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How To Move Forward Amidst Adversity: Find A Better Way With Michael Johnson

BYW S4 10 | Better Way

 

This episode focuses on the WHY of Better Way. Dr. Gary Sanchez’s guest is Michael Johnson, the owner of Shock Wave Defense. Michael is the ultimate innovator who always looks for a better way to do everything. Join in the conversation to witness how Michael’s WHY plays out in his life, starting with martial arts. Today, he trains the public, law enforcement, and military personnel on how to function properly in resistant environments. If you like to find a better way, you’d love to tune in to this episode. Don’t miss out!

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How To Move Forward Amidst Adversity: Find A Better Way With Michael Johnson

We’re going to be talking about the why of a better way. If this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking ways to do everything better. You find yourself wanting to improve anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvements with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, “What if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better?”

You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, “I’m often pleased but never satisfied.” You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something.

I’ve got a great guest for you. He is a perfect example of this. Starting in the martial arts world at two years old, Michael Johnson continues to grow his knowledge and career in combative. He opened Shockwave Defense in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 2002, which combined experiences that yielded life conviction, behavioral psychology and multiple black belt rankings into his interpretation of defense called Bellicusology, the study of militant, martial and warfare ways.

He holds a BA in Criminology from the University of New Mexico and as the Honorary Squadron Commander for 512th Rescue Squadron at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Johnson has done bodyguard work for celebrities such as Xzibit, and was the primary deadly force combatives instructor for the Florida Department of Corrections and their special teams.

His instruction has reached over 19,000 officers in the Department of Correction and has trained multiple officers from other agencies, as well as the Silver City Police Department in New Mexico. He’s a Certified NRA Firearm Instructor and a Professional Lecturer through the New Mexico Department of Public Safety. He teaches domestically and abroad including Taiwan, Yokota AFB and Tokyo, Japan, where he trained the 459th Airlift Squadron, how to defend themselves and their aircraft should a hostile actor try to take over the aircraft.

His tried and tested skills have been tested against underground, full-contact fighters. He has over 55 full contact stick weapon fights. He continues to train the public as well as law enforcement and military personnel in how to function in resistant environments. Additionally, he and his team produced films and judgmental training software scenarios to aid first responders in dealing with violent individuals in shoot and no-shoot scenarios.

Michael, welcome to the podcast.

I’m glad to be on your show.

I’m looking forward to this for a long time because you’ve got a very fascinating story. What you’re doing intrigues a lot of people especially CEOs that are wanting to figure out how to protect themselves. Before we get into that, let’s go back through your life. Tell everybody a little bit about you. Go back into your childhood. Tell us about where you came from, how you got into the martial arts and that whole story.

My why is a better way. The how and the what are also significant factors in this. My how is through simplification, to simplify and then the ultimate thing there is to make sense. I need to make sense out of things. I’ll talk about the nine pillars that shifted my life from when I was a kid. They don’t happen to you. They happen for you. If you understand a lot of elements and things such as the why is an important aspect here, you’ll go, “This makes sense. This is why.”

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I’ll get started with this mindset of what I train executive warriors. I have a few different products won for men who are dealing with harsh environments and life-changing events that have taken place, anything from a harsh business decision, family upset, death in the family to dealing with infidelity. Any of those lines that they might be facing, how to handle that mentally but then also how to channel that in a positive way, through being able to protect themselves and their families.

This whole concept is about awakening the warrior within you and using what you have to get what you want. I’ll start with the very first element. The first one was the darkness. I remember when I was younger. I was in my bassinet and the moon used to terrify me. One of the things that I recall was my dad hated hearing us cry at night. He would take me out of my bassinet and put me in the closet. It made it quieter.

From that standpoint of me being in there, I was terrified. I’d be crying. It was harder. He’d come back, hear me crying, whack my rear-ended. Sitting in the darkness was one of the first powers that supercharged my development in understanding both the criminal mind and how to utilize things that we’re afraid of. Most people are afraid of the darkness until they learn how to use it. The first element here is what you start with. It’s not what happens to you. It’s what happens for you.

The next event that was a big part for me was the blade. It was about five years old. I had a knife to my throat. The person was telling me they’re going to slit my throat and stuff my body behind the television so my parents couldn’t find me. That shifted the way I looked at fear and violence. When you’re so helpless, small and don’t have the power to defend yourself in a situation like that, that’s going to change the way you look at everything that you do as you get older to be able to protect and defend yourself. Your tactics are going to be very different.

Most people are afraid of the darkness until they learn how to use it. Click To Tweet

A lot of people look at these events like, “That’s so horrible.” I remember one guy who wanted to do a documentary on my life. He goes like, “Most people go through one thing. You went through a whole bunch. We could do ten documentaries on you.” He almost said it was unbelievable that all these things happened. I said, “I can see that but it’s all documented. You can go find it.”

A unique thing about what other people consider horrible things happened to you are not happening to you. They’re happening for you. It’s going to help shape you into a motivation and drive that’s going to shift the way you think, how you ask yourself questions and what your why is. These all help form who you are.

After the blade, the next one was the brokenness. It seems mild compared to the other events but my dog had died and she was my best friend. As a kid, I lived in the East mountains. I didn’t have anybody to talk to. My parents would go, “Go outside and play with the dog.” That dog was my best friend and when it died, I realized that I did not have any power to bring this animal back. I lost my best friend. You learn how to control the controllable. That’s a tough situation to deal with. Inside of that, that went on. My parents got this horrible divorce and both went separate ways. That added to that area where you can’t control the controllables.

The next big thing that was a huge impact on my life was the lawsuit. The first person that ever sued me was my mother. That was such a unique situation. She was upset because I was in a situation where I was leading the business and she handled things differently. Her fight with life and everybody around her. She didn’t deal with things well on aspects like that.

It was like, “You’re wronging me. I’m going to go after you, destroy you and do everything to you that I did to your dad that led to divorce.” On that court stand, there were a lot of elements inside of there. In my head, I was like, “This is ridiculous and crazy.” What you end up doing from that is if your mother sues you, anyone will sue you. From that point forward, everything was in writing. Leveraging and using it to make it something bigger.

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After that, I was homeless. I was living in my car. I ended up finishing college and moved out to Florida. I wanted to experience Florida. I’d never been there. It probably wasn’t the best judgment decision of moving out there and ended up living out of my car, in and out of Motel 6. It was at that point that I understood this concept of the yes. It didn’t matter how many noes I got. It was the yeses that mattered. I ended up finally getting a job. I got 150-square-foot apartment. I was able to start building this company I’d worked on before I left called Shockwave Defense.

I was building it on an ice chest, my laptop and a beach chair that was sinking in the center. It was cutting off the circulation in my legs so I couldn’t sit down for longer than 5 or 6 minutes and ended up putting a board across there so I could try and sit on the board. I don’t have a whole lot of fat on me so my rear end was going numb. It’s such a crazy time in my life. I had an air mattress that I bought from Walmart or something like that at the time. I’d fill it up at night. In the morning, you’re on the floor. It was a huge emotional challenge.

You sat down and start realizing who’s who. People that I thought were good people that were going to help me didn’t help me. The people that were supposed to be bad people reached out their hands and kindness. They were like, “I’ll help you if I can. I’ll pray for you.” I came back from that. I move back to Albuquerque and started opening my school. I have my best friend at the time. I met him when I was probably 6 and he was 5. This guy and I grew up together and saw each other at least 4 or 5 times a week, every single day throughout our lives.

I was debating whether or not I was going to put this in here because it was such a painful memory for me. He helped me build my school and stayed up all night. You know how it is launching a business. You’re putting all your energy into it 24 hours a day. I don’t hear from him for about a week. His girlfriend called me first. She goes, “Have you heard from Kyle?” I said, “No, I haven’t heard from him.” I figured he was ignoring her because she was a nice person but I figured he was probably blowing her off. His mom called. I was like, “I haven’t heard from him.” Then his dad called and that’s when I got concerned. It was all in a matter of a day.

They’re like, “Can you go to his house and see if there’s this black box?” Apparently, his mom had bought him a 0.22 for Christmas and that was gone. We started this rescue search for him. We ended up finding him up in the Jemez Mountains. He went up to the mountains and killed himself. For whatever reasons, it was unknown to me. His poor mother was so devastated by it.

She was like, “How can you be his best friend and not know that he would kill himself?” That put an additional level of stress on me. I was like, “I don’t know.” I felt bad. I’m his best friend. Then she was like, “If you didn’t know then you must’ve done it.” I was like, “This is horrible.” Not only that I lose my best friend but this person is trying to cope in their own way of being able to figure it out so they blame me. It was a standard suicide.

It doesn’t matter how many nos you have. It’s the yeses that matter. Click To Tweet

Everybody that was there, from the PJs because they had to call in the PJs due to the place, he was in the mountains, to the law enforcement they’re like, “This is a standard suicide.” The officers apologized to me. They said, “I’m so sorry. She’s searching for answers.” I’m like, “That was devastating.” If you lost your best friend and this other person is trying to point the finger at you or anyone else, they can make sense out of it.

After that, I was like, “This sucks.” You keep going, never give up and keep moving forward. I started riding motorcycles and was into that for a little while. I got hit by a car head-on on my motorcycle. I flew off. On all accounts, I probably should’ve been killed from it but I got up and walked away. I remember hearing this very powerful and authoritative voice when she hit me head-on said, “It’s not your time. Guard your head.”

That sounded like great advice. I covered up. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced having flesh ripped off your body sliding across the asphalt but it sucks. It teaches you a lot of pain tolerance. Every time a warrior feel pain, that’s your new pain threshold. It happens the same in business. When you go through something horrible, you’re everything compared to getting hit by a car because the girl wanted to update her Facebook or whatever.

I’m pointing these nine pillars because for a lot of people, they would think, “I would give up. I’d be done.” You’ve got to ask yourself what’s your why? Why do you continue going? Why do you keep fighting? I end up in a situation where I have this woman that I fall in love with and I have a child with her. I find out six months after my daughter is born that she’s cheating on me with not one but multiple men. I was devastated. It was one of those things that you sit down and you’re like, “WTF.” It’s one of those things where you’re like, “This is horrible.”

That in itself for me, out of all the events up to that point probably the hardest I’d ever been through. There’s a thing inside of you as a warrior that you’re used to fighting the external but when the enemy is from within, it hurts so bad that you can’t figure out how to conquer that enemy. It starts to tear you apart and break down your mind. It’s not something you can run from. It’s like food poisoning. You’ve got to let it pass.

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You wake up in the middle of the night with these horrible dreams. It was a rough experience. Then 8, 9 years later dealing with the judicial system of a family law system, it is such an asinine concept. It makes zero sense. You go through these different events and end up realizing that every single one of them is a gift. Not one of these things happened to me. They happened for me.

As I was thinking, I went through all these different events as I was getting ready for our chat on your show. I thought you only want to pick the ones that were impactful in my life because I had a bunch of other stuff that went on. The point is at the end of the day, understanding who you are and why you do what you do is what’s going to give you the drive to keep pushing forward.

The Lord has blessed me. I make no qualms about it. Without God, I would not be here. I’ve had a very interesting life. I’ve had a life that at times, although I use it for good, while I was going through it, it sucked. None of these events were like, “Let’s do that again.” I was like, “F that, this sucks.” When you sit down and look at all these different variances as they happen, each one of these elements are gifts from above to allow you to be stronger.

Let me ask you something about that, Michael. When did you realize that these happened for you instead of to you? How old were you? What was it that made you realize that distinction? That’s a huge distinction.

I’ll be honest with you. I was trying to get my mind focused, especially as a young man. Honestly, probably not until I was in my 30s. In my twenties, I was like, “What the hell?” You sit down like, “God either loves me or hates my guts. Why does this stuff keep happening? Can you let me die already?” The moment for me was I had different clients that I would work with and they were at the brink of losing it. They’re like, “I’m ready to end it.”

With all of these different variances that I got to go through, I could give them multiple different answers to a very temporary problem that they were about to make a permanent answer to and be able to pull them out of that arena. Probably it’s in my late 20s, early 30s that I realized God is allowing this to happen because of a prayer that I made when I was a child. I had forgotten about it up until that point.

Martial artists and experiencing the things that happened for me when I was a kid, I remember one time I was watching the evening news and this woman had been brutally attacked. I remember going to my room and I prayed. I got on my knees and said, “God, I can’t always be there but if you could let these things happen to me instead of them, I’m willing to take it on.” At that age, I did not understand fully what I was asking but the Lord blessed me with answering my prayer.

I can pretty much talk to anybody who’s going through anything. Sit down with them and give them a different perspective from a different lens that helps them overcome those moments of fear and pain. It’s all about your focus. There are over two billion bits of information trying to get into your head at any given moment. The conscious has a tendency to chase emotion. When you sit down and start understanding that consciousness and emotion are not one of the same, that you can separate the two of them, you can start understanding what you’re going to choose to focus on.

When you start choosing what you’re going to focus on, you’ll be able to see what makes sense to you instead of the elements of what is being presented to you. Whatever you give your attention to, that owns your mind, heart and soul. If it owns your mind, it owns you. What you have to do is control the three things. This will help you go into the unknown with confidence because life is such a unique world. You can control the controllables but outside of that, you can’t control anything else.

I remember one time a guy was like, “That guy over there, do you think you could take him if he was trying to hurt your daughter?” I said, “Yeah.” He goes, “You don’t know anything about him.” I said, “I don’t care. I don’t need to know anything about him. What I know it was about me. I’m willing to die to protect my daughter. Even if he wins, he can enjoy his victory with one eye because he’s leaving here with an ass-kicking.” It’s about what you focus and what your mind is on.

Understanding who you are and why you do what you do will give you the drive to keep pushing forward. Click To Tweet

The first counteroffensive that you use when you’re dealing with all these different scenarios is the three Vs that give you power. You have to learn to control because they are your controllables. As creatures made in the image of our maker, we are given the power to give meaning. People say, “I can control my thoughts.” You can’t. You’ve been to one of my courses, Gary. How quickly can I live between that space between your ears?

If I want to get in your head, I’ll be in your head. Your job as a warrior is to guard the gate of your mind and control vision, voice and visceral. The vision is the media playing out in your head and the meaning that you’re giving that. The voice is the talking. What is being said? Do you tell yourself every single day when you walk past the mirror, “My rear end looks horrible. My waistline is disgusting. Look are those bags under my eyes?”

You have to be able to get your mind wrapped in a different direction of that internal dialogue. “What’s happening there? Are you controlling yourself? Are you in control? Are you separating your consciousness from the emotion and insecurity?” There are different things that will trigger these things. For example, a lot of the men that I work with and coach on dealing with infidelity had this visceral response. They’ll see a car drive fly that reminds them of something that was going on in that event.

It’ll immediately put pictures in their mind. An internal dialogue starts recidivating, going through and building this loop. We all have this loop. If we stay in that loop and keep playing, it’ll suck the life right out of you. It’ll pull the energy away from your soul, productivity and business. That’s the hardest part about controlling all of these events when you’re in them. They’re rough. When you learn how to separate consciousness from emotion, it’s like standing in the eye of the hurricane. The exterior is moving with tremendous force and power but in the center it’s calm.

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When I was telling you some of the stuff, I was annoyed about it. You said, “How do you keep calm?” You exercise through these things, even if it’s a speck of dust in the eye of the hurricane. There was more coming but you learn how to fight through it. When we look at the why, the mindset behind that, there is so much leverage if you can understand what your purpose is.

When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me, “If you walk this Earth, you haven’t changed this world and made it better then you should have never been born.” I believe that. That’s part of what I train the men that I coach and work with. We have female students as well but I have a group specifically that I work with men. I call it the Phoenix Rising because it’s about them living a 2K life. Most of Christ’s works were done in three years. We’re talking about them 2,000 years later. Have the last three years of your life been worth living or talking about for the next 2,000? That’s a powerful thing.

How did you learn all this? Take us through the path that you’ve been on. It’s a fascinating path and there’s a lot of spikes and valleys. How did you learn what you’re sharing? Who was your mentor for what you’re sharing with us?

God. People try to say, “Was there somebody else?” One of those things I prayed when I was on my knees is I said, “Father, I don’t have a father. I need you to be my father. I don’t know how to be a man, a dad or even a father. Will you teach me?” He’s the one that gifted me the discernment, wisdom, articulation, ability to understand it and translate it into a way that people can understand in a way that is clear and has that clarity.

The only way I can say it is in truth. Even when we were doing the underground fights, a lot of the tactics we’d start studying and all of a sudden, I’d have this dream of this amazing concept. I’d go use it and be beating people with this concept that they had never seen. They’re like, “Where’d you learn that?” They wanted to hear some cool Filipino or Asian guy’s name. I’m like, “I dreamt about it last night.” There are levels where he spoke to me in dreams. He’s given me these insights and wisdom. I’m not trying to say I can float above everybody else. I don’t feel that.

What I do feel is that the credit is to him because I would have never gathered this knowledge on my own. There was nobody to teach it. I didn’t have people around me to teach that knowledge. There’s one of the events I left out but fascinating. When my mom was trying to raise us by herself, growing up, she had so much opposition coming against her. She got to a point where she was like, “I want to date.” She married this guy that was a whack job. He kept threatening to kill us all in our sleep. I’m 140 pounds. This dude is 6’5, 6’6 and 240.

I used to have to physically fight this guy almost every other weekend. The one that kept me safe and gave the insights of articulation and understanding was Elohim. It may not be the answer that the audience is looking for but it’s the only answer I have to give them. God gave me the insight to articulate this, understand it and have a discerning eye to see it, the vision, voice, visceral. As I was going into meditation, I was like, “What are the things that mess with us in our reality?” This is what came to me.

Let’s go back a little bit because I don’t know if the audience understands how you got into martial art yourself. Where did you take it? How it shape you for what you’re doing?

Initially, my grandfather started in the arts back in the ’20s. Ironically, his life was probably similar to mine in a lot of aspects. His dad took off when him and his sister were young. When his mom saw that, she took off. At the age of 12 or 13, he started raising himself and his older sister. Samuel Johnson, the guy was such a stud.

When people say, “If you respect somebody, who would that somebody be?” It’s him because he followed this path and felt the Lord paid for him. He quit school and started taking care of his sister at the age of 12 or 13. Martial arts was the only thing for himself. Being a Black man back in the ’20s and ’30s, that was not a good time to be a Black dude. He had to deal with a ton of oppression and all sorts of levels of resistance but he kept a roof over his and his sister’s head. He ended up meeting my grandmother who already had my dad.

He jumped into that scenario and then took on that family as his own. He started training my dad at a very early age, as I understand, from when he was eleven. He got his first black belt when he was 16, 17 years old. He loved the martial arts and continued pursuing it. At the time, the biggest craze was this episode called the Green Hornet. My dad flew out to Seattle to train under a guy named James Lee. James brought in a guest speaker that evening who announced his presence by kicking the heavy bag and shaking the whole building. My dad turned around and Bruce Lee was standing there.

Pain is temporary, but your reputation will outlive your flesh. Click To Tweet

A lot of people don’t understand this. Bruce Lee is a giant but it wasn’t until after he died that his name and reputation got huge. Back then, it’s the Green Hornet, a B-rated movie. People didn’t understand the power of how talented that man was. My dad with his experience in martial arts looked at Bruce and was like, “This guy’s phenomenal.”

At the time, my dad had seven black belts in different martial arts and then went to spar with Bruce Lee. He beat the hell out of him. Bruce beat the hell out of my dad. You got to understand my dad was a bodybuilder also. He’s a very talented guy, muscular, healthy, strong and this small Asian guy that weighs about 140 pounds soaking wet, 5’7” whoops him.

He asked him, “What are you doing after class?” He goes, “I’m flying back to Seattle. I’ll be there tomorrow.” My dad quit his job, went back to the Chinatown School in California and started training under Bruce from ’67 to ’69. I started training when I was about two years old. Bruce Lee was my dad’s best man at his first wedding with my sister’s mother. Long story short, he was like, “You should probably jump into movies with me.” My dad was like, “I don’t feel like doing that.” He’s trying to talk him out of it.

My dad went ahead. They had a part of time where they weren’t talking as much and then Bruce dies. My dad then flies out to China to go train with Bruce Lee’s instructor, Ip Man. By the time he got there, Ip Man had died and so he trained with his son, Ip Chun. When they came back, there were all these martial arts schools that have popped up all over the place after Bruce had died because his name was like wildfire. It swept the nation.

Every place you looked, there was a Kung Fu School. In this scenario, that’s when they moved to New Mexico. I started doing my training at the age of two. I started my daughter at the age of three in the defense. What we did is we went from studying the basics all the way to trying to figure out what the simplification was. I remember my first fight in eighth grade. The guy that I got on a flight plastered me because I was trying to do all these stupid martial arts moves. He smacked and knocked me out cold.

I remember one of the last things my buddy said was, “He got you good,” as I’m passing out. When I came to it, I was like, “Where is he?” He’s like, “He left. He wrote a book. He has a novel. You were out for a minute.” That shifted the way I looked at martial arts. It’s blasphemy to say this but most martial arts are garbage. Ninety-five percent of the stuff is nonsense. It’s that 4% or 5% that works in real-time and resistant environments against multiple opponents, weapon conditions and fighting inside of vehicles that had worked well.

That was the initiation of where I started looking at it differently. After I started doing the underground fights some people started seeing those on YouTube and paying attention. We trained 512th Rescue Squadron out here, flew out to Japan and train the 459th Airlift Squadron. From there, the Ecuadorian Special Forces heard about us. We went out to go train the Ecuadorian Special Forces, got to work with their defense minister’s bodyguards and meet the people at their version of the Pentagon, which was super cool. From there, we went to South Africa and train the tactical response team. It’s been taking off ever since. It’s been a huge blessing.

It would be fascinating for people to know because most of us will never experience a fight room or fight club. What is it like going into a fight club? How does it work? What did you experience? Why did you do it?

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Initially, I did it because I was pissed. I had found out that my kid’s mom was cheating on me. I was having some serious issues handling my temper. It’s such a devastating thing to find out about. There were two events. It’s not my personality. I’m not the guy that gets pissed because you flipped me off in traffic but this guy cut and flipped me off. I started crawling out of the vehicle after him.

I’m sitting there with one of my instructors and he’s like, “It seems like you’ve got some anger issues.” I’m like, “What?” He’s like, “Let’s probably channel that the correct way. There’s a group I know about. You can go in there, fight with sticks, chains, microwaves and bullwhips. You can fight 2-on-2, 3-on-3, 5-on-5, whatever you want. There are no rules, no judges and no refs and you won’t go to prison.” I was like, “I’m in. Sign me up.”

I went in and trained for it. When I first watched the videos of these other guys doing it, I was like, “You guys are idiots. You are sitting in there beating the hell out of each other with sticks and all these other weapons.” I thought I’ll do one to get this thing out of me, deal with it and then 60 fights later, I’m still doing it. There’s something anthropologic for a male specifically about hitting another human being with a stick. It feels very natural.

I know that sounds crazy but once I did it for the first time, I remember that night after the fights. I went to bed and there was no ambient on the planet that will give you a peaceful night’s sleep like fighting a human being. The very first guy that I fought looked exactly like the guy that my ex cheated on me with. I was like, “Thank you, God.” I didn’t care if I won or lost. I want to beat his ass. I fought him. That night when I went to bed, I slept like a baby. I didn’t even think I moved that night.

The psychology of going into it is a lot. If you’re going to compare it, a lot of it is like the fear you have in running a business for the people that are fighters. There’s a serious level of fear and of, “Is this going work? If it doesn’t work, what’s going to happen? Am I going to lose everything? Am I going to die? Am I going to not be able to provide for my family?” It forces you to face your fears and fight through them because pain is temporary but your reputation will outlive your flesh.

When you get into that mindset, where you go, “I’m going all the way and playing all out,” that is the only way to live. If you want to leave a name and live a life that we’re talking about for 2,000 years, you can’t go into it halfway and go, “I don’t want to get hurt.” “F that. If I get hurt, that’s cool. Give me a cool story.” You’ve got to get into that mindset of how are you going to get to that next level, how are you going to build your psychology and your heart and mind so you can lift the people around you up. All this stuff is fine and dandy, but it’s not about glory.

I’m not saying it to try and sound poetic. Sometimes you’ll hear religious people, “It’s not about my glory but God’s,” as they sit there, try and get their own glory. What this boils down to is energy is constant. It can’t be created or destroyed. What talks about you when you leave this earth? Your absence has to be your presence. That’s based on the lives you touched while you were on this earth, the frequency you put in other people through the energy. What glorifies God’s name is your ability to keep pushing through the pain, keep driving through all the adversity and then still have the frequency and energy to smile.

When you tell people about the horrendous things that have happened to you, you’re doing it with a smile on your face. People are like, “Weren’t you scared?” “Yeah, I thought I was going to die but here we are.” You got to get that mindset where you move to that next level. I’ve been very blessed that even through these things, I’ve had some awesome and amazing mentors in my life that the Lord has given me and he’s given me wisdom.

I’ve also noticed that he’s given me people in my life that have helped me, and Steve Maestas was one of those. He’s a good friend of mine, a mutual friend of both of ours. When I was first training at my first school, I was teaching out of a storage container. I ran an ad in a thrifty nickel. Steve Maestas found it, came down and trained. I didn’t know the guy was as powerful as he was as a person and also on business.

He came in and played along. I started looking at the cars. He was showing up to class and I’m like, “What are you doing? How do I do it?” He goes, “I’ll coach you but here’s how this is going to go.” He gave me some insights and I appreciated that. He’s a very giving human being. He’s a great dude and that was a blessing. He gives back a ton to his community.

For courage to exist, fear has to be present. Click To Tweet

With that being said, going into a fight and then understanding the business aspects are very similar in that. The other thing is learning how to turn it on and off. You can’t walk around pissed off all the time. When you have a reputation like our school and facility do, everybody wants to fight you. I saw this in school when I was a kid. Kids think if they can beat me up, they can beat up Bruce Lee because my dad trained under him. Everybody in the room wants to kick the hell out of me. It was an interesting childhood and not much has changed in that aspect. I’ll walk by somebody and they’re like, “I don’t like that guy.” “I don’t even know you. Do you want to fight me?”

Describe for everybody that’s never going to be there what a fight club is. Where do they host these things? Is it a house? Take us into your mind as you were going that first time to this fight club not knowing what you got yourself into. What did you see? What were you feeling? What happened?

I’ve been skydiving. The moment that you let go of the plane, you feel like baptized in fire. All these chemicals are rushing through your body. It’s a mixture between that and standing on the high dive for the first time and getting ready to jump. There was a ton of this anxiety, fear and concern. I had martial artists that were friends of mine forever. They’re like, “Don’t fight these guys. They’re going to try and maim you.” I was like, “What’s the point? What are we doing here?” The whole reason we’re doing this is if somebody is trying to maim us at work. I’d rather find out in this controlled environment and find out when I’m around my daughter or something.

It was a totally different mindset, walking in there and they’re hosted everywhere. We have our own group. We fought in another guy’s group, and that one was in a martial arts school but sometimes they’re done under bridges, warehouses and parks. I’ve fought in all sorts of different places. It’s something that you go into with the ideology that you want to do the best that you can to not permanently injure that person for the rest of their life but make no doubt where they’re to hurt each other inside of that environment.

There’s a brotherhood to it though. My job is to push you as hard as I can but I will tell you, as I’ve done this more, I’m not trying to break people the way that I was when I first started. When I first started, I didn’t care. If I could wreck you, I’d wreck you because I had a lot of anger in my heart. As I sat down and started getting past that, I realized this is more to help men channel.

There are girls that’ll fight in these things too but it’s more to help men channel that aggression that built-up angst. I get a lot of guys that go, “I always wanted to be in the military but instead, I became a dentist.” They did what everybody told them to do versus what their heart led them to. This gives them a channel where they can execute and exercise it out. That’s one aspect of the many experiences that I’ve done in life. I want everybody to think, “This guy fights in underground fights.” That’s part of it. I’ve had an amazing life.

I used to have a pet Cobra because I was afraid of Cobra so I wanted to learn how to handle this thing. If it’d bite me, I would die in eight minutes. She was beautiful. I named her Halo. She was this albino monocle. She had silky-smooth pink and white skin. She was very pissy. I eventually got rid of her because she kept trying to bite me. I had four people have dreams that she bit me and I died. I was like, “That’s probably a sign.”

That’s one element of the many aspects that I have gone through in my life. Mixed all the things that you have of the unknown into one pot and then walk up with confidence. That’s what going into a flight club is like. Imagine taking everything that you were afraid of, both physically and emotionally and people are going to embarrass you. There’s a huge imposter syndrome when you go into something like that. You’re like, “These guys are going to beat me and then pull my underwear over my head.” This is fear that you’re going to go out and these people are going to screw you.

In order for the courage to exist, fear has to be present. With my fighting, guys would come out afterward like, “I’ve never seen anybody move like that. What’s your secret?” I’m like, “I don’t like pain.” I don’t want to lose and get hurt. I was fighting so hard and fast giving everything I had because I knew what it was like to lose from that guy that broke my nose in eighth grade. The greatest gift anybody ever gave me was him breaking my face.

After that, I was like, “That sucked.” I looked like a raccoon for three months. My eyes were black. My nose was all smashed into my face. I was like, “Thank you.” That gave me the motivation and drive that I was like, “If somebody wants to beat me again, they better pack a lunch because I’m going to go all out.” That’s the element that you need in business also. It’s learning how to thrive and function in the unknown with confidence. It’s such a hard world to live in. We get so caught up.

Tell me what you know about what’s going on in the world. We don’t have a freaking clue. Everything you’re being taught or fed is some agenda propaganda. Here’s what I do know. God is in control. No matter what anybody does, I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure my family, brothers and friends are taken care of. I don’t need to know what’s going on in everything else because that can suck all my energy out.

“I know me. I keep going no matter what. If you want to beat me, you better freaking pack a lunch because I’m going to come at you with everything I’ve got.” That’s that mindset that you get from fighting that is essential for business. The more tools you have in your tool belt, the better you are at Warcraft. Having known your why, I’ll be honest with you, and that is why I was willing to come on and chat with you is a huge weapon against the enemy because the enemy may not know their why but if your why, you can be the enemy to the enemy. They’ll try, leverage, come against you and get under your skin. They’ll mess with your business and screw with everything that you’ve got going on. You’re like, “I know why I’m doing what I’m doing. I know what motivates me and I’m hungry.” That’s a powerful thing to have in your back pocket.

For the audience, I spent some time with Michael. I did your urban defense conceal and carry. I went into that thinking, “I’m fairly athletic. I did a lot of sports. I’m in good shape. I do weights, this and that. I’ll probably be pretty good at this.” I walked into your class and you probably could have killed me as many times and as fast as you wanted. I had no say in it with no recourse at all. Whatever was going to happen, I couldn’t defend myself.

It’s in the beginning. At the end, you felt very confident in being able to do that. Here’s the thing as men. We have this ignorant perspective where we’re like, “I got a penis so I know how to fight.” That has zero credibility anywhere. Every time you talk about doing a combative course or a defense class, they go, “I’m going to send girls to that because I’m a guy.” It’s the dumbest thing.

As men, that’s part of our insecurity but there are very few men that are willing to go do it as you did and then go, “I don’t know what I’m doing but I do now.” That’s why you were there.” If I sucked and you could beat me up then you should probably be teaching the class, not me. You going through that, we deliberately looked at what your weaknesses were and we capitalized on them.

If you notice your wife had certain weaknesses, we changed and worked on what her weaknesses were. That’s what a good instructor should always do. They shouldn’t be there kicking the hell out of the students. Their objective and mission are to make the students think that they’re getting the hell kicked out of them because it is so demanding for them. That instructor could go up 9, 10 more levels. That was the objective. You did the two-day defense immersive training as well.

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You did scenarios where we were being carjacked or somebody comes into your house. These are not like video game things. This is an actual car there that you’re carjacked in and what will you do or an actual house. How do you clear your house? What I found fascinating was how wrong my perception was of even something as simple as how far away someone can be from you and still get to you before you can do anything to them. That was fascinating.

It’s not your world. You don’t know these things until you experience something. We’re blessed at Shockwave because we have an amazing cadre. We’ve got Dr. Dela Garza and Instructor King. I’ve got another guy that was from Seal Team 3 and 5, Shane Hyatt. He’s an amazing guy. He comes in and talk about mindset. He and I codesigned a knife together. We’ll bring instructors from South Africa. We brought Ed Calderon out at one point for him to do this escape and evasion training. He’s a fascinating person as well.

We’re blessed to have such a unique group of people to help expose everyday civilians to these things so that they don’t die because the enemy knows you don’t know. In that moment when you’re like, “I got enough space. I’m good.” They’re on top of you and you can’t get your gun out. That’s when you realized, “Maybe I should learn some hand-to-hand and nice stuff.” When I trained the department of corrections, there were probably 30 guys in that class. We did an exercise with these electric knives where we’ll run and zap you.

We had a drill. Their job was to pull the gun out and they didn’t know if I put a malfunction in a weapon or not. I was probably 40 something feet away. I killed every single one of those guys in that mock scenario with the exception of one that did what I told him to. I said, “Don’t focus on your gun. Fight me.” He pulled the gun out that didn’t work and blasted me in the face, which sucked at the time but it was super awesome to see that he listened. I got hit. I was so proud. My bell was ringing. He did what he was supposed to do.

That’s the goal of life. Learn to move through adversity with ease to the best of your ability and to keep pushing. It’s not about your ego because it’s like looks, they’ll fade. What is the legacy you’re leaving on this earth for future generations to talk about? Martial arts is the weirdest industry. Martial artists drive me insane. They remind me of Star Wars nerds. They sit down blabbering. I don’t care about any of this. All I care about is can Gary Sanchez protect his wife when some crack head is coming after them?

It’s what works in real-time. Getting caught up in the nuances of what system works better. It’s like the amateur argument of 0.45 caliber versus 9. Amateurs argue caliber. Professionals argue shot placement. If I shoot you in the face, it doesn’t matter what I shoot you with. It’s going to suck. That mindset of understanding how to get honed in and get deliberate, that’s going to take you to a different level in your love life, combatives and business.

A lot of the men I coach are like, “I don’t know what to do with my wife. She’s upset with me.” I’m like, “Did you win her heart? Did you conquer her? You say you’re a warrior, did you conquer? Do you conquer that woman in the bedroom, kitchen or living room? You’ve got to re-win her heart every single day or some ever douchebag out there on Facebook is trying to, trust me. He’s sitting there going, ‘Girl, you’re so hot. I love your filtered photos.’ In her mind, she’s going, ‘I’m going to replace my man.’” You both have to fight to re-win each other’s hearts. Life is a struggle but the more comfortable you can get being uncomfortable, the more successful you’ll be in life.

Michael, the last question I want to ask you is what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given or you’ve ever given?

Something that’s with me probably the most is if you weren’t afraid of failing, what would you attempt? If you knew the fear wasn’t an option, what would you do? I understand that fear is a necessity in life and it’s important. Too many people waste the energy of their ability in the day on what they’re afraid of instead of facing what they fear.

If you allow other people’s beliefs, they become your reality. You will end up always being what they say you are instead of what God made you be. If you can learn to be a full version of who you were born to become on this earth, you’d be living a life worth talking about for 2,000 years. What would you do without fear? If it was impossible to fail, what would you attempt? If there was one piece of information or insight, I would more likely than not say what was that.

If there are people that want to connect, bring you into work with them or find out more about what you’re doing, what’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Text the word, WHY, to (505) 437-4029. We’ll know that you’re coming from Gary’s show and we’ll give you guys a special gift. What I recommend doing is starting off on a call. If it’s something that you’re serious about, you want to grow your mind, get past limitations and conquer some challenge in life, jump on a call with us.

If you’re not there, you don’t have a major challenge going on, I’m probably not the guy for you but if you have a major challenge that you want to conquer and overcome then jump on a call with us. When you text the word, WHY, to (505) 437-4029, you’ll end up being in a position where you’ll get access and we’ll jump on a discovery with you. We’ll figure out if we’re a good fit for each other. After that, if you like what we do and it seems to match you, we have some options that we can enroll you in but we make every student that wants to train with us go through basic training first.

What’s included in basic training? What is that?

We call the program, Dauntless. It’s how to overcome fear. It’s not only going to be from a mindset exercise of how to grow yourself and make yourself stronger with daily, weekly and monthly routines but also how to grow yourself from a combative standpoint with what we call the Theoretical Minimum of Defense. If you’re familiar with physics, there’s a concept called the Theoretical Minimum of Physics. If you understand those basics, you can do all of physics. If you understand these basics, we’re going to teach you in Dauntless. You can do all combatives hand-in-hand.

If you look at every single system on the planet, all of them are made up of about anywhere from the top fifteen moves then there are variances and spins off. They go, “This is an advanced move.” “It’s not. You put the other moves together.” Once you understand the three ways to shut down the human being, the timers, switches, mechanics and then you start to understand the fundamentals and environments, that is what you’ll learn inside of fearless and basic training.

Michael, thank you so much for being here. It’s been awesome to connect, know your story and how you’ve taken and transitioned that into something that helps so many people. I look forward to staying in touch as we go on our journeys.

Thank you for having me, Gary. Thank you for what you do for the community with why. It’s an awesome tool to have in the tool belt to anybody that gets a chance to do that. If you have not, you should activate that and also send it out to your friends. If you care about people, living a purposeful life is an important thing to have. That’s an important element of living each day with power. If you know anybody that can use the why, fully endorse it. Thanks for having me, Gary.

I appreciate it, Michael.

It’s time for our new segment and that is Guess The Why. We picked somebody famous that everybody at least typically knows. We’ll guess what we think their why is. I want to pick the why of Conor McGregor, the MMA fighter. What do you think his why is? He does things differently. He challenges people.

He’s getting into business. He went from MMA to the top of MMA to then fighting a boxer, which nobody had ever done. He did that at the highest level. He’s made a fortune. He doesn’t ever follow a typical path. He beats to his own drum. He does it his own way. He won’t follow the rules and do what people tell him to do.

Which of the nine whys do you think his why is? For me, I believe that Conor McGregor’s why is to challenge the status quo and think differently. Don’t follow the rules. Ask the question why not versus following what people say he has to do. If any of you out there know him, make sure you put him in contact with me so we can discover his why. I’ll get back to you and let you know for sure.

Thank you so much for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com. You can use the code, PODCAST50, and get it at half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you use so that you can help us bring the why to one billion people in the next years.

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About Michael Johnson

BYW S4 10 | Better WayStarting in the martial arts at 2 years old, Michael C. Johnson continues to grow his knowledge and career in combatives. He opened Shockwave Defense in Albuquerque, NM in 2002 which combined experiences that yielded life conviction, behavioral psychology, and multiple black belt rankings into his interpretation of defense called Bellicusology (The study of militant, martial, and warfare ways). He holds a BA in criminology from the University of New Mexico, & is the honorary squadron commander for the 512th Rescue Squadron at Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, NM. Johnson has done bodyguard work for celebrities such as Xzibit, and was the primary deadly force combatives instructor for the Florida Department of Corrections & their Special Teams Units. His instruction has reached over 19,000 officers in the Department of Corrections, and has trained multiple officers from other agencies as well as the Silver City Police Department, NM. He is a certified NRA firearms instructor and a professional lecturer through the New Mexico Department of Public Safety. He teaches domestically and abroad including Taiwan, and The Yokota AFB in Tokyo Japan, where he trained the 459th Airlift Squadron how to defend themselves and their aircraft should a hostile actor try to take over the aircraft. His tried & tested skills have been tested against underground full contact fighters and he has over 55 full contact stick/weapons fights.

