and arrogance I

embodied both at the time this isn't so hard I can just figure this out and then ignorance killed me and I cost myself everything W long story short through trying to sell this online course thing I stumbled across this thing called Facebook ads yes and that is where it all changed for me because I made money literally while I was sleeping sleeping and it changed my relationship with the thought of money trading time for money and I was like this thing is going to take over everything I got obsess with it I started buying courses

on it cuz I wasn't going to try and figure my stuff out and I started practicing and practicing and practicing and literally for 2 years I took on a couple clients I Didn't make any real money yep but you were willing to work for free for a while too and that's a lesson entrepreneurs need to hear right so that's how I got all of my experiences I started just telling people hey I can work for free I went my own way with that smoking company and I was like this is actually what it I'll give

you guys a play byplay if you're really hungry for clients or customers and you can apply this to any industry I went to monster Craigslist and indeed and I looked for people who were looking for marketing I would make them a screen capture video meaning there's a software that's called Camtasia it's free 30 days for a trial and you can film your screen plug in a microphone so I would go to their website and say hey what's up my name is Billy Gan I know you don't know me but I'm looking at your website and

here's what you can fix to start making more money right now if you like more advice Call me bro I didn't sleep I woke up every single day I did the same process again finally I got a call and it was the Swedish lady this company called kids in the house big parenting compan they're probably still around doing the thing and she calls and she says hey I love your video we'd love to help you can I hire you to be a consultant I said what the is Consulting I don't I don't know what Consulting

is this is crazy but like I Just needed money I was like whatever sure yes ma'am absolutely tell me what your Consulting needs blah blah blah long story short she ends up paying me uh a th000 bucks to consult for her I went up there I showed them what I can do and I realized it was validated knew what I could do and then I did that same process again and again and again and again I started getting clients and now I had an agency on accident not on purpose and then finally I took all

of The winnings I was getting cuz I was killing it for people and I recorded a short video and here's exactly what I did I'll give you guys tactical step by steps I went on Amazon okay I got a green screen for like 40 bucks okay I got a tripod which cost me like 20 bucks I got a microphone cord a lava mic which probably cost me $7 and sat down at my parents house and I said there was a wets suit company I was working at the time I said hey everybody um I made

a Short video and I said hey everybody here's how I sold $150,000 worth of wet suits using Facebook ads on a $6,000 budget if you want to see how I did it click here and I brought them to this 10-minute video of me outlining exactly what I did at the end of it I said if you want to work with me and you want me to do the same thing for your business click the button below and schedule the time to talk with me $10,000 the next day oh my goodness So here we go everybody

now $10,000 the next day I went from nothing parents house my parents talking like are you ever going to figure this thing out you're really just playing video games everything you can imagine $10,000 next day okay I want to start out a little bit just to give them context because you haven't just done this once you've had multiple successes just give them a little bit of your background because I don't think that was an adequate Introduction about the businesses you built and what you did with them yeah so you know I started my career actually

in banking mm so you know there wasn't really the startup scene back when I was in high school you know I graduated high school in 1989 me too U oh did you okay great yeah College in '93 yeah there wasn't really this startup scene and so uh you know being from New York and um the stock market and stuff was kind of a hot thing to to think about as a kid and I I got into stocks at a young age you know from from 10 years old I had a little you know book that

I would look in the newspaper every day and write down the St stock prices Kellogg here's what it was it was up this and tracked them and you know read about stocks as a as a kid and started getting and reading books on derivatives when I was in like seventh grade eighth grade wow but my whole childhood was filled with all these entrepreneurial things that I did Not realizing that that could be like a thing like you could actually be an entrepreneur and and start something and never even occurred to me don't you also think

though like if you're a parent too listening to this cuz I had that entrepreneur bug and I didn't know was a kid too we both had basb card businesses and you and I both had lemonade stands and I had an auto detailing business and I think if your kid shows that proclivity early you should be feeding That because we are we are in that world today so in your case though it fascinates me so you kind of this entrepreneurial Spirit you go to college first dude in your family really to do that you do well

you're doing very well in the banking space yeah and then but you've got this entrepreneurial bug sort of floating in you the whole time and there's a lot of people listening to this that want to be entrepreneurs but they're out of job right now you know They're they're winning where they're planted for now but in the they've always wanted to have their own thing or start something and and in your case what I love this you didn't even know what the hell it was right so one day tell them you just basically walk into your

