Mid-Season Recap: Lessons On Entrepreneurship
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Mid-Season Recap: Lessons On Entrepreneurship
This is going to be a mid-season recap of our theme. We still have a few more interviews to do regarding our theme of entrepreneurship. 2019 has been crazy for me. I usually have to travel maybe once a month or so for different conferences and speaking engagements. At the end of 2018, I had an incredible experience with one of Tony Robbins’ events, the Date With Destiny event. I was compelled to immerse myself in that culture. It’s been a wild ride. I’ve been to a handful of events so far. I’m recording this in July of 2019 and I have one event every month until the end of the year. It’s going to be an even crazier and busier travel schedule. I’m learning so much. I had felt compelled to review a lot of the main core principles that we’ve been learning this season from the guests on entrepreneurship and weave them into our previous themes on capitalism and in 2018, life, liberty and the pursuit of property. They all weave into one another. In the end, they provide something that I would like to focus a lot of my thoughts on now.
Main Takeaways From Events
Let me first step back and talk about some of my main takeaways from all of the events that I’ve gone to and the coaching that I’ve had. I have two business coaches now. There are two female business coaches, which is a much different dynamic than the coaches I’ve had in the past. The guests that I’ve been so fortunate to interview this year. I’ve broken down and summarized my takeaways into three things. First is to define and discover what you want. The second is the power of relationships. The third is the power of your state. I’m going to get into the details of all three of those. These came to me almost immediately. It was incredible. I’ve learned things about business finance, the mechanics of the different focus points and impact points of your business and how to have maximum growth with the least amount of improvement. I’ve learned things about tax strategy, other aspects of wealth strategy and all of these different things.
It’s not just me observing my business and myself. It’s also observing others’ businesses. That’s one of the main benefits I’ve gotten from this Platinum Partnership group with Tony Robbins. I’ve been exposed to thousands of other successful business owners. I’ve experienced what they’re going through, their struggles and their chokeholds. It has allowed me to summarize. I thought of these three things almost instantly. I believe that if you don’t understand these three things, you’re going to discover them eventually. I’ll put it that way. This is not based on my fourteen years of experience as an entrepreneur. It’s now my experience with thousands of people, both with the clients who I get to work with and my team gets to work with, as well as going to different conferences. It’s hearing stories, hot seats and much more successful than I am business owners and what they struggle with. Let me start with the first one.
Takeaways From Platinum Partnership: Discovering What You Want
I’ll start with a story. One of the conferences I went to, which is an advanced business mastery course and this was one of Tony’s smaller events. It was in Amsterdam. It was for five days. There’s an extra day exclusively for the Platinum Partnership. Most of the crowd was from outside the United States. It was amazing to see all of the different translators in the back and the languages that the event was being translated into. This was a smaller amount of people. There were probably 3,000 or so people there. It’s still a big number, but relative to some of his other conferences, it was much smaller. The last day was where this story comes from. This was a business owner who was in South America. He owned a big piece of real estate and business that had to do with the shipping port of Uruguay. He was part of a hot seat.
Oftentimes it’s easy for us to look at somebody else’s business and make recommendations than our own. Click To TweetOne of the things that Tony and Jay Abraham did on the last day of this Platinum Day was known as a hot seat. They gave the opportunity for anyone to go to the mic and talk about some of their struggles in business. We’ve already done several days with twelve to fourteen hours of all business that spoke to every single thing that everyone who got to the mic and did a hot seat talked about or had a struggle with. Despite being able to have the education in the previous sessions, you still had these same struggles. It was interesting.
This guy, in particular, he had to raise $7 million to finish a building that had to do with his contract renewal for this shipping company that he had. He was not able to answer some of the basic questions. What came out of his mouth was all why he couldn’t do something, not how he could do something. It’s a very simple shift in language. The thing that hit me is when either Tony or Jay Abraham asked him the question of, “What do you want out of your business?” He couldn’t answer that. It hit me hard. To conclude this story, he got to the mic and wasn’t able to articulate what he wanted. Also, he was making excuses for why he couldn’t raise this amount of money.
Based on the revenues and success of his company and the money he was trying to raise, $7 million, it was like a drop in the bucket. Tony said something interesting to him. He went face-to-face with this guy and said, “I will write you a check right now. Pitch me on your business,” and the guy couldn’t do it. As he is talking through his issues, another thing occurred to me. Oftentimes, it’s easy for us to look at somebody else’s business and make recommendations, be a consultant and know what they could do to improve this, that or the other. When it comes to your own business, because you are in it and that’s where I think the whole, “Working in your business versus working on your business,” is used so often because of how challenging that is.