He continues to train the public as well as, law enforcement and military personnel in how to function in resistant environments. Additionally, he and his team produce films in Judgmental Training Software scenarios to aid first responders in dealing with violent individuals in shoot, and no shoot scenarios.

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The WHY Of Make Sense: Cracking Data And Solving Problems With Len Herstein

BYW S4 9 | Make Sense

When we don’t question things because things are going right, that’s when we miss micro-issues. In this episode, you’ll witness how the WHY of Make Sense works. Dr. Gary Sanchez welcomes Len Herstein, the CEO and President of Lead ManageCamp Inc. Len displays his uncanny ability to make sense of data and use that to solve problems. When COVID hit, he immediately pivoted from live events to virtual events. How did he make such a successful move? By gathering feedback to create a great learning experience. Len continued to bring his WHY as he went on to work for other companies. Learn how he makes sense and solves problems throughout his journey. Tune in!

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The WHY Of Make Sense: Cracking Data And Solving Problems With Len Herstein

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of making sense, to make sense of the complex and challenging. If this is your why then you are driven to solve problems and resolve challenging or complex situations. You have an uncanny ability to take in lots of data and information. You tend to observe situations and circumstances around you and then sort through them quickly to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. Often you are viewed as an expert because of your ability to find solutions quickly.

You also have a gift for articulating solutions and summarizing them clearly in understandable language. You believe that many people are stuck and that if they could make sense out of their situation, they could develop simple solutions and move forward. In essence, you help people get unstuck and move forward.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Len Herstein. He has years of experience in business and brand marketing. Prior to founding his marketing and events company, ManageCamp Inc., Len innovated, managed, and grew brands for major consumer packaged good marketers, including Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Nabisco, and others. Since 2015, Len has served as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado.

Len, welcome to the show.

Thank you. It’s great to be here, Gary. Thanks for having me.

This is going to be fun. It’s a very interesting background and what you’re doing right now. Take us through your history a little bit. Take us back to where did you grow up? Where did you go to high school? What were you like in high school? How did you progress to where you are now?

We’re going way back. I grew up in the Westernmost part of Long Island, New York. My family is from Brooklyn. A bunch of people moved from Brooklyn out to this area where I went to high school in Valley Stream. What was I like in high school? I wish I could say I was like the coolest kid, but I don’t think I was. I straddled this weird line because I was an athlete. I played soccer, baseball, basketball, and stuff, but I was also a student in the AP classes and stuff like that.

I walk this fine line between athlete and academic. I learned how to get along with a lot of different people and play a lot of different roles in friendships and stuff. That’s where I came. I went to college at Cornell University in New York and studied Marketing. I came out of there and went to work in consulting. I was one of those guys who didn’t know what I wanted to do, so I consulted. That helped me figure it out.

I worked for Anderson Consulting, which is now called Accenture. Basically, in the first year or two, I figured out what I got hired for was computer programming. They take you out of college at that point and send you to this university that they built for themselves in St. Charles, Illinois. They taught us how to program in COBOL II, which is an old mythic language. It didn’t take me long to figure out that was not what I wanted to do. I was not good at it. I did not enjoy it.

I made the switch over to what was called Change Management. I worked on the teams that helped organizations go through the changes that these new systems that we were building made for them. I did that for a couple of years and went back, got my MBA back at Cornell in Marketing, and made that switch over to consumer-packaged goods marketing.

I went to work for Nabisco, Coca-Cola, and Campbell Soup before I realized that I was going to a lot of conferences. I found myself coming home early from a lot of them back in the days when we had travel agents that we would call and stuff. I decided to put together the conference that I would want to do. I was having a hard time finding it. That’s what my conference was called brand managed camp became. We did our 19th Annual back in May 2021. This one was virtual, so we did that. Several years ago, I became a volunteer police officer basically. I’m the Sheriff’s Deputy here in Douglas County, Colorado, which was a whole new path for me.

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I’m sure we’ll talk about that. I was looking for a way to give back and do something different, and this came up. I went through a whole academy, a long field training process, and became a deputy. I was learning some things that were surprising to me and I could bring them back to my business and personal life. That’s where this concept of complacency is. I learned about how complacency kills. We fight it with vigilance and law enforcement.

I saw a lot of synergies back to business in terms of complacency kills brands, businesses, organizations, and personal relationships. My book that came out is called Be Vigilant!: Strategies to Stop Complacency, Improve Performance, and Safeguard Success. It’s all about specific strategies you can use right away to fight complacency in your own life, whether it be work or home, with vigilance. That’s my life.

Let’s dive into that a little bit. When you were in high school, you were the athlete and the student. Were you the guy that people would go to if they had problems or issues and say, “Len, can you help me? I got something going on. Can I tell you what’s going on?” Were you the guy that would help them?

I’d like to say I was, but I think the honest truth would be no. I don’t think that happened back then. I don’t think I have gotten into that role yet. We were more about, “Where can we find some beers and get down to the boardwalk?” It was a simpler life back then, Gary. They didn’t seem like there were many problems to solve.

Everything was easy to figure out, but getting into programming was not the direction you thought you were going to go. Were you forced in that direction?

I wouldn’t say I was forced in that direction, but we’re talking 1991 at this point. At that time, those gigs out of college were pretty high, relatively paying. I think the number was $33,000. It was the starting salary. That was huge, enormous. It was one of those things where I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do. I figured I probably wanted to go back to grad school at some point, but I needed some years to figure out what that was going to be about.

I took that job, and that initial thing in terms of programming turned out not my thing. It was good because it helped me figure that out. I went down this path of change management, which is helping people solve problems brought on by change. During those jobs, I ended up doing some consulting work. Some of our clients were marketing companies per se like Pepsi and AT&T. That’s when I started getting excited about marketing. That then gave me the confidence that I knew what I wanted to do. That’s when I went back for my MBA.

As a change management agent, what did you do? What was that?

A lot of the time I spent working in the government sector. We were coming into the state tax department, state DMV, stuff like that, mostly tax stuff. Putting together new computer systems for them to help them manage the flow of information and data they have basically do the things they had to do. When those new systems would come in, there would be enormous changes to workflows, jobs, and what was required of people.

The change management job was about mapping out where are we now? Where are we going to be in the future? How do we get people between there with the least amount of pain? It was a lot of reorganization, re-engineering of jobs and processes, and training to help people get the skills and the knowledge they needed to move forward.

That sounds like it fits you pretty well.

BYW S4 9 | Make Sense
Make Sense: The path of change management helps people solve problems that are brought on by change.

 

It did. That was right up my alley. Now that you told me I’m a make sense guy, it makes all sense to me.

It’d be interesting when you go back to one of your high school reunions to find out if your classmates felt that way about you, like, “Len was somebody that I could talk to. Len was somebody that if I had a problem, that’s where I would go because he’d helped me figure it out.” It’d be interesting to ask your classmates that question. I bet you. They’re going to tell you, “Yeah, you were that guy. You were partying, an athlete, and all that, but if I had someone I needed to talk to, I was going to talk to you.”

It’s possible.

Based on your why, I would bet that’s the way it is. You were in change management, and then you decided to go to Cornell. Why did you switch from change management to marketing? Why did you feel you needed an MBA?

I started doing some work within companies that I would consider marketing-driven companies. It’s a certain type of marketing. Everybody has a different definition of marketing. I talk more about brand management. To me, brand management is running many businesses. When you would run a brand for Campbell Soup or Coca-Cola, or something like that, you would touch everything, P&L, sales, manufacturing, research and development, advertising, which would be the traditional way people would think about marketing.

There are all these other elements that go into what I would consider marketing or brand management. That started to excite me, being at the hub of this wheel, influencing everything, and driving this business forward towards a more profitable, innovative, and successful future. Once I saw that I started thinking about how do I get there? I started processing the information and said, “Here’s where I want to be. What’s the way to get there?”

It became fairly evident to me that if I was going to do that type of job at the type of company that I wanted to do, which was like a Coca-Cola, those types of things, I did need to go back to school. I did need to get my MBA. It was going to get hard. If I wanted to come in through, like maybe a sales role or something, and then work my way over into marketing, I could have certainly done that, I’m sure. The quickest way for me to get to where I wanted to be was to use that advanced degree as my pivot point and move into a new area.

You did that and through that, you learn that the type of education you’re going to get at these events didn’t make sense. You’re bored to death and wanted to leave, so you created your own.

As a brand marketer, I’d go to a lot of conferences. When I was at Campbell Soup and working on suits that we were marketing to kids, I would go to kid’s marketing conferences. They’re all very niche and specific. They would look great on paper, and I would get there. They would serve me a cold bagel for breakfast. You’d show up and be sitting there. Maybe a bunch of people trying to sell me things as opposed to telling me anything useful. This was back in the days where if someone showed up with a Mac and nobody had a dangle, and everything broke down.

The execution wasn’t great. The content wasn’t great. I wasn’t getting anything actionable. I was walking away with. In general, I felt like they were a big waste of time. Literally, it’s a cliche, but it’s 100% true. This will date me and tell you how old it is. I was on a US Air flight from New Orleans back to Philly and started writing down on a cocktail napkin what the next conference I was going to go to had to offer me. I couldn’t find anything that matched those requirements. My wife got tired of hearing me talk about it until they did something about it. I generally do what she tells me. That’s how we made it this long.

What is it you want at a conference? What did you write down?

People have different attention spans and do things differently. Click To Tweet

I wanted something that was going to deliver actionable insights that I could use. I wanted something that was going to be a broad look at brand management. It wasn’t going to be so narrow that every topic overlapped and was repetitive with each other. It had to have speakers who needed to be keynote quality. I didn’t want one great speaker and then a bunch of people from the industry who look good on paper.

The thing I started to see at least in the conferences I was going to. This is not a broad thing. In the conferences that I was going to, there was this move towards multi-track events. There’s a lot of panel discussions. A lot of it was built around getting a lot of speakers in there, who had big titles and big companies, that they can then use to pad their attendance list with like, “Look at all these great companies that are going to be here,” and then they could sell sponsorships.

It was all about the sponsorship money, the sponsorships. What I was looking to do is I was looking to create a conference that was simpler and easier to go to that delivered actionable insights, a single-track conference where there were no choices to make. It wasn’t super complicated to figure out what I was going to go to. I wanted it to be attendee-focused, not sponsor-focused. I wanted to be focused on delivering actionable insights that people could use right away, along with a broad range of topics. It had to have great food and be executed flawlessly. Other than that, it was pretty simple things.

It’s hard to find one like that even now. It sounds like you created that. Is that what your events are like now?

That’s exactly what it is. We focus heavily on execution and making sure everything runs smoothly. We value the fact that people are taking money and, more importantly, time away from their families and offices and stuff like that to come to spend it with us. We value that a lot. We want to make sure that not only do they get a great learning experience, but that seating is comfortable. Everybody can hear everything. When they break for lunch, there’s hot food, great choices, and healthy food available.

A lot of people, especially in marketing, talk about the experience. We have a lot of great speakers who have spoken about customer experience and things of that sort. What I found was the conferences weren’t living that. They would bring in speakers to talk about it, but they weren’t living it themselves. They weren’t creating a great experience. That’s what we set out to do.

Tell us about the first conference you threw.

The first one we threw was in Philly in 2003. We’re in this post 9/11 timeframe where the travel industry had been decimated. Hotels and everything was hurting. We were able to come in and get this sweetheart deal on a contract with a hotel, which was a big deal. In the conference industry, you have to put a lot of money upfront. You’ve got to guarantee a lot of things in order to get space and hope people come. We were able to get this great deal so that our risk was low.

I was still working for Campbell Soup at that time. For the first four years of starting my business, I still worked full-time for Campbell Soup. I was trying to build the proof of concept here. It was in Philly. I think 90 people showed up is what happened. It was in this small ballroom. We had great food, sushi, and all these things. We thought we had a great experience. Several years ago, we looked back at how different it was in terms of what the AV capabilities are now and the things we can do with the stage, the slides, and everything going on. It was pretty interesting.

We were able to succeed early as we were able to get speakers at our event that were well beyond our budget. Somehow, I was able to negotiate it. We have Seth Godin, who’s written a ton of marketing books and a huge deal. We had a guy named Malcolm Gladwell, who probably doesn’t speak for less than $75,000 to $100,000 now. We got him for next to nothing back. Those types of things upfront help us get started down this path. There’s a lot of things lined up for us that went in our favor back in those early years. It helped us learn quickly and cheaply.

What was the title and topic of your first event?

BYW S4 9 | Make Sense
Make Sense: To be part of the solution was to create a great relationship between the community and law enforcement by joining it.

 

As we moved on, we stopped having topics. The first event was marketing in turbulent times. It was something about marketing in turbulent times. I started to realize what happened because the first 2 or 3 years, we changed our theme every year. It was always a marketing conference, but we call it marketing in turbulent times or something else. Because of that, we have to rebrand every year. We have to convince people that this is the topic they need to hear more about. The more you focus on a specific topic, the more you have that problem, where you have overlapping things and people talking about the same things and maybe contradicting each other and all this.

After a few years, we moved away from coming up with a new topic every year. The tagline for the event has been and still is fresh thinking starts here. For brand marketers looking for fresh thinking for their brands and organizations, this is the destination each year. It made it a lot easier for us. We didn’t have to brainstorm a whole new thing, like, “What would it be in 2021?” It would be like “Marketing in turbulent times.” Every year is marketing in turbulent times. It’s never not turbulent. Nobody ever wakes on me, like, “Marketing is easy in 2021. It’s easier.” They’re giving us more money to do less. It’s fantastic.

You got out of working with Campbell Soup, and the event was your business or was there a different business besides the event?

We also did consulting work, but the event was the main part.

We move forward to COVID and no events.

Things got shut down pretty quick there. The end of 2019 is when this all started coming. We’re like, “This is no big deal. This is a China thing. This is not a US thing.” It was back when people were thinking back then. It came in, and we had our 2020 event planned for September. We would generally start promoting that in January. We did and started promoting it. January and February 2020, we’re promoting it, and things are starting to get a little bit dicey, and some people are signing up, but we can see that things are slowing down.

March 2020 hit and everything shut down. We’re like, “I don’t think we can do a lot of events.” It was back before that realization had settled in. Quickly we realized, “We’ve got to pivot to something different. This is going to move to virtual somehow.” We don’t know how to do virtual because we’ve been complacent. Several years of doing it live, it was always going to be that way. We never built our virtual capabilities. We had to do that real quick, pivot around, and create our first-ever virtual conference.

From 90 people in 2003, how did it grow? What was it like before the pandemic? What is it like now?

It was always, what I would consider, an intimate conference because we’re not focused on sponsorship. We’re focused on attendees. We didn’t have hundreds of sponsors and speakers. We would only have 12 or 13 speakers. We’d have maybe two sponsors, and then everybody else was attendees. We were in the 400s. We’re able to deliver a good experience to everybody that way. It was fine for us. When COVID hits, all that’s out the window. Now we’re in this whole brand-new world of virtual, and everybody is giving it away for free, and nobody wants to pay for the virtual stuff anymore.

The whole value proposition has changed. You can’t even compare it. It’s like apples to oranges. Our goal in this virtual timeframe is to continue our relationships with people and stay out there with content. I’ve been spending a lot of time on the book. We did our 2021 Brand Manage Camp back in May. Generally, we do one a year. We’re sitting back on that side and waiting to see what happens. We’ve learned that we can’t predict what’s going on. We have these ebbs and flows in terms of events. Quite honestly, my event and our event are probably among the last types of events to come back.

There are trade shows, industry, and association events. Those things where people need to get out and sell to each other are different than my event, which is a learning event. It was probably going to be among the last ones to come back to the live forum. Because so much goes into planning a live event and financial commitment, we’re waiting to see how these next few months play out before planning our next one. I took that opportunity throughout that time to write my book. I’ve been spending a lot of time doing the law enforcement stuff as well. That’s been keeping me busy.

There's no benefit to being treated differently. Click To Tweet

There are going to be people reading this that have their events and have been doing them like you have and had to switch to virtual. What was it like for you to go from live to virtual? How do you think the effectiveness is virtual versus live?

There are pros and cons. I think in terms of the convenience of it, the cost of it to the end-user, and the ability to have stuff on demand and see it on your own timeframe, there’s a lot of positives there. The inability to get together in person, I think a lot is lost there. The inability to carve out your time when you’re in a live event, you put your phone on mute and out of office email answer. You sit there, listen and learn. When you’re sitting in your home or office, and you’re watching a virtual thing, there are a million other things competing for your time and attention.

It’s by nature. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s nearly impossible to put the same amount of attention into one of those things as you do in live events. I’m still a big believer in live events. I think they’ll be back, but the way we approached it makes sense within this make sense thing. We took a step back and said, “We’re going to approach our pivot into virtual the same way we did when we first started our live conference. It was to take a look at things and figure out what’s missing. What are people getting wrong?” We sat back for a little bit and saw that a lot of people were trying to take their live events and turn them into virtual as if there was no difference other than the delivery mechanism.

The reality is that’s not true. People learn differently. People have different attention spans and do things differently. The other thing is that people were diving into this virtual world, and they did not understand the tools they were using and the best way to use them. The way that manifested itself for us is that we looked at it, and I said, “We’re going to do this virtual and have all these speakers.” We don’t typically do Q&A in the middle of a speaker session. Our speakers get up and speak for, in a live event, 50 minutes.

The first thing we said is 50 minutes is way too long. We can’t do that in a virtual world. We’re looking at 20 to 30 minutes. What I saw was that there were a lot of these people calling things in conferences that ended up looking a lot like webinars. Someone with a talking head in the corner and the whole screen was a slide, and you’re looking at the slides the whole time. We hire our speakers because they’re engaging, entertaining, and energetic. We don’t hire them for their slides. We hire them for them.

If I were doing a live event, I would never have them sit off in a corner somewhere and have everybody stare at the screen. What we did is we spent a lot of time and energy working with every one of our speakers. We prerecorded all of the sessions, but we did it with professional production. Slides coming in and out, only being shown when they needed to be shown. Having our speakers stand up, move around, be active, and do all these things that are not someone sitting in front of a webcam.

What we did is our conference platform allowed us to then have our speakers attend while we were airing their session. They could interact with attendees in the chat room and answer questions in real-time. We would bring them in on a live stream as soon as their session ended to do a live-action Q&A. This hybrid of why not prerecord so that we could guarantee the quality, everybody could hear, didn’t crap out because their internet went or something like that.

We had that guaranteed quality of the session. You have this other thing that we’ve never been able to have before live, which is a live Q&A with the speaker as the session is happening. They could clarify, expand on stories, and hear from the audience. We would carry that over, basically what you and I are doing now, into a live conversation and an interview afterward. That was pretty cool. We took this and said, “We’re going to take a look at all the information, come up with our best solution, not take what we did before and do it virtually.”

It’s a great way you did that. We had to do our annual event 2021 as well and I learned a whole lot along the way. Obviously, I saw some things that we could do better. That being one of them, that was great to hear. How did you prerecord the sessions? Did you have him show up and do it live on a stage with no audience, or was it a Zoom thing that was recorded? How did you do that?

It depended on the speaker because we only had twelve speakers or whatever speakers we had. Part of our brand is I formed my personal relationship with every one of our speakers. We don’t hire 100 speakers, and I don’t know who they are, and they do their own thing. We were able to work individually with each speaker. A couple of speakers were here in Colorado, so they were able to come over to our offices and we shot it in our studio.

Most of our speakers are all professionals, so they have their own studios and stuff. Some were able to produce themselves. We had a couple that needed a little bit more help that was more remote. We set them up with equipment. We walk them through it. We gave them all sorts of tutorials and instructions, and some of them, we had to do a couple of times to get it right. It was a mix depending on their experience level, comfort, capabilities were in terms of lighting, sound, video, and all that stuff.

BYW S4 9 | Make Sense
Make Sense: We can become so focused on the competition that we miss new competition from different industries coming in.

 

I can see how you helped them make sense of this different way to do it and created an experience that was better than expected. I’m sure you’ve allowed them beyond what they thought they were going to get in a virtual seminar or workshop.

That’s the feedback we got from folks, which was like, “This is the best virtual event we’ve been to so far.” We got a lot of that. It’s interesting because at the beginning, my immediate thought, as we were thinking this through, was, “How do we prerecord this without letting people know it’s been prerecorded?” We were going to have the speakers wear the same things when they recorded, as they did on the day they came. It took me two minutes to then figure out, “That is so disingenuine.” It’s basically a lie. I don’t want to ever lie to my customers. That was a terrible idea.

We very quickly said, “No, we’re going to be totally upfront about this, be honest, and let people know.” There were some people afterward who were like, “I was like very skeptical of this prerecorded thing. I wasn’t going to get value from it, or I should watch it later or whatever.” The way that happened, where I was able to have a conversation with the speaker and the live Q&A afterward was so much more valuable than they expected.

Tell us about your book, Be Vigilant! How did that come about? What is it? What prompted you to write it?

I’ve been working with the bestselling author for several years. I always thought I would write a book at some point, but I never had an idea that I felt was good enough or book-worthy. I didn’t want it to be a me-too book. I never did it. When I had this opportunity to become a Reserve Sheriff’s Deputy, which basically means that I’m a full-fledged police officer, I do it for free and go out on patrol. It sounds crazy.

I’m not going to let you get off the hook with this one. Why did you do that? Were you drunk one night and said, “I think I’m going to be a cop for free?”

I was trying to keep up with my wife, who’s been heavily involved in Girl Scouts. We have two daughters. For several years, she has been heavily involved in Girl Scouts beyond being a troop leader for both of my daughters and all sorts of volunteer stuff. I never had this volunteerism going on in my life. I felt like it was something that I wanted to add. I was looking for something to do. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop or thinking that I wanted to do that or anything like that. Honestly, it was around December of 2014 Facebook post.

We’ve got a big county. The sheriff’s office runs most of the law enforcement within this county. They put out a Facebook ad saying, “We’re looking for people to go through the Reserve Academy to become reserve sheriff’s deputies.” I was like, “That looks pretty interesting and sounds cool.” We have a unique department. This is not paraded duty or something like that. You go out and work. You do everything that a full-timer does. You do it for free. I was like, “That sounds cool.” I asked my wife, and she didn’t understand it, so she said, “Yes.”

She didn’t know what she was getting herself into at the time. I went off to this informational meeting. There were 120 people in the room. There were ex-military, ex-cops, and all these people, and most of them younger than me. I remember walking away from that and being like, “They’re never going to pick me. Why would they pick me?” I filled out the application and I got chosen, which was crazy. I had to go through all this stuff. I had to go through the same psych evaluation, physical testing, and all that stuff.

I got accepted and had to go through an academy that ran from May to November. After that, I had to do 440 hours of field training out on the road with a field training officer before I got certified to do patrol. That’s why I wanted to do it. Honestly, the other piece of this is that everybody is aware of the difficulties we’ve been having in terms of the relationship between community and law enforcement in the last couple of years. This is not new.

Back then, it was like Ferguson. That was going on. I got tired of seeing friends and acquaintances argue and complain on Facebook or whatever social media they’re on. I wanted to be part of the solution. The best way that I could see to be part of creating a great relationship between the community and law enforcement was to get involved and to do it. That’s my purpose. It’s to protect, serve and help people be safer, but also help strengthen our relationship in my little piece of the world that I can do it.

When we don't question things because things are going right, that's when we miss micro-issues. Click To Tweet

Two obvious questions that the readers are thinking about right now, and the first one being, what did your partner think when they first met you and thought you did what? You’re doing this for how much? Why the heck are you doing this? The second question is, what’s the craziest thing that’s happened to you out there so far?

When you say partner, do you mean one of the other cops?

You get into a car or whatever with your partner for the day or one that you’re doing all your hours with. They are talking to you, and they’re like, “You’re a marketer. It makes a lot of sense that you’d be in here with me. How much are they paying you for this? You’re doing it for free.”

The interesting thing is for the first six years of this, and I patrolled solo. I didn’t have a partner. I would go out and do it by myself. I would work in a district. We have eleven districts in our county. I would fill in for people who were going on vacation or short staff. We’ve started going to two-man cars for that. Before that, it was all solo stuff, but I get your question. We’re in briefing or whatever. The great thing is I spent so many hours doing it. I would spend most of my hours working on a specific team called the Swings B Team. It’s a swing shift and on the B side of the week.

In fact, the publishing company that I created for the book is Swings B Publishing because that’s my team. I got very close with those people. They consider me part of the team, but I get all the time, like, “Why are you doing this for free?” I barely want to do this for money. People get it, but they don’t get it. There’s a lot of respect. They appreciate the help are always short-staffed. They appreciate the fact that I’m there. I think they’re coming in assumption before they met me in the way that a lot of people look at it, “Here’s a guy who wants to run around with a badge, a gun and have some power,” and stuff like that.

Like anything in life, the only way to prove people wrong is to prove people wrong on it, do the job and do it as good as anybody else does it. That was always my goal. My goal was always not to be treated differently because I’m doing it for free. If I mess up, I want you to come down on me the same way you would come down on someone who’s getting paid.

At the end of the day, we’re talking about life and death on a lot of these things. There’s no benefit to being treated differently. I think that earns a lot of respect. People look at me as a regular deputy. They don’t look at me any different, but every now and then, I still get, especially on a rough day, like, “Why are you here? What are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

What’s the craziest thing that’s happened so far?

There’s been so much bad and good. Everybody has a different definition of crazy. I think the funniest thing was when I was in-field training. We got a call about a chicken crossing the road. I thought it was a joke. While part of our county is rural, the part that I work in is not rural. It’s a typical suburb. You don’t have chickens running around. We got this call about a chicken crossing the road. We were like, “This is not happening. Somebody is playing with us obviously,” but we still got to go check it out and whatever.

I get there, and lo and behold, and there’s that chicken. We were looking around for a little while, and I had to call out on the radio, “If you’re unable to locate, you’d call out UTL.” My computer started to lighten up with all the chat messages that everybody was laughing and stuff. Literally, ten seconds later, this chicken saunters across the road in front of my car. I caught that chicken and returned it to his owner. It’s not easy to catch a chicken. They’re ornery.

Hopefully, nobody had a video going while you were out there chasing a chicken.

BYW S4 9 | Make Sense
Make Sense: The more successful we are, the more complacent we become. We start believing the hype that all of our actions have led to that when, the reality is, that’s not always true.

 

My field training officer got a good picture of it. I didn’t take any video, but I got a good picture and some good ribbon. It was fun.

Tell us about your book.

Basically, I started this thing thinking it was going to be completely different than anything I’d done before, which it was because I was coming in with this lens, that’s different. I’m not a 21-year-old whose this is their first work experience or something like that. I’m a 45-year-old at that point in time who’s had 25 plus years of work experience. I can’t leave that at home. I’m definitely coming with that point of view. We started learning from the very first day how complacency kills. This is something we talk a lot about in law enforcement because 95% to 98% of our day is pretty standard and uneventful, and then things can go wrong quickly.

If you allow yourself to become comfortable, you can be in some pretty big trouble. We talk about it complacently and what it is, and how to combat it. I started thinking about how there were things that we were doing every day that we didn’t talk about in those words. There are things that we’re doing in law enforcement, too. I started making that connection. We’re doing this to keep us present and from getting complacent.

I started paying attention to the fact that complacency as a word is used a lot in culture, but it’s a throwaway word. People use it thinking that, “Let’s not get complacent out there,” or like, “They’re getting complacent to see headlines during COVID.” Nobody ever talks about what it is like, “What is it? How do you fight it?” As opposed to saying, “I’m not going to be complacent,” as if it’s that easy, but it’s not that easy.

That last piece of it, I started thinking, “Complacency in law enforcement kills businesses, brands, and personal relationships.” I saw an opportunity where I can write this book that brings some of these lessons learned and translate them into the personal and the business world to say, “What are some things that we can do every day to help us fight complacency?” The idea is that complacency is not laziness. Complacency is overconfidence, self-satisfaction, and smugness that makes us unaware of dangers and threats.

The opposite of complacency is not paranoia. A lot of people think that. I have to be looking over my shoulder all the time. No, because the opposite is not paranoia. It’s vigilance. The difference is that paranoia is based on fear, the fear of potential threats, and vigilance is based on their awareness. This book then is about how do we remain vigilant? What are specific strategies can we use to help us fight complacency every day in business and at home?

Give us an example of one.

There are ten different ones. Each one has a chapter in the book. One of the simplest ones is this idea of threat awareness, understanding where your threats could come from. One of the things that I talk about in the book is law enforcement or the military. If you’ve got anybody like that in your family or friends, we are notoriously difficult to go out to eat with because we are very specific about where we want to sit. We want to have our eyes on where the potential threats could be. Not because we’re paranoid, but because we want to be able to see what’s coming if we have to.

The parallel to that in business in life is how do you get a 360-degree view of your threats? How do you look beyond the overconfidence that you have in terms of what your threats are? A lot of times in business, someone was asking you who your competitors are, and you can rattle off 2 or 3 right away and what your strategies are against them. I would start to think maybe you’re a little bit complacent because you’re getting that tunnel vision. You’re focusing and becoming what I would call the roadrunner effect.

Wile E. Coyote becomes so focused on the Road Runner, but what gets Wile E. Coyote every time is never the Road Runner. It’s always something else. That can happen to us. We can become so focused on the competition as we’ve defined it that we miss the new competition. We miss different industries coming into our industry. The same thing can happen at home.

The unfortunate reality is businesses only do debriefing things when things go wrong. Click To Tweet

We could become overconfident that we understand what’s happening in our life, that things blindside us. They feel like they blindsided us, but they haven’t. They’ve been coming for a long time. We didn’t have eyes on them. I have a whole chapter where I talk about threat awareness and how do you build that threat awareness. How do you do it not in a paranoid way, but in an awareness way?

I’ll give you one more. Another one that I talk a lot about is debriefing. We all know the brief and the debrief. We all do some level of the briefing, whether it be weekly meetings or one-on-ones, or whatever it is. If you talk to most people in business and you ask them, “Do you guys do debriefs now?” They might say yes, but the reality is they’re debriefing things when things go wrong, there’s blame to find, or some disasters happen. We got to figure out why.

What we do in law enforcement that doesn’t happen a lot in the business or personal life is we debrief big things, whether they were successful or a failure. At the end of a mission or something of importance, we’ll sit down and say, “What went right? What went wrong? What went right? What went right by accident, because our competition or whoever we’re against made a mistake and we benefited from it?” When we don’t question things because things are going right, that’s when we miss these little micro issues that are coming up.

That’s where we miss these things that we have the ability to fix early before they become something bigger. I talk a lot about the value of debriefing in terms of fighting complacency because the biggest thing that leads to vulnerability from complacency is a success, ironically. The more successful we are, the more complacent we become. We start believing the hype. We are successful because of everything that we’ve done. All of our actions have led to that.

When the reality is, that’s not always true. In Denver, I would tell people, “Be a Peyton Manning. He got the Ring of Fame in the Bronco Stadium,” or anywhere else in the rollout, I’ll tell you to be a Tom Brady. Neither one of those guys, at the end of a win, sit back and say, “We’re going to party until next week.” Every one of them immediately will start thinking about what could we have done differently? What could we have done better? What are some vulnerabilities that maybe our competition didn’t take advantage of because they didn’t see them, but the next time somebody will see them?

Debriefing is a great way. You can do it with your family too and at home. How many times do you only talk to your kids when things go wrong? They get a bad grade, stay out too late, get into an accident with the car. How many times do we sit down and say, “What went right? You got a B+ on a test. That’s awesome. How can we get it to an A? What can we emulate? What can we build on?” We don’t do enough of that. Talk about our successes and try and find learnings in them. That’s another way to fight complacency with vigilance.

The last question I always ask people is what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or the best piece of advice you’ve ever given?

I’ll give you two pieces of advice. One of them is from a guy by the name of Bruce Turkel. He is a speaker I’ve worked with. He’s written a couple of different books and wrote a cool book that came out called Is That All There Is?, which is pretty awesome. The thing was from a previous book and it was this idea that it’s all about them. The concept that I think a lot of us mess up with both in life and business is making it about us when it should be about them, our customers, our constituents, our vendors, and our employees. When we’re marketing our products and services, are we telling people what we want them to hear? Are we telling them what they want to hear and what they need to hear?

It’s that nuance in terms of making sure you’re always thinking about things in terms of making it all about them and not all about me. It’s something I think has been great for me. I come back to it a lot. In terms of whenever I’m putting together materials for people to read, or writing my book, or whatever, how has this for them, as opposed to what I want people to hear? It’s the difference between doing a presentation at work filled with 100 slides of all the work you did because you need everybody to know all the work you did as opposed to the two slides of the conclusions because that’s what the people in the room need.

If they want to hear about all the work that he did, they can come to get that later. That, to me, is a great mantra for a lot of different things in life. The other one was when I was back working at Coca-Cola, there was a guy named Steven Boyd. He told me this thing, “One is a dot, two is a line, three is a trend.” It’s something I go back to a lot in terms of making sure I don’t read too much into one-off events, and when I’m making decisions is based on an actual pattern and not based on something that’s an anomaly or something like that. In life, especially in this world that we live in now, people are way too quick to react to things without understanding. Is it a dot, line, or trend?

I’m going to ask you, people who are reading this say, “I like Len. I like what he’s about. I totally agree with his book, and how do I get ahold of him? How can I work with him? How can I go to his event?” What’s the best way to connect with you?

The biggest thing that leads to vulnerability from complacency is success. Click To Tweet

The best way is to go to my website, LenHerstein.com. It’s got everything about me and my book. If you’re interested in a conference, you can go to BrandManageCamp.com. That’s the conference. If you’re interested in the book and where you can buy it, you can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anywhere you buy books online. You can get it there, but if you want to learn more about me, what the book is about, and get some free swag, too, go over to LenHerstein.com.

Len, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I enjoyed our conversation. Hopefully, I don’t see you in your sheriff’s gear anytime soon because I do go by you all the time.

I don’t work the highways a lot, so if you’re staying on a highway, you should be good. I appreciate you having me on. The other thing I forgot to mention is that I encourage anybody out there to reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. I love connecting with people on LinkedIn. We can have one-on-one conversations there. Thanks for having me, Gary. This is awesome. Thanks for letting me go through the process of figuring out what my why is. I have a whole chapter in my book about why, purpose, and all this stuff. It’s such a great connection for me. This is a different use of it, but I love it. It’s spot on.

Thanks, Len. I appreciate you.

Thank you.

It’s time for our segment, Guess their WHY. Instead of using Walt Disney, I’m going to use his brother, Roy. If you know anything about Disneyland and Disney World and Disney, Walt was the visionary. He was the why guy, but if he didn’t have his brother, Roy, nothing would have gotten done. You have a guy with a lot of ideas but not the ability to implement them. He brought along with him his brother, Roy, who wasn’t an idea guy, but he was an implementer. He took all of the ideas, concepts, and thoughts that Walt came up with and made them happen, creating structure, processes, and systems around getting things done.

What would you guess, Roy Disney’s why is? Think about that for a minute. For me, I believe that Roy’s why was to do things the right way in order to get results. People with that why are structure, process, systems people. They take ideas and build a structure around them, making them happen predictably and consistently so that people have a predictable, consistent experience. That’s what’s so great about Disney World and Disneyland is you get a consistent, predictable experience every time you go there.

It’s done around vision and the thinking of Walt Disney but done in the way that Roy created so that people love the experience they have. That’s what I think. Let me know what you think. Thank you so much for reading. If you’ve not yet discovered your why, you can go to WHYInstitute.com, use the code PODCAST 50, and you can get it for half price. We do that to thank you for reading. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and rating on whatever platform you’re using. Thank you so much. I will see you next episode. Have a great week.

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About Len Herstein

BYW S4 9 | Make SenseLen Herstein has over 30 years of experience in business and brand marketing. Prior to founding his marketing and events company (ManageCamp Inc.), Len innovated, managed,and grew brands for major consumer packaged goods marketers, including Campbell SoupCompany, Coca-Cola, and Nabisco.Since 2015, Len has served as a reserve deputy sheriff with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado

 

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Podcast

The WHY Of Make Sense: Unlocking Your Best Self By Finding Your Genius With Mike Zeller

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius

If you want to find your genius, you need to figure out who you are and what you’re amazing at. Once you find that you can put yourself in a position where you can succeed the most. Life gives you so many clues on how to find your genius, like a murder mystery, you just need to find and organize them. This is your zone of genius. Dr. Gary Sanchez’s guest, Mike Zeller exemplifies the WHY of make sense. Mike is a business architect and entrepreneur mentor who helps professionals find their zone of genius. He is the founder of Symposia Mastermind and is the author of “The Genius Within“. Learn how to find greater clarity in yourself so that you can be in your zone of genius. Learn what the WHY of make sense means for Mike today!

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The WHY Of Make Sense: Unlocking Your Best Self By Finding Your Genius With Mike Zeller

Welcome to the show where we go beyond just talking about your WHY, and helping you discover and live your WHY. If you’re a regular, you know that every week, we talk about one of the nine WHYs. We bring on somebody with that WHY so we can see how their WHY has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the WHY of Make Sense or to make sense of the complex and challenging.

If this is your WHY then you are driven to solve problems and resolve challenging or complex situations. You have an uncanny ability to take in lots of data and information. You tend to observe situations and circumstances around you and sort through them quickly to create solutions that are sensible and easy to implement. Often, you are viewed as an expert because of your unique ability to find solutions quickly. You also have a gift for articulating solutions and summarizing them clearly in understandable language. You believe that many people are stuck and that if they could make sense out of their situation, they could develop simple solutions and move forward. In essence, you help people get unstuck and move forward by helping them solve their problems.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Mike Zeller. He is a business architect and entrepreneur mentor. He helps professionals find their zone of genius and rewrite their subconscious to fuel momentum towards life’s purpose. He has mentored over 200 high-level entrepreneurs from all over the world, helping add tens of millions in revenue to his clients. An entrepreneur himself, he has founded or partnered in over twenty ventures across multiple industries including technology, real estate, digital marketing and more.

Collectively, his businesses have achieved more than $100 million in sales in the last several years. He partners his business strategy with a heavy emphasis on social entrepreneurism, including one venture that gave away $300,000 in cars to single mothers in need. Mike has trained under masters of the industry such as Tony Robbins, Russell Brunson and Jay Abraham. As a master NLP practitioner, he uses his core methodology to help entrepreneurs and creatives get unstuck from emotional roadblocks to become more fully integrated and build unstoppable momentum. He has been featured in Business Insider, Forbes Coaches Council, Thrive Global, Huffington Post, and on Fox Radio. Mike, welcome to the show.

Gary, I’m excited to be here. After that intro, I sound a lot more impressive than I feel.

It sounds like you have done a lot of things. Where I think we should start is take us back through your life, maybe back to even when you were in high school. Where did you grow up? How did you get on this path of entrepreneurism and end up where you are now? Let’s start back there.

I was in love with baseball in high school. I was devoted to becoming a professional baseball player at one point. That’s where self-discipline, desire, hunger and that fuel to challenge myself grew. My dad was an immigrant from Germany with an eighth-grade education. He moved to America, not speaking a word of English during post World War II. He was born in 1940. His parents were anti-Hitler but they still had to have a picture of Hitler hanging in their house. Otherwise, they could be arrested by the Gestapo and a lot worse could happen to them. They had a picture of Hitler hanging in the back door in a closet. If someone came in, they could say, “We have our picture of Hitler in the back.” I learned this story from my dad.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: People need to find their genius. There are clues scattered throughout their lives. The challenge is most people haven’t organized and synthesized those clues yet.

If I go back to some of the roots and things that are imprinted upon us that you don’t even realize where they come from, my dad was eligible for nutrition deficient camps. Even though he was a German boy and his parents had a general store, which is a precursor to grocery stores. He came over to America with this hardiness and this resilience where they had one serving of meat a week. They would have potatoes, vegetables and things like that.

