Ep. 50- Matt Manero: You Need More Money

Let's celebrate episode 50 and my 42nd birthday on July 4th! Recorded at the end of September 2019, Matt is one of the main motivations behind why I started my podcast.

We met a few years ago at my first ever business/entrepreneurship conference called Business Finishing School, spent a year in an accountability group together and has become a friend, mentor and inspiration.

Matt is the real deal, as you can hear how emotional he gets. He loves his family, his business and he loves helping people get more stability in their life through his book and his new business program with Judge Graham, Attack and Conquer Bootcamp.

We discuss:

• How entrepreneurship isn't for everyone
• Being an intrapreneur vs entrepreneur 
• How Matt and I met and were part of an accountability group together
• The psychological side behind Matt's "Torch" process that brought his company from  $100,000,000 in annual sales to $140,000,000 in less than two years
• Why investing in yourself can change your life
• Why consuming info from the greats will raise up your game
• Why you can't just say you are the expert but have to share the ways you are
• Why you need to create a Lifestyle By Design and start with the end in mind
• Why the $150k, $250k, $500k income lines are game changers
• Everyone needs to start broke
• Why you need to know your numbers in order to really win
• The importance of accumulation mode
• When other businesses attack your reputation
• What do to when your business gets stuck and double down
• How you know if you are in the right job/position or not
• His philosophy on being a successful husband and parent
• Why Matt and I preach core values, core values, core values
• How I created the " What's Your Dating Brand" and how I use core values with all my therapy and coaching clients
• "Core Values fix 90% of problems in running a business"
• Why you should create a "Stop Tolerating" list
• "The Universe will take care of those who have clarity"

Matt launched his first company, Commercial Fleet Financing, Inc. (CFF), in 1995  and fast forward 23 years and CFF, has funded over $1 billion in transportation equipment with annual business of $150,000,000+. Matt is a sought after speaker and has a highly popular podcast aptly named, YOU NEED MORE MONEY. He is happily married to his wife of 19 years, Rokki, and they have 3 amazing boys.

His book, You Need More Money is a must buy so click here to get it: https://amzn.to/3ceFzcB

Matt’s “TORCH” TEDX talk:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zon5sauXqQ

Learn more about Business Finishing School, the program Jason is a Certified Coach through: http://bit.ly/2UYGjKx

Full video here: https://youtu.be/tO6p1fuKTDw

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the you winning life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship. So you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro emotional technique practitioner and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Watser.

Speaker 2: 0:36

So I'm sitting today in Dallas, Texas inside the production studio of my friend mentor and past accountability partner, Matt Minera in 1995. He launched commercial fleet financing from his apartment with a folding table and a phone, and has now funded over$1 billion in transportation equipment because of this, he and his company has been recognized by inc 5,000 as one of America's fastest growing private companies. As a sought after speaker. Matt has collaborated with business development programs, such as business finishing school, where we first met coach Burt's monster producer program where he co-leads the founders intensive. And most recently created the attacking conquered bootcamp with judge Graham. He is the author of the books, the grit, and you need more money and has influenced thousands through his Facebook lives podcast, YouTube channel, where he brings raw and practical knowledge to the table from the expertise of his and his guests experiences. Matt, other major proud accomplishment is being the husband to Rocky and their three boys, John Jack, and Julian, the Jews, the Jews who I've had the pleasure to meet over the past few years. And Matt, it's an honor to be able to share this time with you tonight. So great to have you. Thanks for putting it together. It's just a pleasure to have awesome. So outside of everything that you've shared on your podcasts and your Facebook lives, which I'm gonna make a strong referral for everybody out there to make sure they download before we even get started, um, going from working, you know, for yourself has a backstory high school college, what was that like? How did you know a, where did you want to go to for school? What did you want to do at that point? And then the transition from college working and then coming here? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I guess everybody has their own interpretation of what was good or what was bad. Um, there were a lot of things that were wonderful about my upbringing and there are a lot of things that were terrible about it, but, um, you know, I was a very good high school football player was going to go on to play college football, for sure. Uh, got hurt. My senior year was a bit pretty bad neck injury, and that was the end of it. Um, and so I literally applied to one college. I was working in a restaurant as in, through high school and I applied to a cooking school and that was the only school I got into. So that's where I went.

Speaker 3: 3:00

My mother drove me up to the school and dropped me off. And, um, you know, I met some truly incredible friends, lifelong friends there, but my mother used to say the place called Johnson and Wales, and my mother used to say, you're Johnson. Rose was the perfect place for you. And I would agree with her until really the last three or four or five years where we're now I actually fight back and say, you're wrong, mom. It was actually the wrong place for me. It didn't, it didn't push me. Didn't challenge me. It was just a place where, you know, I could be, um, I could be average and be better than most of the other people there. And you know, that's really not the place you want. And if you look at what's going on with my oldest, you can see the exact opposite stance that we're taking, right. Which is, you know, and I just had a guy from the air force Academy. My son's going to the West point, but I had a guy from, from the air force Academy, uh, talking the other day. And he told me this amazing. And he said, he said, you know what happens at the academies? He says, you have a choice, the choices to be elite or the elite of the elite. I said, what do you mean? He said, everybody who goes to the academies is elite. Every kid, whether it's air force or Navy or army, they're all captains of their football teams. And on the student council, president and honor society and all district, every one of them is he says, the difference is, will you be elite of the elite? And he said, there's one way that we define it. I said, what is it? I gotta tell Johnny boy. And he said, it's when you finish the obstacle course, the elite will rest and look at their times and go quiet. And he says the elite of the elite go back into the obstacle course and help the other kids. He says, that's the difference between elite and the elite of the elite. And so maybe it's a long way of answering the question, but, you know, I always knew I had potential man, but for most of my life, I just didn't even touch it.

Speaker 2: 5:20

Yeah. And this is, I think the main theme of what I'm trying to accomplish with the podcast, which is this idea of winning life, of reaching potential, finding purpose, and how I, as a therapist, can help people do that when my own background, my own backstory of living and what you know is like that 1.8 GPA high school students, right. Which is crazy. And I was watching Jesse Itzler and my lead interview. The other, I don't know if he saw this one and they're talking about their SATs. It's pretty bad. Right? So I put a lot of work into that one, but there's a lot of cancer. My life, my parents were going through divorce. I was a scholarship kid at this really awesome private school, but there was no internal belief in me, even though teachers would say, you have this capability. Sure. You're smart. You haven't, you just apply yourself. I heard, no, I didn't care. I wasn't a bad kid to the other kids like you too. Yeah. It was feeling like I was social, very involved socially in school and this awesome. You saw on the outside, you know, everything was going good. But on the inside, you were, you were just, you were falling apart in a mess. Wondering, who am I, where am I going? Right. And then all the family stuff and the family trauma. Um, I think everything has worked out years later, but not knowing what the heck I was gonna do. And even though I had some really good influential people in my life, it wasn't like, where, where are you going? It's like, here's what you could do next. But it wasn't this big, long thing. And the people I was around where they were about giving back, they're not like knowing what they wanted to do and giving back, but no one really had that roadmap. The way that who was, who was one of those influential. So one of the people, um, but actually mentioned in my first podcast, wasn't one of my youth directors when my synagogue and Joel, and we're still very close to me. And when things were really tough with my family, but emotionally, financially, he just created space for me to show up every day after school here, we need this to be done. Hey, we need this to be done. And we're going to give you a credit towards events and conferences and retreats where everything that we went to from a local thing in South Florida to a conference in Jacksonville, we're going to international conference in Toronto. My senior year of high school was all covered. And no one really was looking out for me in that way, except for the people in my spiritual community, which had such a profound impact. And one of my youth directors from another synagogue gave him a down a one week. And we were sitting with Dan and my senior. He's like, all right, so what's the deal? Where do you go? And where are you going? And at that point, I think I was rejected for my first choice school, um, which was university of central Florida. And at that time, it wasn't UCF that it is today with the sports and everything. It was like, if you don't get into UCLA with my 1.8 GPA, and he's like, why don't you go to Israel and study in a Yeshiva under like a pre rabbinical type program and even think about it. Like it was not even anywhere on my radar and like, yeah, I'm into Judaism, I'm into my community. But I never thought about like actually going and going abroad and going spending a year in Israel. And then I'm like, Oh, am I gonna pay for it? How am I going to do all these things? And then all of a sudden, this whole nother round of like people helping, helping out to help give a little bit here a little bit there. And all of a sudden things were showing up off, you went so off. I went and I spent two years and I was incredible with the$3,000 I had in the bank, maybe bar mitzvah money. Right. And, um, started learning, experiencing like values. Not that I didn't have them in my family and my community, but just on a different level of people living a lifestyle that they were committed to based on values. And even though it wasn't always everything that I wanted to buy into, but I saw a lot from that point. And I started seeing like, wow, I can, I can do stuff. I can. I started connecting and started teaching. I started sharing ideas and thoughts, um, came back to America, um, and then started working at different synagogues and um, youth group stuff. And then seeing that it's now slowly plugging into place. And then I started talking to my students and these youth group kids and like, I'm kind of doing therapy. And then that was the next step. After working at Princeton university, where I went to graduate school, I was like, I'm doing therapy. This will get paid like a therapist instead of like a nonprofit.