boss and go hey and what did you say yeah I just walked into my boss's office one day this was like about almost seven years into my banking career and I was Executive Vice President Chief risk office for this Bank making a ton of money never thought I'd make that much money you know just cuz you know just wasn't a thing you know growing up thinking that that was possible at that age and uh but I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur I knew I had to just go all in and so I went

and my boss's office and just said his name was Jerry Goldstein and I said Jerry um hey I I just want to tell you that I'm going to resign he goes he laughed he Goes come on what what do you mean where nobody's going to pay you more than I'm paying you and I said no I'm going to be an entrepreneur I'm going to do a startup and he's like really well what you must have a great idea I said well I don't really have the idea yet but love but I need time to think

about it cuz I need to go all in and do it but didn't didn't people think you were crazy he thought I was crazy he really thought I was CRA the people around you like You're going to leave this really good job like I want to be but you don't even know the idea yeah everybody thought I was crazy no Capital either right like not a lot Capital well he thought I was so crazy he said you know what put me down for your first I think it was 50 Grand that as an investor 25

or 50 the guy you resigning from goes well when you figure it out I'll give you $50,000 and so I knew nobody it wasn't like you know we had family friends and things That had money because and I started with Angel Investors it was that first bit of money and then he basically introduced me to two people said hey you should go talk to these two people and then from that seed I wound up talking to I don't know maybe 200 Angel Investors and I got 60 investors to invest a total of 5 million bucks

no Venture I didn't know any VCS I didn't know anything about the startup world I didn't know what a cap table was you Know it was like I knew nothing I just but I got 60 Angel invest to give on average was you about 80 grand each and and it was like 5 million bucks and that was the the thing I try to tell people all the time you don't have to have everything buttoned up and know exactly what you're going to do you kind of just go all in and a great example of this

was I agree we we started um you know there's like a CPA charted you know uh accountant and There's the CFA chartered financial analyst there was nothing for Financial Risk Managers you couldn't get certified so I was talking to my my boss and became a friend and and I was like you know why don't we just kind of create an an exam for Risk Managers because it doesn't exist and he was kind of like yeah well you created an industry yeah how do you how do you create an exam and so we started talking to

people and um basically they're like well you can't Just create a certification like who are you you're like 24 years old you can't just start an exam like who's going to like accredit it or who's going to and I said no no we're just going to we'll start an ass iation wow and a not for-profit Association and that Association will credit it you know and then we'll we'll kind of do the exam and so everyone's like yeah that's crazy you can't do it so I said you know forget it I'm jumping in what we're going

to do is We're going to set up a website we're going to put up a date for the exam first thing we did was a date we just picked a date like it's May you know whatever I don't remember the year 9098 here's the DAT it's New York City actual date and here's the outline of all the things that going to be on the exam send a check for 500 bucks and you got your seat and then that's it and so we just put it up there and all sudden we started getting checks people started

Sending checks and it just like so we looked at each other like I think we need to write this exam now oh my gosh there was no exam at the time no it was just we just started with the date and the and the and the agenda for you know the the the topics we started getting all these checks and we got 34 checks $177,000 and 34 people and so we decided so me and Lev and sat down and we spent weekend after weekend nights and things writing this entire exam on every topic And we

gave also recommended readings as well and then we we went to New York City we rented out of place and we administered this exam to 34 people and then we went home and corrected it we decided where the P fail was we sent certificates to the people that passed and now today it's still in like 50 countries around the world there's like thousand of people taking this exam you're a trip man like like no but but it's just a great I'm just I'm just Saying that only because people think that when you start something it

has to be like buttoned up or you need to have a plan you need to know your next step or whatever and what I always say is you know just take the biggest step you can with your next move yeah that's it like toward your vision you have the vision and just take the biggest step you can and for us the biggest step we can take was here here's the date I believe here's The here's the common line of the entrepreneurs been on the show or my friends that are entrepreneurs is they're willing to step

into spaces they're ill prepared for and they go when I get in there I'll figure it out and then when I get in there I'll figure it out when I get in there I'll figure it out and in your case and then I want to go to some Clues cuz success leaves Clues and what I want to spend our time today on are those Clues are those Lessons you've learned but just for everybody to give some context what the made me attracted to having you on was the diversity of your success so this is you