I’m not terribly old or anything like that but when I was growing up, he taught us a lot of that. He taught us to be resilient, disciplined, frugal, hardworking and industrious. I got a lot of that, but he was also self-employed at the time I was growing up. He owned and raised harness horses and was one of the best in the country, so I wanted to eventually be self-employed. Eventually, I knew I was meant to be an entrepreneur. I thought I was going to be in the restaurants. I got into real estate and started building a mini real estate empire.

At age 32, I listened to Tony Robbins’ Personal Power II. He talks about doing incantations and affirmations. My seventh affirmation was that I mentor and lead some of the brightest and best people in the world. I was like, “I don’t know how I’m going to do that. All I’m doing now is real estate.” I was like, “I’m supposed to write this down.”

Three years later, I had started at that point six more businesses. After a mini-sabbatical in Buenos Aires, Argentina that was inspired by The 4-Hour Workweek, I started getting tons of people reaching out for mentorship and coaching. My first paid client at the time was doing $25 million a year in eComm. He’s the cofounder of iHeartDogs. I loved it and felt like I need to figure out a way to make this viable and make sense in helping entrepreneurs grow. That’s a long story.

You were early on into sports. That was your thing. Did you go off to college or no college?

I went to college. I went to a private liberal arts school and played baseball in college for a bit. I am still very attuned to sports. I’m hosting a Clubhouse room called The Sons and Daughters of Hall of Famers. Jim Brown’s daughter is coming on, Gill Russell’s daughter, Sugar Ray Leonard’s son, Joe Montana’s son might come and share. I love the game of sports.

That will be interesting because the pressure that’s got to be on the son or daughter of a legend has got to be intense. I’m fortunate that I had two daughters and I didn’t get to put pressure on them to be these amazing athletes because that wasn’t in their makeup. I realized that quickly when I was coaching soccer to five-year-old girls. I turned to put my daughter in the game and she’s down at the end of the field chasing a butterfly. I realized all this pressure that I could apply to be a great athlete is not going to apply to them. What was the first business that you got into?

You can't find your genius without knowing your values and weaknesses. Click To Tweet

Besides a couple of network marketing businesses, I would say real estate investing. I’ve built on a little real estate portfolio.

Who got you into that? Why did you pick that of all the things that you could have picked why real estate investing?

One of my mentors at the time shared with me Carleton Sheets’ No Down Payment Program. It says, “97% of America’s millionaires made their millions in real estate.” It was one of his core premises. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know but I got in the game. I loved the power of leverage, the tax write-offs, and all the other things that come with real estate. I’m a big believer in real estate.

It was interesting when I listened to your story, the quick version of it. It’s very similar to my path. I did Tony Robbins’ Personal Power when I was in my twenties. I took the No Down Payment course. I took a lot of those same things. It’d be interesting to see if most entrepreneurs were on that same path. I saw some different multilevel marketing things way back in the day. I quickly learned that maybe that wasn’t the best way. You probably figured out it didn’t make much sense.

I didn’t want everyone that I talked to be a prospect of my downline.

You didn’t want them to scatter when you walked in?

Yeah, exactly.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: Your genius is where you can be one of the best in your marketplace. This has to be deeply aligned with your values, life experiences, relationships, and strengths.

What kind of real estate were you involved with?

It is mostly residential. We did a few flips but frankly, the flips were hard. Even though Nashville is a great market, it is still a very hard market to make good margins on. I eventually owned an office building. I had an office building that was sold in 2020. I loved investing and I still do. Besides cryptocurrency, that’s the thing I want to heavily invest in over the next twenty years, as well as other companies.

You jump in there, figure out the best way to do it, do that for a little while, and then onto the next.

One of the things that I started noticing, especially as I reflect back, is I have 4 or 5 friends that have $100 million-plus real estate portfolios. I didn’t love the game as they did, but I loved other things that they maybe don’t understand or get to. When we go into finding your genius, I think there are clues scattered throughout our lives. The challenge is most of us haven’t organized and synthesized the clues that, “You’re a genius over here and you’re not so much a genius over here. In fact, you suck over here.” We have some basic understanding of those things but you have to get even more precise. One of the fundamentals, as I look back at my entrepreneurial journey, is that I see over and over that those people who accomplish extraordinary things put themselves in extraordinarily right positions. I think there are clues in your life, my life, and everyone’s life as well.

I bet you see scenarios where they put themselves in situations where they weren’t living their genius. How long can somebody take that? You did real estate for a while and then jumped into it by accident. It sounds like personal growth, mentoring and helping other people achieve their success. In that area, is that where you learned about the zone of genius?

One of the businesses that I started when I came back from Buenos Aires was a socially-minded car dealership. We had a goal that was twofold. It’s to create the most ethical, honest, straightforward, and the best value car buying experience in the Southeast, which we did. Every car we sold helped us give away another car to a single mother in need. We gave away over $300,000 worth of cars. We started a digital marketing agency that was designed to help my businesses and other businesses grow and stretch. Another venture was the men’s fashion line, then a sustainable fashion line, and then an office/coworking space.

I started asking myself, “What parts of the business am I good at?” I also started getting clues about what parts of the business I’m not so good at, which are some operations, legal, administrative tax sides. I hate those things. It’s not in my wheelhouse. I can do them and I can discipline myself, but only for so long. I get bored and I want to go over here and create something else. I lost over $1 million as well.

To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom. If you can master yourself, you can master the game of life. Click To Tweet

After I had all this growth, doing $30 million a year in revenue, I personally lost over $1 million in a pretty short time period in 2018. It sideswiped me because I was playing out of my position so much. I realized that my genius had gotten me to a certain level but I didn’t have the right partners, collaborators, etc. Now I had more people asking as well as I was getting more advice-seekers approaching me. I’m like, “I can’t tell you where and what you should do without knowing your values, strengths and weaknesses.” I thought, “All the personality tests gave us different clues.” I loosely created a process to organize and synthesize the clues.

You figured it out. You made sense of this complex thing called, “What’s my genius?”

I’ve got the most complete process ever created for someone who is hungry to figure out their genius more precisely. I’ve yet to find someone that doesn’t have a massive breakthrough when they do the whole thing.

How do you define your genius?

My genius is where I can be one of the best in the world or best in the marketplace that’s deeply aligned with my values, life experiences, relationships and my strengths. It’s those four pillars. We all have webs of relationships. Our network is our net worth, some might say. The third thing is our defining life experiences. Why does someone who goes through the same university or goes through the same experience in terms of the same education or whatever do something radically different?

If we look back at Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, why are they both in a race for space? They were fascinated with space in their teenage years and wanted to do something. They dreamed of going to outer space. One of my favorite stories is about Theodore Roosevelt. At the age of 22 or 23, unfortunately, his first wife dies giving birth and his mom dies 24 hours later. He’s like, “I can’t take it.” He was a politician at the time, a Congressman or something. He let his aunt raise his daughter for the next six months because he’s like, “What am I going to do with an infant? I’m a rough rider type personality.”

He goes out West to North Dakota and South Dakota. He camps, hunts and lives in the wilderness for months. Fast forward many years later, he becomes the President of the US. He preserves the national parks. He preserves more natural acreage and is a bigger advocate for wildlife than any other president we’ve ever had because of those types of experiences.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: The universe is made up of waves. The challenge is to create a new pattern or wave. You can do this by creating new perspectives and new perspectives create aha moments.

The first thing was unique talents, the second thing was your important relationships, and then the third was your life experiences. What was the fourth again?

It’s values and passions. What do I stand for and what do I stand against? What lights me up? What am I insatiably curious about? They all give clues. The goal is you synthesize and organize all the clues. They are scattered throughout. If you get them all on one table or one worksheet in my case, now you have all these clues organized and you can see patterns emerge. You’ve probably read Jim Collins’ Good to Great book, Built to Last and all that. What is it? Jim gathered a bunch of data and he didn’t go in assuming certain things. He had some guesses but he looked in and said, “What patterns are going to emerge from the data, about the companies when they went from good to great.” There were some patterns that he didn’t even expect.

What happens is you have greater certainty and greater clarity. One of my clients that I took through a whole day session on it is a former executive of the federal government. She’s retiring and she’s had as many as 80,000 employees underneath her. She said, “Mike, this is one of the biggest a-ha moments in my 34-year career. She went through the process even though she is pretty self-aware. She spent tens of thousands of dollars with coaching programs. She read countless books. She gets up at 4:30 AM. She does her disciplines and things like that. Socrates said, “To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.” If you can master yourself, you can master the game of life.

What was the turning point for you? Why did you decide to go on this path?

I remember when I first became a man of faith in college. I became a Christian in my junior year. I remember speaking and organizing an event. I was like, “I think my purpose in life is to unleash people’s God-given potential.” I did ministry for a while but I felt like, “I’m not supposed to be in ministry.”

What made you believe that?

It was almost like a divine download. I had a whisper. Sometimes in life, we get whispers and nudges. It doesn’t have to be audible. It’s just, “There was something meaningful here. I’m supposed to connect with this person.” When I was 21 years old, I was mentoring college students. One of the guys I was mentoring was two years younger than me. He says to me one day, “Mike, you’re the best mentor I’ve ever had.” I was like, “Wow.” His dad was a bestselling leadership author. His dad was pretty legit and way far ahead of me. I was like, “That’s pretty awesome.”

The phrase, 'I am' is very powerful because it's a declaration that moves your body to where you want to go. Click To Tweet

When you get connected to your heart and spirit, you get clarity if you’re willing to still yourself, still the outside noise and listen. Tune yourself and ask yourself. Your body doesn’t lie. If I take this pen right here and I put my hand down and I try to stab it, my body will not stab itself unless I’ve somehow bypassed it. A Navy SEAL might be able to bypass it but I can’t bypass that very easily because our body is designed not to harm itself. Our body is also very honest, but most of us are attuned to our mind more than our body. Our minds can lie and it lies all the time. We get all these word tracks, wounds, stories and false beliefs.

I have a Claim Your Power Meditation on YouTube that you go through and you get more connected to yourself, your weak-ass self and your most powerful self. You release the weak-ass version of you from controlling and guiding your life. It’s all about asking your heart and your body. What is the name of your badass self? I’ve got Magic Mike, and I’ve got Weak-ass Willie. Magic Mike is more powerful, I promise you that.

You create your own name for the badass version of yourself and then you put that one on your shoulder or what? How do you use your badass self?

We’re both sports fans. We know Kobe Bryant had Black Mamba. Bo Jackson had a guy named Jason from Friday the 13th. He’s a nice guy off the field but when he’s on the field, he’s going to run over and destroy people. It’s how he thinks. You flip into a different mentality. One of the early clients that I worked with on this was a big Instagram influencer. She had 600,000 followers on Instagram. We sat down for twenty minutes in our session. We were out in LA and she breaks down in tears. She said, “Mike, I’m completely stuck on my message.” I’m like, “What am I going to do? I got a crying girl in my hands.” I realized, “I can take her through this process.”

I took her through the process and I got her connected to Oprah Winfrey. I asked her, “Who do you admire who knows their message?” “Oprah Winfrey.” I had her visualize experiencing, being and delivering a message as Oprah. By the end of that, we go back to her. She’s created a whole new brainwave. We’ve got wavelengths. The universe is made up of waves, sound waves and light waves. As entrepreneurs, what are we? We’re up and down. It’s a roller coaster to some extent. Our women have a cycle and it’s a 30-day cycle. They’re up and down. There’s a time of the month they’re crazy and want chocolate. The universe is made up of waves.

The challenge is to create a new pattern or a new wave. In that Law of Physics, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an outside source. We can create new patterns and new waves with new perspectives. New perspectives create a-has. Why did the founder of Red Bull discover Red Bull when he’s in Thailand? He’s tired and he has a big meeting. He asked the taxi driver to pull over so he could run in and get an energy drink. The taxi driver says, “Get this Red Bull. It’s good.” He goes down and gets a Red Bull can or whatever with a little Red Bull on it. It is something similar to what it is now. He was like, “This works.” He comes back and creates that brand. He was in a different brainwave, pattern and perspective. I help people create new patterns around finding their genius and anchoring to their most powerful identity.

When they have their most powerful identity, they can use that as a sounding board. How do they use it once they have their badass self?

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: Don’t let a thought or pattern that doesn’t serve who you actually are, stay in your mind. You can let them come in, but do not let them build a nest.

I’ll give you an example. One of my clients is Renee Batten. She’s a former Army veteran or a Navy veteran. She’s a powerhouse woman who has written a bunch of books. Her alter ego is Barbuda. We were talking and in many parts of her business, she’s doubled and tripled her income since working together but she hadn’t made some leaps up in our marketing. I was like, “Renee, who’s leading your marketing department? Is it Barbuda or is it Renee?” She’s like, “It’s not Barbuda. It’s Renee.” Barbuda leads with power, magnificence, strength and courage. She doesn’t play small. You have different energy. It’s the beauty of the human mind that is different from the animal kingdom.

I remember when my dad made us watch animal shows. You see a wildebeest getting caught by some lions and then all of a sudden, it somehow escapes the jaws of the lion and runs off. The lion is too tired to chase it down. Two minutes later, it’s eating grass. You’re like, “Mr. Wildebeest, what the heck’s wrong with you? You were just in the jaws of a lion and now you’re eating grass.” We wouldn’t do that. If we almost die, we’re not eating a sandwich two minutes later because our minds are different.

In the animal kingdom, their minds are designed to release energy faster. I’m studying trauma a lot. Healing from Trauma is a great book that talks a little bit about this. As humans, we hold on to it. We also have the superpower of we can transport our minds into a different space with imagination and creativity. If we can do that, then we will lead and create from a radically different space.

Our marriages and relationships can be different. We unlock our divine human potential in a different way. That’s why I think this higher version of ourselves that’s within us is the real version. Sometimes we’re like, “If I step up here and I imagine myself there, that’s the imposter.” No, your current reality is most likely your imposter. What if we flip the perspective? What if my current reality or the one that wants to play small, the one that wants to hide, the one that wants to not go for it is the false version?

Once you have defined what the real version of you is and named, then you can step into that?

What I do is I have people write out, “How does this version of you walk and talk? What is this version of you wearing? Are they wearing hand-me-downs pre-owned clothes? Are they wearing Gucci or whatever they are wearing? What type of music does that version of you listen to?” Do you do affirmations?

Yeah.

Figure out who you are and where you're amazing at. Then you can put yourself in a position where you can succeed the most. Click To Tweet

I start my day off with, “I am Magic Mike. I am a wealth magnet. I am attracting, earning and saving millions of dollars. I am worthy of extraordinary.” I’ve got 2 minutes and 22 seconds of affirmations of declaring “I am,” even though some of those things have not happened fully yet, but I’m speaking where I want to go. Our words are our commands so I speak those into existence based on my zone of genius partly as well, then they are in alignment.

I’m designed to be a creator and not an accumulator like Warren Buffett. The Wealth Dynamics test is one of my favorite personality tests. It shows you your natural pathway to wealth. If I’m creating and building in alignment, the powerful phrase “I am” subtly commands your body to move in that direction with energy and music. I like energy and music. It changes our brain waves as well.

Tell us about Magic Mike versus Weak-ass Willie. When did that transition happen from Weak-ass Willie to Magic Mike? What was that like for you?

Both of them still show up. Weak-ass Willie is when I lost a lot of money and then I had all these people I had to pay and all these things. I had some significant shame around that. I had my tail between my legs. I’m not going to take care of what I need to take care of if Weak-ass Willie is leading my life. I started creating that alter ego of Magic Mike. I had a client call me Magic Mike because of the magic I was creating in her life. I said, “What does Magic Mike do? How does it lead? How can you show up more before I go into meetings or podcasts interviews, and before I do this or this?”

I’m like, “Do I want Magic Mike to lead or do I want Weak-ass Willie?” When Weak-ass Willie shows up, I’ll literally say, “Thank you for sharing your good desire.” It’s always for protection and wanting to keep me from harm. I’m like, “I see you and I hear you but I’ve got to advance. I’ve got to be on the offensive and lead. I can’t retreat. “Thank you. Magic Mike, you take the reins, drive the car, drive the bus in my life. Let’s roll.”

It is very much like sports.

It goes down into visualization, commanding, reinforcing and not letting a thought or pattern that doesn’t serve who you are and how you want to show up stay in your mind long. We all have them come in, but do we let them build a nest in a home?

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
Find Your Genius: Greater clarity leads to greater confidence. Greater confidence leads to a greater conviction. Greater conviction leads to greater courage. Then you will have higher-level commitments to yourself and others.

It’s I can’t versus I can. I was a world champion in racquetball and at every level that I went through at every stage, I faced the “Am I really good enough?” You have to overcome that by believing it. What worked when you were at a lower level does not work when you get to the next level, which does not work when you get to the next level, so you’ve got to reinvent.

You’ve had to do that a few times in your career. I imagine you’ve gotten closer as well to your genius and to your purpose. There is always more to unpack using the lessons of our wins and failures.

What I like about what you’ve done is that you’ve figured it out. You’ve codified what people were doing that found success versus what people were doing that didn’t find success. You said, “This is what these people are doing. Let me show you what the heck they’re doing so it makes sense to you and then you can go do it.”

It’s do-it in your own unique way and your own unique path. The other thing that’s cool about this process is when you do it, now you’re going to have even more deep alignment. If you’re resolved and convicted in your spirit, you show up more courageously. You show up with greater confidence and greater commitment. It all starts with clarity. It’s the first of the five Cs. Greater clarity leads to greater confidence. Greater confidence leads to a greater conviction. With a greater conviction, we show up with more courage, then we make higher-level commitments to ourselves and others.

I’m sure there are a lot of people reading right now that are in that stage themselves where they are making that shift or the transition from what they were doing to what they wanted to do, and it’s scary. It’s sometimes easier to write it out and play small. If you’re talking to them right now, they’re reading and they’re teetering on, “Should I go for it? Should I not go for it?” What is the first step they should take?

Socrates is one of the wisest men who ever lived. He mentored Plato and Aristotle who gave us in essence, Western Civilization, the philosophy of democracy, and the capitalistic system as well, and human growth and human potential. He said, “To know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom.” King David said in Proverbs 16:32, “It’s better to have self-control than to conquer a city.” Another wise man, Dee Hock, the Founder of Visa. When he started writing for Harvard Business Review, he found the very best leaders in the world and did something that ordinary leaders did not. That was that they focused more than 50% of their leadership energy on leading themselves.

Back to what I said before, “Extraordinary results are predicated not necessarily by the most extraordinary people but people being in extraordinarily right positions.” You think of a great sports team. They are extraordinarily aligned. Why will the Brooklyn Nets probably never win an NBA championship with Kevin Durant and James Harden consistently? They don’t have a complementary team. They got two great stars but it’s not aligned with the rest of the team.

Spend 30 minutes a day reading. That way, you start your day off with some fuel in the tank. Click To Tweet

Extraordinary success comes down to people being in extraordinarily right positions. If you get yourself more in the right position, which I think that’s where I had another client go through the test and the course before I had the book out. She was like, “Mike, I would have doubled my salary if I had gone through this first because I would have had so much greater clarity around where I kicked butt and I would have asked for more.” She renegotiated her salary after being at the job for a month.

Figure out who you are and where you are amazing because you can put yourself in a position where you can succeed the most. I would say pick up the book because it guides you through the whole process but go through the personality tests. The reason I’d take people through five personality tests is they all give you different clues. They measure different behaviors and strengths. Doing the other inventories around relationships and defining life moments also give you other layers of clues. The more layers of clues, the more patterns you will see.

Once you know yourself, then making decisions is easier, and then you have clarity, confidence, conviction, courage and commitment. That’s exactly what we believe. The first step is self-awareness and the first step in self-awareness is knowing your WHY because once you know your WHY, all the rest makes sense and fits together. In your case, we know you are somebody who believes in making sense of complex and challenging things. You’ve done that in every area of your life all the way along, from being the guy that helped people through their problems when you were young, to the person that’s continually doing it now. You did it in real estate and you did it all the way along in your journey.

Knowing that, we could predict that you’re eventually going to figure something special out, and you did. You took something that is complex, challenging and overwhelming. I have no idea what to do and I don’t know where to turn,” and you said, “Let me hold your hand for a second. Here’s where you go. Here’s your step. Figure yourself out and then we’ll figure the rest out.” I got one last question for you before we go there. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever been given or that you ever gave someone?

Something that changed my world was when I was nineteen years old. I went to Peter Lowe’s Success Seminar. I heard guys like Zig Ziglar, Colin Powell and all those legends of afar. One of them said, “Spend 30 minutes a day reading. Do it in the first part of your day. Do it in the morning. That way, you start your day off with some fuel in the tank. You put some deposits in your bank account.” I’ve done that in every season of life since then. I’ve read 1,500 books now. I love learning and growing. As a result, I can honestly say that I mastered a lot of different subjects.

There is another guy, Brian Tracy, when I was twenty years old in the middle of a finals week. He said at his seminar, “If you read a book a month in your chosen field, you’ll be an expert in three years. That’s 36 books.” I was like, “I don’t want to wait three years.” I’m a little more impatient. I was like, “I’m going to master a subject in one year.” The first one I mastered and worked on was leadership, sales and marketing, spirituality, relationships, human psychology and all those others.

Choosing a field and becoming a bonafide expert goes far. You want to learn, lean into that and become a master. Don’t be a dabbler. You can dabble in some things and that’s okay. That’s experimentation, but choose a handful of things to become a master at. Once you master something else and you want to explore and master something else, master that. The top one-percenters earn disproportionately more than everyone else. We all can be one-percenters. If that’s 36 books, you can read 36 books in a subject and not take yourself up but apply it. That’s was the best advice I’ve ever received.

BYW S4 8 | Find Your Genius
The Genius Within: Your Natural Pathway To Impact, Fulfillment, & Wealth

One of my mentors says it this way. He says, “Learn less and study more.” It’s pretty much what you said. You don’t need 500 books on 500 subjects, take one subject and go 500 books deep, and then you become the master. If there are people that are reading and they’re like, “I love what Mike had to say. How do I get ahold and work with him?” What’s the best way to connect with you? What would work best for you?

If you want a free Six-Step Guide To Finding Your Genius, I’ve got a free six-step guide. You can text Genius U to 474747. You’ll get a link to opt-in and get that PDF. Also, GeniusWithinBook.com or it’s on Amazon. I’m @TheMikeZeller on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and MikeZeller.com as well. It’s a pleasure being on your show, Gary. I love your approach and am excited for this next chapter of your life as well.

I’m so glad you were here. Thank you for taking the time and I look forward to staying in touch. As you come through Albuquerque, look me up and we’ll go get some Mexican food here.

That would be great. I love it.

Thanks.

In our last segment of Guess the WHY, I want us to think about Patrick Mahomes. He is the quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. They won the Super Bowl and had a great year in 2020, and not such a great year in 2021, but I’m sure it’s going to end better for him. What do you think Patrick Mahomes’ WHY is? He’s the guy that can throw the sidearms and can run and passes well. He seems to think faster than everybody else. He always seems one step ahead.

For me, his WHY is the same as our guest’s, Mike Zeller, which is to make sense of the complex and challenging. So much comes his way but he quickly synthesizes it. He quickly gets on the right path, makes a decision and makes it happen. That’s what people with the WHY of Makes Sense do. Thank you, all. If you’ve not yet discovered your WHY, you can do so at WHYInstitute.com. Use the code PODCAST50 and you can get it for half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe, leave us a review and a rating on whatever platform you’re using. Thank you and I will see you next episode.

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About Mike Zeller

Mike Zeller is a business architect and entrepreneur mentor who helps professionals find their zone of genius and rewire their subconscious to fuel momentum toward their life’s purpose. He has mentored over two hundred high-level entrepreneurs from all over the world, helping add tens of millions in revenue to his clients.
An entrepreneur himself, Mike has founded or partnered in over 20 ventures across multiple industries, including technology, real estate, digital marketing, and more. Collectively, his businesses have achieved more than $100 million in sales in the last 10 years. He partners  his business strategy with a heavy emphasis on social entrepreneurism,  including one venture that gave away $300,000+ in cars to single  mothers in need.
Mike has trained under masters of the industry such as Tony Robbins,  Russell Brunson, and Jay Abraham. A master NLP practitioner, he uses  this core methodology to help entrepreneurs and creatives get unstuck  from emotional roadblocks to become more fully integrated and build  unstoppable momentum. Mike has been featured in Business Insider,  Forbes Coaches Council, Thrive Global, Huffington Post, and on Fox  Radio.
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Podcast

Finding A Better Way: Joe Maez Discusses Leadership, Mentoring And Mindset For Success

BYW S4 7 | Better Way

Finding a better way is what drives human success. To be able to find a better way, we need leadership, mentoring and the right mindset. In this episode, Dr. Gary Sanchez sits down for an insightful discussion with Joe Maez, real estate agent and founder of The Maez Group. Joe is an armed forces combat veteran who has leveraged the training, mindset and mentoring of many to get to where he is today, despite coming from a challenged community. Learn great insights from Joe and Dr. Sanchez by tuning in to this episode.

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Finding A Better Way: Joe Maez Discusses Leadership, Mentoring And Mindset For Success

Welcome to the show, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and live your why. If you’re a regular reader, you know that every week, we talk about one of the nine why’s and then bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of a better way.

If this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator. You are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like “What if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better?”

You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, “I’m often pleased but never satisfied.” You were excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another always with the ultimate goal of improving something.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Joseph Maez. He was born and raised in Northern New Mexico. Joe is not afraid to go the extra mile. He’s a graduate of UNM Anderson School of Management, a US Army combat veteran and the first New Mexico broker on record to close over 100 million in residential real estate in a single year.

He’s recognized as being amongst the leading real estate professionals in the country selling thousands of homes in Albuquerque and Rio Rancho metro areas. Armed with a unique and extensive knowledge of local markets coupled with unparalleled marketing and negotiation skills and discipline, Joe brings a true passion to every real estate transaction. Joe is a sales coach and consultant to many public and private companies. Joe, welcome to the show.

It's not about what you say. It's about what you do. People can say things, but it's about what they do that is worth more. Click To Tweet

Thanks for having me, Gary.

This is going to be fun. I’m looking forward to this. Tell everybody a little bit about your background. Take us back to where were you born? When you went to UNM, how did you get into the military and then how did you get into real estate? Let’s go down that path.

I was born in Española, New Mexico, a little Northern New Mexico town up in Rio Arriba County. I went to school in Cuba, New Mexico, until I was in third grade. At that point, my father got a job up in Chama, so he moved us up to Abiquiu. That’s pretty much where I grew up. My graduating class was eighteen people, Gary, in Coronado High School.

Most people reading this will not know what Española is like, what kind of reputation it has and what it is known for. Give people a sense of where that is and what that is like.

To me, it’s a beautiful place. It doesn’t have the best of reputations. It was known as being the low rider capital of the world and the heroin capital of the world which we’re trying to change. There’s a lot of amazing people that come out of the Española Valley area. It’s a beautiful country, too. For people that are reading that never experienced it, it’s a challenging location. It’s a challenging community. More specifically, where I graduated from was a place called Gallina, New Mexico, which is where the Coronado Leopards are. It was a consolidated school.

I rode the bus for 45 minutes in the morning to get to school. It was neat because I took my daughter on a little trip and I hadn’t been back to that school in twenty years. The campus gates happened to be open on a Sunday afternoon and I took my daughter through there. I said, “That’s where your daddy went to school.” She’s like, “No way.” My kids are going to some great schools. I want them to go to school where it’s cool to be smart because when I was growing up, it wasn’t cool to be smart. MPC had to do things a little bit differently. I graduated from that school.

I did the delayed entry program for the Army Reserves. Both my grandfathers are Vietnam veterans. I always wanted to be like those guys. Those are my gold standard. That’s what a man should be. Just studying what you’re studying and doing what you’re doing. A lot of things are learned. We want to be like the people before us. I have great mentors. I was the only person from my generation to go and join the military. As soon as I possibly could, I even told my recruiter, “I was laid down.” Normally people just hold out for a bonus or something like that, but I joined up right away.

BYW S4 7 | Better Way
Better Way: Going to war is super humbling because you never realize how good you have it until you don’t have it.

 

I was a combat engineer. The good thing that my parents did is they always programmed us. They said, “You’re going to college.” That was awesome. My first major was sports medicine because I was super into sports and always liked to run, lift weights and do all that stuff. We didn’t have enough kids for the football team at the school that I went to, so that was a bummer. If you’re going to play basketball, you have to run fast. You had to be faster than everybody else, which helps me out in my industry right now. You have to be faster than everybody else.

You got to be resourceful.

I joined the Reserves and then I got a business degree. When I was going to college, mom and dad said, “You got to go to college.” I was going to NMSU down at New Mexico State and then one day I woke up, I said, “What’s going on with you?” I used to sell my artwork in the old town. I did stuff for the Spanish market when I was growing up. My father-in-law taught me how to carve crosses in Spanish colonial furniture and things like that.

One day, I was like, “I’m not going to be in people’s feet for the rest of my life,” and then I said, “I’m going to business school.” I left NMSU and went back to Anderson because I have a strong business school and that was that. Halfway through my graduating semester, I was deployed to Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division. That was in 2003 when we invaded Iraq. That was an eye-opener.

Both my grandfathers were war vets. My dad’s a war vet. This was part of me going into that role. When you’re in your twenties, you don’t think that war is a bad thing. As sick as it sounds, you’re excited to go to war. When you get around that in my life, there’s not a lot of good that comes from war but I can tell you that great experience came to me from war.

Going to war is humbling because you never realize how good you have it until you don’t have it. That’s always been a saying. Sometimes people get tired and they don’t know what that means until they experience it. Even going to school, certain relationships that you’ve had, advice that your father or your mother and advice that mentors gave you, a lot of times, we take that for granted. Taking running water for granted and taking a shower in cold water or things like that. What was supposed to be a four-month deployment turned into thirteen months, so that changes your perspective on life.

What was that like?

Nobody ever likes to admit their shortcomings but I was the kid growing up that going to college was checking the box for me because if you didn’t go to college in our family, everybody gave you the guilt trip because all our fathers and mothers had done it. My grandmother was the first valedictorian in the family line, which was great to move the needle forward. I didn’t even buy books in college. I just went, listened, and passed every test with A’s, B’s, and the occasional C.

When I got back from Iraq, I got straight A’s because, unfortunately, Anderson didn’t give me any credit, not even a partial credit, but it was fine. I got down into it. I finished off when I graduated with straight As in my last semester, which never happened. I was in the books and I was reading, and I was like, “I’ll never take education for granted like that,” or opportunities for that matter. That was neat. I needed that.

10% of what you're going to learn is in the classroom. The other 10% is reading in a book, but 80% is actually rolling up your sleeves and doing it. Click To Tweet

Going to war for me was an eye-opener. I was a hell of a soldier. When you’re in your twenties, that’s a great time to be a soldier when you don’t need to have any kids or worry back at home. In my 40s, I’d probably be a different soldier than when I was then because I was one of the youngest NCOs, which is a Non-Commissioned Officer. I got out as an E-6 after eight years of being in which I was always a fast tracker. I always max my PT test and all the educational stuff. I was good at it. I always excelled.

I had soldiers that reported to me that were twice my age which was another learning lesson because I didn’t have enough miles to empathize with them about what was going on back at home because it was hard for some of these guys to be far away from their families. I couldn’t empathize. It takes time to get that kind of experience.

Now, I’m a pretty decent communicator because people always say, “You’re only 40 years old,” and I’ll tell them, “I’m 40 years old, but I got a lot of miles on me.” Sometimes I feel like Forrest Gump because there are many things. Forty is young and I still had a lot of life experience. When I was coming back from Iraq, my wife started looking for homes for us because where I come from, everybody does.

That’s the way a lot of people think about things. They say, “This is the path of life that people need to take.” It’s like, “You go to school, then you go to college. After you go to college, you get a job. You worked that job for as long as it takes to retire. You contribute to whatever your retirement account it is. When you retire, you get a hobby.” The way that you throw and get married, have kids and buy a house. There are these paint-by-numbers things for your life and that’s all learned.

When I came back from Iraq, I told my wife, “I had some good money saved because number one, when I was there, there wasn’t anywhere to spend that money.” These poor guys come back in debt because they have access to the internet. I did not touch that money, so I had a pretty good amount of money saved when I came back. I said, “Time to check that box and buy a house.”

Rosie started looking around for a house and then when I finally was able to talk to her when I came back into town, she’s like, “You would be a good real estate agent.” I said, “What’s a real estate agent?” She’s like, “They help people find houses. They make a lot of money, too.” I was like, “I like money.” At that time, I was bartending at my family’s bar in college and I did pretty good bartending.

Bartending is listening to people and making sure their drinks are full. They’re not waiting on you for that matter. Being a good listening ear but also remembering them, knowing what they like when they show back up again. I was a great bartender. She said, “You love helping and listening to people.” I said, “Real estate. How’s that work?” She said, “It’s a 100% commission paid.” Where I come from, you get a paycheck on the 1st and the 15th. I said, “I will listen.”

I went to career night with her and I listened to the guys that were putting on the career night. They are super awesome guys. They totally put on a good show and sold me on it, but when they told me 100% commission paid, I still had those limiting beliefs in my mind about, “Could I do it?” We both agreed that we’re going to get our licenses. Rosie got her license and went with the brokerage here in town.

At that time, Pulte Homes was doing a lot of college recruiting. They’re on campus and it was in real estate. They advertise a $55,000 a year salary with benefits. I was like, “Great. There’s the security.” I went with it. I interviewed and I got the job. It was a fun process. There’s a lot of time we probably don’t have to talk about that but it was neat. My military service got me in the door there. I would have never gotten in the door if I didn’t have my degree because they’re only looking for college grads.

BYW S4 7 | Better Way
Better Way: When any company rolls out a CRM, they lose so many people because people just don’t like change.

 

Number two, it was when war veterans were coming back from Iraq. I was one of the first people to come back and that was exciting. They hired me pretty quickly, which was great. I started with this company and it was awesome. Their sales training program was phenomenal. I didn’t know that at the time but my mentor’s name is Brian Fink and he used to tell me, “If you want, I’ll give you extra training. Meet me in my office at 5:00 AM.” He offered that to the whole sales staff. I was one of the only ones that showed up and he took a major liking to me.

Before that, this is where I got recognized. The company had rolled out a CRM. It was a national initiative. Pulte is a Fortune 147 company. You know how that is, Gary. We’re both better way guys. Sometimes when any company rolls out a CRM, you lose so many people because people don’t like change. I’m like, “Give me change. I love change.” That’s what I realized about myself. I’m an intern at this time. I’m low on the totem pole, which is great. I’m learning.

All of a sudden, corporate flies into town. Nobody even knows who I am. They said, “We’re looking for a Joseph Maez.” That’s before I started going by Joe. I remember my VP’s assistant was like, “That’s our young guy. He’s working down in the South Valley.” My VP says, “If he did something wrong, we could assure you he’s new,” or whatever. They said, “No. He’s the number one user of SalesLogix in the country. We want to talk to him because we noticed the sales in his community have gone through the roof.”

This was a platform at that time in 2004, 2005. That was the first year I started to see mass emails and things like that were going out. I was using it because I had to network with the brokers in the community. The rest was history, Gary. I used that system and then they had me teach it. For seven years, I was with Pulte. In my last two years with that company, I was the number one salesperson in the entire nation, which was awesome. It all came with great training. Pulte had an amazing training program.

Ryan did a good job of investing in me and he’s an integral part and mentor. He was inspirational to me. I’ll go cool stuff development-wise, so I learned a lot about construction and finance. There’s so much that goes into it. It was like a Master’s degree in real estate. Towards the end, they started laying off people. Pulte changed in general because it was in the downturn. A lot of the people that I looked up to were getting cut and let go for the right reasons. The company could not sustain that type of overhead anymore.

To me, I’ve never seen anything like that so it was hard for me to take even though I was a great revenue generator. At that point, I was untouchable. You got a 25, 26-year-old guy making $500,000 a year. It was amazing. I was at the top of my game. My wife was on the resale side and I’m on the new construction side. We’re doing great.

My little boy was two at the time and Rosie was pregnant with our little girl and then this lady came into town. She was from Pulte corporate. After they started laying off the executives, they came to depend on me. I knew I wasn’t going to get touched because I was a revenue generator. The last person you’re going to touch is the revenue generator.

When she came to town, she’s like, “You’re Joe Maez?” I said, “Yes.” She’s like, “I hear you get whatever you want around here.” I was like, “Where’s this coming from?” She said, “Starting next year, we’re going to cut your commission. The reason we’re going to do that is because we know you’re used to making a certain amount of money and you’ll work harder to make that same amount of money.” I was like, “It’s the cold-blooded killer.”

Nothing replaces experience. You have to have good quality experience. You have to get somebody to mentor you. Click To Tweet

She was hired to do that. She’s honestly one of the best things that ever happened to me because I had been toying about going out on my own for a couple of years at that point but I didn’t do it. I have second-level limiting beliefs. I knew I could do it. A lot of agents and marquee brokers in town were like, “Joe, you got to make people just come to you.”

I didn’t have anything to do with the sale. I was an order taker. I’m listening to that and I’m like, “All this stuff is adding up,” but I knew I was an X-factor. I always make things happen. It’s funny when I was younger, I never thought algebra would come in handy. I solve for X every day. I’m always solving for X, whether it’s figuring out a problem or finding out a better way to do things.

At this point, I’m on the top of my career. One day, I was at a company picnic and our new division president was there. He and I got along well. Six months had passed since that lady had that conversation with me and I’m forever grateful for her. She said, “What’s going on, Joe?” I said, “I’ve never done this before. I’m going to give you guys my two weeks.” I don’t have anything lined up, Gary. He’s like, “What is it? Is it about that conversation you had with someone?” I said, “No, it’s not that.”

In fact, I’m glad that happened because this company is amazing. Up to this day, it is one of the best companies out there because they always stood behind its product. It didn’t matter how much it costs. They always warrantied stuff. It’s seriously a great place to learn. I got to prove to myself that I’m not what they say, that I’m not just an order taker out there. They’re like, “If you ever want to come back, the door’s always open.” I appreciate that but I told them that I wouldn’t be back.

In my first year, I went to the same brokerage that my wife was with because the owners and I are good friends. Out of 550 brokers, I’ve placed number four in my first year. That was awesome. I knew I always wanted to be number one. Meaning, top in units and volume. The only way I could do that was by having a team because I was doing it all by myself.

At this point, my wife was taking care of the kids and taking care of me full-time, which is a hard job and taking care of our household. I would not want that job. Supporting us is the hardest job in the Maez family. That was good that she got to stay at home and she got to do all that. Here, I hit the ground. At this point, I started shopping for companies that I could have a team. They had teams here in Albuquerque, but they weren’t a real team. I would kill myself from stress and exhaustion if I was going to work as hard as I was my first year in residential resale.

I looked at RE/MAX and Keller Williams. I went with Keller Williams because they have a great philosophy in how they approach doing business with people, win-win or no deal, which I love. It’s got to be a win-win. By the way, financially, it made a lot of sense from a team perspective. That way, my team members can make decent money as well because I can’t be making all the money. We did that and grew that company. Keller Williams blew up. That was when I broke the $100 million mark and took the number one spot in Albuquerque. It’s been a documented thing for years.

A few years ago, I left Keller Williams and said, “At this point, the buck stops with me.” I started The Maez Group. We closed $149 million in production for 425 units, which is my all-time best. It’s a small brokerage. We have about eight brokers here. Most of them are new, so I specialize in training newer agents. The only difference was when I was with Keller Williams, I would lose my experienced brokers to the company. You got to get it. People want to make more money. Who am I to tell a broker that’s been with me for a certain amount of time like, “I can’t give you a raise.”

