NFL Executive: How to Win in Life and in Money

Welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Paul Epstein.

Paul is the former NFL and NBA executive, now thought leader, and 2x bestselling author of “Better Decisions Faster” and “The Power of Playing Offense”.  Currently he spends his time as an award-winning speaker on leadership and high performance, inspiring millions around the world to make confidence their competitive advantage.

What this means is that Paul understands leadership and high performance and going to give you a masterclass on how to level up as a leader while in your pursuit of Making Billions.

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[THE GUEST]:  Paul is the former NFL and NBA executive, now thought leader, and 2x bestselling author of “Better Decisions Faster” and “The Power of Playing Offense”.  Currently he spends his time as an award-winning speaker on leadership and high performance, inspiring millions around the world to make confidence their competitive advantage.

[THE HOST]: Ryan is a Venture Capital & Angel investor in technology and energy. He achieved market-beating placement growth in his first 5 yea

Transcript

Ryan Miller 
My name is Ryan Miller and for the past 15 years have helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds, and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business or taking your life to the next level, in the show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of making billions. Let's get into it.

Let's face it, most problems in a company are leadership problems more than employee problems, and that my friends is likely a values and action problem. My next guest has a lot to say about this. As a former NBA and NFL executive, he's seen it all and has agreed to share with us on how to become the very best leader in business and in life, so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of making billions. Let's get into it.

Hey, welcome to another episode of making billions. I'm your host, Ryan Miller. And today I have my dear friend Paul Epstein. Paul is the former NFL and NBA executive now thought leader and two Time Best Selling Author of Better Decisions Faster and the Power of Playing Offense. Currently, he spends his time as an award winning speaker on leadership and high performance inspiring millions of people around the world to make their confidence, their competitive advantage. So what this means is that Paul understands leadership and high performance. And he's going to give us a masterclass on how to level up as a leader while in our pursuit of making billions. So Paul, welcome to the show, man.

Paul Epstein 
Yeah, Ryan fired up to be here. And let me just say, from one community to another, just absolutely love what making billions is all about. So just an honor and a privilege to share this time.

Ryan Miller
Yeah, man, it's an honor to have you and we've been very fortunate to be in the top 2%. Around the world, we've done very well. And we've had wonderful guests like you on the show, we're gonna talk about leadership and everything that you've been able to learn along the way, let's jump into that for people listening to the show. Maybe they're a new leader, maybe they're an experienced leader. This is a spectrum, folks, you're not just to get a promotion one day and all of a sudden, you are amazing at leading people are accomplishing things. This is a process. And Paul is here to talk us through some of that process of not just being a leader, and you know, having the title and making your mom proud, but actually driving change and helping people to make confidence your competitive advantage. As you lead you bring other people and inspire them to follow. It's for those people that are looking to level up. What What advice can you give people who are just starting out on how to get some early points on the board and leadership and how to avoid blowing it up as well.

Paul Epstein 
So for one, I think we need to debunk a myth because the myth is what the Webster Dictionary says leadership is, Webster says it's about rank, roll title authority. And I'm not suggesting that there isn't some element of that baked into leadership. But if I was to ask you and Ryan and or the entire making billions community to think of the greatest leader that you've ever had, in any walk of life, it could be a parent, it could be a coach, it could be a mentor, it could be somebody in business, what did they do? Actions, behaviors, and if we could whiteboard all of this out, hit me with one or two word responses, things like they listened, they cared, they were compassionate, they challenged me, they told me the hard truth, you know, all these things they cared about me as a whole person, I would ask after we get 30, 40, 50 responses deep. Okay, so that's what the greatest leaders in the world do. Which of those attributes characteristics, which of them have anything to do with rank, role, title authority, like, really, we need a title of CEO or president to care to listen to challenge? Absolutely not. And so what I find Ryan is 90 to 100%, of what people consider to be the attributes of the greatest leaders in the world that have personally had a massive impact in their life. They don't need any rank, role, title or authority. In other words, it's at their fingertips right now. And the reason we would follow these people to the end of the earth and back is because before they effectively lead others, they first had to lead themselves. So if before we lead others, we must first lead ourselves. The beauty of that is this democratizes leadership, because every single person listening and watching to making billions right here, right now, we can do all the things that great leaders do effective immediately. And I just think that's a beautiful empowering thing is whether you're on the front lines, and you aspire to that rank, role, title authority. Well, the job description starts yesterday, because you just need to show up with those actions and those behaviors. And then that's how we earn our way into kind of the cultural side of what makes a great leader. And then the other 50% of what matters, your skills, your gifts, your talents, all the things that the job description, typically is, I want to invite everybody to rethink what a job description is all about. If you're in accounting, if you're in marketing, you're in sales, you're an investor, I want to position skills is 50% of what matters. And then 50% Are those attributes and the actions and the behaviors of what the greatest leaders in the world do.