Speaker 3: 9:21

Well, I mean, can we all agree that the, what we learned in school has really very little bearing on what we're going to end up really doing in real life. It's so irrelevant.

Speaker 2: 9:28

Yeah. And that's a lot, but I'm bringing to the table today with my clients of whatever that purpose is. You may not get it in school, at least high school, at least in high school college, depending on what program you're going to. My cousin, um, is going through some stuff like this now. And he has his bachelor's and you're thinking about he was doing a master's in CPA and he dropped out. And because he wasn't finding that purpose and what he can do. And now he's trying to create a program with a buddy of his, um, to do leadership and to do self esteem stuff, and he's loving it. And I'm like, but you know, you could do that as an accountant and help people in their businesses and build self esteem, but they don't teach that in school. So I think that idea of like needing to have people like these things in our life support.

Speaker 3: 10:12

Well, there's lots of fact there too, because kind of what you're saying is, which is great advice, and everybody wants to do this is it has to be something completely different than that. And, you know, I mean, we're, we're a perfect example here at commercial fleet where there's not a customer that comes into this office to sign contracts on a new piece of equipment that hasn't watched some of our videos, which are motivational, hopefully, and mindset based and business strategy and stuff like that. So it doesn't have to be this right hand turn. It actually should just always fall under the core umbrella. And in your example of the account, I mean, somebody got paid a bills, right? So it being a great accountant who helps customers build better businesses by fixing self esteem. And that sort of stuff is makes you a better account. Right.

Speaker 2: 10:57

But they're not teaching that out there. And I think that's what our community of entrepreneurs are doing is seeing the other side of the corny and how you can actually do your core business, but also bring extra value.

Speaker 3: 11:07

Yeah. But there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of misinformation in that to do entrepreneurship is a very hard road, as you know, uh, it's an extremely difficult road that most people should not go down, that accountants should stay in account and try to do some of this other stuff on the side. I know a guy, in fact, he's an accountant who stopped being an accountant altogether to go, you know, build out these coaching seminars and all this sort of stuff. I'm like, I don't get it, but why couldn't it be both? Why, why do you have to stop the ramjet over here? Put the pressure on the, on the new business. Right.

Speaker 2: 11:39

That's great. How do people know if they should be intrepreneurial working in the business, you're working on this idea, right. Being the entrepreneur versus knowing if you're an entrepreneur. So how would you define that and how would you help people to really check themselves to know which one, well, how

Speaker 3: 11:54

Good are you as an entrepreneur? I mean, if you're, you know, in the bottom 20% of the Salesforce, and now you're going to go into business for yourself in which you're going to be the director of sales, probably not a good idea, but if you're the number one salesperson in that organization and you have mastery over the content and it just comes down to trading dollars, maybe you should. The downside is what most people don't realize is that, you know, like in our office, our top guys are highly compensated and let's just, I'll just take one guy. As an example, he makes 50% commission. It's a massive commission in our industry. Well, that's a 50% profit margin for him. If he goes into business for himself, he'll be lucky to have a 20% profit margin. So most people never think about that. In fact, what they think about is not the 50% go to them, but the 50% that's going to the boss, but wait a minute, the boss planned for the office and he's paying for marketing and accounting and human resources and it, and health insurance and taxes and franchise tax and litigation and reserve accounts. And when, you know, the AC breaks, all that sort of stuff, but you're still getting your 50% margin, right? It's, it's just entrepreneurship is just not what it's cracked up to be on social media to do it. And I cannot preach that enough

Speaker 2: 13:08

Hashtag grind and hashtag hustle. It's bullshit. Well, that ties back into your most recent process, right? So when we met a few years ago through business finishing school, you were going through this whole torch process, which people can find that whole video on how you torched your business. And I really, um, and they can go check that out. The psychological side, the behind the scenes side, that not everybody sees what was going on in your life before that, to what's going on into life now and that transition. And what's, what's that done for you? What's that done for your family? What's that done for your health and for your soul?

Speaker 3: 13:42

It's hard to believe what it did, but what we're talking about here is business finishing school, something that you and I went to, how did you get to business finish?

Speaker 2: 13:51

I had a buddy of mine. Who's a chiropractor, um, through my neuro emotional technique community who for about a year and a half, two years said, Jason, you gotta go to this thing. What is it? It's a business like, okay, but I'm a therapist. I'm not in business. Right. Which is such a crazy cause they don't teach us to do business. They taught us to do therapy, going back to original points for about a year and a half. Every time I would see him. Jason, you got the best thing in Dallas, this business finishing school. And I had such anxiety. I'm a therapist, I'm a healer, I'm a connector. I'm not an entrepreneur. That's for the rest of my family, who we have as, you know, a third, a third generation family furniture business. And I chose not to go down that path. And so if I do that, I like that. I also like the Mayan. They're doing that. Am I, am I, or am I salesmen? Because growing up in South Florida, it's kind of like being the scholarship kid, being the kid who grew up with my friends who were getting the range rovers at 16 years old. And I was the kid who wanted not the kid who had, um, I saw that world as a very psychologically challenging role for me of, you're not going to be a nice guy. You're not going to be a good person. I'm more. And that's what I grew up in South Florida. Even though there are people out there that are good people in our charitable and live with core values, but there was something unconsciously that helped me. So finally, he's like, I'm giving him, I guess he had the discount ticket. And I'm like, wow. Was that thousand bucks for the weekend? That's a lot of money for me as a, as a small business owner, making whatever I was making at the time and threw it down on the credit. That's also as scary as her and I sit down next to you and we start talking and I'm still freaking out. I'm like taking notes on everything. My heart's pounding.

Speaker 3: 15:44

No, it was also cool. But I've been holding out on two years. This guy has been right. Where is this? Where does this content come from? It was mind blowing for me too. I just never experienced anything like it. And I raised my hand too. I said, I'll, I'll take it. I'm in. Right. And we both signed up, put us in the accountability group. You knew Rick longer at that point, Rick, similar to your friend had been after me for years to come. Just begging me, come to my business finishes.[inaudible] good. I'm good. I'm good. Let me say dude, you know,

Speaker 2: 16:14

Good. I said, no, man, I'm fine.