BYW S4 7 | Better Way
Better Way: Never take education for granted, or opportunities for that matter.

 

The Maez Group is like the boot camp for newer brokers and if they want to stay long term, they can. The Maez Group is a training ground. It’s where you learn how the real world in real estate works. Everybody has all these cool classes but the real world is a real world. What I provide is real-world experience. There’s a separate brokerage that I own which is called AI, which stands for All In.

These are people that are all-in. They’re not doing this. They’re not doing that. They don’t have one foot over here. They don’t have one foot there. They’re all-in in real estate and they’ve been vetted by me. They’ve been trained by me. They have no criminal record. These are people that you can trust in your home with your family and stuff like that. That’s a new launch.

There’s OP which stands for On Purpose. OP is for people that went through The Maez Group and couldn’t do AI because it’s a lot of work. Now they realize that real estate isn’t as easy as everybody says it is. They worked hard for their license and they still have a lot of contacts. Through OP, they don’t have to be members of the board of realtors with all the fees, but they can refer people to The Maez Group and they can get paid a referral fee on that.

It’s like a triangle of companies. I own a title company as well called Signature Title and it’s been years since we’ve opened it. It’s super successful. It’s doing good business. It’s great. That’s where we’re at. I have an amazing staff. We discovered our why’s with you, but as a better way person, it’s nice to see that because The Maez Group does what it does because we did find a better way.

A little flashback that I had when Gary was when my mentor was around telling him, “We’d sell away more houses if we had somebody to do our paperwork. It seems like every time I’m writing up a contract in the sales office, somebody is coming in wanting to buy, but I’m face to face with somebody writing him up on a deal.” He’s like, “When you’re the boss one day, you could do things how you want to do.” I said, “Noted.”

Now, you do.

My salespeople do not write their own purchase agreements. We have an experienced contract writer that writes all of our contracts. My claim to fame is over 3,000 transactions, Gary, and I’ve never been in a courtroom. The money is great, but having a great reputation is even better. If an attorney would go and say, “You have a pattern of behavior,” the pattern of behavior would be a success and doing things right. Also, creating a business model that people know that when they’re doing business with us, it’s getting done right. We spend money on the processes to make sure that they don’t have to worry about. That’s why people hire brokers to give themselves some insulation from liability.

Question for you then, you said that you’re the guy that makes things happen, what do you attribute to your ability to make things happen?

A lot of that is a combination of a lot of things. Number one, my mom. I’d always say, “I can’t do that.” She would quickly say, “You can and you will.” That was instilled in us at such a young age. My parents were always the candid type of people. In the military, I remember it’s been ingrained in you over time. One of the things that I always would remember was no excuse. If a drill sergeant or a higher up came up to you and say, “What’s this all about?” I’d say, “No excuse and we’d fix it.” We never make excuses and we always would complete the mission. Thinking back, we never had a failed mission because we always never gave up. Looking at things differently, there’s a lot of tenacity that goes into it and the can and the mindset.

Enjoy the process of learning and learn well, because if you skip a step, you might not be able to survive if something really serious. Click To Tweet

One of my favorite sayings was by Henry Ford, “Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you’re right.” That is a huge mindset. There were things that we’ve done here that everybody said, “You can never do that,” but we did it. It’s a mindset that if we know that we can do things, we can get it done. That’s the answer to your question. It’s a mindset more than anything.

When you work with new brokers, what are some of the things that you work with them on so that they can get over these fears? There’s a lot of fear jumping into a commission-only kind of situation.

I learned from these guys, too. I’m a mentor and I’ve mentored some great people in fact, but they mentored me, too. They didn’t even know it but they’ve been helping me out as well. I’m putting myself in their shoes. One thing that I know that we do differently is a real-life experience. I’m an audiobook type of guy, so this show is great. I’ve listened to some of the podcasts and it’s great for a guy like me because I’m not a pick-up-a-book-and-read type of guy.

One of the things I listened to in a book was, “10% of what you’re going to learn is in the classroom. The other 10% is reading in a book, but the 80% is rolling up your sleeves and doing it.” That’s the approach that I love for the newer agents. For me, it’s maybe not the best analogy, but as a wolf would teach the pups how to hunt, that’s how I teach people how to do things. It’s roll with me. We do it, they do it, so do it. If you’re watching me do it, you’re going to be way more comfortable than if you read it in a book or some guy that was teaching in class that’s never even done it. He’s just qualified to do teach the class. This is a real-world experience.

When any of my brokers come out of my camp, if they give me two years, I would put them up against any seasoned broker out there, just from how to get things done. They’re hearing that a seller calls me upset about a low offer or me negotiating that. They hear firsthand the negotiations on offer and how you get the highest price for a seller. They hear firsthand deals are going to miss closing and both the buyer and seller have scheduled moving trucks and everybody’s up in arms about that.

That’s a real-life experience you will not learn in a book or any class by somebody that’s teaching a class that’s probably not even qualified to teach a class. This is real-world stuff, so they’re seeing it for real. You’d be surprised, Gary, some agents will never sell a house because they don’t know how to write the contract. They’ve never made a single contract but once they’ve made that first contract, it’s all good. Now, they did it.

It’s almost like rites of passage. It’s like, “I’ve done that. I’m not afraid of it anymore.” Like a lot of things in our life. The first time somebody skydives, they’re probably freaked out. The second time, probably not so much. If they come back, then they’re probably not afraid of it. It’s the same deal. What I do is get people past that threshold sooner.

I remember there was a broker that I used to see in the office all the time when I was back at Keller Williams. I always remember these stories. Keller Williams is one of the best training companies there is. They do a lot of classroom training. She was going to those classes. I have probably been there for about eight months. I saw her in the hallway and said, “You sold anything yet?” She says, “No, I haven’t sold anything yet.” I said, “I’m going on a listing appointment. Come with me.”

She jumped in the car with me and she watched me list the house. When I was driving back with her to the office, I got a call from one of my buyers. There was a house that we emailed them because we have automatic trips and they wanted to see it. I said, “I’ll have one of my brokers open the house for you.” I said, “You’re going to go open the house and after you go open the house, we’re going to write it up.” She said, “Really?” I said, “Yup.”

BYW S4 7 | Better Way
Better Way: If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, try hiring an amateur.

 

That was her first transaction. I said, “Have the buyers call me from the house.” They called me from the house. I ran payments with them over the phone. I told them about how the process works. She’s listening and watching it. It’s probably something that she had been in those classes for sixteen months and never even experienced. I had her write up the deal for me. I showed her how to write up the deal. She’s not on my team, but she’s a producing broker out in society right now. I know that was the spark that lit the flame. That’s what I do.

The other thing about me is that I’m a man of abundance. I never think about, “That’s my competition,” because it’s not. There’s so much business, Gary. For me, I noticed that it changed her life. It changed my life, too because it reinforced my beliefs that I love helping people. As Rosie said years ago, “You’d be a good real estate agent. You like helping people.” Why would I be good at anything? Because I love helping people.

What was the spark that set you from the guy who didn’t know anything to off and running?

This is going to sound pretty weird, but I grew up doing hard labor and doing stuff where I was even thinking back about my military careers. I was an NCO, but I had all the credits to be an officer. I always did things the hard way. When I realized how much I could do and what a living I could make with using this, that’s where things took off. It was a dream come true. A lot of people will say, “Joe got lucky.” I got lucky to find my niche and my niche is I can take things that are in bad shape and I can make them shine.

One of the hardest things for me, Gary was when I reached what I felt was the pinnacle of my career. A lot of people will probably never reach that spot but I was fortunate to reach it. It’s a breaking point. I don’t know if you can identify with this. I’m pretty sure you can because you’re a winner. I reached a point where I’m like, “I’m the number one guy. I’m selling all this stuff. I’m selling all these houses,” and then you’re like, “I’ve climbed to the top of this mountain. Now what?”

It seemed like I’ve always been in the military, I climbed that mountain. I did that. I went to Pulte, I climbed that mountain. I was done there. It seems like a seven-year cycle. It’s eight years in the military and 7 or 8 years in new home sales. Now I’m at this 7 and 8-year mark in residential resale and I’m at the top of my game, and then you started thinking, “What now?” It’s like the Rocky series. He was like, “Now, what?”

I took a year off and I let the company do its own thing. It still did well, but I realized how much I missed the interaction of being with people. It’s crazy but saving people’s lives. When you sell sometimes, there are situations where you’re saving somebody’s life in this. I’m able to help people in situations where I know another broker might not be able to do it.

For instance, I got a deal that’s closing. We sold their house. Everybody sees my sales and they see this one that’s sold for $2.7 million. They see all these big deals that close, but we sell everything. This house that I am selling on the outskirts of Los Lunas is a $149,000 property. We get it under contract and the seller doesn’t have the money to make all the repairs that have come upon this house. They’re already under contract in another property, so they have to close.

Sales is not a bad word. Sales is helping people. It's getting people to decide on something that's good for them. Click To Tweet

There’s the foundation on this mobile home that needs repairs but they don’t have it. There’s the septic that failed on this house and needs to be replaced but they don’t have the money. The neighbor next door has been living in this house and four people are using this well. The neighbor refuses to sign a Shared Well Agreement, even though these people have been living there for eight years and they’ve been paying the electricity down as well. She won’t sign a Shared Well Agreement. The buyer’s lender will not sell that property unless there’s a Shared Well Agreement or they have their own well.

Guess who drilled the well? I drilled the well for $20,000. I replaced the septic for $55,000 and I did the foundation for probably about $1,500. I don’t have to tell you but the commissionable event in that was maybe $5,100, but I can’t. They have enough proceeds coming out of the sale to where they signed something saying they’ll pay me back at closing. I’m able to do that. I know I can get it done. It’s neat to be in a position like that where you can bridge the gap. There was like, “How did you sell 425 homes?” I found a way to get it done because I’ve been fortunate to be good at what I’m doing. I’m able to help way more people because I’m able to bridge the gap.

There’s a lot of great real estate agents out there and we both know a lot of them. What is it that makes you good? What is the mindset? What is that X factor? What is that thing that somebody who’s reading to this who are thinking, “I’m considering getting into real estate. I am in real estate and I’m trying to figure out how do I go from beginner to expert? How do I go from survival to abundance?” What is it?

The answer to that for me is nothing replaces experience. You have to have a good quality experience. You have to get a great mentor, somebody to mentor you. It’s crazy to see real estate agents coming out and they get into it because they say, “There’s this guy and he’s got this and he’s got that. He doesn’t even speak good English.” The truth is if I can do it, they can do it. What they’re missing is the years of failure that come in there and learning the hard way, too.

When I mentor people, my goal is to save them like my dad and my mom used to give me all this great advice that I never took. My goal is that I get them to take my advice and save them some steps that I had to take that they shouldn’t have to take. That’s where it’s at. It’s been mentored. There are many agents coming into any industry. I know that when you’re a dentist, you don’t just start working on people’s teeth. It took time. You had to watch somebody that had crazy experience perform things and that made you a better person.

There are people in this industry and I have my qualms with this industry because number one, they just let anybody get into it, which is sad. If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, try hiring an amateur. A lot of people don’t realize that until they have to call me up. They’ve spent double or whatever.

Electricians have an apprentice and journeyman program. That’s what people need to do. They need not to cheat the system. I mentor young ones at a couple of colleges in the summer. They said, “What’s the biggest piece of advice you can give to somebody younger like me?” I said, “Enjoy the process of learning and learn well because if you skip a step, you might not be able to survive something serious.”

I deal with millions of dollars of production. What happens if you make a mistake? Are you able to make it right? If you’re a true professional, you have to be able to make it right. That’s why to work with a true professional costs money, but a true professional should pay for themselves. I always tell myself, “You want to get to the point where your experiences were so much that when people hire me, it’s almost like getting me for free because I pay for myself during the transaction.” From the advice that I’m able to give people. I always say it’s experience.

BYW S4 7 | Better Way
Better Way: It’s not just about the real estate process. It’s about knowing your product too.

 

I have an autographed picture here in my office of Nolan Ryan and Robin Ventura. Nolan Ryan has Robin Ventura in a headlock. I have a signed copy of that picture right here. I have it in my office for a reason and I named that picture, Experience, because Nolan Ryan was at the end of his career and probably one of the best pitchers of all time. He’s a Hall of Famer. There’s this young guy who steps up to the plate. Robin Ventura was a pretty big guy and a hotshot back then and Nolan beat him.

Nobody knew that Robin was going to charge. Robin acts like he’s taking the basics and watching them on YouTube and all that stuff, and then halfway, he decides he wants to charge Nolan. Everybody thinks, “Nolan wasn’t afraid.” “You’re talking about a veteran pitcher. Do you think he’s been charged before?” “Maybe once or twice.” He walked towards Robin Ventura and not one bit of fright, he went for it. What that all went down to me was an experience. The man had been in his fair share of scraps. He knew how it was going to turn out. He knew how to handle the situation. That’s what happened but he couldn’t have done that.

Having your mentor when you first started, how much of a benefit was that

It was a huge benefit. I didn’t know that at the time because I was young. You don’t have to be young. I’m talking about being young in the profession. When you’re learning a new trade, so to speak, you don’t know it at the time but you realize later down the road how valuable certain mentors were. My mentor, Brian, taught me the critical path of sales and we never skipped a step. I have my way of doing things right now but my way couldn’t have been my way without his way. Everything from how you greet somebody to how you get a commitment.

Sales is not a bad word. To me, sales are helping people. It’s getting people to decide on something good for them, not what’s good for me. I approached sales in a way that I’m helping somebody and I’m solving a problem. He went a lot deeper. A lot of real estate brokers help people find houses. He taught me how to know money well. Knowing the mortgage side, knowing the different programs and being knowledgeable about all the ways.

If somebody’s a doctor, a lot of people don’t know that there are zero-down programs for physicians with no mortgage insurance. They’ll say, “Call this lender and get back to me.” I’m like, “Nobody’s ever going to call that thing.” They’re almost afraid of going to a lender as much as they’re afraid of going to the dentist. That’s the reality. That’s human psychology and human nature. I always knew the money side. He taught me the value of learning the money side. It’s not just about the real estate process. It’s about knowing your product, too. That’s where the construction knowledge came into play. How does that work?

I remember one of the first things when I was selling houses in the southwest, a guy came in and he was on Sandi Pressley’s team. He was the buyer’s agent for Sandi Pressley, Arny Katz. He is one of the better buyer brokers out there and I’m brand new. I’m the new kid on the block. Arny wants to show his client a spec on a standing piece of inventory out there and the guy comes in and said, “What kind of roof is this?” This was years ago. I said, “I don’t know but I’ll get that answer for you.” He says, “What kind of windows are these?” “I don’t know but I’ll get that answer for you.” “What kind of air conditioning is this?” “I don’t know.” “What the hell do you know?” “I don’t know but I’ll get that answer for you.”

The cheap way of doing things ends up costing you the most. You get what you pay for. Never go to the lowest bidder. Click To Tweet

That was one of those defining moments in my life where I said, “I will never be in that position again.” I pulled Antonio, who was our project manager at the time out there. I said, “Antonio, I want to learn everything about construction, from permitting to the CO. Use me,” and they did. Antonio and his team taught me well about how the construction process works. When I show up to an appointment, I’m not just some other realtor.

I know about PSI in slabs. I know about the different types of slabs. I know about windows. I know more about somebody’s house than they know about their house when I show up and that’s great because I’m an expert. I’m not just anybody else. We are experts. On the money side, if I’m representing a buyer or seller, they can get their mortgage lender on the phone.

They call me the lender’s broker because I’m super low maintenance and by the time I give them somebody to talk to, they’re already qualified. I just need them to pull credit. I’ve already talked to the people about it. I already run numbers. I have already set expectations. It’s pretty easy for them. I know how to ask the questions. I know about the different programs and the reality of all that. That came with time and experience and being a student of the craft.

You said something important there that I wanted to touch on. You said you helped people make a decision. That seems like a big difference between helping them buy a house or helping them in the other areas. When I’m trying to buy something, that’s the hardest part. How do I make a decision? If you can help me do that, you’re my guy.

Here’s the thing about you, Gary, you do what you do, which is what you do and that’s great. You stay in your lane and that’s all fine and good. When you come into my domain and into my universe, that’s my universe, so my job is to be of value to you. You don’t know the market the way I do. Chances are, if you’d give me 5 to 10 minutes to talk with you and you casually tell me because I’m going to be asking you a lot of great open-ended questions to have you open up to me, I’m going to know where that property is. It might not even be on the market but I’m going to know where it’s at. I’m going to know that financially it meets your needs, it’s not going to put you in hardship and it’s going to meet a timeframe that’s comfortable for you.

By the way, unless you’re paying cash, I probably know about a program that you don’t know about that’s going to put a smile on your face. That’s what it is. I’ve seen people that have told me while we’re looking within the next twelve months to move, but after maybe a 30-minute conversation with me, they’re moving and it’s for the better. It’s not that I sold them something. I just showed them something that they didn’t know about.

I always tell my brokers, “Tell our clients something that they don’t already know.” There’s a reason why Zillow, Realtor.com and those types of platforms exist. They are a disruption. The disruption is the fact that people aren’t creating the value that they should. When Zillow is doing the job for you, if the buyer or the seller knows more than you do, then he fails. That’s the way I see it. Technology shouldn’t replace brokers like me because we’re valuable. Anybody else that I train, I want them to build in their value that they never have to be intimidated by some app that’s going to be created. People will always do business when they know there’s value.

BYW S4 7 | Better Way
Better Way: People will always do business when they know there’s value.

 

The last question and I know you’ve talked about a lot of great advice and given a lot of great advice. What would you say is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received or you’ve ever given?

I receive a lot of great advice. There was a Spanish saying, and it says, “Lo barato cuesta caro,” which means the cheap will end up cost. The cheap way of doing things ends up costing you the most. I’ve learned that you get what you pay for in most cases. Never go to the lowest bidder. That’s one of the better advice and that’s in everything, too.

It goes all the way around. If you’re going to go about something the easy way, it doesn’t have to be about money. It could be about taking the easy way out versus putting in the work. That saying can mean so much on many different levels. Don’t ever cheat yourself. You got to put in the work to get what you deserve if you want it.

As far as advice that I give, that’s a tough question, Gary. I give a lot of advice but the advice that I give is by my actions and watching what I do and that’s how I do things right. Having kids, I’ve learned that it’s not about what you say, it’s about what you do. People are watching you and they’re watching how you deliver. That’s the best example because a lot of people can say things but it’s about what they do that is worth more.

Joe, I appreciate you taking the time. I know you’re busy. Thank you for being here. I’m glad we got a chance to do this finally. I know we get to see each other from time to time, but we haven’t had a chance to sit down and learn about you. It’s fascinating how you’ve gone from where you came from to where you are now. There are a lot of great lessons there. Thank you so much for spending the time. If there are people that are reading that want to connect with you, want to learn more about you and maybe want to work with you in buying or selling a house or being mentored by you, how should they get ahold of you?

The best way to do it is to go to my website. It’s www.JoeMaez.com and they can inquire. They could fill in an inquiry and we’ll get with them.

Joe, Thanks again. I’ll see you on the golf course.

Thank you.

I want to wrap it up with our Guess Their Why. I want us to use somebody popular and that would be from the TV series, Ted Lasso. What do you think Roy Kent’s why is? If you watch Ted Lasso, you know exactly who Roy Kent is. He’s one of the favorite characters. He says whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to say it and the way he wants to say it. He’s serious, direct and to the point, no fluff, just right at it.

I’m going to guess that Roy Kent’s why is to simplify because he doesn’t mince words. He doesn’t worry if he hurt your feelings. He says it how it is. He’s nothing fancy. Just right to it. If you like that, you know what you’re getting. There is no extra fluff or candy that goes with it, then that is Roy Kent. What do you think Roy Kent’s why is?

I want to thank you for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com. You can use the code PODCAST50 and get it for half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe or leave us a review and a rating on whatever platform you’re using so that you can help us impact one billion people in the next few years by helping them discover their why, how and what. It’s what we call your Why.os. Thanks, everybody. I’ll see you next episode.

 

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How The Why Of Contribute Bleeds Through Leadership That Rocks With Jim Knight

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks

 

Jim Knight has upheld a passion for contributing in any way he can, anywhere he can. How does that bleed through and influence his work? Jim is a keynote speaker, coach, and author of Leadership That Rocks: Take Your Brand’s Culture to Eleven and Amp Up Results. He spearheaded Global Training for Hard Rock International for two decades and now teaches organizations how to attain their own rockstar status. In this episode, he joins Dr. Gary Sanchez to share how he’s morphed his passion for serving with his experience in HR. Jim talks about leadership and its relation to culture in his latest work. Tune in as he gives tidbits of insights from his book and more on creating a culture that attracts rockstars!

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How The Why Of Contribute Bleeds Through Leadership That Rocks With Jim Knight

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of contribute. If this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause, something that is bigger than yourself. You don’t necessarily want to be the face of the cause but you want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. You love to support others and relish the success that contributors make for the greater good of the team. You see group victories as personal victories. You are often found behind the scenes, looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate, and you often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources, and connections to add value to other people and organizations.

Now I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Jim Knight. He teaches organizations of all sizes how to attain their own rockstar status. Although his illustrious career started at Gatorland Zoo in Florida and he has the scars to prove it, he cut his teeth in the hospitality training industry and eventually led Global Training for Hard Rock International for decades. His customized programs show how to amp up organizational culture, deliver world-class differentiated service and build rockstar teams and leaders.

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks
Leadership That Rocks: Take Your Brand’s Culture to Eleven and Amp Up Results

He’s known for signature spiky hair. He is the bestselling author of Culture That Rocks: How to Revolutionize Your Company’s Culture. It was featured in Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the five books that will help you transform how you do business. His new book Leadership That Rocks: Take Your Brand’s Culture to Eleven and Amp Up Results launched in May of 2021. A portion of his book sales, podcast revenue, speaking fees, and training programs proceeds go to No Kid Hungry and Cannonball Kids’ Cancer. Jim, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Gary. I appreciate it. I don’t know that I gave you the long bio. That was quite an introduction, but you touched on a couple of things that are probably going to fit into our conversation. First and foremost, I’m thrilled to be here. Thank you.

First of all, you can’t see Jim’s hair so I’m going to try to describe it. It looks to be about 5 to 6 inches tall, perfectly straight up, and multi-level, multi-colors. How the heck did that come about and how do you do it?

I probably have always been known for my hair and since I’ve been an adult. Once I started to work on my music degree and for 21 years, I was at Hard Rock International. We had a chance to look, be, say and do whatever. I worked with The Island of Misfit Toys. Believe me, this hairstyle is safe compared to a lot of my rock and roll friends with piercings, colored hair, bollocks and the whole thing. I used to have long hair. I had a mullet and I could sit on my hair about 2.5 feet at one point, then I decided several years ago to grow up a little bit and started speaking professionally. I went up so it’s got some spikes in there.

To answer the second half of your question, it is multilayered. I have somebody who does the hair once a month. She uses razors instead of scissors and that’s the first secret. The second is I use this product called Got2b Glued. I’m sure a lot of people in your audience probably have seen this before at CVS, Walgreens or Walmart. It’s in a yellow tube. It’s the same look, smell, feel, and consistency as Elmer’s Glue. I throw that stuff in there a little dollop and 30 seconds later, this is what you get. It’s like Sonic The Hedgehog all day long. This thing is hurricane-proof in Florida.

You go to bed looking like this. What do you look like in the morning?

It’s almost the same. I took a shower in the morning but if I go to sleep like this and I was laying on one side, it might get a little bit matted. You can throw some water in there and it reconstitutes the glue. If I wanted to, I could not wash my hair for 3 to 4 days and it would still be spiky like this. I’ve lived pretty well on Survivor for about 3 to 4 days. After that, it’s sad and it gets weak and flat. Water is my nemesis. If I jump on a pool, it’s game over.

Take us back to when you were a kid. Where did you grow up? How did you get into hospitality? Take us through the quick version of your life back when you were in high school.

At the heart, culture is about people. Click To Tweet

My quick version is I wanted to be a musician. When I was in middle school and high school, I started thinking about wanting to perform. I did a bunch of community theater. I did go to school and have my Music Degree in Associate of Arts, Music, and Education. My first job was at Gatorland Zoo. I live in Central Florida so I live in the land of theme parks, Disney, Universal Studios and SeaWorld. There are like 27 theme parks here in Gatorland. It’s one of the best-kept secrets. That was my first job. While I was doing that in the summertime, I started to go to college. While I was at university to make a living, I found out that being a musician, you had to be good, so I changed careers.

They say those that can’t do, teach. I became a middle school teacher and did that for six years. I’m a product of public education and I’m happy to have taught in that. Eventually, I needed to make some money in the summertime. As you can imagine, teachers don’t make any money in the summer. I take a little summer gig at Hard Rock International. The Hard Rock Cafe at that time was the new thing in Orlando. It’s the busiest restaurant in the world. I was a host deceiving people. I did that for a year. I became a trainer. They paid me to start traveling and opening up Hard Rocks around the world, Madrid, Mexico City and Paris. I got to hang out in London.

I traveled the world as a kid. A couple of years later, I became a manager and was running shifts for that building, which does anywhere between $42 million and $45 million a year, which is unheard of in hospitality. Your skills get sharp. Your head and ego get big. You’re hanging out listening to 90 decibels of Zeppelin and meeting rockstars left and right. It was a gas to do that. Within a year, I went over to the Corporate Sports Center and ran training and development for them. That’s the long answer. The short answer was several years ago. I decided I wanted to have a little bit of a louder voice and I wanted to contribute more to society.

I still pull the levers of music, education and hospitality. I put all of that together to make this edutainment in the programs, whether it’s something as a writer, eLearning and certainly as a keynote speaker. Several years ago, I left. Instead of being in hospitality, I wanted to go vertical. Now I speak in front of bankers, insurance agents, clowns, and funeral directors. If there’s an association and they’re looking for a speaker, I want to go out there and talk about culture, service, building teams, and those types of things. Leadership is hot and heavy right now.

What did you notice that Hard Rock did better, different and unique that allowed them to scale to $40 million to $50 million per restaurant?

I would say that’s probably three. You usually would take New York and Los Angeles. Las Vegas was probably one of those, as well as Orlando. Those four would do those types of numbers. Everybody else is between $7 million and $20 million, depending on the market. You had to be in a big A-location. That was what Hard Rock started with. They’re now in a lot of C markets. They’ve decided that there’s a lot of earth where they can plant their flag.

They’ll bring the Hard Rock brand to a country or a market because some people in these countries aren’t ever going to travel to Western Europe or the US, which is predominantly where the Hard Rock is. Their future is all franchise cafes. Although a lot of people still go, “Hasn’t that thing been around for 50 years?” They have and they’re still opening up properties, but the future for that brand is hotels and casinos for sure. That’s where all the money is.

Particularly, a casino will do what ten hotels do. That’ll do what twenty cafes will do. You’re limited on where you can do that in the world. To answer your question, Hard Rock is cool as I thought it was. To me, it’s still one of the awesome, great brands in the world. The product is fantastic. I love the environment, the music, the memorabilia, the retail, all of that stuff is cool. None of the buildings are the same. There’s no cookie-cutter. They build pyramids, inherit castles, and they put a bar on the side. It’s crazy. It’s always about the people.

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks
Leadership That Rocks: If you were to keep all of your awesome people, but change everything, logo, font, corporate sports center, tools, process, employee handbook, e-learning, whatever it is. If you change all of that, but keep the people, you wouldn’t make a huge dent in the culture.

 

The silver bullet for them is, I’m going to find the most unique people I can find because unique people bring some unique experiences to the party. They’re also going to make sure that these people have tremendous work ethic. It’s not just because they’re freaky people and they look different, which by the way, you see more companies starting to do that now. I’m thankful that I worked for a company for two decades that was doing that before it was popular, allowing tattoos to be seen, crazy colored hair, being on a first-name base with the boss, pushing back, challenging the status quo, and not having any fear of something happening to them. All of that stuff mattered. When you can do that, do you know what you get with the team members? They stick around and that’s loyalty.

Hanging out with that interesting collection of humans, and the value orientation that the company had were the two things that kept me going. I’d say it’s a tag team. It’s the unique people they went and found, but also the values like save the planet, take time to be kind, and all as one. These were emblazoned on the walls for no other reason but to keep us all honest. That allowed me to want to stick around a little bit longer and invite my buddies to come and work with me.

How did they go about finding all these unique people? What was their process or thinking behind that? Was this something that came about randomly? Was it a strategic thing that they thought or you thought about? At one point, you were running one of them. How did you do it?

I was running shifts in the mid-‘90s but I ran global training for the whole brand. I wasn’t running all of the individual properties. I came in in the early ‘90s. The thing started in 1971. There were two Americans that were hanging out in Great Britain and they had two issues. They couldn’t find a great burger. They wanted to make sure they had a little bit of some of that greasy Tennessee Truck Stop, Southern-style food that you couldn’t get in the UK at that time.

There was also not a big middle-class in the United Kingdom. You were either very rich or very poor. The fact that there were two lines for people, if you were rich, you stood in this line, if you didn’t have any money, you stood over here this line, they didn’t like that. That was red meat for some civil rights activists people that were coming out of the ‘60s. You know what was going on in our country. Those were the two reasons I did it.

To answer your question, it was extremely strategic. They will have the best food, shakes, environment, they’re going to put music in there, but their real goal was, “Let’s go find some people that were unique.” Ironically, they didn’t go youthful. Every single 1 of the 42 original servers had to be over 30 years old and they had to be women. A lot of them were redheads. It was funny to think you got this group of older redheaded women who are slinging food around and they’re going to push back a little bit.

It was a little irreverent and unpredictable but then even as time went on, their goal was, “Where can we go find some rockstars? Maybe it’s outside of the usual. Maybe it isn’t going to be another restaurant. Maybe I will go find somebody in tattoo parlors or concert halls. Could I go and find some in a retail location that had no food and beverage background at all.” They wanted people to have some experience but they certainly wanted to populate it with unique humans that had killer personalities. I almost think of the old TV show, Alice. If you think about that and you think of flow, some of your audience members may be old enough to remember. It was chewing gum and pushing back on everybody.

If you could find that person somewhere in your sphere when you went out to eat, drink, shop, stay, play or do whatever, coerce them, convince them, and pay them probably a little bit more to come work for you. All of a sudden, you’ve got a rockstar. You got a diamond in the rough who is probably going to create some unforgettable memories. That was their goal. It was completely strategic. I hope the brand is still doing that. I haven’t been there for years. That would be a miss if they stopped hiring some interesting humans.

“You want to have a fantastic, awesome culture?” Number one, you got to go find some rock stars. That's got to be your absolute focus more than anything. Click To Tweet

It worked awfully well for them. You were there for two decades.

I started in April of 1991. I left in April of 2012.

What was it like for you to leave that comfort and start speaking? The middle school teacher gone culture, spiked-hair guy is now going to go speak to who?

I was crazy nervous. I had a little bit of some tricks up my sleeve. Part of it was the last several years before I left Hard Rock while I was the Senior Director for training and development, I had a great team of nine people. I started speaking on the side at that time. The very first one, like almost every speaker out there, we do it for free. Somebody asked me to come to do a little mini-orientation at Hard Rock. It had nothing to do with what I talk about now. No leadership, services or any of that stuff. They just wanted to have somebody do the Hard Rock story because they lived in a state in the US where there wasn’t property. I was like, “I’ll go do that. I’m not going to send my team.”

What happens is what happens with everybody. I went and spoke and somebody in the back of the room came up afterward and said, “That was awesome. Can you come to do it for my company? How much do you charge?” That’s when the light bulb went off. I started charging people, but here’s the cool part. I never took any money. I gave the brand. I gave Hard Rock all of the money because I wanted it to be above reproach. I never wanted my boss, the CEO or anybody to ever challenge me and say, “He’s having fun doing his side job than doing the regular day-to-day stuff.” It did allow me to feed the beast, get my sea legs, and get a lot better at platform speaking.

I was sharing stuff that I loved. I was impacting and influencing audiences to check out Hard Rock. Maybe they didn’t even know about the brand. Everybody wonders, don’t I actually get paid? I just put it into my budget. In training people, we spend money. To be a revenue-generating initiative was great. I never went over budget. My boss always loved it. What you probably would imagine did happen to me was I started loving that gig a lot more than the details of the day-to-day making the donuts.

I’ve decided to jump off since I was already doing it. I was doing about one a month. I had a couple that was ready to go when I jumped off. I was scared to death thinking, “I’ve got a cool job. I traveled the world. I’m getting paid well and looking at all the benefits. Am I going to leave all that because I think somebody will pay me maybe the same amount? I’d be happy if it would’ve been the same amount. Am I going to do that for a living?” It was crazy. I jumped off the deep end and I’ve never looked back. It’s been fantastic for me.

The platform that you started speaking on was culture.

It was the Hard Rock culture. If I got to be honest, I was pulling the lever of the brand. I tried to immerse people in the spirit of rock and roll. That’s where I probably got my focus more than anything else. It was on culture, which then led into some of those other things, service, leadership, building rockstar teams, that type of stuff. I’ll probably forever be known as the Culture Guy, and that’s cool.

What is it that makes a good culture and why is a good culture important?

We alluded to this already. If I was ever going to write or talk about it, I do define exactly what culture is right upfront. If you and I did a survey of your audience members or even if I asked you right now, “What do you think it is?” I will probably agree with you. I’m in the everything is culture camp. They can be all of the stuff that I mentioned before. At the heart, it is about the people.

Let’s say you’re a legacy brand. You’ve been around for 15, 20, 40 or 100 years. It doesn’t matter. If I were to have held on to the exact group of people that started the thing in the first place, you’re the founder, the president, the CEO, you’ve been doing it for 40 to 50 years, you could have held onto that group. You’d have the exact culture that you want. If you fast forward a couple of decades, it doesn’t work like that because people come and go.

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks
Leadership That Rocks: The more that you can be open-minded to change, and you can put more arrows in your quiver, you’re more likely to look somebody in the eye and go, “This is what it will take with this person right now to rock their face-off.”

 

I know that if I was to keep all of my awesome people but change everything like logo, font, corporate sports center, tools, process, employee handbook, eLearning or whatever it is, but I kept my people, I wouldn’t make a huge dent in the culture. I’d have exactly what I want. Let’s say that I love all of that infrastructure. I keep all of that stuff but I kick everybody out in the organization and replace them with a bunch of other people. I’ve completely revolutionized the culture

I will talk about a lot of nitty-gritty details but I can’t emphasize enough when I’m in front of an audience saying, “Do you want to have a fantastic, awesome culture? You got to go find some rockstars.” That’s got to be your absolute focus more than anything else because the rest of the stuff is you being a good manager but you’re not thinking like a business owner, entrepreneur, big brand. You’ve got to love on them. You’ve got to do everything in your power not to muscle the result and manage the threats, punishment and fear, which I still see out there in a couple of industries.

If you can throw your arm around people, teach them, and have a little bit of a heart-centered mindset, they stay with you longer. There’s a direct correlation between turnover and top-line sales. It’s not just in hospitality. I’m starting to see that in almost any industry. I know that’s a long answer but it’s always about the people. Do I want to focus on all the other stuff? Totally, but those are the little rocks. The big thing that makes a difference is I got to populate the thing with people who can slake it. They’re showing up going, “I’m in the memory-making business now.” They show up and do that every day, “I’m going to put Herculean results.”

When you’re leading the team and you’re trying to love on them, but you’re not getting the result you want. How do you handle that? I’m sure there are people reading that are dealing with this. Their key person isn’t quite doing it like they were, could or you wanted. How do you love on them yet get results?

First, I’d look in the mirror. Maybe the common denominator is the leader. Sometimes, I’ve got to change their tactics or they’ve been doing it the same way. They’re banging their head against the wall going, “How come they’re not responding to me?” This is why you go to conferences. You read books and listen to podcasts because the more that you can be open-minded to change and you can put more arrows in your quiver, you’re more likely to look somebody in the eye and go, “This is what it will take with this person right now that rock their face-off.” I would say that anyway from an end-user, a guest or a customer but we have to think the same way from an employee.

These associates and team members have different needs. For some of them, it might be a tiny little bit more money. Others need you to spend a little bit of time with them, look them in the eye, care about them, and ask them about their family and what did they do this weekend. Others want development. “Put me on a fast track. Give me a program so I can start hitting some things to ultimately become promotable.” It doesn’t guarantee me the job but it’s less likely that you’re going to go to the outside if I’ve been on the AAA Ball Club and I’m ready to be called up.

There are a variety of things. It could be surprising them with small little things, whether it’s buying sometimes a lot of tickets, stopping and getting an Icee or a Slurpee on the way. Sometimes it’s doing contests and having fun when you’re at work. Maybe it’s dressed down day. Maybe you’re allowed to have a company dog or you change the benefits in favor of them where it doesn’t cost you a lot of money. There are many things.

I have an entire chapter dedicated sometimes with all of these ideas bullet-pointed. I freely admit and go, “Please don’t do all of these. It’s ridiculous, but pick and choose the ones that would make sense from a tactical standpoint.” If leaders just sat back and thought, “I need to say thank you a little bit more. I need to tell people they rock. I need to care about them as a whole person and let them be seen.” Have discussions that if something is not working, don’t be freaked out about it. Come to me and let’s figure that stuff out.

It isn't about competence anymore. It's not just about character. You need all three Cs: competence, character, and culture fit. Click To Tweet

Sometimes it’s the easy and free things that would make a difference. This could be a whole episode discussion for me talking about how to keep employee engagement going and loving on people. When I say love on them, it isn’t just throwing your arms around them and going, “Come on, guy or girl.” It’s not about that. When people feel like this person does care about me, and there’s a relationship and trust factor, I’m willing to follow that leader off the edge of the cliff. When they do leave the company, I’m going with them.

What’s interesting is your perspective on this is right in line with the why of contribute. You look at it from the perspective of, how can I help you? How can I make your time here more fun, better and more productive? How can I be part of your success? Not every why sees it that way. It’s interesting to see leaders from how they think. It would make sense to somebody who’s why is contribute. Of course, I would do it that way but somebody else would look at it and say, “That seems like a lot of extra effort for trying to get them to do what I paid them to do.”

This is why your show is great because I love the idea that you take in these different tenets and you look at these and go, “Let’s dissect it. Let’s talk about each one.” If you take any of these personality assessments, DISC, Colors, Myers-Briggs, Franklin Covey, you name it. Everybody realizes there have to be different types of people on the team. If all of us were wise, there would be a lot of kumbaya and we’d be giving a lot, and nobody would get stuff done. I realized that but it’s been part of my DNA. I’ve always been like that because of my parents. Probably a little bit because of religion and going to church early on.

It’s certainly working for a brand that did not have a single marketing initiative that didn’t have some type of philanthropic charitable component. A lot of people don’t know that and they never wanted to scream from the top of their lungs but I knew. My Hard Rock buddies all knew and that’s part of the reason we stuck around. I love the idea of giving back if for no other reason but propping other people up because I know that it’s in my interest. Sometimes they’re not a part of my inner circle. It’s just I want people to succeed. By the way, I’m a consumer. I personally am an experiential starved consumer.

When I go out in shop land, I care about the store, the restaurant, the hotel or the place I’m going. It doesn’t matter. I want to be around awesome people. There are some small ways that I can give back, whether that’s a nugget of information, advice or some real mentorship. I’m all about that. Sometimes, it’s money too. I don’t mind helping people out. That’s how I’m wired and I get it. You’re right. There are going to be some that are like, “Not my bag. It’s not my gig.” That’s okay. I sign up for that. I’m the one who volunteered to say, “Put me in that role.”