Ryan Miller 
Man that's phenomenal. You know, I think about the first person that I willingly followed ended up being my mentor and this was a person I was a young guy just limping along during the recession trying to figure out my career and this guy, you know, he's 6'3", nine Kids, worth $100 million, like just full light. Yeah, every area literally had no reason to even look at me or give crap. But he did. And I remember him always say it was when I was just a lowly analyst and an energy company. And he was like, You're way too smart. Ryan, you got to get out of there. And just his confidence in me. He had so much confidence in himself, obviously. And in me that it infected me, I would say, yeah, that I was like, wait, I am. And nobody ever talked to me like that. I'm being very vulnerable here. No one ever talked to me like that when I was starting my career. And I had this guy who literally had everything. And he went, he he descended from his role, his rank, all of those things that you listed. And he was just a confident guy that was just a few steps ahead of me more than a few, but you get the idea. And from that he was so successful that he did have authority from his result. And from that authority, he inspired me to also do exactly what you said. So I'm relating to exactly what you're saying here. And sometimes you're providing those people with leadership. And so he worked under that servant leadership that definitely taught me that model. And this guy wanted to see me be successful. Holy cow, a guy like that wanted to serve me and helped me in my career, just with advice, couldn't believe it. That was my first exposure to leadership. It wasn't management, it wasn't some guy telling me what to do and how I serve him. It was someone that was 10 times more going on. And he showed me how he, with everything at his disposal to send it from on high will say, and decided to help me that was my first example of leadership. And I'm sure the millions of people around the world that are listening to this, they are all thinking right now it was who was the first person that you willingly want it to follow? Would you say that's a fair example of, of what you're talking about?

Paul Epstein  
Hundred percent, what I took from everything you just shared, and I love, love, love the example. It's a transference of belief. We've all heard the line that I believe in you, sometimes even more than you believe in yourself. And that's what it takes, especially as we're early in our careers, or we're growing or we're climbing, or maybe we're not showing up consistently as confident as we should be. But then that one person believes in us, not based on the outcome, not based on our performance, but in who we are in our character in our values. Like when somebody genuinely is like, Dude, I just have Ryan's back, not as a producer, not as a performer. But as a person. Think about what Ryan would do for somebody that genuinely cared after him as an entire person, not just based on how many widgets ki could sell, or how many dollars, he could profit from a strategic investment. Like, that's not what this is about. I know, that's what we all want to drive in terms of some KPIs. But at the end of the day, if I care about Ryan, holistically, he would do anything for me like I always share this example, Ryan, and it's super quick. You know, I wrote my first book, The Power of playing offense, a leaders playbook for personal and team transformation. And that was the leadership playbook that I never had, because I got promoted from player to coach, which is so common in business, right? Like if you think about sports, all right. So I'm the top point scorer on the top goal scorer. And if you were to say, well, is that player in sports destined to be a great coach? And anybody that knows about sports would be like, Well, no, like, maybe. But just because you're a great player doesn't mean you're going to be a great coach. And we all get that we accept that. But in business, that's our default setting. Oh, you're the top widget seller. Now you get to supervise the widget sellers. What if you don't even want to be a leader? What if you're not cut out for that? What? And so like, I think that's part of what gets businesses in trouble and leaders in trouble. And so when I got promoted from player to coach, and I said, Awesome, now, where's the playbook, and they responded, good luck. And here I am doing the trial and error thing for about a decade. And thankfully, I figured it out. And that's why I speak all over the globe about it. But I don't speak about Paul on his best days, because that will get boring real quick, I actually speak about my worst days, because I think that's the bigger lesson, the bigger insights, the better teacher, you know, like they say, early in your career, you learn something from everybody in every place, whether what to do or what not to do, I think the latter can be a way better teacher, I learned a whole lot of what not to do early in my career, whether as a player or a coach. And that's why I am who I am today.