I’m not placing any type of judgment on this guy. I just found it fascinating. There are so many blind spots that I have met with the business that I have been discovering. With this individual, he had a guy that would give him money right there but he did not have the wherewithal, the state, the understanding, the knowledge and the basics of any business to be able to tell Tony why he should put his money there. The conversation went on and he got the nuggets he needed to go back. They even made him make a commitment regarding it that they were going to follow-up with him on. There are chokeholds in a business.
What I discovered about most businesses and myself is that the chokehold of any business is the psychology of leadership. A few years ago when I was having some cultural issues with my business, we had to let a bunch of people go and other people quit. All this happened within a few months. It was crazy. It made me doubt my abilities and myself. I had those feelings of insecurity. I didn’t step up as a leader. I looked at the psychology of my culture. It wasn’t until now where I connected the dots to the growth of my culture, my business and what I want to do in life first has to start with my psychology. It has to be there. My influence and leadership abilities have to be there before I expect my team or anyone within my stewardship to step up and represent that psychology or culture.
I realized and recognized a lot of limitations in myself. Now, I’m focused on my personal growth as a leader. That’s why these business coaches have been extraordinary in helping point out my weaknesses, my blind spots, to help me up my game as a leader. As I do that, the game and psychology of my team will subsequently rise. That’s the theory. It sounds awesome in theory. I do believe in that principle though and that’s why I put so much emphasis and resources behind that, especially for myself. Whether you’re an entrepreneur and working for a company, it doesn’t matter. Sit down and define what you want. Write it out. Let’s say you’re in your car and you’re going to start thinking about what you want. I’m not saying that at all. This is maybe a good tactic.
Tony Robbins has this exercise. If you go to his website, which is TonyRobbins.com/priming, he takes you through his exercise. It takes about ten minutes of breathing exercise and a visualization exercise. This puts you into this state of mind where you are thinking clearly. There’s nothing going on around you. Maybe put some noise-canceling headphones on while you’re doing this. In that state, ask yourself some questions, “What do I want professionally? What do I really want?” It’s not what you don’t want like, “I don’t want to stay at this company. I don’t want to be in this position.” It’s, what do you want? “I want this position. I want this type of company. I want this type of lifestyle.”
Once you connect with that, think through why. There’s this exercise known as the Seven Levels of Why. I don’t know if you always have to use seven levels, but ask yourself based on the answer you give. “I want to make a $500,000 a year.” Why? “It will allow me to provide this type of lifestyle for my family.” Why do you want that? “I care about my family. I want to provide them good experiences. I don’t want to have financial anxieties.” Why don’t you want financial anxieties? Why do you want to provide this type of lifestyle for them? Keep going and write all that stuff down. You’re going to get to this core why of what you want. Typically, it’s going to be, “I want to be happy. I want to have an adventure.”
Relationships are hardwired into who we are. Click To TweetIt’s going to narrow down into something very simple. I’ll end with that first takeaway which is discovering what you want. It doesn’t have to be, “I want to make this amount of money. I want to have this type of position or this lifestyle.” You’re going to achieve that. You have to believe and want it. Write it down first, but you’re going to want stuff beyond that. This is one of those infinite game types of principles where just because you come up with it and achieve it, it doesn’t mean that that’s it. It’s going to be this never-ending pursuit. Start with something and once you connect to that, make a decision that it’s what you want.
The Idea Of Proximity
The second thing I want to talk about is something that I have experienced for quite a long time with business, family, extended family and friendships. It’s the idea of proximity. There’s a saying, “Proximity is power.” That is the nature of relationships. Relationships are hardwired into who we are. If you go back to a part of our heritage, our ancestry which is in our DNA, people weren’t alone. They were always together. They ate together around the campfire. If you go back thousands of years, archeologist will always go to where people ate. That’s where they found all this stuff. People gathered. How that happened over and over again built itself into what we desire. I believe that if you work hard enough and you repeat and have these behaviors, people can be happy by themselves.
Do you want to go against thousands of years of our ancestry? People want to be with people. I look at all the opportunities that I’ve had. It has come as a result of relationships. However, relationships also have some characteristics, healthy relationships. It’s not about how to do something, how to invest here, how to set up your tax strategy this way or how to become this. It’s who and this whole idea of proximity. I believe in the six degrees of separation these days is probably two or three. It has probably been cut in half. It’s looking at how important reputation is, how important it is to have integrity. Do the right thing. Put other people first, which is not a natural principle. As much as we’re meant to be around other people, being in groups and want relationships, we also have these fears and anxieties of being taken advantage of.