It is what we were talking about the why of contribute. You use your time, your money, your energy, your connections to push other people forward. That’s the essence of how you view the world, which is awesome why for what you do. Let’s transition that a little bit into leadership. What is leadership from your perspective and what makes a great leader?

It’s probably like culture. These are both esoteric and nebulous words. Everybody’s got a different opinion about it. I’ve taken the slice of leadership from creating, maintaining or even completely changing and revolutionizing a culture. I had to start with that because that was a little bit of my background. I have been to many courses and I’ve seen many things. You talk about the difference between a manager and a leader. There are many important elements that come out of that.

Probably the number one characteristic that I see more than anything else is somebody who is trustworthy. If you trust that person, they’ve got a good shot of having some leadership. You’re trustworthy. Therefore, I trust you and all the other awesomeness in our relationships happens from there. The book that I wrote and the things I talk about are trying to dissect several of those. What does critical decision-making look like when you get to a point and you’ve got to make a decision?

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks
Leadership That Rocks: If you trust that person, they’ve got a good shot of having some leadership. You’re trustworthy. Therefore, I trust you. All the other awesomeness in our relationships happens from there.

 

Is it time for me to be quiet, subtle, cool and humble? Is it time for me to be loud, over the top, grandiose, and bring the thunder? It’s different for different moments. Can I be heart-centered? Can I still get things done? Could I still marshal the resources that I need but do it in a caring, loving and kind way where it’s the carrot versus the stick? I remember back in the ‘80s. You can push people uphill and you can muscle the result. Those days are long gone.

Gen Z or even if you still go back to the Millennials, they’ll laugh at you because a rockstar can always get another gig. As employers, we need them a whole lot more than they need us. Sometimes, the way that you treat people is the linchpin. They’ll go, “I’m out of here.” They’ll go right up the street and probably work for your competitor. I think about that from a leadership standpoint. I think about mentorship. I’ve gotten to the point that I almost dissect that into five different areas. You could be an internal, external, peer, public mentor. You could even be a reverse mentor. You can learn a lot from somebody that you’re mentoring. I have somebody who’s 25 years my younger and I learned from that person all the time.

Even having an unparalleled work ethic, which I know some people are going to throw certain generations under the bus. I don’t want to do that. I liked being extremely positive and also probably contribute to my contribute. I do think that there have been some things that have been lost. Sometimes, having a little bit of a pep in your step, a sense of urgency, attention to detail has been lost a little bit. I know it’s not always taught by parents. It isn’t being taught anymore in public education. If you’re not in charter, private school and in public school, I don’t know where you get that.

I used to think I was a good trainer. I cannot train people to have a personality and I can’t train you to smile. Either you have it or you don’t. If the juice isn’t running through your veins, you’re going to be impaired. You’re going to not be of use to me unless there’s a place for you in the back where no one will ever see you, which is highly unlikely. I need people to have a little bit of this work ethic mentality.

I have a good friend of mine who runs a frozen dessert concept in Chicago and it’s populated all with Gen Z employees. They’re young and they don’t have a lot of these skills. She has to make the decision to go, “There’s no way I’m going to hire you. I’ll move on to somebody else or I see something. I see the personality a little bit. They might be a diamond in the rough. Maybe I’m going to be their first and best job. Maybe they’re going to always think favorably. Maybe when they finish college, they want to come back to be a manager.” She’s made a cognizant decision from a work ethic standpoint. If they didn’t get to somewhere else, let me be that person. She almost probably has the same mentality. I bet her why might be contribute as well.

I think about those things, how can you be a catalyst for change? I talk a lot about change because times are changing. Changes are coming. You can either freak out about it. You can run away from it. You can lean into it. You can be a part of the change, or you can prepare the team for it. I spent a lot of time talking about that stuff. I don’t know if I rattled off 4, 5 or 6 things, but I try and chunk it down. If I’ve got time, an hour keynote, a three-hour workshop or somebody is flipping through the book, at the very least, they go, “I get it.” It’s in the sphere of culture but around work ethic, a heart-centered mindset, or critical decision-making. Could I be a catalyst for change? Can I enlist in some mentorship because maybe my company doesn’t have that? How can I go to the outside and make that happen? Can I think about everything that happens to me be a personal culture shift? Things are happening to me or things are happening for me.

You use the analogy of Shrek. Life is like an onion. There are layers in there and every time something happens to you, you can either be mad or you can be like, “This sucks but it’s okay. I’m going to use this to my advantage. How can I get better? How can I make sure I don’t make any more mistakes?” I ran off on a tangent there, but leadership is the number one characteristic. If I can trust you, then I’m willing to follow you. Now I’m more open-minded to doing the things you need that I might not have done on my own.

What part of being a great leader comes back to who you hire? Is it you can take anybody and lead well?

I’ve always been to the camp that there are three types of people. There are people who don’t know, can’t do, and don’t care. If it’s a don’t know, you can train about anybody. It’s a knowledge dump and there are many different ways to do that. Somebody might be visual versus auditory. Maybe they need a little bit more time, whatever it is. The don’t knows, I can deal with.

All the best training in the world isn't going to help a bad hire. Click To Tweet

The can’t dos is where leaders tend to get a little bit frustrated because you try. Maybe you are somebody who gives somebody 2, 3 or 4 opportunities but they can’t do the gig. A lot of them are willing to cut ties and move on. I would see if there’s a place for them somewhere on the bus. Do they maybe have a skill? It’s the old Marcus Buckingham Gallup approach. Can I focus only on their strengths instead of pointing out their weaknesses because everybody’s got strengths? Do I need that on the team?

The can’t dos is tough. You might have to cut ties with them, but there’s also a whole bunch of don’t cares out there. I have no love for them. As a leader, if somebody were smart enough to think, “I’m going to focus on every area of the employee life cycle but at the very least, I’m going to focus on the front end. How I recruit, interview, what’s my stereotypical employee, how do I hire, and how do I train? Before I step back and go, “They’re an employee. I don’t have to watch them anymore.”

There’s a lot of things that go into place from recruiting collateral, non-negotiable interviewing standards. Do you know what you’re looking for? Because it isn’t about competence anymore. It’s not about character, although those two C’s I care about a lot. Now, I didn’t think about culture fit. You need all three, competence, character, and culture fit. If the leader is smart enough that they’ll go and find great people, then all the other stuff falls into place.

If you’re asking me, could I be a great leader and still do it through the product being first to the market, keeping everything clean? Is it just a physical building? How do I handle stuff when it’s online or on the phone? Regardless of what the product or the industry is, there are certainly a lot of things that I would do. I do care about the 997 things that somebody should be focusing on if they’re in a position of power. If I can’t get some end-user to think about the last three questions that always show up on a survey, “Are you coming back? Are you spending more money? Are you going to talk about me positively?” If I can’t get them to say yes to those three, I haven’t created a memory. I haven’t created some incentive for them to come back.

That’s another long answer. There’s a lot that somebody could do. I am now a firm believer, and I study and love many brands that I have huge crushes on. I have fallen madly in love with some great cultures out there who now swear that the only reason they are the way they are and their cultures is because of their people. You can steal all the rest of this stuff but if you can’t get my people, you’re never going to be able to replicate what we do.

Here’s a great example, Southwest Airlines. I cannot understand why every airline has not copied their onboarding and their departure processes. How they bring people on because they’re still number one in departures, landings and arrival. They’re still the most profitable airline out there. They have some fun when they’re doing safety announcements in their uniforms and all that stuff. Just the fact that they have no fees for baggage and they can onboard everybody quickly. Nobody else can figure that out. I go, “Why haven’t they done that?”

Let’s say they did do all that. They can do every one of those. If they can’t take the Southwest employees, all you’re doing is moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic. All you’re doing is changing and swapping systems. You’re not focusing on human behaviors, which are all learned human behavior. They’ve done a fantastic job getting the right people and that’s why I’m a fan of their still.

The next question I was going to ask you led right into that. Do people have it or don’t have it? Maybe you answered that with the three types of people but I’m wandering back to training. How much training do these organizations do? Let’s take Southwest Airlines. How much training do their team go through before they meet a customer? Is it a little or a lot? Do they hire somebody who already got those skills? How does that work?

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks
Leadership That Rocks: If the leader is smart enough that they’ll go and find great people, then all the other stuff falls into place.

 

They do a lot. When you’re looking at travel, you’re going to spend a lot more time because of the safety requirements that are in there. It’s probably even more than whatever the stuff is. My knowledge base is way more around retail, hospitality and theme parks. That’s what I learned and I sat on the certification governing board of the National Restaurant Association. I have to say the long way because if I just say NRA, they’re thinking of the other NRA. When I think about the work that organization does and I’ve seen about all of these statistics, the average restaurant day one orientation is around two hours. The good ones are around three hours.

At Hard Rock, because we had much more, food, beverage, retail, local marketing, group sales, dealing with celebrities, live music and all this other stuff, we spend an entire day. I thought that was short. I wish we had two days, but it’s one-day orientation and then you started training the next day. When I hear most restaurants are doing two hours, it blows my mind. When I think about a company like Chick-fil-A, this is a fast-food chicken place. They do no training until day three. It is two days of orientation. Their story, values, vision, mission, they dunk you in the culture. When you come up out of it on day three, you’re either all in or you’re not. It starts to prove that the awesome companies out there are spending a little bit more time.

The first part of your question was, “Do you just have it?” I’m a firm believer now that you don’t. You learn everything. You and I and your entire audience are not the way we are because we were born that way. It’s the difference between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. You learn everything. You learn it from your parents, school, friends, playground, religion, lack of religion. By the time you come to me as some 18, 19 to 20-year-old kid, you either got it or you don’t. You either have the smile. You’ve got the amp to want to be around people or you don’t.

People can fake it for a while and then you become unmasked. You fall back into your natural disposition. Training and leadership help. There are some things that I can do not to fake and coerce people into doing the things I want because as a leader, most companies aren’t going to have the boss micromanaging over their shoulder. At some point, you’ve got to step away and hope that they know what they’re doing, and they can represent the company, the brand very well. I do think you ought to do all these things, train, develop, communicate, reward, recognize, and all of that stuff.

On the front end, if you don’t have people who are coming to the party with some of that oomph as you said, it’s going to be a slog. You’re going to be pushing people uphill. I still think there are people that just because of their environment, they have the ability to wing it. They can shoot from the hip. They certainly like to gab. Even those things, you got that from somebody from somewhere.

I do believe and I’m such a huge fan that everything is learned human behavior. When I’m in front of an audience, I have to go, “You’re all recruiters now. You’ve got to put on your human resources hat.” If I was honest with myself and I had a time machine, instead of being a training and development guy because I had no say in how people came onboard or how they left, I can train the best that I can with what you give me but all the best training in the world isn’t going to help a bad hire. I would push people.

I would go back in time to be a recruiter because, at the very least, I felt like I got my finger on the pulse of what I needed. I will hand them off to the training guy or girl and they’ll be in a much better place. If they don’t have that DNA, it’s going to be tough. I don’t believe that you’re naturally born with it because I’m sure it’s controversial for some people too.

I’ve got a baseball team for you to follow. Follow the Washington State baseball team. The coach, Brian Green, had taken over the worst team in the NCAA, which was the New Mexico State Aggies. He turned it around to being five winning seasons in a row. Multiple players picked it to the Major League Baseball and then he got hired away to Washington State. I’m not sure if this is correct but I think his first twelve days of practice, they don’t touch a ball. It’s all culture. That’ll be a perfect example for you as well because it’s all about the culture. That’s what’s changed the game for many of them. He speaks on that now. I’d be curious to hear what are some other good companies that you’ve fallen in love with that have a great culture. I heard Chick-fil-A, Hard Rock, Southwest Airlines. What are some others that you like?

A single person with a great idea can start a revolution. Click To Tweet

This is where I’m always stretching to do more outside of hospitality because I could probably name a lot of those. Your readers will probably know Zappos. They are amazing to me. They only sell shoes and do it online. They don’t even sell their own shoes. They don’t even have their own branded shoes. They sell other people’s shoes. When I see brand health studies, they’re always in the top ten. It blows my mind that their founder, the late Tony Hsieh, decided they’re going to have the best culture and customer service regardless of what they do. They sell online shoes. They get propped up quite a bit.

There’s a computer server company called Rackspace. A lot of people will not know who that is. These are tech people and IT people. They set up infrastructure companies, but yet they internally have one of the greatest cultures to the extent that some of their employees get the Rackspace tattoo on their shoulders and on their calf muscles. That blows my mind. Harley Davidson still does a great job out there. Some of my music roots, Fender and Gibson have their own unique cultures.

There are a couple of places that I love that are restaurants here locally in Central Florida. Yellow Dog Eats is one of those. I talk about them quite a bit. It’s mostly because of the executive chef, the founder. He is one wild, interesting guy. The food is great and the atmosphere is fantastic but this guy has no filter. Every time he’s in the building, he creates memories. People have discovered him when they’re out and about.

Hotel-wise, I know people will talk about the Ritz-Carlton, but I’m a fan of Kimpton Hotels. From a culture standpoint, they’re fantastic. I got to still prop up Hard Rock. A lot of people don’t even know there are Hard Rock Hotels and there’s something like 30 of those on the planet now. It’s got some of these unique people you don’t normally see in the hotel space. Those are ones that I think of right out of the gate.

I spent a lot of time with the US Air Force now. I do some stuff up at Andrews Air Force Base up in DC which is where the presidential aircraft go off. I spend time with the Brigadier Generals, all the new ones that come on board. They have a fantastic culture. If you’re probably in any of the Armed Forces in the US, they will say that there’s a distinct, specific culture. I’ve met a Colonel at that time. She’s a Brigadier General now who works over at the Pentagon Space Force. She was at Andrews and on her own started to change what was going on at that airlift because it was not top-down like, “You will do it this way or else.” We probably think about the military. It was like, “Let me love on you. Be a little bit more kind. I want to hear feedback from you.” They are very open-minded and they cared about what happens to you and your families. Realizing you’re not just serving but the whole family is serving. I love that approach.

I almost hate using the words kinder and gentler armed services. To some degree in our country, at least, when you’ve got an all-volunteer military, you have to go there now for some of these young kids that are going in. You can’t go out there and be wrapping knuckles. That doesn’t work anymore. That’s 5 or 6. I’m trying to think outside of hospitality but my book will certainly list a whole bunch more, especially in this last one because I’ve talked about leadership. My next one is Service That Rocks. I want to want to highlight that. I wonder if I could get Brian Green in there from an employee standpoint for my 2023. It’ll be Engagement That Rocks and that’s all about some of the discussions that we had upfront. Let me check out Washington State. I think that’d be cool.

You’re going to love him. Last question for you. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten or the best piece of advice you’ve ever given?

In my podcast, Thoughts That Rock, that’s the only question we ask on all of our people on there, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? You turn the tables on us a couple of times. I like it. I’ll give you two. My father who was instrumental for me passed away of cancer. He always said, “You need to start small and crush those things.” What happens is when you get the win, somebody recognizes that. They invite you to the party and you get promoted. You take on more responsibility. I probably needed a little bit of a refresher. My first real corporate boss when I got over to Hard Rock said the same thing. Between my first real good Hard Rock boss and my dad was a real big step for me.

BYW S4 6 | Leadership That Rocks
Leadership That Rocks: You still can make a difference. At some point, when you put your ideas on the table and you get recognized for that, you’re going to get more responsibilities

 

I teach people now my mantra. My main piece of advice is and I still believe this. I think a single person with a great idea can start a revolution. That’s how dictator-led countries were overthrown. That’s how philanthropic movements are started. That’s how cultures get perpetuated for all times. Even if you’re a new up and coming, maybe a middle manager and you think, “I don’t have a lot of responsibilities. I barely have a staff. I got a small budget,” I don’t care if you’re making widgets. You still can make a difference.

At some point, when you put your ideas on the table and you get recognized for that, you’re going to get more responsibilities. The things that used to be in your circle of concern that you cared about, but you couldn’t do anything about, now they’re in your circle of influence. Now you have a bigger influence, which is what my driving force has been forever. I want to allow their voice, “How can I contribute to the world a little bit more in my own unique way?”

If there are people that are reading, and they want to connect with you, follow you, and get your book, where do they go? What’s the best way to connect with you?

The best place is my website. All roads lead to that. It’s my last name KnightSpeaker.com. You’ll see the podcast, my books, and the programs that I do. I’ve got a book marketing company and some fun little apps out there. We help people discover their next great read. There are a lot of things that I play in. I love the format of your show and I appreciate you having me on this. This meant a lot to me to be invited because I’ve seen some of the people that are on your show. It means a lot.

I am glad we got to talk and I’ve got three pages of notes here on what you talked about. Culture is something that I think about all the time. It’s something that we’re working on all the time and we’ll continue to work on it. That was helpful for me. I’m sure it was for the people that are reading. Thank you so much for being here. I look forward to staying in touch as we go on our journeys.

You got it. We’ll talk soon. Rock on.

Thanks.

It’s time for our new segment, Guess The Why. I want to do somebody that everybody knows, at least they think they do and that is Simon Cowell from American Idol. What do you think Simon’s why is? Let’s think about him for a minute. Every time you saw him on American Idol, what was he wearing? He was always wearing a white T-shirt and jeans and who knows, maybe tennis shoes. They weren’t perfectly starched, but he was always wearing a white T-shirt. I think at one point, he changed to a black T-shirt. Now everybody has a big to-do about he switched from a white T-shirt to a black T-shirt and what does it mean?

Every time he gives advice to people or has feedback, he is very direct to the point. Don’t give him the fluff, just tell him what it is. Based on that, I would say that Simon Cowell’s why is to simplify. To make things simple, direct to the point, and don’t give him the fluff. Tell it like it is and don’t beat around the bush. He simplifies things to the point where people can do them, use them, and be effective with them because it’s simple. I believe Simon Cowell’s why is to simplify.

What do you think? Let us know what you think. I want to thank you so much for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com. Use the code Podcast50. You can get it at half price. All of our interviews will be much more valuable for you if you know your why. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you’re using so that we can help spread the word. Thank you very much. I will see you next time.

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About Jim Knight

Jim Knight teaches organizations of all sizes how to attain their own “rock star” status. Although his illustrious career started at Gatorland Zoo in Florida (he has scars to prove it), Jim cut his teeth in the hospitality training industry and eventually led Global Training for Hard Rock International for two decades. His customized programs show how to amp up organizational culture, deliver world-class differentiated service, and build rockstar teams and leaders.

Known for his signature spikey hair, Jim is the best-selling author of Culture ThatRocks: How to Revolutionize Your Company’s Culture was featured in EntrepreneurMagazine as one of the “5 Books That Will Help You Transform How You DoBusiness”.

His new book, Leadership That Rocks: Take Your Brand’s Culture to Eleven and Amp Up Results, launched in May 2021. A portion of Jim’s book sales, podcast revenue, speaking fees, and training program proceeds goes to No Kid Hungry and Cannonball Kids’ Cancer.

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Contributing To The World With The Leaders Of Tomorrow With Glen Campbell

Today’s episode is going to be about the why of contribution. Join your host, Dr. Gary Sanchez, as he talks to, who he believes to be the best example of this why. Contribute today with Glen Campbell as he creates the great leaders of tomorrow. Glen is the Chief Executive of Brandheart Method. Discover his long and impressive career before he found his own company. Know when to listen to your intuition and understand how when to leave your job. Glen spent all his life helping people find their who and why that he forgot about himself. Find out when he had an epiphany and how his business now, contributes to society. Learn how he is developing the leaders of tomorrow today!

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Contributing To The World With The Leaders Of Tomorrow With Glen Campbell

We’re going to be talking about the why of contribute. To contribute to a greater cause, add value or have an impact in the lives of others. If this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause. Something that is bigger than yourself. You don’t necessarily want to be the face of the cause but you want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. You love to support others. You relish the success and contribute to the greater good of the team.

You see group victories as personal victories. You are often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate. You often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources and connections to add value to other people and organizations.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Glen Campbell. Glen started his career with degrees in commerce and psychology. He also has a master’s in NLP and hypnotherapy. For years, Glen has been a Director and Chief Executive of some of the world’s best and brightest brand strategy and communication companies like Clemenger BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett across four continents.

Twelve years ago, he created Brandheart and developed unrivaled methods for leaders, best self-identity and organizational brand identity. He has worked with over 500 business leaders and entrepreneurs from around the world in developing their personal and organizational brands. The results have been nothing less than transformational.

Glen’s unique and proven method is para-disciplinary in nature. It’s a harmonious fusion of his extensive experience, the latest in leadership research, unique brand identity model, neuroscience, quantum physics, Eastern and Western philosophy and spirituality. Glen is considered a world-leading authority in empowering people to profound higher self-realization in business and in life. Glen, welcome to the show.

I’m delighted to be here, Gary. I love that description of contribution.

Let’s start here, Glen. Let’s go back to even when you were in your teens. What were you like? Take us through your journey on how you got to where you are.

I went to a private boys’ boarding military school. I’m sure a lot of people can identify with that. I’m very disciplined, very exact in everything we did. We played a lot of rugby union. That was my sport. This is was in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. I played a little bit. It’s very much a sporting school, very big emphasis on the sport, academia, the military and discipline, all that sort of stuff. From a very early age, you could say that achievement, discipline, being scholarly and seeking answers were very important to us. That was part of the culture of the school. I was a part of that. That starts to forge the way you go through life.

From high school, you went off to get your degrees. Where did you go for that?

I stayed in Brisbane. I went to a university called the Queensland University of Technology. I did a commerce degree with a major in marketing. I was playing rugby at a representative level so I graduated playing for my state Queensland, which in those days was an amateur sport but it was pretty cool because we were probably one of the top five provincial rugby sides in the world. Queensland would play against Scotland and we’d beat them. It was a pretty impressive side I was a part of. I was playing rugby at that level, so I decided not to go into the workforce. I decided to do another degree and that was a psychology degree. I did that at University of Queensland.

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Why did you pick a psychology degree?

After I finished my commerce degree, I did a number of psychology electives. For some reason or other, I did particularly well in those subjects and I liked it. I remember the head of the faculty at the time said to me, “If you’re thinking about doing further study, you should do psychology because you’re pretty good at it. You’re bit of a natural at this stuff.”

I naturally went to the other university, which was not far away, that had a specialty in psychology. I went there. I had no problem getting in. The other thing was I’ve done so many subjects at that university, so I got a number of exemptions. Instead of doing a three-year degree, I ended up doing a two-year degree. That was good.

You’ve got your commerce degree and psychology degree. Glen’s off to do what now?

I got a job straight away in brand strategy and communications in the best agency in Brisbane at the time. It was called Clemenger. It was a part of the Clemenger BBDO Group. The BBDO Group is in America. They had offices in New York. I ended up getting a job straight into the business of brand strategy and communication development and execution.

How long did you do that?

I worked there for five years. It was a very small agency, only about 35 people. It’s a strategic and creative boutique. Amazing work considering it was a small agency in Brisbane, Australia. After five years there, I got headhunted. Things happened. I was asked to work for an agency called Saatchi & Saatchi in Sydney, which at the time, Sydney is the biggest city in Australia with the biggest population density. This agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, was one, if not the leading agency in Australia at the time. Certainly, one of the bright lights of Saatchi & Saatchi was it had a $6 billion global net worth at the time.

You were there for how long?

I was there for five years as well. My role there was to look after the Toyota Motor Vehicle business in Australia. That included the Hino trucks, the Lexus brand, which is the prestige brand and all the Toyota vehicles. It was a very big account for us at the time. In Australia, they were spending $75 million on advertising and brand strategy.

It was a big step up for me from Brisbane to work on such a major piece of business. I certainly learned a lot. They weren’t easy guys to work with the motor vehicle game. They want to see results. Interestingly enough, in that time, I wouldn’t say we did it all but we contributed a great deal to getting that brand from number 3 to number 1 in the Australian marketplace.

Contributing Leaders
Contributing Leaders: Ask yourself the two primordial questions that plague humanity for time immemorial – “Who am I” and “Why am I here?”

Keep us going. What happened to you next?

I got headhunted again to go and work for Leo Burnett, which I’m sure Americans if they knew anything about brand strategy and communication companies, they’ll know that Burnett is a Chicago based company. It’s another global powerhouse, about $7 billion or $8 billion company. I got headhunted to work with those guys. I spent quite a lot of time there.

I ended up going straight into the national board of directors. I was the National Business Development Director. I worked on a number of pieces of business that I led in terms of the strategy and the development of all the marketing and communications work. I’ve worked on brands like Woolworths Supermarkets, which in Australia is a 700-store supermarket brand.

I worked on Subaru, a number of alcohol brands and Gatorade. We introduced the Gatorade product into Australia, which I love working on. That business was a lot of fun. Big brands like that. I worked on our military over here. I worked on the army, the air force and the navy with their recruitment. There was lots of interesting stuff. It’s a lot of fun.

How long were you there? Then onto the next thing.

I was nine years there, then I went into my first chief executive role. I was the chief executive of a small agency that was only turning over about $30 million, $40 million. That was a creative boutique, the creative powerhouse in Australia at the time. It was a dream job for me. I ended up taking that company.

When I started with them, they were doing about $18 million. I got them up for about $42 million in the two years I was there. After that, another chief executive role in another agency called Ideaworks. That was a part of the WPP Global Group, a publicly listed company. That company was turning over about $400 million and I had about 120 people in my team working with me. I did a very successful couple of years there. Then I left the industry and started my own business, Brandheart.

Take us into that moment when you knew you needed to leave the industry and start your own. What happened?

Seriously, Gary, this was the turning point, the epiphany. This is where I started to think about this whole idea of why. I remember it like it was yesterday. There were two things that happened in a week. One, I was pitching a banking business. It was a second-tier bank but it was still a pretty big piece of business. Inside the context of that pitch, there were lots of things going on, which I didn’t like morally, ethically and professionally. That bothered me a lot.

In the same week, I was pitching a burgers, Coke and fries business. I thought to myself, “Is this what it’s come to burgers, Coke and fries, Glen? That’s not you. That’s not your thing.” I remember coming on to my wife and saying, “I’m not happy.” I’m working 60 hours a week on average. I feel like a hamster on a treadmill. It’s Groundhog Day. All I’m doing is all about money. This can’t be it for me. It’s got to be more to it than that. How did I get to this point? It’s like I blinked and 25 years have passed of 60-hour a week. I’m sitting there going, “What am I doing?”

The message from the universe from your perspective is manifesting in your intuition. Trust and listen to it. Click To Tweet

I asked myself those two primordial questions, Gary. “Who am I? Why am I here?” It bothered me a lot. The epiphany was this. I thought, “Hold on a minute. All I do for a living and all I’ve done for the last 25 years is help big organizations develop their why and who. That’s all I’ve done for a living.” I go in there and develop a strategic positioning or their brand identity. Those terms were interchangeable.

It’s like how are we going to position ourselves in the market. Then we do all this work around the personification of the brand, what’s the personality of the brand? How do they look? If this brand was a person, what would they look like? What would they be like? What kind of friends would they have? Where would they live? I thought, “I’m good at this stuff. Why don’t I do it for myself?”

That’s what started that journey of self-reflection contemplation. I took the strategic tools that I’d learned from some of the best and brightest brand strategy companies on the planet. I changed and modified them. Then I took myself through my exercise, which is not easy to do. When you try to do that yourself, it’s very difficult. You’re second guessing everything. I did that for a period of three months where I got to the point and I went, “This is Glen’s brand. This is my brand.” When I looked at it, I had this massive sense of relief. It’s like, “I know who I am. What I’m doing is not it. That’s not me and my passion. That’s not what’s going to make me happy.”

After doing all that work, I came home and sat down with my wife, Victoria and said, “I’m leaving.” She said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know but it’s not that because that’s not what makes me happy.” She said, “You have no idea what you got to do?” I said, “No but I’m going to leave because this is not it for me. It’s not my why.” That’s what I was talking about. I can’t do that anymore. I’ve got to be true to my true highest self, my true higher why and purpose. I ended up leaving. What I did was I continued to develop that model. I started to work with business leaders and help them do the same thing.

What was it about what you were doing that you didn’t like or didn’t feel like you?

I was lacking meaning. I felt like this was meaningless to me. I tell you what the thing was. I wasn’t getting up in the morning and feeling enthusiastic about going to work. I was the chief executive. There are a lot of people look at you and take cues from you. I did a good job of masking that and not allowing people to see that. I thought I did a pretty good job but it was bothering me.

One of the other things that contributed to this was when I went into this chief executive role. The group CEO and the group CFO are upstairs and we’d have these quarterly meetings. We sit down and look at the numbers. I noticed they never talked to me about the people or any other kind of KPIs. They only ever sat down and said, “Let’s go through the numbers.” I was like, “Aren’t you interested in the health and wellbeing of my people? Aren’t you going to talk to me about my culture, how I’m improving productivity and all those other things?”

They didn’t want to know about it. They said, “We’re interested in what your EBITDA is, Earnings Before Income Tax and Depreciation Amortization.” “You’re just interested in my profit contribution. That’s all.” All the discussions were around that. The other thing that happened was we went from quarterly meetings to monthly meetings. There was a lot of pressure on the network that was all about contribution to the network. The monthly meetings went from weekly meetings. I go up, sit there and say, “What do you think has happened since last week? I’ve got to cut the biscuit budget or something?”

There are other two things here. There’s revenue. The two biggest costs I’ve got are people and rent. All the rest of it is inconsequential. They’re line items and not very big. I could go through all that stuff all day, cut them by 10%, be the head of the razor gang and cut this stuff. Everybody will know. It has massive confidence.

I’ll fix the confidence of people in a confidence business. Creativity is a high confidence business. When people are seeing little things change all the time, it’s like, “What’s going on here? What are we doing? What’s happening in our company? Why is Glen doing this?” I used to have these discussions since I’m not going to do that week by week. Why are we meeting week by week when the story is never any different?

It’s this constant pressure coming from the top down to achieve things that I wasn’t passionate about. I got into that industry because I was passionate about doing amazing creativity that impacts people in positive ways that can enhance their life and it wasn’t happening. I felt I was the head of the gang of people who was selling more consumables to people that they didn’t need or want. I thought, “This is not good for me. It’s not good for anybody. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Contributing Leaders
Contributing Leaders: Don’t be a business that’s just all about money, that only goes over the numbers and not the culture and wellbeing of its people.

It’s interesting the way this happens. It was like a seismic event where all of these things happened at once all in a short timeframe. I remember talking to Victoria about it saying, “It’s fascinating the way this is happening. I can see it. I can see that’s happened.” It’s like, “I’m getting a message from the universe here to do and change something. I need to listen.”

The message from the universe from my perspective was manifesting itself through my intuition. My intuition is telling me, “This is wrong. I’ve got to change and do something.” I’ve got to trust that. I’m very connected to my intuitive powers. I trust my intuition. I thought, “You got to listen to this. It’s too overwhelming. There are too many signs. There are signs everywhere.” I’ve got to listen to this. I listened and I changed.

I resigned and they said, “Where are you going to? What other job are you going to in the industry?” I said, “I’m leaving the industry.” They were shocked. “How could you be doing this, Glen? This is you.” I said, “It’s not me.” I’ve discovered that. That was what I call the epiphany, that turning point that you were talking about, Gary.

You sat down and asked yourself those two questions, “Who am I? Why am I here?” How did you go about figuring out that answer? What was the answer?

My first answers were the standard answers. Who am I? I’m the Chief Executive of Ideaworks. I immediately went to my title. I thought, “Is my title my identity?” It’s not. Then I went, “It must be my CV, my experience. That must be my identity.” It’s not. The more I went through this, the more I thought, “My experience in my CV, my title, where I live, the car I drive and the brands I buy are not my identity. That’s not who I am. Certainly, that’s not why I’m here. That can’t be why I’m here to accumulate more stuff.”

In fact, I’d feel a whole lot better if I got rid of most of it. I defaulted like most people do who don’t get into this level of introspection and journey. They default to what people or the industry has told them or what we’ve been programmed to believe, all those other classic borrowed identities that don’t mean anything to us. They’re not real anyway. As you start this whole thing, don’t contribute to anything in a meaningful way. To me, it was like, “None of that is meaningful. None of that makes my heart beat stronger.” I’d feel passionate about it. That was what started the journey.

I’m at my best when I’m helping other people to realize who they are as well. In my work life, whenever I sat down, forced as a leader to do these quarterly reviews, HR would say, “You’ve got to do quarterly reviews or bi-annual reviews.” I always would find myself in those meetings, putting the checklist aside and saying, “How are you going? Why do you get out of bed every morning? What keeps you awake at night? What bothers you? What basic questions can’t you answer?” I would have these searching discussions. I never tell anybody anything. I’ll just ask these questions.

The questions I was asking were prompting them to think about it. I would leave the meetings like, “Go away and think about that. Think about why you’re doing this job, why you love it and what it means to you. Then come back and talk to me.” I was getting into these amazing conversations with people where they say, “I thought about what we last talked about. This is where I’m coming out on this stuff. I found that we were going on this journey of self-discover, which is what I did for myself.”

We’re going into this discovery. I had many people sitting in front of me going, “I’m doing this introspection work and I’m not liking it, Glen. I’m revealing things that I don’t like to see.” I was like, “It’s okay.” I’ve studied with psychology. I’ve studied Freud, Jung and all these guys. Jung used to call it The Shadow Personality. I was like, “You’re identifying your shadow. Do you know what the shadow is? It’s a part of you. It’s okay. You just got to know who it is. You’ve got to work to minimize that. Go back to the light side of who you are. What’s the light look like? How would you describe the light?” We’d had those yang-yin discussions.

I was doing that with myself as well. I’m aware of my dark and light side. I’ve got to continue to stay myself to that light side, work, build and define that. To me, it was about what does my source self look like? It is the why, Gary. You call it the why. I call it the why too. It’s the same thing. What’s that person here to do? Everybody’s here to do something. That contributes to the planet. All human beings are good people.

You're at your best when you're helping other people to realize who they are. Click To Tweet

They all want to do something that’s good and contribute to people. That’s what we’re here for. That’s when we’re at our best. How do I be my best self? It’s through contribution, which I loved what you started. Through contribution, it’s serving others. How can I help others to find their why, get a stronger understanding of who they are, why they’re here and then have the courage to pursue it?

There’s a basketball coach here in the US called John Calipari. He has your same why. He says, “I want to be the pebble that causes the ripple effect in the lives of those around me that goes on and on.” It keeps multiplying your ability to contribute to the world by the people that you help have a bigger impact.

He calls it the ripple effect. I call it the butterfly effect. I borrowed that from a movie. This butterfly effect is where the vibrational energy of you is going to affect the vibrational energy of somebody else, which is going to affect the vibrational energy of somebody else. You want that vibrational energy to be high vibrational energy like, love, wisdom, insight, acceptance, joy, bliss and peace. They’re the high vibrational energies that you want to have the effect on other people.

This was the quantum physics side of it when you talked about that at the front where I do quantum physics. It’s knowing and understanding energy. How can you energetically impact somebody in a way that’s positive? Daniel Goleman does this work. If you read any Daniel Goleman’s stuff like Emotional Intelligence and amazing best-selling books like this, he’s one of the US profound psychologists in leadership and EQ, understanding the role of EQ, what he calls emotional intelligence.

Emotions are energy. The quantum physicist and the neuroscientists have proven this. What kind of energetic or emotional level are you vibrating at? What energetic level you’re vibrating at? How does that impact others? We know from quantum physics that like attracts and impacts like. If I’m operating at a very high emotional level, those levels I was talking about of love, bliss, joy and harmony, that’s going to affect other people as well and infect in many ways. They start to feel it too.

Have you ever walked into a room and felt the vibe of a room? It’s the energy of the people in the room. Creating a vibe through your own energy is very important. You got to know what that is, your energy and so to your work. You wrap your energy around your why. Your why is a high vibrational energy. You can’t have a why that is around death and destruction like, “I want to go out and hurt people.” That is not why. It’s the antithesis of what a why is. Why is something that is positive, powerful and profound that enhances life and the planet that we live on.

Therefore, you wrap this high vibrational energy around it and it becomes massively contagious. That’s what creates the ripple effect. The ripple effect is another way of talking about quantum energy. The ripple is the energy that impacts everybody else. The butterfly effect is the energy that can impact 1 to 5 minutes.

Tell us about how those conversations then led to Brandheart. What is Brandheart?

Brandheart is all about working with leaders. All I’ve done from the beginning of Brandheart is work with leaders. Mostly it’s C-Suite leaders, chief executives, chief financial officers, chief technical officers and chief marketing officers. My rationale was always to influence the influences. If you can positively influence an influencer, then that influencer is going to have the butterfly effect to a lot of people. If you can get to one that’s an influencer, you’ll get too many. That was my rationale.

I want to work with the leaders of businesses that impact their clients, team and culture that has this profoundly positive impact on their business. Coming from a brand strategy background, I knew how to do that from a positioning point of view. What I did was escalate that up and say, “Before I do any work on the organization, I want to work on the leaders first.” Get them to know and understand what their role is as a leader. Unfortunately, the vast majority of leaders on this planet have been organically programmed to be command and control leaders. They command and control.

Contributing Leaders
Contributing Leaders: Be aware of your dark side and your light side. You have to continue to steer yourself to that light side so that you can work on that, build that, and define that.

That’s very low vibrational energy. That’s motivation through fear, coercion and negative persuasion. That doesn’t work. That creates destructive disharmonious cultures. That’s one of the reasons why 3 out of 5 businesses fail within the first two years. Why did they go broke? It’s because it’s a leadership problem. It’s not so much that they’ve got a bad product or whatever they’re doing.

The buck always stops with the leader. When we’re talking about leaders, we could talk about leaders of businesses, basketball teams, families or leaders of anything. You’re being a leader of your own life leading your own life in a way that’s positive. It doesn’t matter. Everybody has the opportunity to be a leader and should be a leader. At the end of the day, I went, “It’s not just leaders. It’s everybody.” I want to help everybody do this work like you do. We’re in the same game in many respects. That’s why in our first discussion we got on so well.

It’s like, “A kindred spirit here. This guy is great. I love his work.” I’m not competitive like that. I look at you and hope you’ll be immensely positive and influence a lot of people to do this work. It’s fundamental and essential, in fact. I’m doing the same thing in my small way. It is the same thing. When you asked me a question about, “Glen, what are you doing?” It’s like, “Pretty much the same as you, Gary. I want to help people to find their why. I want to help people to know and understand that deeply right into their DNA.” That’s neuroscience and quantum physics.

I go very deep into the journey of seeing and understand how this affects your neural pathways. How can you create new neural pathways? How can you create new belief systems that are held in your subconscious mind? How can you get this conscious and subconscious mind coherence where you’ve got this single-mindedness or whole mindedness? Every part of my conscious, non-conscious minds, every part of my body, my cells are in harmony around my why. I’m in harmony.

I’m a walking, talking and the epitome of my why inaction every minute of every day. I try to take people deeply on that journey. It doesn’t become something that it’s conscious. It becomes unconscious competency. I do this naturally. It’s me. It’s who I am. What happens in that process? It’s a similar process to what people go through when they get programmed to be somebody who they’re not, which most people are. We were mostly brought up to be programmed to be something that we’re not. It’s reprogramming into who you are.

Take us through somebody going through this process. What would they like to begin with? What would they like afterwards? What was the impact in their life? Give us an example of how this works.

I worked with a guy who was a group CFO of a big supermarket chain in this country. After seventeen years, he was sacked unceremoniously. He was referred to me by somebody I know who knew him very well. When he came to me, he was a basket case and a mess. He had attributed his identity to his title and job. What happens when you take the title and the job away? Identity gone. When this happens in their life through their work and they’ve attributed their identity to that, they feel this sense of helplessness, hopelessness and may go into, “I don’t even know who I am anymore because it’s been taken away from me.” I don’t what to do.