Ryan Miller 
I love that. And speaking of what not to do, this also is part of a tool in the toolbox of a leader is to say, because very often all this stuff to do and to write and motivational speaking and poise and all these things is fine. Those are great. But sometimes there's some don'ts. What would you say to people who are starting out or who are just trying to be a better leader, as far as what's what's some of the key don'ts that you would love to teach our fans around the world today?

Paul Epstein 
Well, one of the greater influences of leaders and we always hear this word culture, culture. So I lead a culture I lead a team, I lead an organization, but coming back to culture. A lot of folks say that it's top down, and I do believe that there is a top down influence, but I want to try to also debunk that myth as well because that would mean that in an org chart, the top 10% control everything in the bottom 90% We're just prisoners to whatever the top people say. If they if they're if they're warm, then we're gonna be warm if they're cold there. Then we're going to be told that they're toxic, we have to absorb toxicity. Like that's just not the business world or the working world that I believe in. And so rather than think of it that way, what not to do is believe that you have no power or influence or control of culture. And the reason that I know that the opposite is true, is because I used to consult for one of the top airlines in the world 120,000 employees, 6000 positional leaders, and I did workshops for multiple years with all 6000 leaders. And when I would visit their headquarters, I would go into floor five, and they were high fiving, great energy, then I would go up the floor six, watch out, bosses around the corner, frigid cold, and Ryan, floor five and six weren't just the same company weren't just the same airline, floor five and six were the same department, drastically different weather system, which proved to me that within every single culture, there are infinite microclimates. So now I say all culture is local, down to the department, down to the floor of the building down to the individual. So for everybody in the making billions community, when you hop in a Zoom meeting, when you walk in a room, when you hop into that dinner conversation with a potential investor, you have two options, you either warm it up, or you cool it off. The question is, are you aware of your own temperature. And when you are, and you consistently choose warms, no matter how cold the environment may be around you, that's a person that I would bet on. So what not to do is just to adapt your temperature to your surrounding environment, because you can't always control that. But 100% of the time, we control our own temperature. And I choose warmth, and I surround myself with people that choose warmth as well.

Ryan Miller
I love that, you know, one of the things I do take pride on I'm a big energy. Yeah, and it doesn't always happen. But when it does, I'm 100%. Right? So when those things kick in, and something's off, there's an energy ever gonna read on someone where you're like, I can't put my finger on it. Something's not right here. Or, you know, maybe it's the opposite. You're just saying, Look, I know, this looks messed up, but I got a good feeling about it either way. And so understanding that energetic frequency, that's number one, but also the fluctuations in those energy. Essentially, I'm just saying the same thing. And through my own perspective, but it's just saying, like, I think if, if I could and keep me honest here, Paul, is being very clear on those subtle changes in energy of the team, but more importantly of yourself as a leader and really being sure, how are you looking at your calendar this week, the meetings you got going on? Or the study meetings where there's just that one person that just drives you crazy? How do you respond to that? And really, try dialing it in on your own temperature first? And then being aware externally? How what kind of temperature do you bring to meetings or to people's experience at work and really dialing that in? And obviously, I haven't nailed it, who has, but really, I think what Paul and I are saying here is you got to be very clear on the impact you create for yourself, as well as those around you would you say that's a fair statement