Speaker 3: 16:17

I love this man. I said, dude, you're a mess. You're sweating through your shirt. Look at yourself. You're like, you're, you're insane. And I was, but that was normal. I didn't know. There was something on the other side. That's a huge takeaway for somebody today that, you know, don't, don't look at where you are as, um, as normal or appropriate or acceptable. This. Be open to thinking that there could be another way to live and uh, then go model a few people and try to go get tastes that because if somebody told me that in just a couple of years, we could be on this side of a business experience versus what I was for 18 years. On the other side, I would not have believed them. I didn't know this world in business existed.

Speaker 2: 17:15

So for people who don't know, you haven't heard some of your stories. What was that life like pre and what's it like now specifically, right? I know health has changed for you. Family time has changed for you. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 17:28

And the environment here has changed too. I mean, I started a company for nothing 1995. I was 25 sort of equipment, finance company financing, uh, trucks, trailers, equipment, very blue collar customers, trucking towing, construction, moving. Those are our primary industries that we work in, started from nothing. And um, the first 10 years were terrible. Like, I mean, as bad as you could imagine. Look, I tell, I was just saying this the other day to somebody, we had a company picnic and they were asking me, you know, tell us the story of the early days. And I said, all right, I'll tell you a story about the early days. Because my COO recently said stop telling stories about the early days. It doesn't, it doesn't impress anybody anymore. She says, you're better than that. It dates you. She's like what I think you should do is talk about the present and the future only stop talking about the past. So I, you know, by the way you want people to hold you accountable like that. Right. Um, anyway, I said, I'll tell you a story. So one day I came into the office and we, we had an office in the hood and I thought it was the Taj mall. I remember buying a house and walking through, not buying them. We ended up buying the house, but we were walking through with the realtor and she said, you know, you guys could really fix up this kitchen. You could put granite countertops here. And I remember saying what a granite countertop would know. You know, they even know, I mean, who was teaching, who was showing you this other side? I didn't even know what she was talking about. Anyway, I told the story that I came into the office in the hood one day and someone had literally driven a car through the front of the office. It was glass like a picture, like a, uh, retail strip mall. And uh, literally papers were blowing in the wind and they stole all the computers and everything. And I remember calling the landlord and saying, Hey buddy, you got to come out and fix this glass. And he said, Hey buddy, you better read your lease. We covered to the glass. You cover from the glass to the inside. So I had to come up with the money to fix the glass. And then I came up with this amazing idea. I said, you know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go to the hardware store and one of my black electrical tape, and I'm going to run electrical tape down the glass and make it look like there's bars on the windows. So if a guy tries to Ram his car through this office, he'll say I better not do it because it's going to bars on it. Never even dawned on me that the new hire that might be interviewing would be like, Oh, wait, it's obviously got bars on it. Or that the employees would say, I work for a lunatic that just put tape on the window to make it look

Speaker 4: 20:03

Okay. If that gives you

Speaker 3: 20:05

Any insight onto how desperate I was

Speaker 4: 20:12

In

Speaker 3: 20:14

Trying to survive. I don't know another story that could tell it. I mean, nobody showing me not one person came in and said, what the hell are you doing? Not even an enemy came in and you were married for how long at that moment? Oh, well the rock and I got married in 99. So that was like 97, 98 ish. I don't even think Rocky. Uh, and I were together in that office. It was, it was pre, it was pre that I started the company before I even knew. Um, so I was two years into the business before Rocky and I even met four years into the business when we got married, but she dealt with them. I believe me, that there was still plenty of tough times, but, uh, um, you know, interestingly enough, I think a lot of those insane stories and mindset stuff, um, make for really good content. And relate-ability now, um, in, in building a personal brand and now moving also into the attacking conquer bootcamp series. So I mean, uh, I think there's a lot of people that have never seen that level of

Speaker 2: 21:24

With darkness and to get out of that, to be where you're at now. What's, what's it feel like?

Speaker 3: 21:34

Yeah, man, it's, it feels like I should have done it sooner. That's a dumb seriously. It's not like I go back to all of are the good old days and relish and I go back there now. I mean, I'm pissed. I'm pissed that I didn't do it sooner. And I'm also pissed that nobody jumped in to help me. And that's unfair too. Cause there may have been some people, but you know, when you're that, when you're that desperate buddy, you're not even seeing the teacher. Right. What's that old saying the teacher is always there, but is the student

Speaker 2: 22:00

That's the show up? Yeah. Yeah. You just, you believe it when you're so consumed. Right.

Speaker 3: 22:05

Survival. You, you don't even, you just start shutting down and you don't even realize it that you're shutting down. You're shutting down emotionally. You're shut down with courage. You're shutting down with, with, with ambition and you just begin to get, you just begin to get satisfied with this crappy existence that you have. And then you actually begin to justify that it's not so crappy. I used to bring banks to that office and like put breakfast out for them and show the office off. I mean, it was outrageous. It was so twisted. I look back at only say, you know, I promise that no matter who I come in contact with, if I see that happening in their existence, I will be the person that challenges them to do more and to not be acceptance with that.

Speaker 2: 22:57

What are some of the rebuttals that you're getting? So, cause I know there's been people in my life who I've been, but I'm not at the level where I would have that much of a massive influence, um, when it comes to the business side. But the mindset side is what I'm perfecting. And I've invited people to come to programs like this. And one of my buddies who started his own private practice in a specific field. So I'm going to tough through my first year and I'm going to reach them, funds him. He's now one a business and working for someone else within six months. And I'm like, okay, well, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you do this? He's like, I don't know, a thousand bucks or 800 bucks a week and it's too much. How do you get people to learn how to invest in themselves? Cause I find it even in therapy at a certain price point per hour, shoot, we're still afraid to do that. People

Speaker 3: 23:46

Haven't morphed into the new economy, buddy. I mean, listen, you can't start a landscaping business anymore. You're not going to go ahead and make hamburgers. And you're not going to make coffee for$3 and compete with Starbucks. It's over most platforms that 20 years ago had a chance through grit and toughness and just stick to it illness. They don't create the same opportunity. And what we'd like to say to attack and conquer bootcamps is, you know, you got to learn how to play chess cause checkers ain't going to make any money anymore. Checkers in most industries has expired. People think that all these listen, they look at Slack, they look at Instagram, they look at all these amazing valuations that are being created on these relatively young companies. And they say, Oh, that's like a Steve jobs. Or you know, a bill Gates, that's an Apple or Microsoft story. No, it's not. That story started in Silicon Valley funded from day one from venture capital funds, with the smartest people in the room, beta testing, everything, testing the marketplace for how much can we charge? What is the product offering has to be? And then it launched it. Wasn't these guys in the garage. You don't hear those stories anymore. Buddy of this guy was a rags to riches, started from the garage. The big hits are ones that started in incubators. And so people need to understand that, that the platforms that we are in matter, the platform is the business that you're choosing to go into is vital because the minute you stop being a solo production and begin to hire that first person, your margins and the complexity of everything.