This guy put on a lot of weight. He was doing a lot of comfort eating. He was lying around the house. His relationship with his wife and family was badly affected. He stopped doing anything because he didn’t know what to do. He lost all sense of purpose and meaning. His life didn’t stand for anything anymore. This is a guy who got a couple of university degrees. He’s an accomplished leader in his field and worked with a very big company but they took that away from him. When they took that away, he had nothing left to deal with, hold onto and take forward.

When he came to me, we went through my methodology. I saw him straight away. He was a blubbering mess. A guy with his credentials couldn’t articulate what he was feeling and doing. He was having all sorts of problems. He had no idea what he wanted to go to either. In fact, when I said, “What do you want to do?” He said, “I need to get another job as a CFO of a supermarket chain.” I said, “You want to go back to doing exactly what you did before?” He said, “That’s all I know. I don’t know anything else. I’m good at that.” I said, “Let’s put that aside and talk. Let me take you through my methodology and we’ll go on this journey.”

We did that. Fast forward about two months later, we’ve discovered his why and who. We’ve been going about the reprogramming work to get that from the conscious that develop new neural pathways to get that from the conscious mind into the subconscious mind. We’d be doing that programming. We’ve been working hard. I must say he jumped in. He said, “I’m going to give you everything I’ve got.” He did the work.

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Everything changed quickly. His relationship with his wife is so much better. For the first time in several years, he was going out and having lunch with his daughter. He had no relationship with his daughter. He never had the time. He was spending time with his daughter. His daughter was saying, “Dad, what’s going on with you? Where’s your magic dust? I want some of that magic dust. It’s good. You’re so much nicer. We can sit down and talk. It’s lovely.” He was having those relationships as well.

He stopped talking about his previous employer. He wasn’t talking about that anymore. He looked at it and said, “I’ve got that in perspective. That was experienced. That’s a good thing.” He saw the positive in it. He started being very positive. He was back at the gym. He’d lost a lot of weight. He was eating well. His skin was glowing. He was smiling. I hadn’t seen him smile through my whole process. He was laughing and joking again. We’d finished our work.

He rang me one day and said, “Glen, I want to talk to you. I’m going for this dream job. Remember you told me I shouldn’t be a CFO anymore? I should be a CEO. I should be running the company. I’ve been going for CEO roles.” I went, “I didn’t know.” He said, “I wanted to sit down, talk to you about this role and what it’s all about. This is my dream job. It’s in an industry that’s very different to supermarkets, very socially focused, very positive and are good for people.” He’s landed there.

I said, “That’s okay. Let’s do a role play. I’ll interview you the way they would interview you.” I’m going to listen carefully to the way you talk about yourself. If it’s not around your why and who you are, I’m going to be pulling you up on that. If you default your CV all the time like everybody does, you don’t want to play that guy talking about CV. That’s not who you are. We did a couple of role play sessions and a bit of corrective work, also defaulting back a bit.

A week later, he rang me and said, “I need to talk to you. It’s important.” I said, “What’s happened?” He said, “I’m standing outside the building. I’ve finished the interview.” I said, “How did it go?” He said, “There was a panel of five people. They kept talking about my CV. I kept elevating the discussion up to what they were buying and that’s me. They’re buying my why and who I really am. I kept saying you can read my CV. I’m happy to talk about specific things but that’s not who I am. I am so much more than that. That’s history and I’m better than my history, a whole lot better.”

He was talking about that and kept going back to his why. “Let me explain to you why I’m here, who I am and what I’ve got to offer here.” The discussion was so unique to this panel. They said they’d never heard anybody talk like that in that way with such confidence, conviction and understanding of self-awareness. He finished the interview. He walked out to the elevator. One of the guys came out from the panel and said, “We’ve talked about it. We want to offer you the job now.”

He went, “Oh, really?” They said, “We don’t even need to think about it anymore. You are a standout candidate. We couldn’t believe the kind of conversation we had with you. It was extraordinary. Everybody was so focused on wanting to tell us about their experience and you didn’t do that at all. We were stunned.” He said, “Glen, I got the job and this is my dream job.” This was $500,000 a year salary, Gary.

It’s extraordinary. One interview, done. He said, “I talked about myself, who I am, what I’ve got to contribute and my passions. When I talked about being sacked from that job, I talked about it openly and honestly. How the experience has made me a better person and why I’ve gone through this journey. They went, ‘You’re in. We want you. You’re the guy who’s going to develop this business and this culture in a way that reflects you. That’s what we want.’”

Instead of what he’s done, he talked about why he does it and who he is.

He hardly talked about the what and the how at all. He talked about the why and who, Gary. Mostly, about the why. He got his narrative going around that. He changed the narrative of the discussion where they said, “Tell us more about this. We want to know more.” He was very clear on it. I had massive clarity and focus around his why and who.

Contributing Leaders
Contributing Leaders: Influence the influencers. If you can positively influence an influencer, then that influencer is going to have the butterfly effect on a lot of people.

Whenever they deferred back to the what and how, he kept saying, “You can read my CV for that. If there are specific things you want to talk about, I’m happy to talk about them. Quite frankly, that was who I was then. Now, I would probably do that a bit differently. My answer would be different because I am different. I’ve grown a lot since then.” They couldn’t believe how open, vulnerable, passionate and compassionate he was.

What would a statement, a sentence or an introduction sound like if he had started with his why and his who? I don’t know if you could give us that example or maybe your own why and who so that the audience can understand what that would sound like versus just, “I’m a coach. I can help you with your brand strategies.” What would it sound like from the perspective of, “This is why I do what I do and this is who I am?” How do you do that?

I’ll give you an example of mine. I’m happy to do that. This is through my own process and method. I always start with the two words I am. The power of those words is profound. My vision statement, which is my personal why is, “I am the light that awakens people to higher self-realization.” What’s light? Light is love and a very high vibrational energy. It’s not telling, persuading or influencing people. It’s helping them to wake up to who they really are. The waking up is to their higher self-realization.

Realization is, “I’m not thinking it. I’m doing it. It’s happening all around me.” Realization is the impact and influence I’m having on people, the butterfly effect, the results I’m getting in my personal life, relationships, through my reputation and revenue. It always comes back to revenue because I find leaders who do this always make more money. It shouldn’t even be a focus. It’s a natural outcome. They always make more money.

Why more? They attract people who want to be a part of that. They attract the best employees who want to do the best work. They attract the customers because the customers go, “There’s something about this company I like. Therefore, I’m not going to ask them for a discount. I’m not going to question them because this is the way they work.”

Leaders like that have a tendency to develop powerful leading brands to make a whole lot more money. Even if you take that thought away from it, these people are a whole lot better in their relationships, family life, friends, their associates, strategic alliance partners or whoever. They have better relationships. That doesn’t mean they’re passive or at walkover. It means I have better relationships. I know how to handle that stuff in a way that’s quite positive, as opposed to, “This is not working for me. I’m going to throw a tantrum, go into command and control and get aggressive.” It doesn’t work that way. People don’t do that once they get that.

My why statement is, “I am the light that awakens people to higher self-realization.” I have a purpose statement that sits underneath that as well. My particular model has the vision, the North star. My purpose statement is, “Why am I getting out of bed every morning to get me on the fastest possible track to that North Star? What’s my purpose?” My purpose is I am empowering people to be in heart lead conscious success flow.

What’s flow? It’s effortless. I don’t have to work at it. It’s not a struggle. There’s no frustration. There’s none of that stuff or those low vibrational energies. I am in flow. I know Americans call it in the zone. When I’m in the zone, I mean flow. I’m in this state of effortless flow. I talk a lot to the people I work with about the effortless flow of productivity. Don’t be busy. Be productive. How you be productive? Be in the state of flow. When you’re in flow, that’s when your creativity and imagination are working at its best. That’s when you’re problem solving. You’re getting solutions that come to you. You do your best work when your creativity and imagination are released.

What happens with most leaders is they’re suffering stress, anxiety and depression. They’re in fear. What happens when you’re in fear? You go into your reptilian brain, that primordial brain. What’s the primordial brain? Fight, freeze or flight. What happens when all the blood flows from your prefrontal cortex, your executive function to your primordial brain, your reptilian brain? All the creativity and imagination shuts down. You go into fear and protection.

That’s why you see a lot of intelligent people in this pandemic are in fear and doing crazy things. They’re in fight, freeze or flight. They can’t solve problems with their creative and imaginative mind. It’s shut down, so it’s not working. How do you make sure that you’re a great leader and you have great people working for you? You empowered them to their higher why. The higher why is not a state of fear. There’s no fear.

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This is the last question I got for you. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given or you’ve ever given?

The best piece of advice would be this. Stop spending money on personal development. Don’t go get another degree. Don’t do further training and coaching. Find your why first. It is essential and fundamental. There is nothing more important because everything else comes from that. Once you find your why, what happens is you then understand what further development work you need to do to take you on the direction of your why.

Then you can say, “This is the further training and education I need to do. This is the coach or the person I need to work with that’s going to help me most to go on that journey and that direction towards my why, my North star.” I’ve worked in Chicago and New York for twelve months on two separate occasions. I do know and understand in some respects the American culture, the American psyche and the American business because I’ve worked with a lot of leaders there. To me, save that money. Don’t spend any more money at all on that. Get to your why first.

Once you get to that why, what happens is clarity, focus and meaning, then what happens is this journey of fulfillment and joy because you’re doing what you love, which is right for you, which is around your why. That’s the best piece of advice I would give for you, Gary, which I already know you’ve done all this well. For anybody that reads or wants to work with you, it’s crucial. It doesn’t get any more important. This is my final statement if we had a planet that knew their why, we would have a planet in absolute productive, joyful harmony.

Glen, if there’s somebody reading this that would love to connect with you, wants to work with you, wants to hire you, any of those things, what’s the best way for them to get in touch with you?

They could find out more about me at my website. My website is simply BrandHeartMethod.com. You could go there and find how you can contact me. You can find out more about the work that I’m doing. By the way, it’s very simpatico with your work, Gary, which I loved. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. “I want to have a chat with Gary. It’s going to be great. I can’t wait. He’s a kindred spirit.” I love kindred spirits who are out there trying to help the world in a way that’s profoundly positive. You told me about your journey, which I loved. Your journey from being a dentist to where you are, which is an extraordinary shift. I want to say I love your work, Gary. You’re a treasure to the planet. Keep going.

I appreciate that, Glen. Thank you so much. Thank you for doing your best thinking with us. I look forward to staying in touch as we go on our journey because I know you take a lot of what we do and you go even deeper. You help people manifest that, bring it to their world and see it in the right light. Thank you for being that light that awakens the soul of the people around you.

Thank you, Gary. I appreciate the time. This is a great conversation.

It’s time for our new segment, which is Guess The Why. I want to pick somebody that I’m thinking most of you know. If you’ve seen the TV series Breaking Bad, it was filmed right here in Albuquerque. It’s funny driving around town. You see so many of the scenes and places that were in the TV series. The one I want you to think about is Walter White. What do you think Walter White’s why is?

Contributing Leaders: People have been programmed to be command-and-control leaders. That’s motivation through fear and coercion. That creates really destructive disharmonious cultures.

I’ll tell you what I think it is. Even though he did a lot of wrong stuff, I think his why is right way, to do things the right way in order to get results. At the beginning, he was appalled by the way things were being done and he was on the side of good but then he rationalized the right way and that it was the right thing to do to make meth in order to make money to pay for what he needed to pay for.

He got way too deep into it but he was always still about doing things right, doing them the right way, creating the structure and processes around getting a predictable result. That’s what I think his why is. What do you think it is? Thank you so much for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you could do so at WhyInstitute.com. You can use the code PODCAST50 and you can get it for half price. If you love the show, please don’t forget to subscribe below. Leave us a review and rating on whatever platform that you’re using. Thank you and have a great time.

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About Glen Campbell

Contributing LeadersGlen started his career with degrees in Commerce and Psychology. He alsohas a Masters in NLP and Hypnotherapy.

Overa period of 27 years Glen has been a Director and Chief Executive of some ofthe world’s best and brightest brand strategy and communications companies likeClemenger BBDO, Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett across four continents.
Twelveyears ago, he created Brandheart and developed unrivaled methods for Leader’sBest Self Identity and Organizational Brand Identity.
Inthis time, he has worked with over 500 business leaders and entrepreneurs from aroundthe world in developing their personal and organizational brands and the resultshave been nothing less than transformational.
Glen’s unique and proven method ispara-disciplinary in nature: it’s a harmonious fusion of his 30 years of extensiveexperience, the latest in leadership research, a unique brand identity model, Neuroscience,Quantum Physics, eastern and western philosophy and spirituality.
Glen is considered a worldleading authority in empowering people to profound higher self realization inthe business and life.

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Podcast

Herbal Ecstasy: The Search For A Better Way To Party With Shaahin Cheyene.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy

 

Shaahin Cheyene always searched for a better way. He is the brilliant mind behind the legendary smart drug known as herbal ecstasy. He’s earned over a billion dollars in revenue because of it. But what if you were to discover that Shaahin’s family had to escape to survive and ended up finally migrating to Los Angeles, California? At 15 years old, Shaahin left home with nothing but the clothes on his back! Join the conversation as host Dr. Gary Sanchez uncovers Shaahin’s powerful “why” of wanting to contribute better processes and systems to the world. It pushed him from a place of desperation to a place of prosperity. Tune in and find a better way!

 

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Herbal Ecstasy: The Search For A Better Way To Party With Shaahin Cheyene

Welcome to the show, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually helping you discover and live your why. If you’re a regular reader, you know that every week, we talk about one of the nine whys and then we bring on somebody with that why so we can see how their why has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of better way. If your why is better way, then you are the ultimate innovator. You are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better.

You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, “What if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better?” You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, “I’m often pleased, but never satisfied.” You are excellent at associating, which means that you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Shaahin Cheyene. During the Iranian revolution of 1978, Shaahin’s family had to escape to survive and ended up finally migrating to Los Angeles, California. At fifteen years old, Shaahin left home with nothing, but the clothes on his back and created over $1 billion in revenue by inventing the legendary smart drug known as Herbal Ecstacy. These childhood experiences had a major impact on his perspective of freedom, hard work, and entrepreneurship.

Shaahin went on to invent Digital Vaporization, the forerunner to this day’s vapes and a start a number of successful businesses with a couple of notable failures. He is the Founder and CEO of Accelerated Intelligence, Inc., a major Amazon FBA seller with millions in sales and the Lead Coach at Amazon Mastery, where he teaches the entrepreneurs how to crush it on the Amazon platform. He is an active YouTube creator.

Shaahin is considered one of the leading global minds on what’s next in eCommerce, Amazon and the internet. He is described as the Willy Wonka of Generation X by The London Observer and Newsweek and is one of the most forward thinkers in business. With his Amazon Mastery course, he acutely recognizes trends and patterns early on the Amazon platform to help others understand how these shifts impact markets and consumer behavior. Shaahin, welcome to the show.

Gary, it’s my honor to be on. Thank you for having me.

Take us back through your life. Let’s go back and give us your story, how you got started and how you got to where you are because it sounds like it was a struggle at the beginning for sure.

We came to the United States in the late 1970s, early 1980s as immigrants. We immigrated here through Germany to the United States. Iran was on top of the heap, we came here and all of a sudden, we learned that we were third-class citizens in a country that didn’t appreciate Iranians during the whole Iran-Contra thing. We had Ronald Reagan trickle-down economics and Oliver North. Iran-Contra was not a friendly environment.

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I grew up with a big chip on my shoulder because I was constantly getting my ass handed to me in school. I would go to school and get beat up every day. We grew up in a neighborhood that was up and coming, the little enclave of Los Angeles called Pacific Palisades. In the early ‘80s, it was much more hippie than it was well-to-do and gentrified. My folks managed to get a house there. It was fairly inexpensive. It was a totally beat-down house. They bought the house and we started fixing it up. As we started fixing up this old house, the neighborhoods started booming.

More and more people started moving to LA. LA was in a building boom. All this wealth started cropping up, literally all around us. We’re in this old house. My dad worked at a pizza shop and then at dry cleaners. We were solidly poor and there was all this wealth around us. I remember grown up there. We didn’t eat out at restaurants. We didn’t buy new clothes and all that stuff. When my brother and I got clothes, we would wait for somebody to walk into my dad’s dry cleaner and pray that person was like cool that they would not pay their bill, so we could get the clothes when they defaulted on their bill or just left the clothes there. We’d always be 2 or 3 seasons behind on whatever the fashion was.

I remember a friend of mine whose dad was a wealthy doctor, invited me over to eat. I was like, “Cool. What’s your mom cooking?” He’s like, “No, she’s not cooking. We’re going to a restaurant.” I was like, “Okay.” We went in there and he gave me a menu. I looked at him and I said, “How the heck does this work?” I can order a pizza and a hamburger and that man’s going to bring it to me. Explain to me how this works again. This is incredible. That’s how it was. I didn’t have any of this wealth, but around me was tons of wealth.

By the time I reached fifteen, I remember thinking to myself, “I want that stuff. I want the Porsche. I want the Ferrari. I want the beautiful blonde sitting in the car next to me in the big house on the hill.” All that great stuff, great vacations and all that stuff. What’s the path? I went and I talked to my parents and I said, “How do I get that?” They thought about it. As any immigrant family will let you know, the pinnacle of success is becoming a doctor.

My parents told me, “You become a doctor. You go to a school.” I was like, “Great. Sign me up for that. I’ll be a doctor.” They’re like, “Okay.” I’m like, “How long does that take 2, 3 years?” They’re like, “No, it takes 8, 10, 12 years. Specialty, 14, 15 years.” “What happens then?” “You got to get a loan. You’ll be in debt for another ten years. You’ll be fat, old and bald like the dude next door. Maybe by the time you’re 50, you’ll have a mortgage, a wife and eight kids.”

You won’t have time because you’ll be selling your hours. You’ll have to wake up at 5:00 AM and come back at 8:00 PM. Maybe by then, you’ll have the house in the car, which by the way, the bank will own, you will not. Very quickly, I discovered that it was not going to be a path that worked for me. Very unceremoniously, I packed up my stuff in a single backpack and I left. I left the keys on the counter. I didn’t come back. I burned my ships. I decided I was going to go out and find my fame and fortune in the world. As a kid, I was fifteen with no friends and no money. This was pre-internet, pre all those times.

Take us into that decision. What was going on for you when you decided at fifteen, I’m going to walk out and do this on my own? What was going on for you?

Growing up again in Los Angeles, at school, I never fit in. I never belonged. There was never a group that I belonged in. As an adolescent, I got involved in multiple criminal activities that adolescents would get involved in. We went to liquor stores and we had this little Greek kid and he was very small. He would walk into the store. He would fit just right under the sensors. He’d wear baggy clothes.

We would create some kind of distraction on it. We’d open up a Coke, spill it and something would happen. The store owner or manager, whoever’s monitoring the store will get busy. He would stuff his pockets with nude magazines, with those little tiny bottles of liquor, cigarettes, glue or whatever we could get. He would rush out under the sensors and we would just pay for the Coke or whatever and get out. We would sell that stuff in school.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Any immigrant family will tell you that the pinnacle of success is becoming a doctor.

 

We always get busted. We were terrible at crime. We had no business being in the crime business. They would put us in detention. Here we are, these little juvenile criminals in detention. Who’s in detention? More juvenile criminals. It was the best business we had ever done. We would get caught again. They didn’t even have second detention to send us to. We’d be going back and forth through that. By the time I was fifteen, I realized, “Crime was not good for me. I am not good at crime. I’m a failure at crime. I will not be doing a crime. I need to go out there and figure out something to do.”

My why was I wanted the wealth. I wanted success. I wanted to climb the ladder. There was not a path for me to do that in those days. I was going to forge a path. I was going to make a path. I was going to go out there with machetes and cut the entire forest down until there was a path for me. That’s what I did. I started sleeping in abandoned buildings, which was much more glorious than it sounds, and on the beach as well. Sometimes abandoned buildings near the beach, because LA was in a building boat.

I quickly learned that if you could watch realtors, when they opened up the buildings, there was a code to these boxes where the keys were held to these mega buildings that they were building. You could put that code in, get the key, sneak in at night, sleep and leave in the morning. By the way, I don’t espouse anybody to do this. It’s highly illegal, but I would do that. I would sleep in this luxurious building, maybe the plumbing didn’t work or the electricity wasn’t on. I wake up in the morning and get out.

Eventually, I got into the electronic music scene. I learned that I could sleep at clubs behind the speakers, which was another great thing for me, in front of the speakers is very loud but behind the speakers is super quiet. I started hanging out there thinking, “I got to learn something about making money.” I had the books. I had the fortitude to read Think and Grow Rich. Og Mandino, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer. I read every self-help, personal development, old-timey, new timey, all of those books.

I knew that there was a possibility for me to break the mold, to break out of what one of my mentors called TikTok. To get out of that world and get into a new reality for myself. I didn’t quite know what the path was in those days. Hanging out in the clubs, I realized that there was money being made. I thought to myself, “It’s got to be the promoters.” I tried throwing a couple of parties. I started looking at the promoters. I was like, “These guys are broke as hell. Everywhere where they’re going, they don’t have money.”

They’re bailing before the party’s over, so they don’t have to pay people. They’re not driving fancy cars. These are not wealthy individuals. I thought, “It’s got to be the musicians because musicians make money.” Nobody in those days appreciated DJs. People who played other people’s music. Which led me to how did these things happen? Week after week, night after night. I looked around and I was like, “It’s got to be the property owners’ real estate.”

Nope. These were all break-ins. All these warehouses were borrowed from some big corporation that owns 50 warehouses and whatever. We’d figure out a way to get in then some guy would climb the power pole and steal power. Another guy would turn on the water main and there’d be plumbing. The party would go on until the morning in these warehouses. I thought to myself, “There are these guys that hang out at the door all the time.” They’re well-dressed and have several beautiful women with them. They sometimes have bodyguards. They had nice cars, nice apartments. What are they doing? What do you think they did?

They were the doorman. They were the gatekeeper.

They were the drug dealers. They were the ones that were dealing the illicit substances and subsidizing the failure of everybody else to keep these parties going because it was highly profitable for them. Drugs are a very lucrative business. I thought to myself, “Let me do that.” I realized I was bad at crime. I looked back to my adolescents, my younger self talking to my older self, “You sir, should not be doing crime. You get caught every time.”

I pictured myself in multiple prisons around the world and thought, “No, I can’t do that.” It hit me. What if I could create a legal drug? What if I could create a version of the most popular drug at the time that there was no supply of because it had just been made illegal called ecstasy. I didn’t get the memo that it was impossible. I went out there and I did it. I managed to get myself a girlfriend with no money and nowhere to live.

I figured out how to get a girlfriend. I managed to convince her to let me cook up prototypes in her kitchen while her dad was out at work. I think he was like the principal or the superintendent of some school district or somewhere. The guy would leave. I would sneak in through the back, a window or door or something. I’d come in and cooking it up in the kitchen. Finally, we got a formula that worked. I didn’t have enough money to buy a capsule machine. She and I would be rolling them up into little balls, and all kinds of people would be coming over. We’d be giving them, “Try this, try this, try this.”

Finally, we got a formula that worked. I called everybody I knew and I said, “This is amazing.” I called authors, writers and all types of people. I found them in the yellow pages, in the phone books in those days. I would call people up and ask them for advice, ask them to come try it. When we had a formula that worked, I knew this was my second reason why I was going to be successful. I had to burn my ships again. I did it once when I left home and I had to find a way to sell the stuff, distribution.

It led me back to the clubs. I had a backpack full of these little baggies filled with these little balls that we hand-rolled to look like pills. I had a little insert card in them with a butterfly in those days. I didn’t know what I was going to call it. I walked up to the biggest drug dealer in the club. These days, if you have tattoos on your face, they call you Post Malone and you are a platinum record star, girls love you, you are harmless. You’re probably a TikTok star or YouTube star. You remember in the ‘80s and ‘90s, should you have tattoos on your neck leading to your face, you are most certainly a criminal, a freak or both.

Straight out of prison.

You must have a solid vetting process because there's a big buzz around you when you're super successful. But when trouble pops up, there are only a few who will stick by you. Click To Tweet

Nobody had tattoos on their faces. Tattoos were not visible in the ‘80s unless you were a sailor or a part of a gang or something. This guy had tattoos on his face and on his neck. He had those three little tear things, which I think meant he killed somebody in prison or killed three people or some crazy thing like that. He had the gold teeth. He had the bodyguards. He had the girls around him. It was straight out of the movies. Here I am, this teenage kid with this baggie full of herbal goop, walking up to this man who sells bonafide drugs from a criminal enterprise.

I walked up to him and he’s like, “What do you need kid? I got nothing. We’re all out. We’d been out for days.” I said, “No. I’m not a consumer. I want you to sell my stuff.” He said, “What the heck is wrong with you? Are you a cop?” He’s like looking at me. The guards are patting me down looking for a wire. I said, “No. I’m definitely not a cop, but I want you to sell this stuff.” He’s like, “What is it?” I’m like, “It’s just like ecstasy. It’s fantastic, but it’s legal. It’s herbal. It’s natural. You’re not going to go to jail, sir.”

In that moment, he looked like he was about to kill me. There was no happiness in this man’s face. Although, I don’t think I ever saw happiness in his face. By the way, I write about this in my book, Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult, which was just released. In that moment, I remember thinking to myself, “You are not leaving that spot until this man buys whatever it is that you’re selling. You are either going to die tonight or get him to sell what you’re selling. You are going to make a sale.” I didn’t move. I’m sure he said other things to me.

At that moment, two people walked up to him, two party goers. I remember them asking him and there was a negotiation that went on. He motioned to me, the bodyguards moved aside. I thought, “What’s he pointing at?” He’s pointing at the bag of pills. I handed him the bag of pills. He grabbed the bag. He grabbed my backpack, which was filled with pills and said, “Come back in two hours.” He handed it to them and had an exchange. He said, “By the way, kid, you better not be messing with me. Don’t leave the club.”

I’m having a little bit of a freakout and pretty certain that my young life was going to end there and then in that club. I came back a couple of hours later and I didn’t know what to make of it. The bodyguard motioned me to come forward. The girls moved aside. I moved forward. I’m standing there, sweat and bullets looking at this guy directly in the eyes. I can’t tell what’s going on. I do notice in the background, people are partying, happy and having a good time. I see the empty baggies everywhere. This guy probably emptied out 30 of them himself.

I’m looking at the guy going okay and he looks at me straight in the eyes, the silence for about 30 seconds. He says, “Kid, how soon can you get me more?” All the tension was released at that moment. That was it. It went from 1 drug dealer to 10 to 1,000, to 10,000. We were all over the world. I had all the buildings in Venice beach. We were renting them all. We had telephone operations, telesales operations.

I was making this stuff for $0.25 a unit. We were selling it for $20 retail. Mostly cash business, mostly direct to consumer in those days, completely legal. We got calls from Urban Outfitters, Tower Records, GNC. We were selling in any store you could possibly imagine. Larry Flynt from the Hustler Enterprise, the famed pornographer bought our product to sell to all the sex shops around the world. We were being sold in 32 countries. We were in over 30,000 doors.

What was it called? I’m trying to think about it back then.

The drug dealer looked at me at that moment too. As he was handing it to his first customer said, “What do you call this stuff?” I had a moment where I was like, “Holy crap.” I looked at him and I said, “Herbal Ecstacy,” and the name stuck. It was called Herbal Ecstacy. I remember one day, I was in my teens. We’d been in business for some time and the news broke that we had broken the billion-dollar mark. This was pre-internet, pre-Facebook, pre-mobile phones, pre-access to free data, pre-access to any of that stuff. We had broken $1 billion.

Sam Donaldson was in a limo outside of my office waiting to get me on Nightline. He drove over, the great Sam Donaldson. Montel Williams had sent me tickets to be on his show in New York. CNN wanted to have me on, Wall Street Journal has a reporter outside. We were the hottest thing. Everybody wanted to know how this long-haired teenage kid had broken $1 billion in revenue. We were on the cover of Detail’s magazine. We had two Newsweek covers, LA times, New York Times. You name it, we were there.

The London Observer did a feature piece on the cover. They called me the Willy Wonka of Generation X. I stepped into my office. I would normally sleep 2, 3 hours on those days. I would usually fall asleep on the factory floor, on the floor one my offices, or the call center, anywhere just because I was intent on making this company successful. I remember having a panic attack when the news broke because I did not know what $1 billion meant. Not theoretically or hypothetically, I literally didn’t know how much money $ 1 billion was. I barely knew what $1 million was. That was my panic in those days.

I figured out what it was. I started doing all the publicity. We did all the shows. I write about it in my book, Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult. It was absolutely a wild ride. I wrote about how the mob tried to take over the company at some point. The Japanese mafia, the Yakuza tried to get involved. We had government intervention in the company and it was a wild rollercoaster ride leading to an interesting several years, to say the least.

Why couldn’t somebody just copy it?

A few people tried. We had the formula patented in those days. We had trademarks, but we were first to market. You could copy my product, but you couldn’t copy me. I was the long-haired, rebellious kid doing the TV, doing the media. It’s like Coca-Cola. Can you make brown sugar water and sell it to the masses? Probably. Can you compete with them? Not really. They’ve got first to market and distribution. We had that cinched up.

What’s the best part of building a $1 billion company and the worst part of building a $1 billion company?

The best part is the $1 billion, which has fantastic. Money is great. I tell people often that the greatest injustice you can do to yourself in America is to be poor. The poor pay more for everything. The poor are penalized for being poor. The rich very rarely pay for anything that the poor pay for and are incentivized to be rich. If you believe have a choice, please try to be rich. I’ve been broke and I’ve been extremely wealthy. It is far more fun to be extremely wealthy.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation

A good friend of mine talks about the root of all evil, where they say money is the root of all evil. He used to like to say that, “The guy that said money is the root of all evil didn’t have any.” The guy that said, “Money can’t buy you happiness didn’t know where to shop.” It’s true. It’s a blast and super fun. You’re hearing it from somebody who’s done it and who does it.

The worst part of it was trying to figure out who likes you for you, who genuinely wants to be your friend and who wants to be around the fame and fortune. I can only imagine what somebody like Jeff Bezos, the Founder of Amazon or Elon Musk has to go through because it must be very difficult to forge long-term meaningful relationships with people. You must have a solid vetting process because, in those days where you are super happy, super successful, there’s a big buzz around you, everybody wants to be around you.

When trouble pops up, there are only a few that will stick by you. Those are your real friends. That’s the most difficult part is realizing that there are people in the world that are not interested in you, but only in self-enrichment. Having your BS detectors refined to a point where when you reach those levels of success, being able to fair it out, the people that are the fakers is absolutely essential. I, unfortunately, didn’t have that in my teens. As I got older, I’ve developed it and my BS detector has gotten a lot stronger in the years to come after Herbal Ecstacy.

What happened to Herbal Ecstacy? You’re on top of the world and then what?

The government doesn’t seem to like very much when a young Iranian kid, in his teens develops a drug that is unregulated. They don’t like the idea of not being in control. What they did, along with some big pharma companies is they lobbied against us. Laws were passed. Our ingredients were banned. It slowly fizzled out. We had a bunch of different products in those days.

From there, I went on to solve a different problem. I went on to solve the problem with smoking. I figured, “People have been smoking for hundreds of years. Smoking creates smoke char and carbon monoxide. There’s got to be a better way.” It turns out that you can heat any plant substance, tobacco, cannabis, whatever and get the active elements, what you need, the cannabinoids, the THC, the nicotine without burning it, without heating it to 1200 degrees but you had to have the system for regulating the temperature, I patented that.

We developed the first world’s first vape. Digital vaporization was invented by me in those days. I patented it. I wrote the first book on it. That is the forerunner for all the technology that you see in vapes. We invented that industry. It didn’t exist before us. I created those patents. I wrote a book. That company went public. I decided, “I want to get back into the pill business.” At this point, we were having our first kid. I thought I got to figure out a way to make my brain sharper.

I want to be limitless. I want to function optimally, even as I’m aging, because aging is BS. I want to beat it. Maybe I won’t beat it. One day, I’m going to die. It’s all our destiny. Until then, I want to die with my boots on and sword drawn and be a badass. I came up with this pill called Excelerol. We’ve got two versions. One called Excelerol, one called FOCUS+, which was a nootropic, a brain supplement. It’s still available on Amazon. It works great but, in those days, it’s very expensive to produce. We use real ingredients. It was like $120 a box of this stuff.

I was looking for distribution thinking, “How am I going to sell this?” We sold some to GNC. We sold some to the different avenues. This was in the early days where this guy named Jeff Bezos was getting somewhere with his company. You could email Jeff, Jeff@Amazon.com and he would respond. We heard through the grapevine that Jeff Bezos was opening up his platform, the bookstore, Amazon.com to third-party sellers. People like you and me to sell whatever we wanted to on those platforms.

I thought, “That’s cool. That’s timely. Let me try putting this stuff up.” It took me fifteen minutes. The whole process of opening a seller account, listing the product, the whole thing. I put the product up, Excelerol and I went to sleep. I didn’t think much. I thought maybe I’ll get a couple of orders in the next few weeks. I’ll work on this. I woke up the next day we had thousands of orders. “This is interesting. Who is this Bezos guy?” I read up on Jeff Bezos. I learned that he’s not this nerdy Silicon Valley guy that we see that we think he is.

This guy is a beast. This guy’s a leader in the industry. This guy comes from Wall Street. This guy comes from one of the biggest Wall Street firms with expertise in acquiring top talent and bringing cheap money from Wall Street, billions from Wall Street into Silicon Valley. He’s building this platform. This is no joke. This was never a bookstore. This is a key to world domination in global commerce. When I realized that, I decided I was going to devote the next several years of my life to mastering the Amazon platform. That’s what I did. I learned everything there was.

I spend most of my days impacting other people to sell on the Amazon platform. I teach a course where I train people, how to do everything from how do you find the perfect product? How do you sell it on Amazon? Why do you sell it on Amazon? How do you create a business that creates these predictable recurring revenue streams? Which is what I do and I love it.

As I listened to your story, you’re always in search of a better way. You find a better way and then you share it. You did that with the Herbal Ecstacy. You’ve done that every step along the way. Take us into your mind or do you just see a problem? Do you have a problem and you want to solve it, and then that’s what leads you to it? What got you in those different directions?

For me, sometimes that’s the case. My superpower is that I am a predictor of trends and a very accurate one particularly when it comes to consumer products. I know what’s going to be hot five years from now. I know what’s going to be hot ten years from now.

How do you do that?

I don’t know how I do it. I think it’s my obsessive nature. I am an obsessive human being. When I get interested in something, I dive deep. Back in the days, where people read books, I would be at the bookstore. I would be spending thousands of dollars on books. I would not come home any night without having a stack of books on topics that I was interested in. I still do it to this day. I order on Amazon. I will watch videos. I will read books. I will get audible. I will watch the TED Talks. I will dig deep. I will go into my new detail about a topic that I’m interested in.

There is no hack to hard work. You have to get out there and put in the sleepless nights. Click To Tweet

I will look to where the opportunity is. My friend, Jay Samit, who wrote the book, Disrupt You! and his new book, Future-Proofing You. He is a former executive at Sony. He talks about solving the bigger problem. For me, it came naturally the solving the bigger problem because I start with curiosity. I’m not looking for a why. I’m not looking for a reason to do what I’m doing. I’m following what my fascination is. I follow that fascination and see where it takes me. This brings me to what we teach at Amazon Mastery. My FBA seller course, which is FBASellerCourse.com for anyone who’s interested.

I’ve got a free one-hour course that I’m happy to share with any of your audience. What we teach is to find the distribution first, find what the market is hungry for. Find the competitors, find their vulnerabilities, then it’s easy for you to put a product out on the market. It’s low hanging fruit. That’s how you win. If you come out with a product and then you’re like, “How am I going to sell this thing?” That’s the long road.

You’ve got to educate people. Education is the kiss of death when it comes to product launches because you’ve got this thing. You’ve got a mousetrap. It’s better than every other mousetrap out there. I don’t know that as your consumer. You have to spend all your money educating me. What happens while you’re spending money educating me?

Somebody else comes along.

The competitors are selling and selling. People’s attention span is short in the days of TikTok, Instagram and the internet. What most entrepreneurs don’t understand, probably the single most important thing, comes from us being taught. This whole generation is being taught that you matter, that everybody cares about what you’re interested in. Nobody cares about you. People care about one thing. I, they care about themselves. That’s it?

Nobody cares about you, your story, your brands. All that stuff is BS. All they care about is what you’re going to do for them. When you go on Amazon and you buy a product, that person, if it’s one of my students will be an expert at crafting that story in a way whereby the time you get to that listing, you’re already clicking buy it now. The way that product is presented has pre-suaded you to believe that it’s your decision to buy it.

We are decision architects. That’s what we do. The old models of selling are dead. The old models of disruption selling and knocking on people’s doors and shoving stuff down their throats are dead. We’re in the Amazon era where we believe as Robert Cialdini in his book, Pre-Suasion talks about pre-suading people and becoming decision architects.

Give us an example of a product that you did this with so that we can see it in action. Somebody took a product and took it to Amazon after they found their market and it took off.

Excelerol would be a good example of that. FOCUS+ is one of the supplements that we talked about. Another example might be matcha tea. We’re one of the largest producers of matcha tea in the country. We make a specific matcha tea called Matcha DNA. Matcha is a green tea. It’s high in antioxidants. It’s got all these benefits. You can just Google it and learn about all these doctors and celebrities. The Kardashians are drinking it. Gwyneth Paltrow is drinking it. We started off by I’m a big matcha drinker. I thought, “I’d like to buy some matcha. Can I get some on Amazon?”

I looked on Amazon and there wasn’t any. There was a couple of brands that were expensive and they were just the big bulk market ones from Japan. I thought, “Fukushima just happened. I don’t want to buy anything from Japan. There’s radiation out there, allegedly.” I’m going to go with Chinese tea. The Chinese are good at teas. That’s the one thing I am going to buy from China.

I went out there and I found a supplier that produces it for us. We started selling matcha tea on Amazon. Went gangbusters. We sold tons of it. I did my research. We researched that there’s a huge market of people looking to buy matcha tea. There was no supply on Amazon. Now there are a million sellers selling it. We’re still the leader, but there are $ 1 million sellers selling macho.

I thought, “That’s a market that we can feed.” We went out there and we started introducing matcha. This is another thing that I teach my students is that you want to capture all areas of the market. We’ve got multiple brands that we sell in multiple categories. We sell the most expensive one. We sell the cheapest one. We sell the mid-level one. We knock ourselves off.

We sell knockoffs of our own product. We do all kinds of things to make sure that we dominate in that field. That’s what you have to do. If you want to win, you have to find a niche. You have to exploit the weaknesses of your competitors. You have to come in and dominate that niche and maintain, and hold on to that dominance.

When you talk about dominating the niche, how do you do that? What I think I’m hearing you say is, you found something that you were passionate about, went on Amazon and researched it and found that nobody’s dominating this market. “We’re going to go dominate it.” You created a better product, took that product to the market. You found ways to keep competing with yourself to be both sides of the coin almost, to push your brand up. Is that what you did?

That amongst other things. I remember I had at this point been selling on Amazon for a little while and there are certain hacks, and tips and tricks that we teach on how you get your product to rank, how you get your product reviewed within their terms of service. How you can successfully get that product visible and selling on the Amazon platform, that’s what we did.

It’s very interesting because Amazon is a very effective place to sell products. The one thing that I would say to you that maybe I would push back a little bit on in your description is the passionate part. I was interested in the tea. I was a fan of the tea. Maybe you could argue that I was passionate about it or maybe not. I’m thinking, “I’m passionate about hanging out with my family and my kids.” I’m passionate about all kinds of stuff that doesn’t make me money. It’s one of the most common myths that people tell you.