Paul Epstein 
100%. And I think it's not only just the discipline and the commitment, and the awareness of warmth, I also think it's the power of compartmentalization. Because we've all been in those situations where something bad happens in one area of life. And now, it's not that we're robots, it's not that we can completely wipe that clean, but we still have to show up at our best five minutes, five hours later, whatever the case is, we've all had some drama at home, and then you got to work and you got to go show up at your best. And it's like, I'm not saying it's easy. But those that can compartmentalize best are the ones that are going to win more consistently, because again, bad things are gonna happen. And so I've always thought about that, that was one of the earliest sales lessons that I learned, you know, somebody cuts his yacht, I'm making 200 cold calls for bad NBA teams early in my career, and screw you and screw this, and I'm cleaning up a language for the podcast, but you can imagine, right, and I still had to show up the next call as if nothing negative or bad happened 30 seconds before, because if I carry that energy, I'm gonna lose, right. And I think just put a bow on all these two. I also believe in the making billions community that a lot of us have a certain daily scorecard that we probably tie our success to our happiness to our fulfillment to, and at least early, let me just put myself out there, I had the wrong definition of success. And my scorecard was based entirely on performance and production. So if I sell widgets, I'm gonna be a happy camper. If I don't sell widgets, it's a miserable day. And you know, that's kind of the environment I was in. So I was doing the opposite of all these things that I'm preaching now. But I had to go through some of that pain and some of these insights. So now I repositioned my daily scorecard and I believe everyone in the making billions community can do the same. I call it the principle of e i r. It stands for experience, information, and relationships. So at the end of every day, ask yourself these three questions. What experience did I gain today? What information did I learn today? What relationships did I build or enhance today? And if you can compound the past positive answers to those questions, experience information relationships, if you are consistently up leveling in all of those areas, it's not even tied to outcome, because maybe you picked up some good experience that it was kind of a failed experiment, that's still a net positive, right? Like you learned, oh, I shouldn't be doing that. That's a positive experience, maybe it's a negative outcome, the world calls that a failure, I call that a positive experience, because now you're just not going to do it again, you're gonna grow, you're gonna evolve information. It's that constant evolution of information and learning and growth and development, right? We're all momentum machines. And then relationships. I know, this is huge for you, Ryan, I mean, relationships is one of the greatest currencies, if not the greatest currency that exists in the world. And sometimes, we don't prioritize it often enough. And then when we get into tough spot, we tried to call back on some of those people, and they're like, Dude, I only hear from you when you need something, I want to be proactive, I want to place those daily deposits into people when I don't need anything, when and I'm not going to keep score. Because that's ultimately how the world works. So experience information relationships, when you tie your daily scorecard of those three things, you're gonna have a good quality life, and you're gonna run a good quality business. And chances are, you'll make even more billions when you can compound those three things.

Ryan Miller
Man, brilliant, I absolutely love that. And yeah, just for those who follow the show, they know that your reputation and relationships are the two most valuable assets in your possession. You know, what you've talked a lot about leadership and even decision making. And you know, Paul, in leadership, it often comes down to moments. And those moments are often a function of decisions. And so I'm curious on your take on this is, let's say how does effective decision making impact the quality of someone's leadership?