Speaker 2: 25:24

So taking it back from that, and I'm sure we'll jump back into that topic, but I know one of the things of massive importance to you while you were building this business was being able to be with your family and being a husband, being a dad. And I know, you know, one of the times in our conversations, you've talked about this chip on your shoulder, right. And using that as motivation. So what are some of those challenges? What are some of those changes that you've seen in yourself starting off as this guy, before you met your wife, becoming a dad, creating another baby, this business that has helped you overcome lessons, what's helped you overcome, what's helped you achieve what are the resources, what's the work that you've done to become the guy that you've become today that we're getting to now

Speaker 3: 26:10

I had a friend of mine asked me a similar question, not too long ago, over dinner. I've watched him grow and succeed and he's, he was saying the same thing. It's like, I just don't have that same chip on my shoulder. And I'm like, well, because you're doing good. You know? And then that's, that's why. And I think a lot of that does go away when you start to hit a certain level of achievement. That hate for me, it was hate, absolute, just hate towards a lot of things that a lot of people, um, I think age has something to do with it. And then I also think there is a, um, there is a validation and that validation isn't just necessarily from money. It's also just from, you know, you're inside, which you were talking about earlier about, you know, how do you, how do you connect to the soul? You know, your potential starts to feel good. It goes from the uphill climb to the, to the top of the mountain, to the next mountain. It just, you just want more of them. And so, you know, you sort of start out the doubt and you replace it with confidence again. Um, at least I hope that's how it works for most people. And I think that's how it worked for me. I'm just, I just don't have those self esteem issues that I used to have. I just, I sort of figured out, but by the way, I'm 50. And I think this year is when it fired on all cylinders. So, you know, that's 50 years of a lot of headshots. And so what are some of the things you're actually doing differently for sure. It's physical fitness. Okay. You know, I had a trainer who talked about what he called integrity, wait it's until your body connects to the strength in your mind, you will be out of integrity and you'll be fighting against it the entire time. And isn't it true? You see someone who's grossly overweight and you just know that they can't feel good about themselves and no matter how the brain wants to cloud it, the body doesn't do what the brain wants it to do. So fitness is one for sure, the ability to feed into other people, right? The ability to give the same opportunity that I created for myself to other people, incredibly powerful to give management, uh, like our management team runs this place now. Right. And to watch them begin to thrive and challenge themselves and even watch them break under pressure at times and be able to remind them it's going to be okay without being the jerk. Like I used to be, which is what are you complaining about? You want to know? Did I not tell you that story? Right?[inaudible] I don't want to hear that sort of stuff. They just want, they want somebody to say it's going to be okay. It wants somebody to say that the breaking point is just short term and those are powerful moments, man. I like to refer to that as the magic of entrepreneurship, because entrepreneurship is incredibly powerful when it's done properly. It's it's unbelievably powerful.

Speaker 4: 28:57

And uh,

Speaker 3: 28:58

It's just, it's one of the greatest things of being an entrepreneur, which is the ability to help other people do things they never thought they could do. That's awesome. So is that the difference or the shift between owning

Speaker 4: 29:14

The company and leading a company? Well, look, you know, that's a,

Speaker 3: 29:21

And the company never is the same as leading a company. You always have the ultimate threat goes to the owner. What's the threat regulation changes. Two planes had skyscrapers, the economy stalls, um, fraud, harassment, right? I mean

Speaker 4: 29:42

The leader of the company might be to blame for the it guy flirting inappropriately with a receptionist, but the owner pays for it. Right? So that's a big problem in ownership. It's just the cross that we bear as the owner. And some people can't deal with that. I happen to love it. It doesn't trouble me at all. It's the risk return for me. I dig it. So people are risks. That person shouldn't be going into that stance. They're better off working for someone else. They're going to be management or they're better being a nine to five or I think that's fair. I do. I think that, I think if, if, if, if, if you don't like being in the deep end and kicking hard and relishing that not being paralyzed by the fear to get to the side of the pool, but you actually can calm yourself down. And that the greatest, the greatest get call in the, in the, in the darkest moments despair of, of the abyss is, you know, um, comfortable for the grades. So I want to shift a little bit to investing in yourself. Right? You talked about working now, you've talked about spending more time with family, your role changing here in this company. I remember one of the stories that you, you told us. I think when you first started out, you would go to a disused bookstore and you would pick up the audio cassettes. Right? So I did go to half price books, Aaron Dallas, and then I would go to the clearance rack at half price book. And I would buy, you know, um, Brian Tracy's, um, how to sell like a master for 99 cents. Cause for me that was college courses, dude, that was like, that was all I wanted to learn. And you know, to get it for 99 cents was incredible. And then what I learned is if the, if the program was multiple cassettes, nobody ever, and I bought hundreds of them, no one ever went past the first cassette. Most of them were halfway done. And those were just incredibly for a competitive person. You know what I'm talking about? Those were just like, those are like, Oh man, I'm going to beat. I'm going to beat the guy, whoever who owned this one, just by listening to the second one. And then I would get consumed by dude. There were multiple times, right? I'm saying this, somebody not too long to where like I would be in a frenzy to find my tape for the day. What is, what am I going to listen to this morning on the way in? And the way up I would sit in the car, dude, I would listen to them over and over and over and over like freakish. Is it crazy to now realize you're the guy people are now listening to you? And I know I've told you a few stories about some of my clients and I've turned onto your stuff. And one of them, you getting really awesome shout out for their wedding six months ago. And one of my other clients has really just been like obsessed with, with doing this because he works in a really awesome company, has been trying to take leadership roles, everything that you talked about in your book, um, and then creating value in that, asking

Speaker 2: 32:40

For more, what's it like to go from that point to now be the person who's leading workshops. Who's leading seminars who has this really incredible book and this really incredible platform has that ever like the realization of that, that you were the guy in the car going to buy the 99 cent books and now you're like, I eat him.

Speaker 3: 32:58

No, it doesn't. I don't, I don't even look at it that way. I mean, uh, yeah, but you know, we have a mutual friend and Hank Norman and, you know, Hey, Norman says the hardest part for the expert is to realize that you can unpack your expertise. Right. And, and he actually goes to further now pushes people out of purpose that you have to, it's not good to just be the expert. You got to tell me how you got to share it. Um, so it's pretty cool in that regard, but it's always bizarre when you see somebody and you know, you think they're being weird and standoffish and you can't quite free. Like what kinda like me or something like that. And the only reason is you realize they're huge fans of your book and your podcast, and they don't know how to approach you. I mean, it's just a bizarre thing and that certainly doesn't happen often. But when it does, it's, it's, it's bizarre. But, um, but it's cool at the same time. But, uh, my life was never meant for that. My life was to provide for my family and to reach, uh, reach a version of my potential, which I still think I haven't even come close to them.

Speaker 2: 34:03

So that takes us to this lifestyle by design, which, which both, I know you're, you're, you're a big proponent of that. And I share that a lot with my clients. Um, so what does it specifically mean to you and how can everybody who's listening out there? Apply that to life?

Speaker 3: 34:19

Yeah. I mean, people should start with the end in mind and then what does it, how does it, how do you want it to finish? What's it supposed to look like? Where does it, does it, does it finish on the beach or does it finish in the mountains? Right? Does it, where does it finish on Friday and Saturday nights and with who does it finish with and how do you get there? And when you get there, is it steak? Is it lobster? Is it salad? Is it, is it a$9 buffet? I mean, what is it? Because the one thing that happens, my friend is it finishes. And why can't you reverse engineer that, why can't you live backwards to figure out how to get, how it finishes? The one variable we don't know is whether we have time to get there, right? But to me, the way you build out your life site design is by designing it from the end backwards. If you remember business finishing school was that video. We did. What if you could relive, what if you could see your life, the way that ends. Right? Um, and that helps me. And I think it helps a lot of other people, too huge component of the, of the bootcamp, where we build out a person's end game, literally how much money do you want to make? And then we go and we put them through the exercise and we just did this in our September event. Guy says, I want to make a million bucks a year. Awesome. Which profit margin, 20% super. Let me go and do it. It was six point million bucks. We're gonna take 37% of taxes out. You're gonna be left with dah. That leaves you with a million bucks. Now let's go further to get to the million, which your average sale,$3,000. Great. Now we're gonna figure out how many of those sales we have to make them. We're going to go step further and figure out which close rate. Well, and we came out in that situation that his sales team needs to be making 50 calls a day, quoting 20 transactions to sell enough, to get to the revenue of 6.3 million, to pay the tax bill at 20% margin to get him a million bucks. And I said to the group, these are pretty sharp guys. I said, how many people in this room have done this? And one guy raised his hand. He says, I do it at every stoplight. I said, well, what about the other 19 yet? No, I've never done that. I'm like, but then how did you ever think you were going to get to a million?