We’ve had these fear and anxieties of what people will think and say about us. That means a lot. Social media is a perfect example. We’re all connected in theory, but people lack connection more these days than any time in history. It’s this idea about understanding the value of relationships and putting yourself around good people. That’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to immerse myself this year in this group. Probably 80% of the stuff that Tony Robbins talks about, does and believes, I’m all in. The 80% is what I focus on. I don’t care about the other stuff. The other stuff maybe because I don’t understand.
Looking at the group of people that are all there paying a large amount of money, spending a lot of time away from their families and businesses to commit themselves to grow personally, I wanted to be a part of that group. I realized that this immersion would help me become a better husband, father and leader. It’ll allow me to focus on my psychology, my state of being, my happiness and my physical wellbeing. If that wasn’t taken care of first, the experience I have with showing up for my family, business, friends or any other role that I play in life will be less than what my potential and what I could do. That’s where I connected the dots. This is a time where I am able to immerse myself in new relationships. I’m able to be around people that are driven like me and learn certain things. I’m able to make connections and contribute in a way that I may not be able to contribute to others. It made so much sense to me. Now I’m paying a huge amount of money to do it.
I’m taking up pretty much my entire year with the goal of achieving this state of personal development, as well as an improvement or enhancement of my leadership abilities. It’s been incredible. I’ve had so many breakthroughs. I’ll use an example. I was talking to someone about Donovan Mitchell. He is a professional basketball player for the Utah Jazz. I’ve talked about it before on the show. He was either a runner up or the Rookie of the Year. 2018, he had an incredible season. He had a shoe named after him now. His nickname is The Spida. He did this commercial with Tom Holland about his shoes. Don Mitchell has his own shoes with Adidas now. He’s not just an amazing player, he’s an amazing person. How do you know that? I don’t know him personally.
I’ve met him a couple of times. How do you know he’s a good person? He does a lot on social media. If you are on social media, follow this guy. It’s amazing. He has gone to some of the Utah football games like the University of Utah, Utah State Games and local basketball games. He walks around town. He never denies a signature or a photograph. He makes it fun. He’s so approachable. When they lost to the Rockets in the last game one evening, we were bummed. The next morning, my wife was at Target, which is down the road from us. It’s halfway between where I live and where downtown is where Donovan Mitchell lives and a lot of the Utah Jazz. Cynthia saw him at Target. She and her friend got a picture with him and were talking with him.
Donovan Mitchell has this personality. I don’t know if he designed it or he was raised that way. I had a conversation with somebody that contrasted that with John Stockton. He was probably one of the more famous Utah Jazz in the past. John Stockton was a prick. He did not talk to people and give autographs. This person was telling me that he used to go to this bread store. He would wait in his car for everybody to leave and then would get out and buy bread. You have Donovan Mitchell who’s been incredible. The culture of the Utah Jazz, the season tickets are almost sold out. My point is that the person you show up as is what makes a massive difference to others.
The person you show up as is what makes a massive difference to others. Click To TweetIn my book, Heads I Win Tails You Lose, one of the stories I put in was about LeBron James and how he treats his status as a brand, as a business. Is that the angle that Donovan Mitchell has taken? Maybe or maybe not. The idea is if you can connect with people. People are what provide the highest degree of happiness, fulfillment and achievement. Without people, it would be a pretty miserable world. I look at what we can do as human beings, as individuals. We’ve all had crap happened to us. We’ve all had these reasons to not play full out. We’ve had failures. We have our insecurities, inadequacies and weaknesses. This is where I come to the last point I’m going to make, which is controlling your state. This has to do with how you show up in those relationships and what has those relationships thrive.
The Idea Of The State
I’ll give you a couple of examples of some relationships. I can talk about this principle with some stories. The idea of the state is a big thing that I learned at one of these other conferences that Tony Robbins puts on, which is called Unleash the Power. This is something that hit me. I grew up as an introvert. I was shy. I never had a serious relationship with a woman until my wife and I’ve been married for several years now. I grew up where there were some events of my life that made me shyer and more introverted. I wasn’t expressive. I was afraid of what people thought or say. There was some fear built up based on experiences. I had repeated those stories over and over and it affected me. There were some events that caused me to break out of my shell. It’s one of those things where I’ve connected to the control that I have over how I show up, my state right now and if you think about everything that you will ever want. I’m talking more materially, whether it’s the salary amount, a job or a lifestyle that you want.