Paul Epstein  
Well, you call them moments, and here's a scary stat for you. And for the entire making billions community here, the average adults makes 35,000 decisions in a day 35,000. That's a whole lot of moments. That's a whole lot of decisions. And again, I know not everybody listening and watching is in the finance space. But we can all at least understand the principle of placing bets in the investments that we make, whether it's people or ideas, or whatever it is. And so the way I like to think about this is if you look at the decisions you make, as every single decision is a bet you're making a conscious choice of what to do, what action to take or not take. And if you can consistently make better decisions, then you're going to have a higher quality of life, the weeks will compound the months will compound the years will compound any aspect of your life, do an audit, your health, your relationships, your time, your money, your career choices, consistent good decisions and better decisions leads to a better quality life. And the opposite is also true. So knowing that how critical decisions are that's the beauty of not only leaders, but just as human beings, when we can own and have awareness of our decisions. Because Ryan, when I'm on stage, or I'm writing a book, like better decisions faster, I don't need to convince people that decision making is critical, right? And especially when I'm like, Hey, there's 35,000 today and people are like holy like what? And then I say okay, let me give you a metaphor here, though, because a lot of those are going to be on autopilot. Thank goodness, Paul doesn't need to think about 35,000 things in a day his head would explode. But what about those critical few? What about those handful like in sports, they call them MVP, most valuable players. I call these your MBBS your most valuable decisions. And that's why I wrote a book like better decisions faster, because nobody goes against this universal truth that decision making can be your competitive advantage, and the better your decisions, the better quality of life. But then the key here is and I know this is massive for you, Ryan, how how do you make better decisions faster? Because otherwise, I'm just preaching to the choir. Okay, Paul thinks make better decisions faster. Gods, buddy, how so what I've done, I audited all of my decisions from the best to the worst. Then in my consulting, practice, my training, practice my coaching practice my podcast, literally over countless adult beverages with the people that I know and trust that are just winning in business and in life, from Fortune CEOs to Olympians, NFL players, high growth founders, you name it. I'm auditing decisions for years with my team. And I'm looking for the through line and the themes of what leads to better decisions. And here's where we landed. Those that make better decisions faster, have alignment from their head, to their heart to their hands, meaning their head is their mindset. Their heart is their authenticity and their hands or their actions. And so what I wrote the book about the how is called the head, heart hands equation, its head plus heart equals hands. In other words, when deciding whether to use your hands whether to take action. There's two checkpoints head and heart head. Do I think it's a good idea? Heart do I feel it's a good idea? And just like when you pull up to an intersection as you're driving, you know exactly what to do. Green is Go Red is stop. Yellow is assess. That's how the equation works. So When your head and your heart are on board, it's a green light 10 out of 10 times take that action, opposite no head, no heart, red light, don't do it or stop doing it. And then when one of the two head or heart is on board, well, that's a yellow light. And you got to solve for the gap. So I wrote the playbook of better decisions faster to inspire a life with an abundance of green lights, I wrote the book to create more consciousness and awareness. So we stopped running reds. And then I wrote the book, because it's gonna take way more than a podcast to unpack everything about a yellow light. So that's where the book comes in. I wrote the playbook better decisions faster. So we could all finally conquer and navigate the messy middle of yellow.

Ryan Miller
Oh, wow. So yeah, a lot of those where you're saying the absolute so that we're the bookends of these decisions, the green and the red, those are pretty obvious.

Paul Epstein  
That's a wasted

Ryan Miller 
yellow say, it could be they could be this, it could be that it might be the end, you're kind of waffling a little bit on the line. And in a I think what Paul is saying here, folks, is that that's what's gonna really make or break a lot of those moments, those decisions, and more importantly, those most valuable decisions that you have is just getting sharp getting practice on that messy yellow ground. Would you say that's a fair statement?

Paul Epstein 
100%, I think the separators are going to be the ones that can conquer and master their yellow lights, they've got awareness, okay, is my head on board? Or is my heart on board? What's my playbook for both. And that's really the color inside of the book is I try to lay out as many examples, personal and professional of both, so that we can learn from some of the better decision makers and action takers in the world. And yellow lights are hard. And if you're stuck, or you're challenged with a decision right now, I can almost bet on the fact that it's a yellow greens and reds are about awareness, you want more of one. And now that you're aware of reds, you're probably going to stop running them, you just never had a framework to attach to it. So now that you can say, Oh, no wonder I'm miserable. No wonder I'm not happy. No wonder I'm not fulfilled. No wonder I feel burned out or stuck or fatigued. You didn't get there overnight. You've just unconsciously been running red lights for months or years. And you ask yourself, How the hell did I get here? Well, now that I made you aware of red light, you're like, got it. But green and red. You don't even need the book, you need the book. And you people bring me in to talk all over the globe, so that I can help them with your yellow lights.

Ryan Miller 
Man, that's brilliant. So it really comes down to you said the magic F word, which is frameworks and frameworks I found to be supremely helpful. And what really in my opinion, just my opinion, though, a framework is just it's a function of you sitting down, usually, in my case, early 5am, right? Got your tea or coffee, whatever it is you want to do. And you just sit there and think in this scenario, how would I handle it? Okay, in this scenario, how will I handle it? And literally, I've built my own frameworks. Now, whether they're good or bad, this is how I've evolved myself as a leader is just anticipating different scenarios and building frameworks around it to say, look, when I'm sitting on the couch, for example, it's easy for me to judge a professional athlete, when I'm sitting on the couch, you're not on the field or in the rain, or whatever it is that you're doing getting married and getting pushed, and right, that's a different story. And so I'm pitching myself truly in the trenches as a leader and saying, if someone steals from me, if someone's disrespectful to a client, or another employee, or there's bullying or whatever it is, how am I going to handle that in a way am I going to blow up probably want to, but that's not acceptable if you're a leader that's different. So how will you handle that to get this thing back on track going in the right direction? And so building those frameworks I found supremely helpful. And Paul, you've provided a ton, but I'm not done with you yet, brother. So, you know, we mentioned is a one of I would say the calling card that you have is helping people turn their currency into their competitive advantage. So I love if we could just spend some time and really unpack whatever that means, and leave behind a competitive advantage for people from this principle that you love to teach. And I love to listen to so what can you say to our fans around the world? As far as building confidence?