Scott Adams talks about it in his book, How To Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. Scott Adams is the writer of Dilbert, which is probably one of the most famous comic books in the world. Passion is something that they pitch people because they don’t want to tell them that they’re a little bit smarter than that. When they ask these big entrepreneurs, they say, “What’s your secret?” I go, “It was just passion.”

They don’t want to tell you that, “You know what? I’m an aggressive cutthroat. I cut three guys below me and I’m just a little bit smarter than you. I got access to a trust fund. You’re never going to make the billions that I make.” No one’s going to tell you that. It doesn’t look good for Mark Zuckerberg to tell you those things or Bill Gates to tell you those things. Instead, what they’re going to tell you is, “You just got to have a lot of passion and drive in life.” I know people all the time that have become billionaires, multi-millionaires from products that they do not give a care about.

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Inspire somebody to stop selling their hours and let their money work for them intelligently.

 

The passion part of the component, it’s nice to have. I’m passionate about a nice steak meal, a nice rare fillet mignon grass-fed steak. It’s not going to make any money. I’m passionate about tea. I’m passionate about doing this stuff. I’m passionate about talking with you on this show. This is fun. This is a great show. I’m excited to be here. You have to separate that from the activities that make you money. Making money as a system, it’s a formula. It has very little to do with what you are passionate about. If you’re interested in something, your interest, your fascination in something opens up a pathway, a journey to things that could make you money, but it’s not a precursor for success or wealth.

You’ve separated passion out from your business because you can be passionate about so many different things, but interest is definitely necessary or is it interest necessary?

Not really. I know lots of people who make money doing things that they have very little interest in. I know a guy who runs a very high-end fashion brand of women’s clothing. He doesn’t wear that. Every time I see him, I’m like, “Where’d you get your clothes?” He’s like, “H&M, Ross.” I’m like, “You run this like multi-million-dollar clothing company.” He’s like, “I don’t like that. I like to wear sweats.” He’s like, “I get good sweats at Ross and they’re 50% off.”

What do you see then as the key ingredient to making money?

I don’t think there’s any key ingredient. I don’t think there’s anyone thing. You got to have grit. You got to have resilience. The one thing I would say that’s key is you got to be able to go out there and take some punches. You got to be able to be knocked down. The people I see coming through my Amazon FBA Seller course, the people that come through my Amazon Mastery course, the ones that come in with the attitude of, “I’m going to throw my chips on the table. I’m going to see where that little roulette ball lands and maybe it’ll land on one of my numbers.” Those are the ones that fail.

The ones that come in and are like, “You see that nail, I’m going to drive that thing through that piece of wood.” Maybe I’ll use a hammer, if that doesn’t work, I’ll use a sledgehammer. If that doesn’t work, I’m going to shoot that nail. I’m going to hit it with a rock. I’m going to drill through it and then put it in. It doesn’t matter. That nail is going in. If you go to business with that attitude, you are going to succeed. You are not there to try. There is no participation trophy in business. There are people out there who will eat your lunch.

One of my favorite quotes is that “While you are sleeping, your enemies are planning your demise.” I write that quote in my book, which is one of my absolute favorite ones. It keeps you on your toes. You got to always be on your toes. The world is predatory. There’s no sleeping in the Savannah. You’ve got to be always on your toes, but more so than that, there’s no hack to hard work. There’s no hack to getting out there and doing the work.

There are all kinds of people on social media, preaching things. They want to sell you a course. They don’t want you to get rich. Even a lot of the people out there who sell their Amazon courses, mine, by the way, which is free and I will give it to you if you reach out to me. They don’t tell you what they’re doing to make money. They tell you what they want to tell you for you to think you’re going to make money, but them make money off you by selling you whatever it is they’re selling.

It’s like the stock market guys. I was a highly leveraged commodities trader. I did extremely well. I traded hundreds of millions of dollars in commodities, gold, oil, pork bellies, all that stuff, coffee futures for years. I tried all the different courses. I realized at a certain point that the guy selling the courses are making more money, selling the courses than they are in the markets. I was making more money than them in the markets. It’s like that. There is no hack to hard work. You got to get out there. You got to put in the sleepless nights. I paid my dues. I’ve slept on the factory floor.

I’ve gone from millions to a billion to broke to millions again. I’m continually on that path of learning of self-discovery of figuring out what I need to do to take myself to the next level. I have no illusions to think that I don’t have to wake up tomorrow and work hard at something. The fact is I’ve put myself in a place where I can relax and do the stuff that I love to do. It’s only because I spent all those years doing all that stuff that I didn’t want to do.

I love what you’re saying because you’re not sugarcoating it. Here’s what I have been thinking about as I’ve been listening to you. You said this at least twice. You said, “I burned the ships.” How critical was that to you having the motivation, the grit and the desire to get up every day and go do it when things didn’t look good?

As my friend says, “You got to go all in.” I don’t believe in half-assing things. I love watching these historical shows where you see these historical battles. You see these guys. These were guys who most people don’t know. The Vikings controlled England for nearly a thousand years, maybe longer. They ruled England. England was ruled by Vikings for 1,000 or more years. You look at that and you’re like, “What did they do?” This is before even naval navigation. These guys went on these wooden boats that they carved out from trees, left everything behind. They went out. Their swords were drawn for glory. That was it.

They burned all their ships. They were there to win. They would colonize places where they landed. That’s what you got to do. I think people have to be intelligent about the decisions that they make. If you’ve got a family, if you’ve got to feed the kids or whatever, you can’t leave everything and go off on some crazy venture. You need to have stability but it’s that stability that’s going to allow you to have the bandwidth to succeed.

You need to have stability that'll allow you to have the bandwidth to succeed. Click To Tweet

We talk about foundational thinking in my course. I tell people, you got to have four pillars, a four-legged table much more secure. Three-legged table, not so good. Two-legged table, not good at all. One-legged table, you’re a tripod. The first leg should be a career, a job, a trust fund, whatever it is money where you don’t have to worry about eating. You don’t have to worry about your family being taken care of. You don’t have to worry about if you want to take the wife out for a nice dinner, that it’s going to give you problems or the girlfriend or the husband or whatever.

The second pillar, you should have some money and cashflow-positive real estate. I tell people this all the time, “You got to buy at the right time when the market conditions are right. You got to find great deals, but you can do this with little or no money. I’ve bought houses on credit cards. I bought houses on eBay. There are all kinds of things you can do, but leaning towards cashflow positive real estate.” If you can’t get into it for whatever your restrictions are, you can at least start learning about it.

The third one is compounded interest. Why is Warren Buffett one of the wealthiest men in the world? Berkshire Hathaway is one of the most successful funds out there. It’s because of compounded interest. He’s been investing since he was a kid. If you leave money in and you compound interest over time, that’s going to add up to something. The fourth pillar, the fourth foundation, is an e-commerce business. I recommend Amazon. Amazon’s what I do. It’s one of the best, but it’s not the only one. We teach people how to sell on Etsy, Walmart, eBay, Poshmark, all these different marketplaces that are popping up. If you have these four pillars, these four foundations, nothing could ever shake your world.

You wake up in the morning, “The real estate market tanked. No problem, you’re cashflow anyway. It’s okay. It’ll get back up. We wait for a cycle.” “The boss fired me. No problem. You got your compounding interest money. You got your real estate.” “All those stuff failed. You got your e-commerce business,” and vice versa.

If you have those foundations, you might be unsettled for a little bit in life, but you’ll never be knocked out. If you look at these guys, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, look at what they do best, it’s diversification. It’s building those foundations. Those guys have hundreds of pillars. Do you think if Amazon went down tomorrow that Jeff Bezos would be crying? He’s got so much money. He’s got so many things he’s going. These guys are good. There is no one thing that’s going to shake their world. That’s what you have to do. You’ve got to build your life in a way where you can never have a day that’s that bad.

What is the chain that keeps you going? You’ve already done this multiple times. You’ve got the money. You’ve got the stuff. You’ve got the family. What’s keeping you motivated? I can feel your energy. I can feel you’re fired up. Ready to go fight, create something and go do something. What is it that’s keeping you going?

That’s a good question. I spend most of my time traveling with my family. We go to all great places. I’m a family man. We collect cars. I collect exotic cars, Porsches. Me and my son, my seven-year-old like to go out into the garage and fix these cars. We don’t know what we’re doing, but it’s fun to look under the hood and take a look at that. Spending time with my family is what fires me up. It’s what excites me. Outside of that, at work, I get excited about two things. One is when somebody buys a product that I’ve built, designed or developed.

The second is when somebody calls me up and says, “Shaahin, I made an extra 60,000 this month on Amazon. Thanks to you. I can quit my job. I can walk in tomorrow and tell my boss to beat it.” That excites me, when I can inspire somebody to stop selling their hours and let their money work for them intelligently. I’ve got students that have 3, 4 Vas, virtual assistants in Nicaragua, Venezuela, in South and Central America, in South Asia, Southeast Asia, working for them, running their business and they’re on the beach. They’re traveling. Those VAs are running that business. While they’re sleeping, they’re making money.

If I can empower people to have that freedom, I always say, “Freedom is the ultimate luxury. The new luxury is time.” If you have all that money and you can’t take a break, have a nice lunch with your significant other, take your kid to the park, do whatever you want, when you want with who you want, you’re not really wealthy. That’s why the cost of a private jet somewhere is exponentially more than a first-class ticket on any airline because it offers you the ultimate freedom.

In my world, what I would say is your energy comes from when you find something better and then you share it. People love it because they appreciate that you shared that better way with them and it’s brought them results. It worked. It was better. I feel the same way when I can share something that’s better and people love it. Even a better restaurant, even a better anything. “Have you been to this place?” They love it. It brings me a lot of joy. I can see you doing that same thing on a bigger scale. The last question for you. What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever given or the best piece of advice that you’ve ever gotten?

As far as advice goes, the best advice I’ve ever gotten is topical and it’s time-sensitive. The advice that I got as a young person might not apply now. With that said, in very general terms, I could say, don’t work in a vacuum. Build a mastermind or join a mastermind. Like with my Amazon Mastery course, we have a mastermind where people sign up with us. They’re immediately with a hundred other people that are selling on Amazon. Find a mentor. Getting somebody who is where you want to be and incentivizing them to conspire for your success could be the ultimate hack to getting there a lot faster.

If people are reading and they want to get in touch with you, how is the best way for them to do that?

You can email me directly. We have the one-hour Amazon Mastery course. I’ll offer that to all your audience for free. It’s normally $200. We’ll give it to them for free. Just use the code WHY and email me at DarkZess@Gmail.com. That’s my direct Gmail address. I get emails to zero every day. I will answer all emails directly. You can also check us out at www.FBASellerCourse.com or ShaahinCheyene.com. My book Billion How I Became King Of The Thrill Pill Cult just dropped. You can get that on Amazon and check that out. We also do a show. We’ve got a podcast called Hack and Grow Rich.

If you want to check out Hack and Grow Rich, make sure to like, and subscribe to us, dislike us, whatever you want to do. Give us some love, give us some attention. You can get us on Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, wherever podcasts are heard. Gary, if someone’s reading this on our channel, how can they get ahold of you and subscribe to the content you’re producing?

BYW S4 4 | Herbal Ecstasy
Herbal Ecstasy: Love the path you’ve been on, including the ups and downs.

 

Have them come to WHYInstitute.com. The best thing for them to do would be to go Discover Their Why. They can use the code Podcast50 and Discover Their Why for half price. It’s only $47. You’ll see all that you need there. You can connect with me there as well.

Thanks for having me on.

Thanks for being here. I love the path that you’ve been on, the ups, the downs, the stories, the realness to it. You’re not trying to sell something that requires no work because that doesn’t exist. If you were to have told me, “I’ll do everything for you. It’s not going to be any work for you. Give me your $1,000, and you’ll be rich.” Not a real story. You’re like, “You’re going to have to go work your butt off. You’re going to have to put the hours in. There’s no substitute for burning the ships and jumping in with both feet, going all in and getting it done.” Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it. I’ll look forward to reading your book.

It has been fun. Thank you so much.

It’s time for our Guess Their Why segment. I want to think about Walt Disney. What do you think Walt Disney’s why is? He imagined a place where people were happy. He imagined Disneyland, Disney World and he built it when people told him he shouldn’t. He wanted to contribute to the youth. He wanted to contribute to people’s imagination. He wanted them to have a great experience and to have a great time. I believe that Walt Disney’s why is to contribute. To contribute to a greater cause, add value and have an impact on people’s lives.

When I think about him, he was able to surround himself with other people that he brought with him. His brother, Roy, who was the how guy, but lifted them up. He lifted up the people around them to be creative, to be fun and to be funny. That’s what somebody with the why of contribute would be. What do you think Walt Disney’s why is?

If you love this episode, if you love this show, make sure to go to the platform that you’re reading on and rate us, give us a review because it’ll help us to bring the why to the rest of the world, so that we can impact and help one billion people discover, make decisions and live based on their why. Thank you for reading, and we will see you next week.

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About Shaahin Cheyene

BYW S4 4 | Herbal EcstasyBorn in Iran Tehran in 1975, Shaahin Cheyene is an award-winning writer, filmmaker and a prosperous businessman who is committed to share his enthusiasm to accelerate intelligence through his most recent company and products. Cheyene is the CEO and Chairman of brain nutrition start-up Accelerated Intelligence.

As a teenager in the 1990’s, Cheyene jump initiated his career by inciting and leading the “Smart Drug Movement” with his invention of Herbal Ecstacy, a refreshing, herbal supplement made to energize the body. He realized early in his career about guerilla branding and he still makes use of it to sell his products today. Shaahin Cheyene has developed over 200 award-­winning products, selling millions of units globally. After pioneering the breakthrough components for Herbal Ecstacy, he extended his company’s offerings with Ecstacy Cigarettes, an herbal substitute for tobacco that many have put to use to quit smoking. It went on to become the most effective herbal cigarette on the earth.

In the early 2000’s, Cheyene’s career naturally progressed and matured. He started to work with several major pharmaceutical organizations to broadcast the technologies and great things about herbal medicines to the mainstream. In this process, Cheyene was accountable for the proliferation of several plant medicines now applied to popular naturopathic health regimens.

In 2000, Cheyene invented, branded and developed a revolutionary new medicine delivery system called the Vapir Vaporizer. His creation quickly spearheaded the burgeoning vaporization industry. He also published the definitive book on the science of Vaporization, Vapor: The Art and Science of Inhaling Pure Plant Essences. Shaahin Cheyene credits the production of his top-selling health supplement Excelerol to his career-long love of naturopathic herbal solutions. He remains true to his objectives to nurture and assist in improving the health of everyone with herbal alternatives to harsh chemicals.

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Contributing To The Success Of Others And Making A Positive Impact In The World With Dan Dominguez

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success

Dan Dominguez believes in the power of your why to make a difference in your organization. He exists to positively impact the lives of others. In this episode, he joins Dr. Gary Sanchez to share insights on contributing to other people’s success, making a positive impact in the world, thinking differently, and delivering solutions. Learn how you could change perspective, turn the complex and challenging into an opportunity to move forward and prosper in your organization.

 

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Contributing To The Success Of Others And Making A Positive Impact In The World With Dan Dominguez

 

If you’re a regular follower, you know that every episode, we talk about 1 of the 9 whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why, so you can see how their why has played out in their life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the why of contribute. If this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause, something that is bigger than yourself. You don’t necessarily want to be the face of the cause, but you want to contribute to it in a meaningful way. You love to support others and you relish the success that contributes to the greater good of the team.

You see group victories as personal victories. You are often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate, and you are often acting as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources and connections to add value to other people and organizations.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Dan Dominguez. He exists to positively impact the lives of others. He does that by challenging the status quo and looking at things from a different perspective. What he brings is the ability to make sense of the complex and challenging to help others move forward faster.

Dan’s diverse background as an academic scholar, college mascot, Army Ranger, sales leader, marathon runner, track and field, cross-country coach, and Rotarian allows him to connect easily with almost anyone. He does that as the Chief Growth Officer here at the WHY Institute. Dan and his wife, Monica, are proud parents of their two daughters, Jazz and Sophia, along with 24 sheep, 4 dogs, and 3 chickens.

Welcome to the podcast, Dan.    

It’s great to be here, Gary.

This is going to be fun. I’ve been looking forward to this. Let’s start with telling everybody how you got to where you are now and how you got to the WHY Institute. Start back with your childhood because you’ve got a fascinating path that you took along the way.

It’s great to tell this story, Gary, especially from the perspective of my why, how and what. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the South Valley. I went to Rio Grande High School. If you’re familiar with Albuquerque, the South Valley is more of the poor side of town. Even then, I remember always wanting to help people but always wanted to do things my own way. I was in the student council, but I was friends with all the game kids and I also played football. I wasn’t the kid that you could put into a group even in high school. I knew the football players and I knew the student council kids, but I also was an honor student. I graduated number nine in my class.

I was that kid that you couldn’t put in a box but I love to help. Where it comes from for me is I always had great teachers and mentors that took time to mentor me and help me. I grew up always wanting to give back. It led to me wanting to be in the Army. I remember when people said, “Why do you want to be in the Army? You have a full academic scholarship to the University of Mexico.” I said, “I feel like I want to give back because this country has been such a blessing for my family as immigrants. We’ve done so well to be able to do everything we’ve been able to do. I feel like I’ve got to give back.”

Here I was in the Army ROTC Program at the University of New Mexico, and then I had an extra semester that I had one class I had to take. I remember saying, “I’ve got to be here.” I tried out for the cheer team and I became the mascot. I am probably the only person in history to be the Commander of the ROTC unit at the university while at the same time being the college mascot.

There are many stories that make more sense now in my life since I know my why of contribute, my how of challenge, and my what of makes sense. Make sense gets me in trouble with my wife all the time because I want to solve problems. She’ll come to me with something and I say, “Here’s what you’ve got to do.” She says, “I don’t want a solution. I wanted you to listen.”

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It’s been a long journey. I went from graduating high school to going to the University of New Mexico and going into the Army. Even there, Gary, I was a Quartermaster Officer. The Quartermaster Officer in the Army is a logistician. There’s no reason for a logistician to go to Ranger School, except that it was offered and I did it. “Why do you want to go to Ranger School? You’re not in the Infantry and Combat Army.”

I was one of those rare people that was a Quartermaster and also an Airborne Ranger, which I had no use for those battle skills as a logistician, but it was nice for me to have that background because it gave me a great perspective of what the warriors on the ground were feeling when we weren’t getting supplies to them in time. I’ve always been an out-of-the-box thinker and wanting to contribute to people. It’s funny because when I have that introduction, people are like, “You did this but you did that also.” That happens all the time.

You left out a little piece in there, at least I think you did. Weren’t you more than just one mascot?

I did both, Gary. At the time, myself and a good friend, Raven Choni, were the mascots. We were Lucy and Louie Lobo, and we’re two guys. Usually, it was a guy and a girl, but there were both of us that did it. You never knew who was going to be in which costume. I did it for one semester. It was one of the best times I ever had being in that mascot costume with the little kids where they don’t know that there’s a teenage guy or a 22-year-old guy inside the suit. They think, “You’re Louie the Lobo.” They want to say hi, get your autograph, and take pictures with you. It was a blast.

I’ve been going to the Lobo basketball game since I was about four years old. When you were the mascot, I was back here watching the games. I had some good seats where Lobo Louie and Lucy used to come by all the time. I do specifically remember there was a time when all of a sudden, Lucy got taller. Now I know what happened. That was you.

That could have been, Gary. You never know.

You went from an interesting high school to going to UNM, leading the ROTC, being the mascot, going off to be in the Army, and then becoming a Ranger. How long were you in the service? What happened to you when you got out?

That was about an eleven-year journey between the ROTC time, and the time I was on active duty. I spent three years on active duty with the 3rd Armored Cav, and then I was in the Reserves again. It was a total of about eleven years. It was a time when junior military officers were valuable to Corporate America. I remember being in the Army, and coming from my background, I was making $34,000 a year. I thought I was the richest guy in the world. They were giving me all this money. After going through college and you’re poor all the time, I was like, “This is great.”

This was also 1993 when the job market wasn’t great. A lot of my friends are graduating and don’t have jobs. I had a job, I could buy a car and do all those things that you do when you get your first job. A recruiter comes talking to us and targets junior military officers and says, “We’ve got opportunities for junior military officers with your leadership to work in Corporate America.” I get recruited out of the Army. Immediately, they double your salary and you can make bonuses based on how much you sell as a salesperson. I’ve always loved sales.

It was almost a no-brainer because I remember talking to Monica about it and saying, “Here’s the decision we have to make. I can stay here for twenty years and I’ll have retirement and all this stuff. The travel is about 50%.” She said, “When you say 50%, will you be gone half the year?” I said, “No, maybe two overnights a week.”

She’s like, “That sounds a lot better than being gone half the year and deployed. When you travel, are you going to be sleeping on the ground outside?” I said, “They’re going to put us up in hotels.” She said, “That sounds better. Is anybody going to be shooting at you?” I said, “No, they won’t be shooting at me. What’s the decision here? It sounds like a good idea.”

I left active duty service and went to work for a pharmaceutical company. We launched a drug called Prilosec. At the time, it was new. Nobody knew about it, and it was dangerous because it had a black box warning. Now, it’s over the counter. It was cool to be with a company that launched a product that revolutionized the way people treated heartburn.

That led to me meeting people in the gastroenterology field and becoming a device sales rep. I started selling endoscopes to a gastroenterologist for a few years and then landed at Baxter Healthcare, where I stayed for seventeen years. I advanced there, leading small groups of salespeople, to leading an entire national sales force at a high level and meeting our numbers every year. I’m doing a job that I love because we are helping patients all the time.

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success
Contributing To Success: It’s not so much the challenges they’re having. It’s the contrast between knowing it now versus before they knew it. It’s a process.

How did you end up at the WHY Institute?

This is a lot of fun. I tell people these were the two things that changed my life. In 2019, you and I were at the Country Club right after the Ryder Cup and we were talking. It was in October and it was a Saturday. I had a toothache and I said, “Gary, can you get me in on Monday? I’ve got something wrong with one of my teeth.” You were nice and you said, “Yeah, Dan. Call the office, we’ll get you in, and we’ll get you looked at.”

At that time, I had also made a decision that I didn’t want to be at Baxter Healthcare anymore. I wanted to do something different. I didn’t know why, but I was no longer happy. I was about 30 pounds heavier than I am. I was stressed. My wife and my young daughter were stressed. I wasn’t enjoying work. I made a decision I was going to leave that.

You found out through the grapevine and through our friends. I sit down at the chair and you’re like, “Dan, I heard you’re leaving Baxter.” I said, “I left. I’m done. I’m not working there anymore.” You said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I don’t know. I’m going to take some time off to find something I love. Whatever I do next, it’s going to be something I would do whether I was getting paid or not.” You asked the question, which was great, “Dan, do you know your why?” I said, “No. What is that?”

You explained to me what the why was but more importantly, you sent it to my phone. You said, “Take five minutes.” I took five minutes and I discovered that my why was to contribute to the success of others. Back then, you were busy with dentistry, so you didn’t take me through my how and what. I went through your online course to discover my how and what. I even paid for it. I went on and did it. I said, “This is me. I’ve discovered my why, how and what.” All of a sudden, a lot of things made sense to me.

You asked me the question, “Dan, do you like to help people?” I said, “Yeah, doesn’t everybody?” Similar reaction to our friend, Jerry. You said, “No, not everyone does. There are eight other whys, and everybody is driven by their why and they do what they do.” Suddenly, I realized that’s why I was unhappy in my corporate role. I didn’t feel like I was making a difference in the lives of the people that I was leading because I didn’t have the freedom to do things my own way, and it didn’t make sense. When stuff doesn’t make sense to me, I’m not happy and I have dissonance. I decided to leave.

It’s funny, my friends were like, “You have no plan. You left.” I said, “I have a little bit of a plan.” I took my financial package, looked at it and said, “How long can I not work?” My financial advisor said, “You can do it for a couple of years, Dan, and then you’ve got to get back to work and start putting money back into your retirement.” That’s what I plan to do until I met with you. We went to lunch at the Chinese restaurant across the street from your old dental office and we talked about it.

You were smart. You used my wife to contribute to talk to me in my language. You didn’t say, “Dan, I’ve got this great opportunity for us to do amazing things that are better and different.” You said, “Dan, I need your help. We can use someone with your skills in sales at a high level to help us get the WHY Institute to where we want to go.” As soon as you said, “We need your help,” I raised my hand and I said, “What do I need to do? Let’s do it.” I showed up at your coach’s meeting that you had that same month at the Canyon Club. I get to meet a bunch of WHY coaches and I was bought in from then on.

For those of you that are reading, Dan’s why is contribute, which is what we’ve been talking about. He wants to help and he wants to be part of other people’s success. He wants to contribute in a meaningful way. His how is challenge, to do things differently, not follow the way everybody else goes, and beat to his own drum. His what is what he does has to make sense. You can hear his how of challenging the status quo and doing things his own way, coming through loud and clear. We had your why, how and what wrong first. Remember?

Yes. I wanted to be the right way. This was before we’ve done everything that we’ve done to make the WHY Discovery and the WHY.os more accurate. At that point, I did an online course where I listened to you and then I got to pick my how and what off a list. I said, “I’ve got to be a right way guy because I was in the military. Trust is important to me. I want to trust people.” That’s not how you pick your how and what.

You thought you were getting a Chief Growth Officer with a contribute right way of trust, which would have been a good fit for you because you’re a better way, clarify and simplify. When we started looking at it, the more you saw the way I worked, you were like, “There’s no way you’re right way. You don’t follow rules.”

We started even looking at the way we behave at the golf course. You said, “Dan, would you go to the golf course and play the holes randomly?” I’m like, “Yeah, I would. Why not? That’s fun. You don’t know which hole you’re going to.” We realized that my how was more challenging the status quo. There were many things in my life that pointed to, “Dan, you like to do things your own way. If it’s something people aren’t expecting it, you’re more than likely to do it because that’s how we get things done and that’s how we contribute.”

I remember specifically being on the tee box in the first hole and I’m like, “Dan, how are you going to play this hole?” You’re like, “I’m going to hit it over there.” I’m like, “What do you mean you’re going to hit it over there? Are you aiming somewhere?” You’re like, “No. I want to get there. Wherever it is, that’s where I’ll play it.” I’m like, “I never thought of that. That’s the right way?”

Ask the right questions and make wise decisions. Contribute to the success of others in the most meaningful way. Click To Tweet

I’ve done why interviews with hundreds of people. I’ve helped many people discover their why, how, and what, and there’s no way I could be right way. You hit it and then you will find it and then figure out what happens. Let’s have some fun with it. It’s fun to play completely differently every single time. That’s why I’ll never be a single-digit handicap or at least not consistently because I can go from a 73 one day to a 95 the next depending on the breaks I get because I’ll take chances that others probably wouldn’t.

It was interesting when we both realized that. I was buying into the whole right way thing because of your military and whatnot. As we started to look back, I said, “How did any of that path that you were on make any sense to a right way person?” Who’s going to go from boxer, to football, to ROTC, to mascot, to Army, to Ranger, to all the steps that you’ve done along the way? How does that fit together? When we realized it’s a different way to think, then it became so clear and you’ve gotten to live into that. Now, you have fun with it and you understand it. What was that like for you when you had it the way you wanted it versus when it was right?

The conflict, and you remember probably, was as a right way person, there were certain things you were expecting Dan to do. Then Dan probably showed up on time half of the time. He’s always running late because he’s doing something helping someone trying to do something extra. I wasn’t able to come up with the processes and systems and build them because that’s not my strength. I’ll be creative. I’m a connector. As a contributor challenge, I love to connect with people of all different walks of life. That’s why I talk in my bio about the fact that I’ve got such a diverse background. It’s hard for me to meet someone that I don’t have something in common with.

If you say college mascot, “He’s got nothing.” “By the way, I was in the military.” If you say, “You were in the military. What do you do?” “I was a Quartermaster.” “You don’t know anything about combat.” “By the way, I was a Ranger.” “How did you do that?” It always comes back to that. I was feeling like I was letting you down because you’d say, “Dan, did you get all that codified so we could repeat it?” I was like, “No, I didn’t do that. Let me try to work on it.” I’d sit down and five minutes later, something else would come up and I’d go work on that. You and I would meet a week later and that wasn’t done. I knew that I was in conflict trying to be right way.

Once you said, “Dan, your strong point is to do it your own way, be different, and bring us all those ideas.” I love our pairing because, as a challenge, I come up with lots of ideas. As a better way, you can call those down to the good ones. For a challenged person to have a better way around to help them get rid of those crazy ideas, the bad ones, and take the ones that are better and implement them. We’ve had a lot of fun with a lot of ideas that we’ve come up with within the nineteen months we’ve been working together.

You discovered your why, how and what, and then you had a revelation about why you left the corporate world. What was that revelation?

There were a couple of things, Gary. First, as a contributor, I want to help people. I was lucky that at Baxter where I spent the majority of my corporate career, I had bosses that were always good at allowing me to do my job my own way. It was always like, “Dan, here’s the quota. Here’s the timeline you’ve got to do. Lead your team. Don’t break the law. See you at the end of the year and let’s celebrate.” Those are good bumpers for me.

I then went into a situation where we changed leadership. There was nothing wrong with the new leader, he just had a different way that he wanted to do things. He was more of a, “Let’s do it my way. If you don’t do it my way, we’re not going to get along well.” When you put those barriers on a person who wants to help others at any cost, wants to do it his own way and it has to make sense, it was in conflict with my WHY.os. I suddenly started not having fun. I had the whole country. Where do you think I would want to have a meeting if it was December? I’d want to go to Florida, “Let’s go to Florida. Let’s go to Phoenix.” That’s where I bring my teams in, and we’d have our December or our January meeting.

Now, I was like, “We’re going to have our meetings in Chicago because that’s where our headquarters is. We save on hotel and flights.” Who wants to go to Chicago in December? Not me and neither do any of my team. All of a sudden, my autonomy and my ability to do things my own way were gone, and it didn’t make any sense. I’m like, “If you’re going to tell me exactly how to do everything, why don’t you tell the people that you’re telling me to tell how to do things and then you can get rid of the middleman?”

I took myself out of that loop and said, “I don’t want to do that again.” It was great that I met with you. I remember it was October 21st, 2019 that I discovered my why, and my official last day at Baxter was October 19. It was serendipitous and then we had those great conversations. I got to meet some of the coaches that we work with and learn from them. I still keep in touch with them.

Let’s talk about this concept of bumpers because that came from you when we talk about somebody that has a challenge in their WHY.os. For those of you that are not intimately familiar with it, Dan wants to help, but he wants to do it his own way. You can’t tell him how you want it done because he’s going to find his own way to do it anyways. Tell us about this concept of bumpers because this came from a conversation you and I were having when we were struggling a little bit with saying, “How do we keep you on course?” It dawned on me and I said, “He was in the military. How did they keep him on course?”

The concept of bumpers for anybody, if your child or somebody you work with has a challenge in their why, how or what, you’ve got to understand that for us, tell us where the boundaries are then give us room to play. Don’t tell us exactly how to do it. Tell us what needs to get done, what are the rules, and then let us play. Then we’ll have some fun.

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success

Contributing To Success: We don’t lie about what we do. We just highlight what appeals to you based on your why.I posted about my WHY.os day. My Friday was I woke up at 4:00 in the morning and I was on my computer answering emails. I set some appointments with clients. I work until 6:00 in the morning, then I had chaos going on because Sophia and Monica wake up. I have to get them out the door. They have from 6:00 to 7:00 to get ready. I spend family time with them from 6:00 to 7:00. I then had a golf tournament. I went and played golf tournament for about four hours and then I had some meetings.

I also had to meet with Sophia’s principal at school. I went to the school and I set up my computer at their school in a room that they allowed me to borrow. I did some appointments and I sent out some more emails. I did some more communication with clients. I then met with the principal. I had coffee with Monica. We picked up Sophia from test practice and then we went to dinner.

If you’re somebody who’s right way, that probably sounds like chaos to you. For me, it was so nice to say, “All I need is a flat surface and an internet connection. I can do my work from my car. I can do it from the office. We have a great office here at the WHY Institute, so I can go there and do it or I can do it from my home office.”

At the end of the day, what does Gary want? What do you want from your Chief Growth Officer? “Dan, let’s go make connections with people that want to join the WHY Institute. Let’s share our message. Let’s grow this business so we can help a billion people discover their why.” What does that feed? That feeds my why of contribute.

When I see what a difference knowing my WHY.os made for me, I want to give that to everyone I can. The best way we do that is to get amazing coaches like the ones we’ve got in our first 97 to 100 that we’re getting to help us get to 1,000 coaches and get us to thousands of coaches, so we can help the world know their why because it makes such a difference.

As you’re having the opportunity to talk to coaches around the world, what are some of the challenges that you’re seeing they’re having in helping people discover their why? They’re talking about the concept of why but what’s it like for them? What are you hearing when it comes to discovering somebody’s why?

It’s not so much the challenges they’re having. It’s the contrast between knowing it now versus before they knew it. I got off the phone with one of our newest coaches, Bill Summers, in Texas and he said, “Dan, I’m using the why, how and what as a framework for everything that I do.” He’s writing a new book and he’s organizing his chapters that way with his co-authors, “Tell us why you do what you do. Tell us how you do it and tell us what you bring.” That’s what’s nice about this process. What coaches tell me is when I know the why, how and what of my client, I can plan my coaching around their why, how and what.

For example, if you’re coaching Dan, you don’t want to give Dan a step-by-step, “This is what you’ve got to do every day,” plan. He’s probably not going to do it. If you tell Dan, “This is how you can help people. This is how you can do it your own way. These are the only rules you’ve got to follow. Do it your way. Does that make sense to you?” “Explain it to me.” Then you’re going to have a great client that’s going to be happy because you’re talking to me in my language. That’s what they find gratifying about learning their client’s why because they can talk to them in their language.

It’s what we call the platinum rule. Don’t talk to people the way you want to talk to them. You can talk to them about a better way, clarify and simplify. If their contribute challenge makes sense, you’re going to talk to them like you did to me, “Dan, I need your help.” “I’m not going to tell you how this is better. Let me tell you how this is going to help a billion people.” When you talk to me about that stuff, I was bought in. It’s the unfair advantage of helping people by talking to them. It’s not about lying about your product. We don’t lie about what we do. We highlight what appeals to you based on your why.

If they only spoke Spanish and you only spoke English, it would be tough to communicate. Imagine being in a country where you don’t speak the language, and maybe you had that experience when you were in the Army. You run into that one person that speaks English and you’re like, “It’s nice to talk to you. I can get something accomplished here because we speak the same language.” Has that ever happened to you?

That happens all the time. This is some stuff we talk about. I have found that when we share our top 3 of the 9 whys as our WHY.os, I have amazing conversations with people. For example, if I meet a fellow contribute, we talk the same language, so we tend to have a good conversation. If I meet a contribute challenge, then we have an even better conversation. It’s like we’ve been friends forever. If I meet somebody whose contribute challenge makes sense, we’re finishing each other’s sentences. It makes so much sense that we connect.

Alex, who’s a mutual friend of ours, got the same top three as me in a different order. I would have never thought that we would get along so great from looking at us. He’s an attorney and he’s a tall, athletic guy. He walks around like he owns the place. He’s different because his why is challenge. When I met him, I didn’t know what to think of him and I didn’t know that I would get along with him, but his contribute is strong. It shows in his work as a personal injury attorney.

When we worked with him to get to his WHY.os, I realized he cares about people, but because he leads with challenge, it doesn’t come across right away. The more I got to know him, the more we got along. When we figured out his entire WHY.os, we have the same top three in a different order. We clicked. We hang out and text each other all the time. We have a good time because we think alike. That’s a key factor that I’m sure our coaches are finding. When they talk to people who have similar whys, they get along great.

The challenge is to think differently and not to follow the way everybody else beats their drums. Click To Tweet

What was it like selling for seventeen years without knowing somebody’s WHY.os and now selling and connecting with people when you do know their WHY.os?

It is a completely different world, Gary. If I had this tool when I was in the Army to know my soldiers better, it would have been extremely helpful, but definitely in sales. It is nice to be able to present to someone in a language that they understand and they are listening for. In sales, especially working for a Fortune 100 company where we have a huge marketing program, everything we put out has to appeal to everyone. You’re throwing stuff against the wall and you hope something appeals to them.

When you know their WHY.os, you talk to them in what you know is going to appeal to them. This is what’s important to them. It doesn’t matter why it is. At WHY Institute, we found a better way to help people discover their why. It’s a clear way and it’s simple. We lead better, clearer and simpler. If I’m talking to someone whose why is mastery, I will spend time on the nuances. I will send them the full definitions of every single why because they’re going to want to know that.

Before we talk, they’ve already got their questions and they’ve done all the reading. I know that they’ve read our entire website and every link because that’s what they do. I’m concentrating on how this is going to help them learn at a deeper level and how to talk to their clients. The same goes for everyone in their whys. We adapt our presentation to that person because that’s what they’re listening for.

What’s it like for you to meet somebody now and not know their why or WHY.os?

It’s tough. I will give people the why even if I’m only going to work with them for a little bit because I want to know how they tick and what’s important to them. It’s interesting you say that because I’m working with Sophia’s school, and the principal is a nice lady. She was my oldest daughter’s third-grade teacher, so I’ve known her for a long time. I said, “Janice, I’m sorry but if you want me to help, I need to know your why.”

I had her take the WHY Discovery and we found her why is trust. All of a sudden, a lot of things make sense. Working with her, it’s trust, mastery, right way. It’s different from me. I needed to know that because now I know how I can help her. All this challenge stuff that Dan does, I have to tamp it down a little bit for her because trust is important. I can’t show up late.

Mastery is important. I can’t pretend I know stuff. I better know stuff before I show it to her in right way and follow the process. That’s how she runs a successful school and that’s what’s important to her. I know how I want to make sure I present myself to her, so she doesn’t say, “Get out of here, Mr. Dominguez. I don’t need you here.”

Let’s talk about relationships. How has knowing your WHY.os, your wife, Monica, and your daughter, Sophia and Jazz, helped you as a family to connect, work together, and understand each other in every aspect of the relationship?

Sophia knows her why, which is challenge. She’s an old soul. She’s read all the nine whys. She considers herself a pet why-ologist. She’s challenge, clarify and make sense. You’re thinking, “Why did you do this with your daughter?” She reads at a high level and we let her take the WHY Discovery. When we came out with our WHY.os, I said, “Let’s have her take it.” We had her WHY.os and it’s nice to understand why she always says, “Dad, why do I have to do it that way?” I’m that way and that’s okay. As somebody with the how of challenge, I don’t like it when other people do it to me. “I asked you to do it. That’s why you should do it.” “Why Dad? What if I can do it this way?”

Now, I understand both her and my oldest, who also had the why of challenge. I understand that they see the world differently. I understand I should allow them to and give them bumpers. As soon as you give them bumpers and let them run, “Don’t burn the house down.” That was simple, “Don’t break the law and we’re going to get along fine.”

With my wife being a why of clarify, I realized why it’s important for her to ask all the questions. When I left the Army, she’s like, “They’re not going to be shooting at you? You’re going to get to sleep in a hotel?” She asked all the questions to get me to come to my conclusion. She asked the right questions so that I understood the decision I was making but then she also understood. It used to drive me nuts how many questions she asked, but now I see it as a positive.

We bought a car, Gary. I knew that if we went to the dealership, she was going to take that poor salesman through a three-hour torture session. She has lots of questions about everything before we invested in that car. I did the smart thing. Knowing her why, I dropped her off with the dealer and I took Sophia, and we went and had lunch and did something else for a couple of hours.