The only reason why you want those things is that you think it’s going to produce a certain state. I look at the control that we have over defining a beautiful state that we can live in without those things. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t want those things. Having an adventure and experiencing life, there’s being able to travel and go to events like the ones I’ve been talking about. Being able to take vacations, even something as simple as that requires financial resources. I get that. At the same time, what makes that so much easier is understanding what your state of mind and being consists of and figuring a way to put yourself in that state as often as humanly possible. Let me talk briefly about that.
The first is a triad. The first principle of that triad is your focus. You can always look at the glass as half full or half empty. Every experience that happens in life can be construed as good or bad. In the life that we live, people would kill. They would die. They would walk across the desert. They would do that to be in the United States. That is something that we could wake up and be way more grateful for than we usually are. Be grateful for the time in which we live. We don’t have to worry about the things that people had to worry about 100 years ago. One hundred years ago, people were working their ass off during this time of year so that four months from now, they wouldn’t be freezing on the brink of dying.
We don’t have to worry about that these days. We have so many things that are part of life that we take for granted. That sounds super cliché, but if you think about it, we could focus on something as simple as that. The feeling of gratitude, being able to understand and acknowledge that, helps us to see our experiences, whether it’s today or tomorrow, from a different perspective. That allows us to experience a different state and different degree of happiness, fulfillment and so forth. That’s the first, is focus. The second is physiology. It is your physical wellbeing. When I look at physiology, something’s connected with me. I want to do more research here. I look at all the different experiences we’ve had in our life. They’re all in us somewhere.
We can’t remember them all, but part of our unconscious mind is that most of that stuff is there. Most of our life is on autopilot like our heart beating, reactions to things and language. We use the same words. We say the same phrases. We have these very similar thoughts over and over. A lot of our life is on autopilot. Much of that is with our physical body. Our body is taking care of itself without us giving direction to it. I look at how repeated the behaviors are, whether it’s the language we use, the things we say, the things we tell ourselves. How we show up has been programmed into our habits. Those habits continued to be reinforced over and over again.
Looking at focus is one of the first ways in which you can start to reprogram your habits. The second thing is looking at your physical wellbeing. A lot of those things are built into our nervous system. We react to things that way. When somebody says this or does this, we react this way. It’s there. As far as controlling our state as we start to focus on different things, paying attention to our body, especially our stature, smiling, chest up or shoulders back. There are several things that, if you understand body language, tell the person what you’re feeling without you saying anything. That’s why nonverbal communication is 93%. It’s your feet position, shoulders, eyes, chest, smile, and frown or where you look. There are all these tells that FBI agents and interviewers know to a T but we don’t know those but they’re built into us. Paying attention to our physicality or physiology is huge when we want to live a beautiful life and a beautiful state.
The final thing is language, which are the words that we use. I can’t remember what the statistic is, but we have a set of vocabulary that we consistently use. We all know what the positive words are and what the positive tonality is. We know what the negative words are and the negative tonality. As much as we control our focus, we control how we define that focus, which is typically in words and language. When you define an experience or your physical state, when you put an adjective on something and start to describe something, you can easily say that it’s negative as you can positive. Most people, because of these survival instincts that are within us, our fear of being and what people will say, protection to our self-esteem, we typically will use negative patterns. Those affect our positive state. In the end, this may sound woo-woo to you and it probably is. This is what I’ve been going through. I’ve taken all of these experiences that I’ve had, thousands of conversations over the last six months and boiled them into these three things, which I have connected as the most important to me.
Every experience that happens in life can be construed as good or bad. Click To TweetI look at the pursuit of an entrepreneur, all the different people that I’ve interviewed, both in the season on capitalism and this season on entrepreneurship. You’re going to see the same theme throughout, which is people overcoming certain things, digging down deep. They may have not articulated what I have here, but I look at the power of relationships, the power of controlling your state, making certain decisions and difficult moments and in the end, understanding what you want. I’ll go back to that relationship story I was going to tell you. I was in Dallas for UPW, the Unleash the Power Within, which is a Tony Robbins event. Instead of coming home the last day, I drove down to Austin and did a video interview with someone that I’m doing some joint venture type of marketing with.