Paul Epstein  
Yeah, I believe confidence is the greatest currency and and here's my belief about confidence. I've got two chapters of life, pre confidence and post confidence. Now pre confidence. I'm not saying that I lacked it, but I was inconsistent. One day, I felt confident the next day I didn't one week was a great week, the next week, I lacked confidence. And I think we've all have suffered through that and struggled through that. But now I can tell you with full humility and no ego, my confidence doesn't take any days off, it is now a competitive advantage because I have found my authentic sense of confidence and where it was born. And I want to share a framework to use one of your words, I want to share a framework with our entire making billions audience here in just a few minutes on how we can all become the most confident version of ourselves day in and day out. And it truly is not just a competitive advantage, I believe it can become a superpower. And so where my journey of confidence started was in the sports industry on the head of sales for the San Francisco 40 Niners back in 2016, almost 15 years into a high profile journey that you know now before the whole Jerry Maguire leap and everything else that I talked about from stage I'm running revenue, leading billion dollar campaigns come in fresh off of breaking in all time. Super Ball revenue records. So life is really good man. And I thought I was going to be in this industry. For the rest of my life, it was a dream come true. Get in a candy store type of experience. And I go to this retreat, and for the first time in my career, it was a timeout for self discovery. The purpose of the retreat was to tap into our why, and our core values. And I got so obsessed with the space of self discovery, I felt like a new person, even during the retreat, it wasn't even the morning after them know, in the moment, I said, this is a life changer. I've never felt this internal sensation of like, Man, I'm locked in. I'm aligned. I know who I am. I know what I stand for. I know how I need to show up. And I know that I haven't been showing up as that person every single day. But at least now I had values to attach my decisions and actions to and that was the space and eventually it leads to me being called the why coach inside of the 40, Niners I was coaching it to players, some of the football guys, HR says, Hey, do this for our onboarding employee. So I am the white coach of the San Francisco 40, Niners and eventually because that was a passion project outside of being a CRO, well, you know the story, I get more, I fall more in love with my passion project that my day job, and I take a Jerry Maguire leave. And now I've been writing books and hitting the stages ever since largely about how you we can have more purpose driven performance. And I believe that this authentic sense of confidence, because here's the reality, Ryan, there used to be two poles, I had a work Paul and a personal Paul. And after this retreat, I told myself, I could only live a life where I was one. And that was the big transformation for me coming out of this retreat. So here's how I want to pay this forward, I went through a process where it turns into a confidence formula. So this is a bit of a framework, and then I'm gonna give a process to our entire making billions community here. So the process was or the formula is confidence equals values times action, I'll repeat that confidence equals values times action, the multiplication is the consistency by which you do it. In other words, show me a person that takes consistent action on their values, I will show you a confident person, period point blank Same applies to teams Same applies to organization. So if you're leading an organization, show me an organization that takes consistent action on their values, I will show you a confident organization with a confident culture. It really is as simple as that. Not easy, but simple. And so here's how I coach this out using that formula. There's a two minute process. And we do it once a week. So time no matter how busy we are, cannot be an excuse. Here it is, you Journal, the following. For the week ahead, I will live my value of blank by blank. The first blank is a value that you hold near and dear to your heart. The second blank is an action that you connect to that value. And by the way, and I'm going to share a resource in just a bit with a common set of core values. So we'll talk about the confidence quiz in a bit, which is an amazing resource. With a report on the back end, I will show you the top 50 values, you choose one that resonates the most with you. If you don't even want to wait for that moment. Google common set of core values choose one word. So going back to the journal, here's what you're going to journal, I will live my value of blank by blank. The first is the value. The second is an action. Let me share two examples. Let's say after looking at a list of values, you choose the core value of joy. Cool. So I would sit down in my journaling chair, and I would say I will live my value of joy by cooking my favorite meal. Cool. aren't that great? For me? I'm throwing bacon in the pan, what are you doing whatever brings you joy. If cooking your favorite meal brings you joy, you do you Alright, so that's one example. Now let's raise the stakes a little bit. Let's get off the joy. Let's up level into courage. So the journal would be for the week ahead. I will live my value of courage by having that challenging conversation that I've been putting off, you're not having that conversation, because Paul said, you're having that conversation because courage is a core value. So that's exactly how the journaling process works. And here is the last caveat to how the journal will guarantee I will say this, it works 100% of the time with this one caveat. And the caveat is also why a lot of us suck at New Year's resolutions, myself included, I will tell you why we suck in New Year's resolutions. For one, we lack a process or a system. So if I had a journaling process for my resolutions, I promise you I would be better at them. So I've made that shift lately. But the other part and this is a little bit of human science, we don't stick with it long enough. In other words, it never becomes a habit. And if anything is done once or twice and ever becomes a habit then there's no permanent change. There's no transformation. And so why do it and that's why a lot is New Year's resolutions fail, no process, no system, and we never get past the threshold of habit formation. So the key here is what the science says habit formation will happen typically within a three to four week time period. So can system process consistency is some repetition of action. And within three to four weeks, it becomes internalized, it becomes muscle memory. It's a ritual. It's a habit. So how does that apply to the journal, you can guess it, if you did journaling, just one sit down for one week, I promise you no permanent change and no transformation, I promise you that, if you did it twice, you'd be lucky if you had permanent change or transformation. Once you get to that third week, all of a sudden, you're realizing I'm not just doing one or two actions a week, maybe now I'm doing three, four or five actions. But then here's how it works. Ryan, in the fourth week, as I've worked with 1000s of clients on this, the fourth week, you're doing eight 910 1112 actions connected to that one value, because now you've passed that threshold of habit formation. So you stick with one value for for journaling, sit down. So it's a 30 day process for journaling, sit downs, two minutes per sit down, it is less than a 10 minute time commitment for the next 30 days of your life. And you stick with one value. So if you chose joy, journal Joy four consecutive weeks, if you chose courage, journal courage, four consecutive weeks, if you choose growth, or belief or impact, whatever core value you choose, stick with it. And that's the process. And once you can take consistent action on that singular value, it's internalized, it's muscle memory. And on the other side is you at your most confident self, because confidence equals values times action, and this is the process for how to do it.