Speaker 2: 36:21

It's amazing. Cause I do this with my clients, like relationships or goal planning, whatever it may be. And that way we're always trying to solve it from where we are now looking forward, as opposed to, well, let's do that reverse engineer. And that phrase, reverse engineer kind of has been like water down over these years and then made cliche. But I really do believe like you do that. This is the only way to get somewhere. And I know that you have this very controversial, uh, viewpoint of the dollar amount. It's happily controversial. It's lifesaving controversial because people aren't talking about this. And um, I know when we were last together at, uh, Evan Stewart's obsess conference, like you put it out there, right? And um, this is something that you stand by. So what is that?

Speaker 3: 37:05

The publisher of union more money took it out. They, I think this is what you're referencing. They took it out. They said it will alienate the American public. If I put that in there said, all right, you guys paid me the advance. Okay. So bid. But every time I speak, I, it actually was beautiful. Cause I say, you guys get a piece of information. And the publisher said the American economy with it right here, right? Life begins at 150 grand a year. Life gets better at two 50 and life gets good at 500. And you can test those numbers with anybody you want. And the only person that tells you those numbers are not accurate or someone who's not making those numbers. Every single person knows at one 50, maybe the spouse doesn't have to work anymore. At two 50, the trips can start and maybe some niceties and at 500, you begin to say, I'm cooking with gas. The thing that happens at 500 is you begin to say, I see a million. And the thing that happens in a million is you begin to say, I can see three. And when you get to three, you start to say, I'm good. Or I'm going to turn into a psychopath and I'm going to go get real rich. That's the way it plays out for the winners. And you only get to those numbers if you're a winner, but people also have to

Speaker 2: 38:21

Start off at making what these 70

Speaker 3: 38:24

Year, right? 1996, the revenue of this company was$46,000,$46,000. So everybody starts from someplace. But why wouldn't you? Uh, I mean, that's never to be afraid of. Everybody's gotta start broke, man. The starting broke is awesome. There's no challenges with it. It's just staying in. It sucks. Right? And for me, we were broke for a decade and that's just the price we had to pay. And I regret that we should have done it faster.

Speaker 2: 38:53

So with the mindset of the economy can go either direction in 2009.

Speaker 3: 39:01

No it won't. Cause you're looking at the national economy. You just need to look at your economy. Your economy will not be affected by anything. That's a massive marketplace that there's 3.5 million truckers in the United States. If half of them went away, there's 1 million, 750 truckers guys. I need 3000. That's it? The only economy I need is 3000 truckers to finance a truck with us. So if it's harder, so be it. If it's easier. So be it. But you know your numbers, I gotta have 3000 truckers by a truck, but there's 1.7, 5 million chances in trucking. But what about in towing and what about and moving and what about in construction? Oh, forget those four. They all went out of it. Okay. We'll go after landscaping companies or we'll go after plumbers and we'll go after electricians. So you've got to find a way to win man.

Speaker 2: 39:50

So where does the accumulation mode idea come in with all this? Oh, then what do you do?

Speaker 3: 39:56

You got to stack and rack the cash because without, without accumulating cash, most entrepreneurs finish broke most small businesses. My friend finished the way they were started. It's what we were talking about earlier that no man's land and, um, very difficult to get through no man's land. It's it's, you know, when you go from, um, let's just say 5 million in revenue to try to get to 50 million in revenue. That, that, that range is no man's land. And if you're doing it at 10% growth rates, it's going to take you way too long and you won't survive it. You need to start cranking again and get from 5 million to 10 from 10 to 20, from 20 to 50. And then, you know, if you can feel reasonably okay, that it's going to last forever. I mean, would you say that your family feels as though the furniture business still has a chance to go out of business for now?

Speaker 2: 40:51

I think they're seeing with what they're putting into play exponential growth and the reputation that they have is really, really sound and really high quality. So it's funny that there's other companies out there that are trying to sabotage

Speaker 3: 41:06

Sure. Locally market leader, Mark,

Speaker 2: 41:08

Right. As the market leader, as people who, cause they're not being able to get the relationship that they're going to get with my family, that I've been getting some regular company and they know that there's exponential growth in that cause everybody always needs for them.

Speaker 3: 41:22

So there's really two segments. There's the people that I can go to rooms to go

Speaker 2: 41:25

Right here. And then there's going to people who are gonna want handcrafted American and Italian higher quality, because feel the value in that. So I guess I wonder if it is a value versus a money thing, which I know, you know,

Speaker 3: 41:39

Trying to get to is when do you get to have confidence in your business? Yes. Because, and the only way you get confidence in your business is not through the grind and the hustle and through motivation, it's through the structure and the roadmap. You have faith that if we do this, if we block and tackle, if we chop wood, we will eat. And that, that, that applies in any type of economic situation. Most people get caught up in the excuses of it's, you know, this could happen or that could I, what's the word we're going from 5,000 square feet to 13,000 square feet in what we know will be a slowing economy. There's no question we're in it right now.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Um, so what to hear

Speaker 3: 42:15

Huge world out there. Let's go get it. Let's go, let's go play our game. Let's go fight our fight. You know?

Speaker 2: 42:21

So what about the other companies out there as someone who started their business there, they got to a certain level. They're putting things into place and it's just not right. Yeah. At what point do you know or how would they know? What would they need to do to double down versus saying, I gotta take my losses and try a different verdict.

Speaker 3: 42:38

Yeah. It's the ultimate question, right? I mean, it goes back to this platform piece. How do I know that it's worth my time and my effort to double down because sooner or later you get massive pressure at home where he or she starts telling you, listen, you know, I had the pain, where's the gain. You promise me, baby. You told me it was going to be worth it. Right. Well, I ain't seeing it and I'm not seeing it year after year after year, it's terribly terribly debilitating. But you have to know that someone in the, in the platform that you're in is killing it and you must model that person. So if you can't pick someone in the therapy business, who's just kicking butt and taking names and you can get to them to figure out what their process is. That's a big problem. If you're in a business, that's a dying business value was used the printing business. I mean really? When was the last time you print? Who prints anything anymore? Right? I mean, we printed this paper, but like I'm talking custom stuff. I mean, yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:35

We're only going to one or two places. Why, why, why?

Speaker 3: 43:37

But I go to the guy on the corner. If the guy on the corner wasn't as good as instant prints.

Speaker 2: 43:43

So what's the challenge for that guy on the corner. It's terribly challenging for him.

Speaker 3: 43:48

He has to reinvent. He's got to figure it out. He's got a model Insta prints, but wait a minute, I don't have the money. I can't reinvest. I can't be an instant Prince. Then you have to figure out what is instant prints, not doing great that you could start to do great. But if you can't figure that formula out, dude, you've got to close up shop because otherwise you breathe in freedoms for another 20 years if

Speaker 2: 44:09

You're luck. So before we were talking about that same process, when it comes to relationships, right? How does someone know that they're in an abusive relationship? How do they know if this is what they're used to? This is what they're trained to be. How do they get out of that?