know an exam for Risk Managers right success in that space you take diapers.com sell it to Amazon I think they give it in your own case cuz it's your story I think even in your own case you don't have quite the appreciation for how remarkable is so you take diapers.com sell it to this little Company called Amazon right I'm kidding and then you build jet.com you sell that to Walmart like you've had a really crazy career for a dude who literally walks out of a job one day that's really successful it doesn't even have the

damn idea yet like it's remarkable merge these two things together for me because you're you you own this content cuz you've lived it what's manage two up and two down mean I know what it means but I want you to Tell them after reading and and self-awareness wrapped around it okay manage two up and two down okay I think if you're coming up in an organization you obviously want to have a great relationship with your with your boss okay and and you know so you you need to know how they're thinking what they're thinking and

you you want them to know that you have their best interest at heart and that you're trying to help them in the organization okay But you got to manage two up you just can't focus on your boss you got to focus on your boss's boss or go as high up as you possibly can okay and that's when you got to realize when you get in with that person that's one level or two levels up or more that's when you got to make the most of it because that's when you show people you've got potential you're

not just doing job that you're in you want when you get a chance to have that meeting or be with that person you Want to go in and you want to talk about the things that you would be doing if you were them or what the company could be working on that shows that you think about the business bigger and so that person's going to look at you when it's time to look when they have your review process they're going to say oh boy yeah you know that person has a heck of a lot of

potential okay so it's you know it's two up two down you have to motivate the people that work for you you really do The your direct reports and you want to you want them to feel a part of your team there's a law on leadership which I believe is no involvement no commitment so you you definitely want to get people involved and and make sure that you they everybody on your every one of your direct reports knows that you need them you value them and that you're looking for them to make you better because you

know that you need them okay the two down is going to the front line go as Close close as you possibly can to the customer where it really happens and make sure that whatever you're thinking is really really happening where it matters most which is with the front line who's making it happen for your customers and make sure that it really works you need to validate you know your own assumptions and the thoughts that you may have but I think that two up two down is a great way to think about it and uh yeah

love you if you really want To grow in a company you better show the people above your boss that you got heck of a lot of potential what about their awareness level of them themselves like to me I I can I connect with people who have a sense of themselves their strengths and their weaknesses right couldn't agree morea you know that that's where I had what would I call my 3x5 exercise okay and every year I do it myself and I put my I I do a 3x5 card And I write down who am I

today and what do I want to be tomorrow okay so for example um believe it or not when I was coming up I I was really enthusiastic really passionate that's hard to believe yeah I mean you know but you know what when you're 26 27 years old you're working around a lot of people because you're getting promoted faster than other people you got to temper that enthusiasm you got to temper that passion so that people will see you As more mature but you have to be aware of how people think of you you know in

my book taking people with you I write about you know my leadership style and I'm a marketing person that's how I came up but in marketing I always ask the question what perception habit or belief do you need to change build or reinforce to grow your business or grow yourself okay so when it came to people and and leading I would always ask myself what perception habit belief do I have to Change build or reinforce to take people with me and they might say like when I was at Pepsi Wayne Callaway was the chairman of

PepsiCo I loved Wayne I was with Paul Barett his for funeral we loved each other okay but he he he he saw me as a marketing guy I went to him one time and I said you know and I'd always go in with those four or five ideas to show him I have potential and then he finally asked me Faithfully he said you know uh David what do you want To do with your career I said' well I want to be a division president he said 'w you're a really good marketing guy and I saidwell

Dwayne I want to be a division president he says you're a really good marketing guy I said Wayne I want to be a president he says I'll make you president of marketing we could improve pepsico's marketing function but when I walked out of that room I had the self-awareness I had the self-awareness that I was going to have to demonstrate That I was more than just a marketing guy that I wasn't just a Airy fairy creative person that I could make money you know work with the front line get things done and that's when the

job came open to be the Chief Operating Officer for the pepsicola company and I went in and I took on a new challenge and I I definitely learned from this new challenge but it was like I said to my boss I said look you know Craig weather he he I said if I don't do a good job And this job you can fire me in six months put me back in M fire me put me back in marketing but you got to give me a chance I begged him for the opportunity and I got that

job and that's how I end up being the president of KFC that's awesome story that is an awesome story and you what I got to say everybody's like to some extent it's read the room you know I've watched my intensity over the years be a bit too much for people when I was younger and I Learned to temper that and soften it to some extent actually even poke fun at myself for having it just like what you just did and it's an important quality of a great leader all right I've been dying to ask you