Ryan Miller
Wow, that is brilliant, you reminded me something if it's okay, I'll share a little thing that absolutely changed my life. And it's very similar to what you said. So there was a time I did this for 10 months, and there was one attribute, there was 10 attributes that I wanted to master. And I still remember what those are. And this my friend was like, 25 years ago, this is really where I started to start to come into your own skin. And yeah, be comfortable and start to really think of what kind of man and this can be anybody, what kind of person do I want to be? And so it was faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, kindness, godliness, charity, humility, and diligence. And so for one month, that is all I did, and I obsessed about cultivating these values of faith, hope, charity, right? kindness, all of these different things, and cultivating those values. And they all came to a head when I was in a former life as an executive, like you were both recovering executives now. But when we were in there, we, you know, they had an HR firm come in, and they wanted to write SOPs, and all of these things, there was a growing company, and they're doing wonderful things in their industry. And I was fortunate enough to be there as a CFO to help them get ready for a sale. And so that's the time you got to build systems and show the buyer that you know, you know what you're doing. And so they were systematizing the knowledge from the founders into the operations. And so this HR company came in and they said, Mr. Miller, we're really excited to talk to you, we've saved you for the last because all's we heard is everybody raved about you. And I was like, really, you just assume because you're an executive that people don't like, I'm being silly. But in they said that, and I thought, well, that's interesting. And so they asked me some questions. And I remember one guy leaning over to his colleague, and he said, Oh, he's definitely a level five leader, I had no idea what that meant. So I actually followed up because leadership, folks, you should take this very seriously, this can literally add value, this can add revenue, this can just enhance your experience in many others, all from the quality of your leadership. And that's not just in your job, folks. This is in your life. And so I followed up with this, this HR representative consultant in his office, and I said, What did you mean by a level five leader? I've never heard of that before? I don't know is this is this five out of five? Are this the worst or the best? Like help me understand, teach me, right. So humility. And he said, oh, a level five leader from his perspective is these are the kinds of leaders that are very rare, and I'm not beating on my chest. This is not about me, I'm just trying to illustrate a point that the power of what Paul is saying can do for you. These are the kind of people that when they're in the room, other people naturally follow them, not because of what you originally talked about rank roll title authority, they follow you because of who you are, and what you stand for. So that my friends, from professionals from Paul, for myself and anyone else that you talk to turning yourself into the kind of leader that is values based and not just because you say it out loud, but because you live it because you do exactly what Paul and I are telling you is saying you spend time you cultivate it, build those frameworks are not complicated. Do exactly what Paul said, have actions and values, combine those two and cultivate those things. And you can then eventually become that leader, not by title, but because if that's who you are, at your core, would you say that's a fair analysis?