Speaker 3: 44:22

Oh, you go, I want to be married forever. I'm Ray. Then we should be talking to people. Who've been married 70 and a half years. By the way we act Rocky. And I have that in world. Her grandparents were married 70 and a half years. Unbelievable marriage, not a lot of money, very simple lifestyle. Tickled pink died three months with each other still, by the way, knocking boots in the nursing home. I mean model the great ones. But what did we do? Did we model someone slightly better than us or worse? We model someone slightly below us because it makes us feel better. We don't model the badass.

Speaker 2: 45:03

So with technology, especially today, there's no more excuses to not find it.

Speaker 3: 45:09

Nothing he sourced can never replace the face to face. Dude, we can all listen to that person on social, but you just don't really know what's going on. Dude. You need to have somebody tangible in your life. You need to have an uncle Bob that you go out to lunch with and sit down and talk about truthfully. But what do we do as entrepreneurs? We're terrified to tell you guys the truth. We have to tell him no it's going great. Really? I thought last week you told me it's not. Yeah, it was true last week, but it's amazing this week, now that doesn't work like that. Right? So gotta go find people to Mol. Gotta make sure the platform is a real platform that has, has longevity has need, as uniqueness has sustainability has growth. Um, and there's plenty of them out there, but there's plenty of them that are, and people are doing, people are going into business thinking that just because we hang the shingle, we're going to get rich and it doesn't work like that. Dude. It's chess,

Speaker 2: 45:56

Not checkers. So how do you apply this as a dad? Cause since it might do kids have come to BFS. I know that there's a ton of things that you're doing at a deep level to show up and be there for them. What is your philosophy as a father?

Speaker 3: 46:19

I think a lot of the success we're having with our children is connected to my wife, um, which some of that is connected to me because she doesn't have to work so she can pour into the children. Um, she has a lot to do with the success of the kids, but the one thing Rocky and I both agree on is we have high expectations for our children. And if they want a lot of people here that they think like, Oh, you're putting tremendous pressure on our kids. So we're not, I'm not putting pressure on my kids that great grades or great sat scores, or even get into great colleges. I'm just having pressure of expectations that they can achieve great things through the belief system we have in our children. We tell them constantly you can do anything. I tell my boys, particularly my middle son, Jack, cause I think he has a natural ability to, I say, I want you to go find that kid. Who's on the outside of the circle today. And I want you to bring him in that is your power Jack go find that kid. And every day he comes home and says, man, dad, there was this kid. And he was kinda at the end of the tape. I told him you're with me, come on over here with me, man. What, what you think that skill set doesn't play out that doesn't produce a winner who gives a shit about your sat court when you can do that to kid

Speaker 4: 47:31

Did that's that's I think some of the stuff that we're producing it within our children and just the ability to be that confident to help the other person, you know? Uh, and I think that matters so much to me. Cause I have so many memories of somebody not doing that for me when I was a kid, you know it wasn't my old man. Wasn't a coach. Hell. I remember wanting to go to this football game, this high school football game in the playoffs. I remember asking my old man. He said, no, I did have a friend who, whose dad was going. I call my uncle and I asked my uncle, Hey man, what'd you take back gate? I said, yeah, I'll tell you that again. And I sat on that porch. You never showed up ever candid again, the last person on the plane that I could think about, maybe you're taking me to the thing I still have. So the thing that the rocker and I do with our children is we force them to see that and had to have the power to bring their kid into the fold. So you ask, you know, where does our strengthen parents and why we were raising two kids? I think it's expectations and it's not expectations for what most people. I expect you to be super human as a person. That's what I expect about voice. So this whole idea of core values, not just on the business level, right? You brought that into your company, through the torch process to visitation school, your life. That's a man as a dad, as a husband. I'm so over and over repetitive of core values of my clients that I had a couple that came in recently uncouple some major issues. And I said, I can't talk to you. I'm trying to a recording.

Speaker 5: 49:30

Okay.

Speaker 4: 49:30

I send them home with a worksheet and it was a core value problem. It wasn't and why they weren't connecting, why the things happened in their relationship that happened is because they probably were just there sung and no one sat down with them and did this stuff with under 25, 26 years old. And I didn't even get into the issues of why they came. I saw them for three sessions, session one between session one, session two. I said, I want you guys to each write your core values, connect with them personally, between session two in session three. I said, I want you guys to write your relationship without use and come back with that. Yeah. And that was it. It's deep work. It's simplistic, but it's deep work you remember going through and I do too. I mean, that was one of the first questions Sapio asked me over lunch. That first time when I first met him all those years ago, what's your quarterback is I even, you know, it's deep work to get those core values, right, man, it's deep work. I mean, my,

Speaker 3: 50:28

You know, we have, we have our four core values of the office and three, my three core values in my life and at home, the three core bikes at home, our good friend, great husband hero, dad chose hero as an important word. Um, knowing I also chose good friend, cause I know I really can't be a great friend. I just don't really have it in me to be a great friend. Um, the best you're going to get out of me as your friend is a good friend. I won't screw you. I won't steal from you. I won't cheat. I won't do any of that sort of stuff. I just know that I'm never going to be the guy that remembers your birthday. It's just, I just don't have a system in place for that. You know, I'll show up for your funeral with respect, but I just, I just don't know how to be great, but I do know how to learn to be a great husband. And I damn sure know how to be my version of a hero dad. Right?

Speaker 2: 51:22

So picking those three things like everybody out there is trying to juggle everything, right? That work life balance, all these topics, all these categories. And I'm saying, this is what I got. These are my primary focuses. Well the kids

Speaker 3: 51:33

She says, Hey, daddy, want to jump in the pool? No, I don't want to wait a minute. Hero dad coming in. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 51:39

Oh, they changed the instantaneous. They put you back on the

Speaker 3: 51:42

Yeah. You know, and um, they're vital. But I recognize the difficulty in asking the question to your clients and them saying, well, that seems a little bit watered down, but it's so not watered down. It's the ultimate seat,

Speaker 2: 51:58

Ultimate foundation with everything that we want to get. I did a retreat for non-professionals three weeks ago and them in class was what's your brand. And it was all core values. What's your, what's your dating brand marketing. Right? If you're out there dating and you're new, you're coming back to these retreats, which is like a single dude for young Jewish professionals. You're not maybe doing something right. If you're coming back to these scenes year after year. So I was there. And so I finally transitioned from being a participant of the staff. That was my excuse. That's a bias out there. Why am I still coming? And um, and I gave her and it was all around core values. I love that class. So, um, and I snuck it in and that, but it was all about the core values. I gave him the worksheet and I had them put stickers on what are your four or five, uh, personal core values. And then I said, okay, so now what's going to dating while you're on a date. And I know Rick did this with, when he was dating his now wife, um, when you're on a date, what are the top three values that you want to see? So, you know, no matter how good looking the person is across from you, that if it doesn't show up, it's because you're going to swipe, left you in real life. Right. And they did it. And then after we went through this process, I said, okay, so you're all in your twenties and thirties. I want you to go back to any significant dating process or even someone you went out with longer than, you know, you should've. Yeah. And I want to know if you were to go back through these core values through that lens, how many of those people would date again? Sure. One girl raised her hand and she of all the 35 40 people that were in that workshop. And one girl said, I would only go out and date one person again, no one else raised their hand about going back and dating the people that they spent that time with. So can you mention like the days, weeks, months, and properties years that they've wasted. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 53:46

Now you're talking personal. What if you went, you know, we just look at entrepreneurship, just, just think about that core values fixes 90% of the problems in an entrepreneur's business, the hiring problems go away, the firing problems going away, the management goes away. The expectations, the goal setting, the missing of goals, the conversation connected to the missing of the goals. All of it goes away when the core values are in place, because then you just take the person over and you just say, Hey, you know, we missed core value. Number two here, what, what are we gonna do about it? Hey, we missed it again. What should we do about it? W there's no question of whether or not you're the good boss or the bad boss. You're just managing to the core value. There's no, there's no variable. It's just, this is who we are. So it's okay if it's not you, but this is us it's so transformation.