BYW 3 | Contributing To Success
Contributing To Success: The key to overcoming this challenge is for you to identify where you will be able to make the greatest possible contributions, and then commit to focusing your efforts on those areas.

When we came back and we talked to the nice gentleman who was selling us the car and she had all her questions answered, I didn’t have to sit through it because I knew it was coming. She was satisfied. We were able to buy our vehicle and drive it home after she asked all her questions. Once she was clear, we were able to move forward but I needed to let her have time to do that. In the past, I might have said, “It’s blue and it runs. We have the money. Let’s buy it.” That would drive her nuts. Now, I allow her to ask the question she needs to ask so she can move forward.

There’s one flaw with that plan. The flaw is you need to send her in to ask all the questions to beat him down so that by the time you walk in, he’s like, “Take the car for free.”

Gary, the gentleman we bought the car from is a mutual friend. I’m not allowed to disclose the terms but I can tell you, she did a good job with it.

Dan, you’re right in the mix of everything. What do you see is the future for where we’re going, what we’re wanting to accomplish, and how quickly we’re going to get there?

What’s been exciting is I’ve been here for a while, and I knew nothing about the WHY Discovery. I knew nothing about executive coaching and this world. You introduced me to a whole new world. Going from absolute zero knowledge to now having done more Why Discoveries than anyone else other than you and Jerry, and having worked with many coaches and learn so much. I see the immense value that the WHY Discovery and the WHY.os Discovery have for the coaches that we talked to.

We went through an exercise where we took testimonials from coaches. To hear them talk about the difference that the WHY Discovery and the WHY.os have made in their lives and the lives of their clients, gives me tremendous confidence that we’re on the right track. We’ve got a tremendous team working on the backend to make sure that our website works, all our links work. Everything that we send out looks professional and good.

When I look at where we were in December of 2019 when I joined the team and where we are in September 2020, we’ve made leaps and bounds, and where we’re going and the people we’re working with. We’ve got coaches from ICF, John Maxwell and Marshall Goldsmith. We’ve got coaches from every major coaching organization in the world. We’ve got people that are certified in Kolbe, DiSC, StrengthsFinder, and all the assessments that are out there, and they all say one thing, “As long as I start with why, everything else falls into place.”

I can’t wait to see where we take this. I don’t see us being able to hold back. We’ve been careful about not launching something big that we couldn’t handle the growth and that we had the infrastructure. Now that we’re building that infrastructure, I can’t wait to present this to the world at large and get to a billion people knowing their why.

Dan, one last question, what is the best piece of advice you’ve received or you have ever given?

The easier question is probably the best piece of advice I’ve ever received, and that’s someone you talked to, Paul Allen. He talked about how important it is to take advice from people that think like you. I would have never thought of that without the why. Somebody with a why of clarify, for example, could have great advice on how to do something, but it’s not going to resonate with me because I want to contribute. However valuable that advice is, I may not be able to apply it because it doesn’t resonate with me.

Those people that we connect with, it’s more important that we connect and take advice from people that think like us because it’s going to be easier to implement. Not that I couldn’t implement clarify advice, better way advice, or advice from somebody whose why is mastery, but it will be simpler and easier because they’ve traveled that same path that I have. I love that.

Not that I don’t take advice from other people, but I listen intently when I do get that opportunity to talk to people with my why, how or what because they resonate with me. It’s a lot easier advice to implement. Mike Koenigs, who you’re working with, I listened to him. He’s a challenge guy. A lot of what he says, I can take and implement. I work closely with one of our coaches, Melahni Ake, whose why is also challenge. She and I clicked. I can take some of what she does, the hacks that she has created to get through and be productive with the why of challenge. The same thing that probably Mike has had to do. It’s helpful.

Dan, thanks so much for being here and taking the time. I’m going to see you every day. We’ve wanted to do this for a long time because you get to meet many people but now, even more people are going to get to know you. Everybody loves you. It’ll be fun to see how you progress as we progress on this journey. Thank you for being here.

Grab the opportunity to talk to coaches around the world so you could discover your why. Click To Tweet

Thank you for having me, Gary.

It’s time for our new segment, Guess the Why. I thought we’d do something fun. If you’ve been watching TV, one of the great series that’s out there is one called Ted Lasso. My wife and I have been watching that and a lot of our friends have been watching that. It is so funny. If you haven’t seen it, start watching it. I’d love to know your perspective on what you think Ted Lasso’s why is. I know what it is and it’s similar to Dan’s why, which is contribute.

He wants to help. He sees the positive in everybody. He wants to uplift the team, individually and as a team. He always wants to make things better for people in any way that he can, whether that’s picking up a broom and sweeping or sitting and having a conversation with somebody. He loves to make the world a better place by helping each person get better. For me, his why would be contribute.

Thank you for reading. If you’ve not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com with the code, PODCAST50. If you love the Beyond Your WHY show, please don’t forget to subscribe and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you’re using so that you can help us bring this message to the world. Also, to help one billion people discover, make decisions, and live based on their why. Thank you for reading.

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About Dan Dominguez

Dan Dominguez exists to positively impact the lives of others. HOW he does that is by challenging the status quo and looking at things from a different perspective. WHAT he brings is the ability to make sense of the complex and challenging to help others move forward faster. Dan’s diverse background as an academic scholar, college mascot, Army Ranger, sales leader, marathon runner, track and cross-country coach, and Rotarian allows him to connect easily with almost anyone and he does that as the Chief Growth officer at the WHY Institute.
Dan and his wife Monica are proud parents of their two daughters Jaz 32 and Sofia 9 along with 24 sheep, 4 dogs and 3 chickens.

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Podcast

Implementing A Better Way: Working To Improve And Change Lives With Dr. Scot Gray

BYW S4 1 | Change Lives

 

Dr. Scot Gray knows that there is always a better way. Ever since he opened his own chiropractic practice, he has always worked towards finding ways to impact the lives of others, to make their lives better. Dr. Gray focuses on training people smarter than him so they can deliver services that impact others.

Join Dr. Gray as he is interviewed by our host, Dr. Gary Sanchez. They talk about how Dr. Gray got his start in the practice and how he learned to take risks and let go of the reins of his business so he can do what he loves: helping others.

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Implementing A Better Way: Working To Improve And Change Lives With Dr. Scot Gray

Welcome to Beyond your Why. We go beyond just talking about your why and helping you discover and then live your why. Every week we talk about one of the nine whys, and then we bring on somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. We’re going to be talking about the why of a better way.

If this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator and you are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvement with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like, “What if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better?” You contribute to the world with better processes and systems while operating under the motto, “I’m often pleased, but never satisfied.” You’re excellent at associating, which means taking things from one area or business and applying them to another always with the ultimate goal of improving something.

I’ve got a great guest for you. His name is Dr. Scot Gray. He is the father of two wonderful girls and husband to his beautiful bride, Jen. Dr. Scot is a serial entrepreneur and author. He has been featured on ABC, NBC, Lifetime Network, and other television shows. He built and sold a successful chiropractic practice, the Ohio Neck and Back Pain Relief centers in Marion, Ohio. Dr. Gray owns several medical offices in Ohio and Florida, a physician referral network called Konnect Relief, and has helped many doctors. Dr. Scot focuses on building teams of people smarter than him to run and deliver services in these businesses in order to change the millions of lives of patients and doctors. Dr. Scot, welcome to the show.

Thanks, Gary. Great to be on here with you. Good to see you.

This is going to be a lot of fun because there’s a lot more to you than that short bio. You and I are in a mastermind group together. I’ve gotten to know you there, but I’m anxious for the rest of our audience to get to know you. Take us back to where were you born and where’d you grow up? How the heck did you get into chiropractic?

I’m originally from Columbus, Ohio. Born and raised right in the middle of the state there. I’m a Buckeye fan, just like most folks there in Columbus. Honestly, the chiropractic thing was interesting. I knew from a young age that I always wanted to help people. I wanted to get into some type of medicine or be a doctor in some way. I didn’t know anything about chiropractic for years.

In high school, I started talking with one of my family friends. One of the friends that my parents went to high school with was a chiropractor and I started talking to him. I got in a car accident, of all things. I was going to school one morning, and I was on the highway, and I got rear-ended at about 55 miles an hour. I was sitting at a dead stop, so it basically destroyed my neck and my back.

Where did I go? My mom told me to go to a chiropractor. I literally had never been before. Dr. Glenn Ives over there in Dublin, Ohio was another big influence on me saying, “Scot, the way a chiropractor does things is a little bit different. We’re looking at the cause. We don’t like to cover things up with medicine or ‘That thing is fine.’ We look at the person holistically. Everything that’s going on, and look at how we can help that person improve.” I just love that model better. That spoke to me and connected with me. I’m a big believer of the power that made the bodies, the power that heals the body. When I started learning about it, it just connected and off to the races I went. That’s how I got into chiropractic.

Chiropractic school and building your chiropractic practice was not an easy thing for you. Is that right? It wasn’t like, “Everything was paid for. Everything was simple. You just fell right into a beautiful practice, and it was all roses from there.” Your story was a little different.

It was a little rockier than that. I was that typical kid coming out of school with a lot of loans, a lot of debt, and nothing to my name. My parents didn’t have money to open a practice or even help us through school and that type of thing. I had to how to figure out how to do it on my own. I went through school with my brother. My brother is also a chiropractor. We were together for years, literally every single day. Luckily, we get along pretty good, so that worked out well.

BYW S4 1 | Change Lives
Change Lives: In school, you get all the clinical stuff. You learn how to diagnose, how to treat, and all that, but running the business and how to get your name out there and share what you do with the world? You don’t learn any of that.

 

What happened was, after chiropractic school, I went to a program where you would call it an apprenticeship, a preceptorship, where I worked with another doctor. He showed me the ropes of how to run a business and how to see patients and all that stuff that you don’t learn in school. In school, you get all the clinical stuff, how to diagnose, how to treat, how to do all that, but running the business, how to get your name out there, and share what you do with the world, you don’t learn any of that.

I went with this group. What he decided to do is, he said, “Scot, we’ll do this program. When you’re ready to go, we will find a spot and I’ll help pay for your way to open your practice.” I go through all this. We go through the program. I’m getting ready to get my own place. I literally have a contract in hand in the new place. We’re going to sign on this thing and we’re going to open this practice.

He’s going to help me, and then I would pay him back over time. What happened though, was his business went bankrupt, and all their investors pulled out. Everything disappeared overnight. It went from, “I had a weekly paycheck. I was going to open a practice. Scot, there’s no money. You literally have no income. You got to figure out how to do it from here.”

My brother and I went through school together. We had decided, “We’ll open our practice. It is separate. Let’s not mix business and family.” When this happened, he was also in that program. He was in the same boat as myself. We decided, “Let’s figure out how to do this together.” It’s the only way. We both have a lot of debt. We didn’t want to work for somebody. We knew we wanted to have our place. We’re bound and determined to figure this thing out.

February of 2004 was when we were dropped from this program. We went from bank to bank. I was 24 at the time. My brother was 26, 27. A couple of twenty-year-old kids going in and asking for a bunch of money with a ton of debt. Most banks just laughed us out of the establishment, but we kept going. We’re trying to find out how to do it. It’s crazy. We did everything from. I would watch his kids while they would go and work nights just so we could pay the bills.

We lived together. It was my brother, his wife, two girls, two dogs, and myself in a two-bedroom apartment. That’s how we started. We did that for probably at least a year where I would watch the girls at night and on the weekends, they would go to work. We would do other things just to make money on the side so that we could get this thing going and profitable. What happened was, we ended up finding a chiropractor that wanted to move and start a practice and do something somewhere else.

We’re able to come in and secure a loan with a company from a small local bank for $50,000, enough to get us started to pay for payroll for the first few months. That was in June of 2004 that we got that started. From February through June, we were scared. We had no income again. We’re doing side jobs, and then, even after we started the practice, we still did those side jobs because the practice did not pay us enough to get the thing going. It was a struggle. We had our ups and downs.

By 2008, my brother decided to go off and do something else. He wanted to do a nerve conduction test, EMG, NCV, these different tests that were more neurology-related things. He went and got more education and went to do that. He still does some of that stuff to this day. I ended up buying him out of the practice and took it from there and went a different direction.

For the people that can’t see you, and even those who can, how tall is your brother?

Seth is 6’4”.

You need to make yourself redundant in your business so that you're not needed. Click To Tweet

How tall are you?

6’6”.

Seth is a 6’4”. You’re 6’6”. A wife, two little girls, and two dogs?

It was crazy. It was a wild place. You got to do what you got to do. We wanted to make it work. Rather than get a comfy job where we knew we could pay the bills, we wanted to take that risk to be able to have a bigger ceiling, an opportunity to help people and create change.

You now own this practice by yourself. What was it like when you bought it? How long did you own it? What happened? Take us on that journey with you.

It was an interesting time when I bought the practice in May of 2008 because I was just getting over an injury. I had a bad cough for several months and I pulled a rib away from my sternum. I couldn’t adjust for about 8 or 9 months. What happened is, the patient visits started going down. The business was suffering. I ended up buying it from my brother, and we’re seeing about 110 patients a week. I went nuts. I started to realize like, “I got to get out there, and I got to meet people. I got to go out and share what we’re doing.”

I was totally focused on the practice, focused with my team on growing this thing. We tripled the size of the practice within about twelve weeks after I bought the practice. A lot of that, when it’s painful, and you’re scared and worried, you go out and you do everything you possibly can. That’s what I was doing. We did that and created a successful practice, and then I started hiring associate doctors to work with me so I could grow it even more and start focusing on running the practice the way that it should be.

Running a practice takes a lot of time in and of itself, on top of the time you’re spending with patients. That allowed me to focus more on that. Eventually, we got two associates in there. I was out of practice. They were doing all the adjusting and I was just working on growing it and doing everything we could to help more people.

How long did that take you to go from buying it to then just running it?

May 2008 is when I bought it. I had this epiphany. I’ve got a mentor by a guy named Vinnie Fisher. He said something to me in October of 2015. This is seven years later. He said, “Scot, you’re never going to grow your business and affect the number of people you want to affect if you keep adjusting patients.” I realized that if I want to help more people, I have to stop seeing patients.

BYW S4 1 | Change Lives
Change Lives: My mentor told me, “Scot, you’re never going to grow your business and affect the number of people you want to affect if you keep adjusting patients.”

 

It was this weird idea that didn’t make any sense to me at first, and then I’m like, “That’s it.” I went back from that meeting that I had with Vinnie, and I told my staff that I’m done seeing patients. I’m going to work on growing the practice and helping more people. It took me a little bit of time, a couple of months. It was December 17th of 2015 that was the last time I saw a patient in the chiropractic office. It took me 7.5 years to get there. It worked out. My associate was with me for six years already.

I had a great guy working with me. He still runs the Ohio offices that we have. He’s just an awesome guy, that I love to be a business partner with, and does a great job. I worked hard to train him and get him to where he could just run it on his own. The beautiful thing that that did is I was able to move on to the next phase of my life and sell the practice. That was in 2017. This was about 1.5 years later. One of the things that the bank loved about it is that I had not seen a patient for 1.5 years. Nothing was going to change.

Gary, you know that with the mastermind that we’re in, one of the things that they always talk about is like you need to make yourself redundant in your business so that you’re not needed. That was one of the biggest things that helped me there to be able to do that and move that along to him. Also, it’s better for the practice because nothing changes and it’s just smooth sailing. It was that seven years. It’s funny. I have thought about it, but I never thought I would get there. I didn’t know how I would get there.

It was just certain things like that with Vinnie speaking that to me, and then it was our mentor, Randy. I had a bad day, a stressful day at the office. He asked me, “Scot, are you happy right now? Do you want to keep the office or should you move on to what you want to do?” That was that word to me of, “I need to focus on what I love, what I want to do to be able to help more people.” It’s created an amazing amount of freedom in my life.

I went through this same thing. If I’m a doctor, or a lawyer or a chiropractor reading this and I want to do the same thing, how did you do it? I understand the concept. I understand what you’re saying, but what did you do to go from being the producer to being the promoter? From being the one who does everything to one that builds everything? How did you change that?

I started to phase myself out. The first thing you have to do is get good people and train them. Spend time with them. I would train my team at least an hour a week. Different little things every single day. I went through so much stuff with Dr. Dave, who took over my practice. We would read books with them. We would go through different mindset things. We would talk about case studies with patients. We spent a lot of time. I put a lot of time into my team and the training into how you do something. You’re always training on, “How could you do this better than me?” because that’s what you always want to find.

I interviewed one of the founders of Pixar. That’s what they said the secret to their success was. It was just hiring the smartest people that were smarter than them even when it was scary that they might take their job or be better. That was the key. Find people that are better, who can do things better than you, and train them up, and you’ll see them surpass you.

One of the things with chiropractic, especially, maybe the same in dentistry, I don’t know, is that when someone sees you, maybe you’re the first person to treat them, adjust them, or meet them, they get used to you. What I wanted to do as fast as possible is have that first encounter to be with Dr. Dave and not me, so that they like being with Dr. Dave and not with me. That was one of the biggest shifts.

When I was able to get to where he would see all the new patients and start with everyone, I’m the odd guy out coming in if he’s out of town or whatever. It used to be, “All I want to see is Dr. Scot.” Now, it’s “I want to see Dr. Dave.” I would deal with that, but that was one of the biggest things. It’s the expectations, too that you have. I would get this question a lot. They would say, “Scot, how do you get your doctors who work for you to do so much?” It blew my mind that I don’t understand how they, “You don’t have them do a lot. You’ve hired them, you should be training them and giving them the most experience you can.”

A lot of docs will do this. They’ll say, “You’re with me for 2 or 3 years in this contract. You better not go out, try to start a practice, and take my patients.” They tried to put the handcuffs on them. I did the complete opposite. I said, “I’m going to teach you how to have a great practice. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know. If you want to go open up a practice somewhere and have your practice, awesome. Go do it.”

Everyone says they're too busy to train others, but the problem is you'll always be busy if you don't train them. That's the reality. Click To Tweet

My thought process was if he wants to leave, he’s going to leave. Why would I want to keep somebody there that doesn’t want to be there? That’s a toxic thing. I just said, “If you want to take this out and do it on your own, go ahead and do it.” The biggest thing was training, letting them have the freedom to want to learn, to want to do good, almost planning to have their own practice because if they don’t plan for that, they’re not going to try to achieve it.

I said, “If you want to achieve it, you’re going to have to work your butt off just like any of us who own a practice.” Having then the faith to hand that person off to them and trust that they’re going to do a great job with them because that’s the hardest thing. Vinnie told me, “One of the things you have to be okay with is that sometimes you have to be okay with the 70% version of yourself because no one’s going to treat your business the same way you do. It’s always going to be your baby. You’re going to have to be okay with maybe they don’t do quite as good.” What I found is that if you train the right people in there, a lot of times, they can do better.

It seems like most of us bypass that training part. Both of them, the training and the freedom.

Everyone says they’re too busy to train them, but It’s like the promise, you’ll always be busy if you don’t train them. That’s the reality.

How was that on your ego because you went from, “The guy. Everybody wants to see you. Now they want to see Dr. Dave?” How did you handle that, “I went to school. This is my place. This is my thing?” Now, it’s more, “I want to see Dr. Dave.” Was that tough on you or was that just an easy transition?

It was an easy transition. I don’t have an, “I need to be the guy.” Honestly, it’s funny, because I promoted the practice that way. I did a lot of videos. You could YouTube me and see that I’ve done a lot of videos. I’ve done a lot of TV stuff. I’ve written books, and it was always about, “Dr. Scot comes to,” and honestly, to get out of the limelight was awesome to me. I’m more of an introvert. I forgot if it’s Randy who says the situational extrovert. I’m that situational extrovert where, what I need to be, I can be extroverted.

Most times, if you were to leave me to my own devices, I’ll just sit over in the corner and be quiet, and I’ll be completely happy and content. In our group, I’m not the most talkative guy. I’m way more of an introvert than most people. The ego thing was nothing. I’m always focused on results. I want to have the best practice. I want to have the best team. I will have the best results. Whatever that looks like, that’s what I want to do. I don’t think that I have to be in the center of that for that to happen.

I feel like my superpower is more of having the vision of where we can go, and creating a better way. That’s what I’m always thinking of like, “How can we simplify this? How can we make this better? How can it be a better experience for the patient? How can it be a better outcome for the patient?” I’m always trying to think of that stuff.

When I’ve got all the providers treating the patients, I can be back doing what I’m best at, what I love, and have a fun time, too. I was going through pain management literature just to see if there’s something that we could add or tweak that would be beneficial to our patients. How can we make it simpler? How can we make it better and more effective?

I’m thinking, “We’re working on the system that we have to connect people with doctors across the country to get pain relief and other relief that they need.” I’m that guy. I’m totally happy being behind the scenes doing that stuff. I just like to see the results that patients get and the jobs we can provide all that stuff. That’s the more fulfilling part for me.

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Change Lives: One of the things you have to be okay with is that sometimes, you have to be okay with the 70% version of yourself because no one’s going to treat your business the same way you do.

 

You had one practice. You were running that instead of being the doctor in it, and then how did you grow from there? Take us on your journey through that to where you are now.

This was not planned at all. What happened was, I sold my chiropractic practice in 2017. I had another practice that was doing regenerative medicine in Ohio. I was just behind-the-scenes vision, had a great operating team, great medical doctor and nurse practitioners. They’re running the whole show. I didn’t even have to show up. I was just doing the things in the background that I needed to do so that we had great company and things are moving along well.

Scot, for those that don’t know, what is regenerative medicine?

Regenerative medicine got big when people started talking about stem cell therapy. With the way the FDA is changing things, we don’t do stem cell therapy in the US anymore. There are great people that we can connect you with within other countries like Mexico that do stem cell therapy. This is using stem cells from, sometimes, your own body. Sometimes they use them from an umbilical cord. A mother will donate the umbilical cord.

Basically, there are two things they’re going to do with it. Either they can donate it or it’s going to go in the trash. What’s going to happen is they can donate it and obviously, goes through all kinds of testing and sterility to make sure it’s clean, good and usable. After all that, they can take those stem cells, those Day 0 cells, that are just amazing.

What they can do for the body is they can release all these cytokines and growth factors and things that help regenerate tissue in the body. There’s this amazing regenerative function in the body, and people see amazing results. When we first started doing it, stem cells in the US were becoming a bigger thing. We’re part of that movement. What that changes now, we can use tissue allografts to where we can help people. We can use tissue that has stem cells in it, but we’re not doing stem cell therapy in the US anymore.

Our offices are based more on insurance-based things like hyaluronic acid, PT, and different things like that. There’s still is a regenerative medicine aspect that we can do but it’s not the old stem cell therapy that we love so much. We still send people down to folks in Mexico that have great programs. Regenerative medicine has just been great.

I’m skipping around here a little bit because I got to be careful. I don’t want to make claims and things and act like it does more than what it does. We want to be careful how we talk about it. You can look up studies from all around the world and what it does, and how it helps people. In other countries, they’re treating things like rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s, lupus. They treat all kinds of crazy stuff down there because they can do things differently than we do in the US. Here, we focus on helping people with joint pain, back pain, knee pain, those types of things. Regenerative medicine is an amazing thing. I wish we could do more of it in the US, but things have changed.

I know you’re dancing around it. I don’t know if I can ask you this question or not. Why has it changed so much? I know a few years back, it was okay to do “stem cell therapy” and suddenly, it’s not okay to say that you do stem cell therapy. Why the change? Is that something you can talk about?

I feel like a lot of it is abuse by doctors that go out there and said, “This thing was a silver magic bullet that was going to heal everything in your body.” There are crazy people out there, doing crazy stuff with it, saying stupid things, so the FDA has to come in and regulate it and say, “We got to talk about what we can and can’t say here.”

Marketing and advertising are really just psychology and math. It's understanding people. Click To Tweet

Even when people say stem cell therapy, there’s way more to this than just stem cells. They’re saying, like, “You are talking about it wrong. You’re making claims that aren’t true. We don’t have double-blind studies.” The FDA basically gave us a window and said, “We can test this out and see how it works, but at the end of that, we’re going to have to come in and set up regulations around this as to how we can use it, what’s being said, and what products you can use.”

They came out on May 31st of 2021 and changed things up. They said, “This is what you can say. This is what you can’t say. This is what you can do. This is what you can’t do,” and no one was talking about the risks involved in it. Anytime you get a surgery, anytime you get any procedure, any injection, there’s a consent form. We did that all along.

There are bad players out there. There’s always going to be players like that in the market where FDA had to come in and say something to do something. Unfortunately, it hurts a lot of other people that were doing it right and had good processes down. One interesting thing about that, though, is that what we did here, we can manipulate the cells. What we mean by that is you may have been able to get like 10 million, 20 million stem cells here. In Mexico, they can expand those out to 100 million, 200 million cells.

What you’re able to do in those other countries is even better than what we were able to do here. It may not even be a bad thing. We just love being able to do it. We love helping people. We never made claims. We always told people, “This is experimental. There are no double-blind studies, and there are risks involved with it.” We went through the consent form and we did those things. Like anything, there’s always going to be people that blow it up to say it’s stuff that it’s not and it creates a problem and then regulation has to come in.

You went from one chiropractic office to multiple chiropractic offices, and then to multiple regenerative practices. Is that the path?

I have the chiro office, and then I had the regenerative office at the same time, so just those two. I then sold a chiropractic practice and had the regenerative practice. At that point, it was basically running on its own. I didn’t have to be there all the time. I had the opportunity where I could come back and be there every once in a while, do stuff on Zoom, and all that before everything was really big on Zoom.

My wife and I decided we wanted to move to Florida. We moved to Florida on a whim. We said, “Our girls are young enough. Let’s do it before school. Let’s see if we love it.” We’ve been talking about moving to Florida for 3 to 5 years. We just love it down here. That’s where I am. I’ve said, “I could do some regenerative medicine down here. Let’s see who I can team up with and build a team down here because I didn’t want to just sit around and not do anything.”

I obviously was working with the team in Ohio. I was like, “I could do it here at the same time.” I met with a doctor down here and said, “Can I rent space from you? We could do something together.” Long story short, we ended up partnering together. We have six offices down here and building that out. What started as regenerative medicine is something totally different now. It’s changed through the changes that we had to make but that came out of nowhere. I wasn’t even planning it.

It was a great opportunity to work together and help more people. I bring my assistant down here and do what we do so well. Once we got that going, then in Ohio, they said, “Let’s do some more offices here.” We’re opening our fourth office in Ohio. That’s how it happened. We have great teams that love to do this. They love what we’re doing. They love the mission. We just keep expanding and working to help more and more people.

One of your specialties that I know of is marketing. You have learned from some of the best and you’ve implemented many of the things they share with you. You’ve taught me a lot of stuff. How did you become proficient in marketing?

BYW S4 1 | Change Lives
How to Win Friends & Influence People

When I first started, I realized, “These patients are not knocking down my door to come and get adjusted.” It was a rocky start. I started reading. It was out of necessity. It was, “How do I do this?” I bought a program from this guy named Ben Altadonna. He was big in helping chiropractors learn how to share the message of their office. I started doing some of what they call direct response marketing of sending stuff out, sharing what we can do, and having people respond and find people that need us that we can help.

I just loved it because one of the big things why I went to Louisville, Kentucky, is it’s where I did that program, my preceptorship, my apprenticeship. I’m an introvert, so I started reading a ton of books on communication because I didn’t know how to start a conversation with people. I’m not like the life-of-the-party guy to be able to just strike up a conversation with everyone. I got to learn how to do this. I got to learn how to talk to people. I’m trying to think around here. I still have it. I have this old program called How to Start a Conversation in 90 Seconds or Less. It’s like this little audio thing. They’re trying to learn how to talk to people.

I started loving the whole concept of communication, which is what I feel marketing and advertising is, is how do I communicate with people on a super high level to help them understand what we do and how we can help them and understand them, what they’re dealing with and what frustrations they have. I just fell in love with it.

I’ve got hundreds of books. I’ve probably spent over $1 million just in courses, going to seminars, being in masterminds, and learning from the best people in the world how to do marketing. When I say marketing, I feel like it’s communication with people and it’s being able to create a community and get the message out that helps more people.

What is the best book you’ve read? If you were going to tell the audience one book they just can’t miss they got to read it on marketing, what would that book be? What’s had the biggest impact on you?

If I take it back to communication, probably the most profound book to me was just the old classic, How to Win Friends & Influence People. That one changed my understanding of how to talk to people. Before that, I just didn’t know what to do. If I could cheat and give a couple more, I would say, The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes was one of the best books I’ve ever read on how to run a business. That includes marketing and advertising.

One of the things that people have said is that marketing and advertising are just psychology and math. It’s understanding people and then it’s making the math work to where, “If I spend this much on marketing, I’m not going to go bankrupt. I’m going to make money on it,” because you can’t just keep spending money if you’re not getting any money back in the business. Those are the two big things.

The reason I say that is because one of my favorite books is the Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. That book was, you talk to any marketer, it’s just understanding basic concepts of human psychology. I was such a novice to this. Those early books were huge to me, and to some people, it may be simple concepts, but to me, it was earth-shattering.

You recommended a book to me that we’re utilizing quite a bit called The Conversion Code.

By Chris Smith. That was good for understanding the psychology of, nowadays, a lot of people are doing online advertising. This is from the guy that was probably the most successful with my understanding. He worked for Quicken Loans. His job was to handling incoming leads off of Facebook to Quicken Loans. He goes through what it takes to connect with an online lead and how to handle that, and understand the psychology of that.

It’s different from someone that read a newsletter or saw you on an infomercial. Understanding where people are when they come in, and raise their hand and say, “I’m interested in what you’re doing,” the way you speak with them, what you say to them, and how fast you respond to them. There’s a lot of things that go into it that a lot of people just don’t understand. It’s like simple concepts. You just got to know it. You got to read about it. You got to learn it, and then you got to implement it.

There is a better way to fix your pain. There is a better way to get relief. There's a better way to be healthy. Click To Tweet

I could read The Conversion Code and say, “That was a great book,” and then go read another book. I’m notorious for I outlined books when I read them. I read a book with the intention to implement everything that I read in that book. That makes sense to the business. When I read The Conversion Code, I literally have a whole presentation that I gave to my team. “This is how you use it.” One of the things I do also is I used to hold quarterly seminars, and I would train doctors on how to run their practice in business. I would take these and put them into presentations and transform them.

You talked about a better way to take something from somewhere and puts it somewhere else. I do that all the time. I take this concept from Quicken Loans. How do we do that in medical practice? Anyone that ever sees anything that I’ve done will find out quickly that I’m a huge Disney fanatic. Gary knows this. I try to take every concept of what Disney does and what Walt Disney did and put that into our practice. How do we give people a better experience in the practice? The better way thing, when you started describing that, when I first met you and learn about all the why. It’s like, “That’s me in a nutshell.”

That’s why we connect is I see the same world you see. It’s got to be a better way. What you’ve done, I love that, how you outline the books and then give a presentation to your team so that you can implement everything. I can read a book and then jump to the next book. What’s the next one I got to read? I love the way you’re implementing. It’s the whole thing.

Yes. Here’s the thing, too. My video library is fast. I literally have a university for my team to watch. One of the things that a lot of people do is they’ll teach that stuff, but then they have to keep teaching over and over again and reiterating it. We do have to do that in business as the leader is the visionary. They say in the Bible when the vision is gone, the people perish. There’s got to be a vision. You’ve got to reiterate it. Most people forget about it within 30 to 45 days and your company, if you’re not going over your vision every month, everyone’s lost. They’re just doing day-to-day stuff. They’re not on point.

What I’ve done is document it so that everyone new coming in can see that and you’re creating clones for lack of a better term. That’s what I do with Dr. Dave. My whole point wasn’t just to say like, “Dr. Dave, look at this cool concept.” It’s like, “No, how do I teach this?” Have that person do it and have it become part of their routine. If it becomes part of their routine, it becomes part of our system. Anyone new that comes in, that part of the system is now there. It can be taught. They can take it and put it into practice.

How do I learn it? How do I disseminate it down? How do I get them to then do it? Now, I’m hands-off and I don’t have to do that again. They can just take it and then, what do we want them to do? We want them to train the next person so they can move up so that they can train. Of course, when they train, they get better at it. There’s a whole system that I focus on to take it and implement it and help other people implement it.

That’s my goal is to get other people to implement it because that’s the only way you’re going to get the leverage that you need, which is a big word that we focus on. How do you leverage your time? When you see successful people who can have multiple clinics and multiple things going on, I could never do that if I had to see every patient. If I had to manage all the staff. I had to know its leverage. How do I train this so that they’re basically becoming a clone, doing these things as part of the system? It’s making yourself redundant in the business and you’re just leading the way.

It’s interesting because this all came from pain on your side. The pain of not having the practice, of not having the ability to just go out and buy it. Maybe a better word would be resourcefulness.

I wouldn’t have been that resourceful if I had the money. I had to figure it out. Once you do that, then you start to have more confidence like, “I can do this. I can start a business. I built a business. I can build another one. I trained that person and sold that business.” Stuff that you never thought you could do. All of a sudden, you’re starting to build chops and build your confidence up as you do these things. That’s one of the things where money can be a killer because it can kill your resourcefulness. Look at most immigrants that come over here that become successful. Talk about resourcefulness. They couldn’t even speak English. They have $1 to their name. Resourcefulness is the name of the game, not money.

What’s next for Dr. Scot Gray?

BYW S4 1 | Change Lives
The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies

I’m trying to help a billion people get relief from their pain and their suffering. I’m building a network of doctors that will have approved, certified treatments that we approve of. We help certify their team so that we know that people are getting great care. Another thing that a lot of people don’t know about me, I served as president of the city council for a couple of years in my town. Unfortunately, in my town, we had a big opiate and heroin problem. I became aware of how huge an issue this was, how it was destroying families. It was destroying people’s lives. It was just killing the people of Ohio.

Unfortunately, we were on the national news because our state was so bad. Our town was literally one of the worst in Ohio. We were in the pit of this thing. People went around and put signs up in my town and said, “Heroin is our economy.” It was that bad. I started to see this and I became passionate about pain relief.

I feel like the way that we treat pain right now is like caveman days. I feel like we’ve done this for years. We’ve been brainwashed that when there’s a problem and a symptom, there’s a pill to fix that problem or that symptom. Just take the pill and go about your day. That’s completely inaccurate. My goal is to educate the world, educate people to understand there’s a better way.

It goes back to that, that there is a better way to fix your pain. A better way to get relief. There’s a better way to be healthy, especially in these times where health needs to be at our forefront. There are viruses. There are things out there that are dangerous. People need to understand that the healthier you can be, the better your ability is going to fight off anything that you get, too. If we’re on that morning cocktail of medications, what is that doing to our immune system and our ability to fight things off?

I could get on a big soapbox here, but that’s what’s next for me is building this program called Konnect Relief. I want it to be like the home advisor of pain relief, where we’re almost like a WebMD in information where you can get great information, but in the new way of taking care of your body, your mind, your spirit, all those things that you need to do. Putting the medical side into it and what’s available, but things that aren’t dangerous.

Things that aren’t going to destroy your immune system. Things that you can do quickly to get out of pain and dealing with some underlying symptoms and issues, not symptoms but issues that are there causing you to have pain. My passion is to be out there, connecting people to the best practitioners to find out why they’re having pain and to be able to get rid of it. If not, anything to reduce medications and opiates and things like they’re on so they have a better, healthier, happier life. That’s my mission.

If there are people that are reading that want to follow you, is it KonnectRelief.com? How do they connect with you, follow you, and see what you’re doing to keep up with you?

You can go to KonnectRelief.com, or you can go to DrScotGray.com. I always tell people that the hardest eight-letter name to spell in the world. I should be putting all the things up there that I’m doing. I’ve got a podcast as well. That is going to be moving over to that page. We’ve interviewed one of the founders of Pixar. We’ve interviewed all kinds of great people like the founder of the Orlando Magic and all kinds of good stuff. We talk a lot about this thing. Gary, you and I are like-minded in this stuff. We love talking about it. We love figuring out how we can help the world with our information and what we do.

The last question I got for you is, what’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received, or the best piece of advice that you’ve ever given?

The time is now. I’ve lived by that since that day, October 2015. That’s when I heard those words spoken for the first time. That’s when Vinnie said, “If you want to have the impact you want, you got to get out of practicing.” I went back and I stopped practicing. I stopped seeing patients, and when I realized I needed to sell the chiropractic practice, I made the decision and I sold the practice.

People need to understand that the healthier you are, the better your ability is going to be to fight off anything that you get to. Click To Tweet

When I started thinking, “Maybe we could move to Florida. The time is now. What am I waiting for? I’m not getting any younger. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I want to live in Florida. Go do it, Scot.” I did it. Amazing things have happened. I just live by this. It’s one thing to hear it, but again, I’m a guy that I like to hear it, then I like to do it.

I say, “The time is now.” Whatever that one thing is that you’ve been waiting to do, that you’re making all kinds of crazy excuses as to why not to do it, I’m telling you, do it. I’ve made that decision over and over again. It’s just been such a blessing to myself, my family, and the people that we’re helping. With all the clinics, I’m helping way more people than I ever could have helped before. The time is now. Take action today.

Scot, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. I know we see each other every quarter, at least, but there’s a lot I learned about you that I didn’t know. I’m glad we got a chance to talk. I love that the time is now because I’m going to use that myself. I’m stealing a lot of your better ways stuff and applying it to my better way stuff.

That’s how we do. We got a swipe and deploy.

I love it. Thanks so much for being here. I look forward to staying in touch as we continue on our journeys.

Thank you, Gary. I appreciate you.

Awesome.

It’s time for our last segment, Guess the Why. For this segment, I want to use Michael Jordan. What do you think Michael Jordan’s why is? I’m going to take a stab at what it is, because if you remember, he was the guy that tried out for his basketball team as a junior. He didn’t make it, went back and practiced and practiced and found the right way to do things. He then made the team and became a superstar. He went off to North Carolina and became a superstar there. He went to the NBA and became the best of all time.

He was always that guy that was willing to have a tantrum. He was willing to go out on a limb. He was willing to do what was necessary in order to get the results that he wanted. I’m going to say that Michael Jordan’s why is to do things the right way in order to get results. Practice over and over the same shot, the same layup, do the same things over and over because they’re going to get results.

People with the why of the right way follow processes and systems that work. They stick to things that work. They’re willing to get in people’s faces, yell at them, have a tantrum, have a fit if they’re not getting things done the right way. I see this in Michael Jordan. What do you think Michael Jordan’s why is? In the comments, let us know what you think Michael Jordan’s why is.

I want to thank you for reading. If you have not yet discovered your why, you can do so at WhyInstitute.com. You can use the code PODCAST50, and you can discover your why at half price or share that with your friends. If you love the Beyond Your Why show, please don’t forget to subscribe below and leave us a review and rating on whatever platform you’re using or listening to so that we can bring the why to 1 billion people in the next five years. Thank you for reading. I’ll see you soon.

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About Dr. Scot Gray

BYW S4 1 | Change LivesDr Scot Gray is the father of two wonderful girls and husband to his beautiful bride, Jenn. Dr Scot is a serial entrepreneur and author. He has been featured on ABC, NBC, Lifetime Network and other television shows. He built and sold a successful chiropractic practice, The Ohio Neck & Back Pain Relief Centers in Marion, Ohio. Dr Gray now owns several medical offices in Ohio and Florida, a physician referral network called Konnect Relief, and has helped many doctors start clinics in multiple states. Dr Scot focuses on building teams of people smarter than him to run and deliver services in these businesses, in order to change millions of lives of patients and doctors.