Pursuit Of Entrepreneurship And Relationships
I’ve known this individual for several years. I met him because another business associate friend of mine, we were having dinner with a very famous entrepreneur author in Austin several years ago. We decided to invite this individual. He expressed a lot of gratitude since then to us for inviting him. It was an amazing dinner. It was a lot of cool and amazing conversation. Over the course of time, we’ve talked back and forth. We have some mutual contacts and connections and I decided to maintain that. It led to a business opportunity. That’s what we’re pursuing now. This time when I was in Austin after we were done with the video shoot, we were going to go to dinner because I was leaving the next day. We ate at this amazing restaurant. The food was incredible. This individual asked if I wanted to invite anyone that I knew in Austin. Almost immediately, a person came to mind.
This individual, I’ve known for several years as well. I had an immediate bond and connection with him when I first met him. He happened to be the guy who bought the very first copy ever of Rich Dad Poor Dad. He’s writing a book with Robert Kiyosaki. I’m going to interview him. I knew he was in Austin. I didn’t know where. I reached out to him. I’m like, “I’m doing this dinner. I’m here just for the night. We’re doing it at this place.” The place happened to be within the same complex as his office and about five minutes from where he lived. He had barely, within the hour just got home from a writing retreat that he did at his place in Colorado in the mountains. We had about an hour of conversation. I was able to bring these two people together. Even though they didn’t know each other, I’ve created two additional networks.
It was such a powerful conversation. The nature of the conversation had to do with, “How can I help you out? I can do this for you.” It was an incredible experience. Never underestimate the power of relationships. You don’t know who people know. You don’t know who people will become. The greatest mistake I’ve made as a business owner and as an individual over the past is failing to recognize the importance of relationships. Over the last few years, this has been something that I’ve been so driven by, which is, “How can I create value for more people? How can I help here? How can I connect this? How can I influence this?” It’s not, “What do I get out of it?” It’s, “How do I bind people, help people and provide value?” I never called it proximity is power or the power of relationships, but I’ve always believed that people are assets.
There’s always something to gain by having healthy relationships. A lot of the business failures that I’ve seen over the course of time are those that don’t care about their reputation and don’t care about others, “It’s all about me.” I get it. We all have this need to be significant and see ourselves as important in the world. If you look at the John Stockton principle, when you express that, whether it’s overtly or covertly, covertly in his case, it never ends well. You build a reputation where people don’t want to have a relationship. Those are the three things. This show revolves around business, ideas, taking those ideas and bringing it to fruition, but I thought it would be good for me to say what’s up and tell you about what I’ve been doing over the last several months. Weave in some of the things I’ve been learning and what they have to do with entrepreneurship.
I have been happier over the last couple of months than I have in a long time. I associate that with what I’ve discovered about myself and these three principles, defining what you want, understanding and believing in the power of relationship and wanting to be around the who and not how. It’s, “Who can help you do this?” and not, “How do I do this?” It’s who’s already done it and building relationships where you may not have a value from that individual for years. You never know. It’s also the state. I have 60-plus employees. I have a lot going on. We have thousands of clients. There’s always something. I was gone. When I come back, there was a toilet that leaked on the fourth floor and trashed all of my marketing books. I probably have a hundred books that now toast. This stuff is going to happen, but I choose how I react to that. It didn’t affect me the slightest.
Sometimes I look at what impacts us and how we can control it and control and understand our state of being and put ourselves in the most beautiful state possible as often as possible. You’re going to see that. That’s going to impact the relationships you have with people, the goals that you set and your success. I hope you got something out of this episode. I’ve made some offers with the book in the previous episodes. If you want to go pick up the book, it’s FreeBook.HeadsOrTailsIWin.com. We’re giving the audiobook for free if you buy the physical copy. You are amazing. Thank you so much for your support. I’ve been getting tons of good feedback for some of the episodes, videos and interviews. Keep them coming. The podcast is at ParadigmLife.net. I hope you’re enjoying this season on entrepreneurship. We get some cool interviews coming up. Make sure you stay tuned to future episodes.
If you are new, we did three seasons. We did all of 2018 based around John Locke who was an influential philosopher several hundred years ago and coined the term, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of property,” which became the pursuit of happiness in the declaration of independence. We did a season on life, a season on liberty and a season on the pursuit of property. You can go check those interviews out. That was such a fun year. The first four months of 2019, we did our theme on capitalism. Now, we’re doing on entrepreneurship. I’m not sure what we’re going to do for the third season of the year. I have some ideas. Thank you so much for your support. That’s it. Thanks. See you soon.
Important Links:
- Date With Destiny
- Platinum Partnership
- TonyRobbins.com/priming
- Heads I Win Tails You Lose
- Unleash the Power Within
- Rich Dad Poor Dad
- FreeBook.HeadsOrTailsIWin.com