Speaker 2: 54:44

So did you think it allows people to step out of their own self limitation? Self-beliefs and then cause the core values, one of the ways I kind of describe it as that, if you were reaching your ultimate potential at Virgin on your tombstone, but what do you want people showing up and consistently saying about you? And I'm like, well, the lens, if I'm not there yet, when's if I'm not living those core values now, should I put it? Oh, what my core values are now and I throw it back at them now, what is it that you know, that you're going to be living your purpose or potential? The things that you want to show up in your life that haven't showed up in your life will.

Speaker 3: 55:15

Yeah. I mean, I think you're you think you're, you're looking at it at a deep level. Like I am, I mean, something happened at that business finishing school where, you know, we, we took it to a deep level, by the way, what's amazing about this visual. There's a hundred and something people twice a year who felt the same way about it. Right? The challenge is how does it grow? Which is a business model problem. But, but the principles have changed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people's lives and went in one ear and out the other have thousands of people's lives. You just not, everybody's going to get this core value thing, but the ones that get it, get relentless

Speaker 2: 55:56

About it. Would you say that that's the most fundamental piece for them?

Speaker 3: 56:00

They do. I think, I think the entrepreneurial journey starts with what you'll tolerate and what you will not tolerate written down and put on the wall because you know, what we end up doing in business is we tolerate for rev. Right? I know the guys wearing shorts and I told him that, you know, the dress for success today. Right. But I need this revenue. So I better not say anything. God forbid he quit, you know, core values fixes that, you know,

Speaker 2: 56:31

So if people created a core values, driven life versus a were in their career versus a dollar driven life, what do you think would change

Speaker 3: 56:43

Everybody? Be happier, everybody be happier. I mean, just know, just know what you'll tolerate and what you won't tolerate and trust the universe that it will reward you for that discipline and that courage. Right? I mean, it's just, you know, that's just the way it is. I mean, and by the way, there's, there's variables of that, right? Like I I'm listening to a lot of Jordan Belfort lately after the Belford Cardone thing, it sort of put them on my radar screen. And um, the one thing I know about Jordan Belfort is he's brilliant. And he would have been ridiculously successful if he had gone the straight and narrow, just like he was ridiculous, successful being a crook. So there's variables to all these things, right? I mean the universe will take care of those who have clarity.

Speaker 2: 57:28

And is that really the essential theme of your book? Because you need more money, wake up and solve your financial problems once and for all. But the story behind your book is not about the success and the money that you've made for the sake of having success in money. But it's really for a greater purpose.

Speaker 3: 57:46

Yeah. I mean, listen, everybody needs more money and you know, you need more money. Cause, cause you know, when the paycheck on Friday doesn't matter anymore, that's when life really starts to get interesting. Right. But once that's all taken care of, then you want to be in a position where you can help the people you love the most because those are incredible checks. Um, and you know, Rocky that be able to do that. The story is about her brother-in-law who died at 46, got sick at 46 and then died a year later with a wife, four kids, no health insurance, no life insurance and a hundred bucks in the bank. Right. Um, yeah, those are great checks. Those aren't just checks for him and his wife and his children. But those are great checks, right? For the rocker too. And for the Rutgers mom Gigi, to know that, you know, all of them no longer have to worry about one element of this re attempting to recovery to get better. You know what I mean? It's powerful. It's just money solves problems, period. End of story. Anyone who doesn't have money in a, as a major factor of happiness, doesn't get it. It is part of the game of life, life punishes you without money, you know, it does.

Speaker 2: 59:03

So how does people find tune it from going to the entrepreneur mindset that's out there in that social media world to where you had that opportunity to do. And I don't know if that's a place where what's that mind that success or money will just the organic,

Speaker 3: 59:22

You know, who you are, who you are, how can cause I know the focus of the community and trying to create is that emerging adults, right? That high school, young adults into their thirties and with social media, with anything it's been this glitz and glamour, you're gonna make a million bucks, get click funnels. All of a sudden everything's gonna be okay for your affiliate marketing. But the difference of doing it to build a community and build a family, to be there, to support the things that you believe in. I think there needs to be more fine tuning out there. I think a vision of yourself is important before you're that person, right? I mean the fat person's got to see them themselves skinnier. The crappy dressed person has to see them in nicer clothes. Right. Um, you know, you, you do have to visualize what, what you are capable of being. And it's very hard for a lot of people, you know, it's, it's very hard. And so I think the beautiful part is to route, surround yourself with somebody who can actually feed you like that. You know, on my weight loss thing, I had a trainer, this guy fed into me who I could look like every morning at six o'clock in the morning, every morning he told me, man, this is what you should bring me pictures of, of uh, of the rock. It would bring me pictures of, um, what's that guy. He was in the movie, the hangover, uh, Bradley Bradley Cooper. He'd say, this is the outfit you should wear. And I'd go out, buy the outfit. And I look better in the outfit, right? We need someone like that in our lives that can have a vision for us that we may not see for ourselves. And the sad part is for a lot of us, we never get that person. So we never become that person. Right? How much you ever look at somebody and say, she's beautiful. If she lost 80 pounds, you can see our eyes are beautiful. And some of her features, but she feels so crappy about herself that she stays fat is it's and he, or she imagine what somebody could, what could happen if that person, but that process of transformation is not a, not a one and done. It takes a of time commitment. So how does, how did you know it was the right person? Right? Cause one of the things in this world, and as we're working, we're coaching and doing whatever we need to do is the idea that we're going to bring people into our lives to help us get there. Yeah. And I know you have a philosophy of, um, hire, hire, hire fast fire stuff, the other way around fire. Well, in this situation, it all comes back to the network. To eventually you have to have a network of winners that you can rely on. I wanted to lose weight. I went to the best shape guy. I know. And I said, I'm going to lose weight. Who do you suggest I go to? And he said, you want to lose weight or you want to transform? And I said, I want to transform. He said, there's one guy, Justin lemons. So that's the guy that was it. I didn't care what Blevins charge. That was my guy. That was my recommendation. That was a guy I trusted who told me, boom, I'm going to Blevins. And it worked out for that period of time. Blevins and I no longer work out. I moved to Colorado to start a church, but yeah, it lives up in the mountains and he's doing this thing. He's awesome. But my new guy is totally different. Right? Totally different. I knew guys bodybuilder, hardcore workouts. And he tells me, I said, you know, we're coming up on a year, a man of, you know, losing weight on social. It's like, they just get started. I'm like, no, no, dude, it's been a year. He was like, dude, you need to give it three years before you see anything. Right. Do those five builders as our hard core. Like he calls it being flawless where you flawless yesterday, how was wanting to, I took him, you know, 120 ounces, like dude flawless is two gallons of water a day. Right? How was the eating then? You know, I, I got it a little. It was like, we gotta get flawless. We're not saying I like people like that. It might move too. That's the rhythms and rituals. But I want toughness. I respond to toughness, which is an appreciation of what a Dick, my old man was. I actually can now look upon his methods with grace because I've turned them into a positive, not a negative. I want to be around difficulty. It helps me. But you can't expect that. Like, you know, I say the rocker, you need to tell me if I look fat going out of the office, she's like, never tell me I look fat, right? So it's your own thing, you know? So to wrap it all up, this is my on one foot question. If you only have two minutes to share your life's wisdom with someone you met on the street and you knew you would never speak to them again, what would you share? You know, I would tell them that a used to have it wrong. I used to say, zebras can't change their stripes, but they can't. I am truly living proof that you can become someone different than who you thought was good. So you can change, man. You can freaking transform. You can go from being broke to not broke. You can go from being fad to not be. In fact, you can go from being an asshole to not being an asshole. You can go from being a drunk, to not be in a drunk, go from being a drug addict, not being a drug addict. You can go from shit to great. You can. And I would just remind everybody that that is, should be a primary focus. Be the best free conversion of yourself. Don't go easy on yourself, man. There's too much at stake, dude. It's not the same world, but it's just not, everything is more complicated. Now. Parenting listen. 20 years ago, we were told to eat low fat. Now we're being told to eat bacon. What's right. I don't know. What's right. How do we know? Right. I, I don't know. Are we supposed to buy certain real estate or is that changing? Is Bitcoin legit or is Bitcoin a joke? I don't know. Everything is more complicated. So how do you weather the complexity by figuring out who the freak you are, what the hell do you stand for? What will you tolerate? What will you not tolerate? That's the ultimate question. Everybody should be asking. I refuse to be around that type of person or that type of conversation or that type of facility or that type of environment or that type of neighborhood. All of those things matter.