Paul Epstein 
That was beautiful. Hell yes. Is the answer. To all of that.

Ryan Miller 
Awesome man. This has been wonderful conversation. I could talk about leadership all day long. It is a passion of mine as well. So I was so excited when we were able to have you come on the show and share your wisdom and knowledge with fans around the world is truly an honor and a privilege to have someone like you on the show. But before we before we let you go is there anything at all that you would like our fans around the world to know any any direction you want to point them to websites offers anything at all

Paul Epstein  
Absolutely, Well, we just came off, and I love your follow on to it. But if confidence is going to be the currency of not only how we make billions, but how we become the best version of ourselves, then what I'd love to do is share a free gift from my heart into the making billions community. And that is a confidence quiz. So all of this can be found on my website, Paul Epstein speaks.com. I'm sure we'll also have it in the show notes, but it Paul Epstein speaks.com, right there may nav bar, you'll see confidence quiz. And here's what to expect in less than five minutes, you will walk away with a confidence score of one to 100. It's awesome. And then on the back end, when you get your score, there is going to be the 12 keys for how you can not only build your confidence going forward, but sustain this unshakable sense of confidence. And one thing I want to impress upon everybody is regardless of how you walk away from that original score, maybe you're in the 90s, maybe you're ladies, maybe you're in the 60s, maybe you're in the 40s, unlike a lot of literature that's out there about confidence, a lot of it, I believe is false, because they take this black and white linear approach to confidence meaning, or a binary approach, I should say, you're either confident or you're not, it's black, or it's white, that my friends would be like a light switch, it's either on or it's off, I want to invite you to rethink your relationship with confidence, not as a light switch, but as a dimmer switch, a dimmer switch, where regardless if you're a 92, or an 84, or a 71, or a 49. That's your data point today, but just like a dimmer switch, how do you plus it up one plus two plus three plus four. And that's why it's not just the score of the quiz. It's what you do with the action plan and the resources that are provided to you after so all of this is at your fingertips, Paul Epstein speaks.com Take that confidence quiz. And also my values journal that I talked about earlier, in the action planning resource, it's going to be smack dab in the middle there. So that's just a gift from my heart to the entire making billions community,

Ryan Miller 
man, thank you, brother. That is amazing. So just to summarize everything that Paul and I talked about, learn to lead yourself first write don't don't assume that you have any god given authority just from rank, role or title, learn to be aware of whether you bring up or down the temperature in the room, keeping that daily scorecard was one of those key elements to help you along the way. But just make sure that you manage it properly. The other thing we talked about is decisions matter. And those decisions in that murky yellow area, those really, really matter. And finally, confidence is the currency in confidence equals values times action. So as you build these things, this will help you to build confidence to excel in your leadership, and help you arrive at your end destination in your pursuit of making billions.

Wow, what a show. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better. And make sure to come back for our next episode where we dive even deeper into the people the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends stay hungry. Focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of making billions