this question and it's not in the book but it's got to do with leadership so maybe the most read Business book the last decade or so is good to Great by Jim Collins have you read the book you what I'm talking about okay I'm interested if you can be candid Philosophically whether you agree and so everybody let me just put it to you this way Collins's premise is basically get the right people on the bus if you're a leader of a company but that ironically most companies aren't led by great Visionary super charismatic high energy

people that's a that's an overall summary that's not fair to what the book truly says but I'm making a generality and then I've always thought yeah that's true but then I've looked at business I'm like well that's that's Steve Jobs that's not Sam Walton that's not Alon musk that's not Mark Cuban that's not Jack Welsh so I've watched some pretty charismatic Vision stretching Dynamic people lead great movements in my career and so I've always wanted to ask somebody who is an expert and has known these actual people you know them and you've seen companies of

all different types succeed and fail where do you come down philosophically on Well I think that Jim Collins If I recall in that book talked about these leaders that he's talking about being level five leaders they didn't necessarily have to have that that Charisma and all that kind of good stuff okay um and I think it is possible to be an excellent CEO without having a ton of Charisma but I I think having a little Charisma actually helps a hell of a lot now here's what he's trying to get at is that the leader that's

ju got all this Charisma and is and and is a promoter okay nailed it I know you're going this then you know that that leader okay that leader is is not you got to watch out for them so that's why he talks in his book about the importance of being a clock Builder okay and that's putting process and discipline around what really matters matters so I would say hey if I could have somebody on my in my company leave my company that had Charisma okay that Could fire up the troops that could be inspirational and

had an appreciation for building the clock process and discipline around what really matters I'd take that person over a let's say a level five boring leader that that you know everybody really appreciates him for how smart they are now they both can be very effective but you know leadership has to flex you know you mentioned Elon Musk I I read his book uh the book Walter isaacson's autobiography Or or biography on Elon Musk have you read that yet Ed no you got to read it okay CU Elon Musk is is a Furniture breaker I wouldn't

do hardly anything that he does cuz he's just damn he's just damn tough on people you know yeah but what he's tried to do and to to be a true innovator he had to break some furniture to get it done and he worked his ass off and he's got his vision and he got people around him who ultimately will follow him now y he's not worried Too much about taking people with you you kind of find you get on his highway or you get off of it okay yeah and that's rare right I I look

at it like I to be honest with you I by the way I've recommended colins's book as much as any book I've ever recommended but I've also looked at business and I think what he's warning against is these super high energy charismatic leaders lack humility sometimes lack self-awareness lack that lack the ability to still learn so to me If you're a high energy super charismatic leader you especially need to read David's book because it's it comes with the territory when you're a big driver and high energy and Visionary you really better have the skills of

learning fostering this environment that he's describing recognizing other people so to me it's kind of the combination of both I I I just love your answer about that too what about process and discipline like but you you use it like In the book like a golf comparison is the way that you do it in the book you know what I'm talking about yeah yeah you have to have a process of discipline around what really matters and every business and every team there's there's things that really matter and if you want to have great execution you

can't leave them to chance you got to have process and discipline so think about let's just take Jason day for example okay a great golfer you watch him on Television right he closes his eyes okay you know he visualizes the shot okay what's a good shot look like okay he opens his eyes he sees that shot he goes in there and he does the same thing every single time because he knows that he's got visual visualization is the key to him really pulling off the shot all these guys have great golf swings but do they

they see the shot yeah and and if you see the shot you have a real good chance of hitting that shot mhm and and And and I think in business you know you have to have process and discipline around what really matters I mean if you I I if you if you want to make your customers happy you got to measure customer satisfaction in some kind of way and hold people accountable for that you know you know measures a lot of times can be boring but they're very important because measur show people what you really

expect as you well know and uh but those measures should be Around what really matters you know so many times people have a thousand measures they they're measuring everything I remember when I went to Pizza you know I couldn't believe the measurement book we had and I said people you know I think people can only remember what three of The Ten Commandments what makes you think you're going to remember 20 things here and all these things are not created equal so leaders have to be disciplined enough to Figure out what really matters in their business

and then put the build the clock around it so good I just think in listening to you how cool this time and history is that for free right now somebody has in your brain about this topic because that this space exists now 253 years ago there'd be no access to you in a live conversation it's like I guess what it goes to is my gratitude for what we're doing right now every once in a while in these interviews like This is crazy good this is crazy good and I I want to acknowledge that with you

I'm just so grateful for your your wisdom it's just it's just very special that we get to talk about this [Music]