Speaker 2: 1:05:50

I remember I had to do that with somebody. I was good friends with them and their reputation kept popping up. And I always had this idea of, if they're saying this about him and Jason's good friends with him, what are they saying about me? Even though they knew kind of where I stood, but it's guilt by association and I grew up never. And I still am working on this of never wanting to hurt someone else's feelings on my behalf. And throughout the years, looking back at people, I've worked with people. I've had a hire, whether I was working for, um, youth group and a nonprofit that I, I would always take the brunt of that, messing up, doing something wrong, not being

Speaker 3: 1:06:28

Great example versus

Speaker 2: 1:06:31

To hurt them. And I think once I started learning that toleration tendency around, how am I hurting myself and put the fear of not being liked

Speaker 3: 1:06:39

Because of saying, no, this doesn't work.

Speaker 2: 1:06:41

This is not the value. So I think that was the biggest shift for me about,

Speaker 3: 1:06:46

Well, there's a lot of power in believing in somebody when they're down to men, you know, and that's the magic of trying to figure out the game of, should I be pouring into this person? Do they really have an upside? Do they have potential? And by the IB, the person that could pull it out, there's real power in that, you know, but you know, as a therapist and as people who are, you know, counselors and things like that, I mean, it's a low percent, you know, the key is to not get hard. And I know a guy who, who, um, mentors, college athletes, D one college athletes who fall into drugs and all that sort of stuff. It's fricking hard as nails, man. I mean, he doesn't feel he expects you to fail. And I don't know that that's the right way to go either. You know, so

Speaker 2: 1:07:27

What projects are next for you? How can our listeners get involved and help come to find you,

Speaker 3: 1:07:31

Let me get the book. You need more money on Amazon that I am writing a new book called the torch, a torch, what you like to get, what you love, which, um, I hope penguin will pick that up. Like they did. You need more money. The big focus is continuing to keep the machine and commercial fleet spitting out tokens. Um, but you know, I'm pretty much delegated a lot of that, almost all of it to the executive management team who I trust completely. And then it's now ramping up this burn, the ships.com, uh, which will be a course, which feeds to bootcamps. And then we'll be launching that tribal rocket, a software company and probably another six months. But that tribal rocket is going to fix a big problem, which is how do you, how do you insert an execute on real company culture within an organization change? And the way we will build that software is only based on revenue enhancement, profit enhancement, or expense reduction. That's the only way belly culture for the sake of culture played ping pong and all this stuff that doesn't work in real businesses, they have to drive rev culture is based on winning and winning and businesses, revenue, growth, profit growth, or expense reduction. That's it. It's not about, you know, yeah, Bob, Bob's not a bad person. That's not winning in business. Right?

Speaker 2: 1:08:44

Let's see. So bringing in an espresso machines and opinions on the table, that's not, it, that's not the end.

Speaker 3: 1:08:48

We will have that in our new office. We will have ping pong table and all that. So we're, so we actually bought a half of a big rig and we'll be inserting it in the wall. It will be coming out of the wall. When you walk into the new office, we'll be sick, but, um, all those things matter, but all of it is the enhancement to drive revenue, drive profit, or reduce expenses, any business venture for anything other than that, it's not busy.

Speaker 2: 1:09:11

And is that the goal for the attacking conquer?

Speaker 3: 1:09:14

You know, if you've come to the town, copy, we lay out all of our core values and our mission statement and all of our objectives, our KPIs, um, you know, we, we, we expect to grow it a hundred percent a year and attacking conquer bootcamps and operate at a 70% profit margin. We tell the attendance there, right? We, our company will operate at a 70% profit margin. And in order for us to get that we will reduce expenses or we will increase the cost to attend the bootcamp, to obtain a 70% margin. I'm not interested in having another business that operates at a 20%.

Speaker 2: 1:09:43

So what can people expect, right. If they did want to go to that,

Speaker 3: 1:09:46

Well, you need to have a million in sales. That's the first criteria, right? That's filter, but we want to make sure we're surrounding ourselves with hashtag like-minded. There's a lot of the concepts we teach you don't experience. If you are not producing multimillions in revenue. Um, but we will, we will literally build out your 12 month roadmap. We will remove the noise and the chaos, and we will get you and your team totally aligned on the five things that you need to do in the next 12 months to grow revenue based on the end game that we create. So it's about 15 pillar concepts that are taught over a day and a half. And it's, it's drinking from the fire hose every minute of every day. But Thursday, nights of blast, bring in cigars, open bar, um, Texas barbecue. It's always done in Dallas, Texas burn. The ships.com is where people can go learn about it. It's an incredible event. Six, six, six is unbelievable. I don't think there's anything that exists anywhere like the attacking concrete bootcamp and, uh, by the way, a hundred percent money back guarantee. That's how confident we are. If for any reason you didn't think the value was greater than the cost to attend, we will write you a check on the second day. You leave with your money back.

Speaker 2: 1:10:54

And that money back guarantee is also backed up by someone else.

Speaker 3: 1:10:58

Yeah. Yeah. Cardona endorsing. You can see it on burn the shifts.com. It's pretty cool. We won't, we won't take uncle G up on that, but, um, but we'll certainly stroke your check and we've never had anybody ask them for the money back and nobody ever, will you be the RA? We made the wrong choice if you ask her to mind that.

Speaker 4: 1:11:15

So thank you. Thank you for, for this time. Thank you for being an example to me, to my community, to people that know you through me, um, for, you know, one of my, uh, my sister and I were talking and I'm just like, are you going to get him to say burn it, burn it. And so congratulations on, as you said, getting a piece of the American, everybody should get their piece and there's a lot of pieces available. Yeah. Thanks man. So thank you so much. Thank you. I look forward to seeing it on Saturday, too.

Speaker 1: 1:11:55

Thanks for listening to the you winning life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it. If you subscribe so you don't miss an episode, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Watser LMF T.